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from the bring-back-common-sense-adctl dept.
Google engineers have proposed changes to Chromium which would completely break content-blocking extensions, including various ad blockers, ostensibly for "security" reasons.
Per The Register:
In a note posted Tuesday to the Chromium bug tracker, Raymond Hill, the developer behind uBlock Origin and uMatrix, said the changes contemplated by the Manifest v3 proposal will ruin his ad and content blocking extensions, and take control of content away from users.
Content blockers may be used to block ads, but they have broader applications. They're predicated on the notion that users, rather than anyone else, should be able to control how their browser presents and interacts with remote resources.
Manifest v3 refers to the specification for browser extension manifest files, which enumerate the resources and capabilities available to browser extensions. Google's stated rationale for making the proposed changes is to improve security, privacy and performance, and supposedly to enhance user control.
"Users should have increased control over their extensions," the design document says. "A user should be able to determine what information is available to an extension, and be able to control that privilege."
But one way Google would like to achieve these goals involves replacing the webRequest API with a new one, declarativeNetRequest.
[...] Hill, who said he's waiting for a response from the Google software engineer overseeing this issue, said in an email to The Register: "I understand the point of a declarativeNetRequest API, and I am not against such API. However I don't understand why the blocking ability of the webRequest API – which has existed for over seven years – would be removed (as the design document proposes). I don't see what is to be gained from doing this."
Hill observes that several other capabilities will no longer be available under the new API, including blocking media elements larger than a specified size, disable JavaScript execution by injecting Content-Security-Policy directives, and removing the outgoing Cookie headers.
And he argues that if these changes get implemented, Chromium will no longer serve users.
The Register points out that this will not just affect Google Chrome and Chromium, but also Chromium based web browsers such as Brave Browser and Microsoft Edge.
(Score: 2) by Kalas on Wednesday January 23 2019, @10:25PM
It had a quite a few nifty and perhaps unique features, like some tab grouping scheme I don't know the name for (1) and a load timer in the URL bar, and the home screen displayed how many ads and trackers were blocked along with the estimated total time saved by not loading ads or 3rd party scripts.
I don't understand all the technical changes below the surface but it seems like it's just one more browser developer shafting the user to better serve their customers. Hell, in at least one version they even preloaded ~250 ads of their own to show preferentially over a site's navite ads! Check their wikipedia page if you don't believe me. I don't remember if they're doing that in the current version but their actions ruined a fine browser. I found it shocking that any browser dev had the gall to preload ads in the browser, much less one with such a reputation for adblocking. I wish I could find another that lets me group tabs like that. I think it also supported tab stacking but that's not the same and I never saw much use for it.
(1) - those bars below the tabs you see here. [catbox.moe] That's insanely useful for someone who spends half his day stumbling through Wikipedia, clicking 3 new links before I close the current article. Each of those secondary tabs held another bar of tabs (20, 50 or 100) you could switch between as needed. Chrome-like browsers effectively limit how many tabs you can use because you can't scroll through or expand the tab bar in any way that I know of.