Mozilla reaffirms that Firefox will continue to support current content blockers - gHacks Tech News:
From next year onward, extensions for Google Chrome and most other Chromium-based browsers, will have to rely on a new extension manifest. Manifest V3 defines the boundaries in which extensions may operate.
Current Chromium extensions use Manifest V2 for the most part, even though the January 2023 deadline is looming over the heads of every extension developer.
[...] By June 2023, Chrome and most Chromium-based browsers won't support Manifest v2 extensions anymore. Those installed will be disabled automatically, because they are no longer compatible. Those offered on the Chrome Web Store will vanish, unless their developers published an update to make them compatible with the new Manifest v3.
[...] While Manifest v3 does not mean the end for content blocking on Chrome, Edge and other Chromium-based browsers, it may limit abilities under certain circumstances. Users who install a single content blocker and no other extension that relies on the same relevant API may not notice much of a change, but those who like to add custom filter lists or use multiple extensions that rely on the API, may run into artificial limits set by Google.
[...] Mozilla reaffirmed this week that its plan has not changed. In "These weeks in Firefox: issue 124", the organization confirms that it will support the WebRequst API of Manifest v2 alongside Manifest v3.
[...] That is good news for users of the web browser who use content blockers such as uBlock Origin. The extension, which its developer claims operates best under Firefox, is the most popular extension for Firefox based on the number of installations and ratings.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Thursday September 29 2022, @03:25AM (11 children)
Chrome being run by an advertising company was always a conflict of interest. I'm surprised it took them this long to clamp down on adblocking. For anyone looking for alternative solutions, something like NextDNS helps a lot to protect the entire network. If you want full control of the entire hardware/software stack there's the Pi-hole project. Blocking ads/tracking on your network is an ethical imperative. If you run a network and you're not doing this, you really should be. You have an obligation to your users to remove internet pollution.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DiarrhoeaChaChaCha on Thursday September 29 2022, @04:18AM (2 children)
Amen.
Of course, as I understand it, once DoH gets pushed hard enough by the Googles and Facebooks of the world (because security) my Piholes will likely become at least partially obsolete quickly.
(Score: 1) by GloomMower on Thursday September 29 2022, @02:26PM
You can set the url used for querying in the browser, and it is easy to turn off. But yeah isn't as simple as just dhcp giving the pihole for dns. But if you set up pihole seems like you should be able to set a browser flag to false.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2022, @02:43PM
Do you mean that DNS over Https will become required in the future? How will that work? Won't people just set up their own DNS server?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday September 29 2022, @05:13AM
They certainly had to wait until people were sufficiently dependent. This meant in particular:
In short, they had first to become the new IE (and in a sense they literally did, now that Microsoft's browser also uses their engine).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Thursday September 29 2022, @06:09AM (5 children)
Chrome being run by an advertising company was always a conflict of interest.
And Firefox is run indirectly by an advertising company since it gets more or less all its money from Google, specifically. Baker has been making that dependency worse while also ensuring that the software gets worse, possibly on purpose, and sends market share over to Google, almost certainly on purpose.
Remember the Golden Rule [quoteinvestigator.com]. It follows then that Google calls the shots at Mozilla, and will eventually make a decision regarding their support of V2. Mozilla's resistance to Manifest V3 / continued support for Manifest V2 will last only as long as Google needs it to last. Right now there is the illusion of choice and that suits Google to a T.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday September 29 2022, @12:00PM (2 children)
There is a difference though: Because Firefox is open-source, it's entirely possible to fork it whenever enough people want to. Whether that be Seamonkey or some other variation. And any nefarious stuff Google tries to add to it can be removed by anyone who wants to put together a patch set and compile their own.
Whereas Chrome is however Google makes it, period, no opportunity for changes.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Informative) by GloomMower on Thursday September 29 2022, @02:22PM (1 child)
> Whereas Chrome is however Google makes it, period, no opportunity for changes.
What do you mean, it is just a build a Chromium.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-projects/ [chromium.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2022, @02:51PM
He means that most people including large companies people work for use the Chrome version which has whatever crap Google puts into it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Thursday September 29 2022, @09:04PM (1 child)
It wouldn't be the first time Mozilla abandoned an extension API.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Friday September 30 2022, @12:42AM
Mozilla had to abandon their previous extension API to go multi-process, and they had to go multi-process because they were losing browser performance wars to Google badly.
They're still losing, partly because Google throws more money at the problem than Mozilla can afford to match and partly because Baker appears to be an idiot and not make performance a bigger priority. But the performance gap is a fraction of what it was when Firefox had its old extension APIs.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Nuke on Friday September 30 2022, @09:10AM
Sound to me like the interests are aligned exactly.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Friday September 30 2022, @04:42AM
...even more than I hate Chrome, but if Chrome nixes UBlock and Dark Reader, it becomes unusable to me.
Literally: ads consume at least 80% of a typical ad-infested page's bandwidth. Which would effectively reduce my already-shit connection to 1Mbps.
As it is, I mostly use SeaMonkey... but mixed and interactive content typically only really works right in Chrome. Gee, I wonder why that could be...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Saturday October 01 2022, @12:45AM
Today I was present as a group of people in a workplace started a training video hosted on youtube. On each and every computer, as they started the video, it started playing a rather disturbing advertisement. I didn't see if they could skip the ad, but no one did, at least not before it played the offending part. Long story short, this advertisement was NOT appropriate for a work environment and caused a serious problem.
I recommended they install ad blockers, but they use Google Chrome, so even if they happen to consider it, it may not work going forwards. Clearly, everyone also needs to consider video hosting solutions other than Youtube - it's gone down the crapper.
We are going to see more of this.