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Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

359 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Reminder to switch browsers if you haven't already!

Google Chrome is starting to phase out older, more capable ad blocking extensions in favor of the more limited Manifest V3 system.
The Manifest V3 system has been criticized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation for restricting the capabilities of web extensions.
Google has made concessions to Manifest V3, but limitations on content filtering remain a source of skepticism and concern.

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[–] pyre 5 points 5 months ago (5 children)

since people here are more tech savvy than i could ever be if like to ask what you guys think of Vivaldi, because i like it a lot. super customizable, has quick command search, side panel lets me use some websites like extensions, and workspaces help me organize especially with work... has anyone used it and can anyone tell me if waterfox or other forks are better and how?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

another chromium
GUI looks good
Cross platform
Highdpi kind of sucks on plasma 5
Fast
Not Firefox

I tried it for a week, but eventually left back for Firefox.

[–] m_hrstv 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Vivaldi is cool af and I used it for a few years but ditched it for firefox the minute i read about manifest v3(2 years ago? don't remember). Not the devs' fault but I'll be damned if i allow ads on my devices.

[–] pyre 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

is that guaranteed to force all chromium browsers regardless? like, does that ban the ublock origin extension (or something to the effect of rendering it useless)?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It does! However, uBlock Origin has a "Lite" version that works with Manifest v3.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home

[–] pyre 1 points 5 months ago

wow. ok. time to experiment with Firefox forks.

[–] m_hrstv 1 points 5 months ago

Yeah, all chromium-based browsers will be affected, sadly.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Vivaldi is the new Opera, right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

If by Opera you mean as it was back in version 12 before it got sold to some chinese company and completely changed, then yes. Nothing to do with what opera is now.

[–] airglow 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If Vivaldi were free and open source, it would make an interesting alternative to Ungoogled Chromium. But it's not, so I'll stick with extensions on Firefox (and Ungoogled Chromium as a backup).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It is source-available though, so that's a plus.

[–] airglow 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

According to Vivaldi's blog post "Why isn't Vivaldi's browser open-source?", all of Vivaldi's UI is closed source and not source-available:

Note that, of the three layers above, only the UI layer is closed-source. Roughly 92% of the browser’s code is open source coming from Chromium, 3% is open source coming from us, which leaves only 5% for our UI closed-source code.

Keeping Vivaldi’s UI layer closed-source and obfuscated allows us to set these worries aside, so we can focus on the job at hand. It may not be a perfect solution, but as a business, we have to make decisions that minimize uncertainty, if only for our self respect as employees – and employee-owners.

The UI is the main thing that differentiates Vivaldi from Chromium, and Vivaldi chose to keep it closed source and obfuscated for business reasons. That's a negative compared to Firefox and Ungoogled Chromium.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Huh, hadn't seen that bit before, thanks for that. Ok, well that is disappointing. I did notice this bit in there too though:

What about security benefits? Even though most of the security-relevant code for Vivaldi browser is in Chromium, there is also some security-relevant code in the UI. If you think that specific security-relevant parts of the UI should be open-sourced to make Vivaldi more trustworthy, let us know, and we’ll consider putting it out as part of our code bundles, so you can check it for yourselves.

It not much consolation, but it's better than nothing. As it stands though, FF still has too many problems for me. I'll have to see how this ad blocking thing shakes out though, might have to revisit my decision then.

[–] kamen 1 points 5 months ago

As a long time user of Opera (from before they went with Chromium), I've been using Vivaldi as my primary browser since they first released a public preview. It has its downsides (i.e. the UI is slightly slower than that of Chrome), but at the same time it's the thing that feels most "at home" for me after migrating away from the joke Opera has become. The developers seem to hold a strong anti-manifest-v3 stance, but unfortunately at one point they might have to comply. I just tried the built-in blocker instead of uBlock Origin I normally use and it seems to do a pretty good job.

I get the whole "switch to Firefox" thing; for me the major blocker is that it doesn't have global mouse gestures and this messes up with my muscle memory. If they add that, I might give Firefox another chance.