this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024

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Here's what's happening to ad blockers in Google Chrome (and other browsers) (www.spacebar.news)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

what i don't get is all the people complaining about google and at the same time using their browser...

i believe that trying to steer masses away from chrome would be more useful in the long run than trying to make it work

[–] mtpender 66 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Just use Firefox

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Seriously... enough of this "oh well its not that bad, atleast we can still do this, or that. Maybe blockers will work but with less features, etc."

Fuck that shit

The extra [API] functionality already allows uBlock Origin on Firefox to work better than the Chrome version.

Always has been.

Tired of getting fucked by chr0me and g00gle? Stop spreading your cheeks and just use Firefox (librewolf, mull, et. al.) and uBlock Origin.

Simple as.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Until Mozilla caves & Fx fully adopts Manifest v3. I hope it doesn’t happen but would not surprise me in the slightest if they did

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

people are somehow allergic to firefox

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I use FF as my primary browser on my desktop, laptop, and mobile devices.

As much as I love and support FF and the Mozilla Foundation, I find that some websites simply need a Chromium-based browser to function properly. It's frustrating as hell.

I wonder how many people tried FF, had their favourite site stop working, and then switched back to Chrome.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Until now I never had issues with Firefox.

But here in Germany the fanbase of ff ist larger. Maybe that’s why you don’t have problems with most of sites from Europe?!?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Maybe that’s why you don’t have problems with most of sites from Europe?!?

That's an interesting observation. I'm not sure, since I'm in Canada.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If you properly use firefox personalised the way you want it, it gives you shitty unusable websites in Europe too. Banking says no, newspapers being buggy to unreadable with certain script blocking or cookie refusal, disable adblock to continue windows etc, it all exists here too. I always try ff. If really needed I open the shitty site in edge and afterwards return to ff... Also public (tax payer funded!) flemish radio and tv for example is completely unusable in ff with proper settings, works "perfect" in edge or chrome. German and Dutch public TV and radio works fine in ff tho.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I've been a long time FF user, and if I encounter a buggy site I just wouldn't use it. Only problematic site is fucking Teams, and since I can't just stop using it, I'll switch to brave for the meeting and right back to FF after.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

That's perfectly fine for some things, but for most people letting their browser choice dictate what sites they use is backwards

[+] Ptsf -14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Firefox has absolutely destroyed the battery of most mobile devices I've tried it with. Any ideas on fixes to get it at least to parity with chrome? In-use power metrics seem fine, but if I let it sit Chrome will allow the system to go into low power/sleep while firefox tends to just keep things running somehow? (Not sure why there's down votes here... I use Firefox by default whenever I'm on desktop and this is a real issue I experience on my mobile systems (M1 pro mac, Intel/Windows laptop, M1 iPad pro, and amd/Linux (steamdeck)). I'm also genuinely interested in solution recommendations... Like I get you love Mozilla and firefox, I do too, but I can't substitute one for the other when it causes a significant shift in my device use paradigm.) (For the continued down votes, 1. You're the reason people don't want to use software you like 2. I've tested this on my machines and it's very real, only occurring when firefox is running and not related to system settings).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I haven't run into that issue with Firefox on my M1 MacBook Air. Maybe try the Firefox reset feature, it's possible some extension or other user data is breaking something and needs to be wiped.

[–] Ptsf 4 points 6 months ago

I'll give that a shot! Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ok you’re back to zero again bro haha. Oh always use my safari btw

[–] Ptsf 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah, I tend to use a mix. Safari for the Apple devices since it gets first class citizenship seemingly, then Firefox on anything stationary, and then Chromium on mobile.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Is it possible this is site-specific? The only issue I've had with Firefox on my MacBook was leaving pinned tabs open on pages that dynamically refreshed. Gmail, for example, would eat up memory over time. So I killed that pinned tab and I haven't had issues since. I still have Discord pinned without issue.

On iPad...I dunno, Firefox on iPad is a hard sell without extension support so I haven't used it much. I've been trying Orion lately, since it has a built-in ad blocker and is otherwise very similar to Safari in terms of performance and functionality.

I only run Linux on desktop so I'm not sure about battery life there. Is Firefox actually blocking sleep? I think Steam Deck runs a version of KDE, so perhaps you can use the kde-inhibit command to list and control blocks.

[–] Ptsf 2 points 6 months ago

I honestly have no idea. I assume it's some issue with background processing or something at an engine level. Nothing Chromium or webkit based seems to suffer the same issues, but perhaps it's just an issue with my Firefox account or an extension that doesn't behave properly with the browser. 😓

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Unfortunately chromebooks have been one of the cheapest options for a whole now and have been being introduced all over school systems in the US so kids are used to them and uninformed parents will continue to buy what they know meete school requirements.

Everyone that can definitely should switch to Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Most people are not accessing the internet via a Chromebook.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Never said they were. But it's foolish to ignore the significant populations of school children and older non technical people who have been reccomended the cheapest thing that won't get viruses and let's them get on Facebook and YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

We had B2G (Boot to Gecko) for a while. We could have had FxOS on laptops instead of one shitty midrange phone & maybe it would have worked. 😔

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

You can fork it and basically freeze it at manifest-v2.

The problem is, all the big tech sumbitches, their buddies and all the companies who want a corporate website that Just Works [tm] will support Google's new shit, and your privacy-respecting fork will slowly deprecate and stop working right, because you don't have the resources to mirror new features in Google's official browser. And of course, ordinary internet users with stick to Google's version because they need a browser that works.

Chicken and egg... In fact, that's exactly what's happening to Firefox and why it's sliding into irrelevance: Google is simply too massive and too monopolistic to resist for very long. Mozilla has had hundreds of millions to throw at trying and even they are on the verge of losing the battle completely.

[+] [email protected] -11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (7 children)

Look, I'm a Linux user, and I prefer to use Free apps. However, the truth must be told: Firefox is not as optimized as Chrome. On older devices, Chrome is twice as fast in youtube playback, and it uses way less RAM overall. Chrome is the better browser in terms of architecture, at least for older PCs (and I have a whole bunch of them). On my main PC, running Debian-Testing, which is a newer PC, I do use Firefox, because it can handle stuff ok with enough CPU power. But for all my older PCs (anywhere from 5 to 15 years old), I have to use Chrome.

Now, if you find me a de-googled, Free, WELL-MAINTANED Chromium browser, I rather use that than Chrome. No, Brave, etc don't cut it. I want a community-driven, well maintained Chromium browser. Currently, all de-googled versions are not well maintained, or not available as native packages on Debian.

EDIT: So, downvoted, huh? By fellow open source users who don't want to hear the truth?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

Google has a history of sabotaging Firefox in YouTube, because they can. This is a YouTube problem more than a Firefox problem. I know that's not really helpful for you as an end user, but I want to mention it because really, Google deserves the blame.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

I can't downvote you from my instance, but you do realise it's been pretty well-known, for at least a decade in certain circles, that YouTube specifically slows down on Firefox? I'm pretty sure you can test this yourself by changing user agents. So that hardly seems like a fair test of a browser's speed.

[–] art 11 points 6 months ago

So, downvoted, huh? By fellow open source users who don't want to hear the truth?

The truth is that you might have experienced this, but this might not reflect the average user's experience. My older ThinkPad feels no difference in better life based on the web browser.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Vivaldi, good maintaned, no calls to Google, inbuild and customizable ad and trackerblocker. If Chromium, than this one.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

A proprietary browser is a non-starter for me, especially when there are many free alternatives, even Chromium based ones. I'd take Ungoogled-Chromium on desktop or Cromite on mobile, heck I'd take Brave even.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes, Vivaldi isn't fullFOSS, because 5% of the script of the unique UI is proprietary of Vivaldi, but it's 100% auditable and even moddeable by the user, they even show how to do it in its community. Edge and Chrome would fork it in the same moment when Vivaldi make it OpenSource, killing all other Chromium and Vivaldi itself. Maybe in the future it will go full OpenSource, there are still intern debates about it. The sense of OpenSource is to be capable to collaborate in new products, but with almost 100 browsers and forks in the market, this value is pretty debatable. For the user is more important the ethics of the company respect the user, in this case a european, employee-owned cooperative, which is given with a full transparency in all it's services included in the account (mail, calendar, feed, blog, the Vivaldi Mastodon instance, e2ee sync in own server, etc.).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I will continue to maintain that it is bitterly ironic for a product which is 95% based on free software to be so hostile to software freedom. They feel so entitled to take but don't want to give back, and they justify it by saying that that others will do the same thing they did if they do make it fully free.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Does Vivaldi play nice with Wayland? I have it installed (can't remember if was an rpm or flatpak) but seems to crash kinda often. Sometimes to the point of gnome session restarting. I used to have the opposite problem with my previous PC. All AMD cpu/GPU. Stock fedora 40 gnome.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

the truth must be told: Firefox is not as optimized as Chrome

what are you talking about? my desktop pc is amd fx4300. definition of old and subpar - https://i.imgur.com/WBm5Ub1.png - and i have 313 open tabs right now.

granted, that is slightly more affected by memory, before i updated from 8 to 32 gb recently, it was admittedly slightly more sluggish.

but at the same time normal people don't really have 300 open tabs at once and also you have to ask what is the threshold where you are willing to sacrifice your privacy for slight speed increase.

do you have some numbers to support that speed difference, or is it just your feeling, or anecdote that is being passed around and everyone repeats it and everyone believes it, because everyone says so?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I use Cromite on my android phone and Ungoogled Chromium (available as a flatpak) on my computers, both are good and getting updates.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Why doesnt brave cut it? Also ungoogled chromium is available as an appimage and a deb

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

It's a company that wants google's spot in the ad business with a different approach, in the long run we'll have the same shit as Google if they succeed.

[–] Mango 18 points 6 months ago

Your extension code could be spying on you. Let OUR software do that instead! It's much more secure in our black box.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (4 children)

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