uBlock Origin developer recommends switching to Firefox as Chrome flags the extension
github.com
EDIT: Apologies. Updated with a link to what gorhill REALLY said:
Manifest v2 uBO will not be automatically replaced by Manifest v3 uBOL[ight]. uBOL is too different from uBO for it to silently replace uBO -- you will have to explicitly make a choice as to which extension should replace uBO according to your own prerogatives.
Ultimately whether uBOL is an acceptable alternative to uBO is up to you, it's not a choice that will be made for you.
Will development of uBO continue? Yes, there are other browsers which are not deprecating Manifest v2, e.g. Firefox.
Comment from gorhill (the developer of uBO and uBOL):
https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1ejhpu5/comment/lgdmthd/
"uBlock Origin developer slams NeoWin, backpedals on recommendation!" —NeoWin editors, probably.
Sounds about right for any news outlet. "Slams" is so overused, and usually nowhere near an accurate euphamism.
How did supposedly intellectual people ever conclude that we should use the word "slam" on the daily in headlines?
It's straight out of Idiocracy and I will never get used to it.
Ragebait gets more clicks.
Well yes, obviously. My question is more about how they pretend it's not just ragebait.
Very simple, they learned not to care and the ones who did care got weeded out.
Intellectual? Shit, that doesn’t pay.
Unless you're lucky enough to get tenure, or stumble upon a fact of the universe that no one knew and just happens to be relevant to a modern economy.
Because not only is it emotive (and they love emotive language to get you to click), it's also just an objectively fantastic word for a headline in that it's very concise and helps headlines fit on a single line.
Headline space is limited, so it's easier to go with "X slams Y over Z" as opposed to "X criticises Y over Z" or "X denounces Y over Z" or "X castigates Y over Z"
It's annoying how much it's seen. But I get why they do it.
100% disagree
All of these are better. They're honest about what's happening and most people understand them. "Slams" implies some level of violence or at least force. Not only isn't that dishonest most of the time, it could devalue the word to that point that it just simply has no meaning. I refuse to internalize it as best as I can, but if they had their way I would think "slam" means a brutal vitriolic takedown. Instead I know it normally means "mildly comments on" these days.
Fuck "slam" in headlines.
You're interpreting me saying "it's objectively good in headlines because it's extremely short and clear what it means" as "I love it when they say 'slams'!"
I was very explicit in saying I don't like it. It's just objectively (not subjectively) a good word for headlines.
I am not making an emotional argument to you. I'm just answering the question of why they use it. If you didn't actually want an answer to the question, you should've made it clearer it was a rhetorical question.
No they aren't, for the very reason I already stated. They aren't concise, which is paramount when it comes to crafting a headline.
Slam does not imply violence or force lol.
I thought it's clear when we ask a question that can't actually be answered, because thousands of journalists are not one person we can ask, it's not meant to be taken 100% literally.
Of course it does. That's 100% the only reason why they use it this way. Notice how that's explicit in every definition but the last (the newer, still less-common usage I'm taking issue with):
I love when people want to quibble about word definitions, being super strict or loose whenever it suits them. In the real world, people use words loosely and over time the connotation changes. Hence definition 4's existence here.
My main problem with using the word this way is that it's rarely honest. I am annoyed by it because it sounds stupid, but like I said, more importantly:
Except... it can, because I did? We're talking about a common industry practice here, not some enigmatic unsolvable mystery of the universe.
No.
Oh is it? Do you have an assertion for that? You really think that when they say "X slams Y" they're trying to make you think there's a physical altercation going on?
You'll notice I said in the context of headlines. Of course in other contexts slam can mean violence. But because we're specifically talking about headlines here, not, say, discussing a WWE performance, it's very obvious what "slams" means.
You're really going into the weeds here. You asked why they use "slams" in headlines so often, and I gave you an answer. I don't see why you feel the need to argue about it so much.
They use it because people understand what it means, it's emotive, and it's very concise compared to "criticises", "chastises", "denounces", "castigates", or "attacks"
Actually, based on your previous argument, you'd probably hate it if they said "attacks" too, as you could also interpret it as violence.
I stopped reading. Being an idiot on purpose isn't as cool as you think it is
It's just flat out ridiculous to say that the word slam has no connotations of forcefulness or violence. Even if I didn't put the goddamned dictionary entry in your face to prove it. Bye.
That's not what I said, can you even read? Are you afflicted with cretinism, lad?
They should recommend switching to Firefox instead. It's clear that Google cannot be allowed to have a monopoly on browsers.
The title is misleading, or false.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox
Welcome to 2024, where people only read the headline and the article is compiled by AI
Even better is FF mobile (on Android) supports full list of addons, including uBlock Origin.
The using the web without uBlock Origin is cancer.
Though not container tabs (yet)?
Unfortunately no.
How do you account for all other apps? My personal preference is using VPN along with DNS filtering to cut shit out system-wide.
I’m on iOS but the number of telemetry, tracking and ad domains requested by apps outside the browser is alarming (many of them owned by Google).
They should I've been using mull on mobile and Librewolf on Windows 10 since the first time Google announced these Anti Adblock intensions. Must be a few years now.
I did mess with Thorium a little when it claimed to be the fastest browser on earth but yeah apart from that I've been using hardened Firefox forks
I only use Firefox and have for the past few years. Yesterday I tried to schedule an appointment to get my oil changed at the dealer but was unable because the process on the site just flat-out breaks on Firefox. This is not a complaint about Firefox, but the fact that Chrome is so popular that some websites only work with Chrome. I don't have a Chromium-based browser installed (besides Edge, which I've never opened intentionally) and I despise being on the phone (which is why I was trying to schedule online in the first place), so I just didn't make the appointment. I'll go somewhere else to get my oil changed. Sorry for the rant but it was extremely frustrating.
It's the Internet Explorer problem all over again, but this time from an even more invasive company.
The more people choosing non-Chomium browsers, the better. Keeping them popular enough that most sites have to support them is the only way to preserve what little agency people still have on the mainstream web.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-mask
This addon will work if it's not letting you
Not necessarily. The problem is often that chrome JavaScript implementation can be ever so slightly different from FFs. Or just that the web devs wrote fragile code that is barely working on chrome and doesn't work on other browsers, where they failed to test.
Worth keeping around at least
Out of principle, I refuse to pretend I am not browsing with Firefox. 🦊❤️✊ Let website statistics show! And I will boycott sites that break due to not testing on multiple browsers!
I thought like that until youtube started intentionally slowing firefox identifying clients. As soon as I changed my user-agent to match chrome's the speed was back to normal.
Lol I blocked all but essential JS on YouTube with NoScript and never faced any problems at all. Videos load just fine without extra penalties.
That works until it's your bank or credit card website. I cannot use Capital One's (CC) "pay bill" any longer.
Change banks
Luckily it hasn't come to that for me yet. But I have reported issues with my bank's website to them, and it had been fixed.
Weird.
Super annoying to have to fire up chrome (brave) to pay my CC bill
"Please use Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge to have a safe banking experience"
Yeah, fck you!
Have you tried either an aagent switcher, or trying with extensions disabled? Just curious if either solves it.
I haven't because I'm always trying to do something, then I do think to troubleshoot after
Adding to this, Firefox’s JavaScript is much more strict than others (which I love). As a web developer I prioritize testing it in Firefox because it’s helped me find bugs other browsers just plow through.
Personally I use Safari daily and the number of websites that are broken due to poor security (but function fine in Chrome) is alarming. Chrome doesn’t even check content type on `` last time I checked.
I tend to agree with you. Normally if something doesn't work in firefox it makes sense, but less often is that the case in chrome.
I am fascinated by the idea of a web developer choosing to use Safari, honestly, though. Can I ask why? For me, the hesitancy of adopting new web standards, the lack of a real extensions, and lack of support for non-Apple OSes... combined with lots of random bugs that I only ever see so often in Safari, I absolutely loathe that browser. And I feel like being a web developer conditioned me to feel this way. And then there's the business practice concerns (Apple selectively supporting new web features with the intention of keeping native apps seen as superior, because it makes them money)... but even ignoring this, I'm a Safari-hater through and through. It feels like Internet Explorer 7 vs Firefox to me.
On iOS I have to support a few major versions of Safari back and it's nightmarish at times. For certain featuresets, you absolutely cannot assume things will probably work like you can with FF/Chromium browsers and it makes me so ragey sometimes. I've been spending the last few weeks trying to workaround an issue in various Safari iOS versions, and it's not the first time I've been in this situation.
I'm curious -- what versions of Safari are you required to support on the job?
This was my poor attempt to mean “as an end-user.” I just love that it’s tied in to the Apple ecosystem and the UI is so much cleaner than other browsers.
I’ve tried to make the switch to others but they always feel very clunky. I love Firefox to death but it looks awful (at least on macOS). I’m not a big extension guy because I’m filtering DNS and IP traffic at the network layer — if we’re talking about ad blocking, tracking and the like it doesn’t make sense to only protect against it in the browser, as apps tend to send traffic to the very same domains as the websites.
I actually hate the trend of apps being nothing more than a wrapper around web applications. It comes off as lazy development, and I miss native apps (regardless of platform) instead of these creepy wrappers around web applications. So I actually have to agree with Apple there.
As for browser support, my team works on an internal-only app and our security policy doesn’t allow outdated browsers, so there’s no hard rules when it comes to browser support.
I use a lot of extensions for a lot of various reasons. Privacy and ad blocking are only two of them. For development purposes, UI preferences, making common actions easier to access, disabling website features I don't like, re-enabling ones I do, the list goes on and on.
I'm a bit confused about your app vs web comment. What I'm saying is that instead of allowing the web ecosystem to evolve at an organic pace by keeping up with the rest of browsers, apple puts their thumb on the scale, choosing not to support things, so that installing an app works better. This isn't a matter of comparing ways of building a downloadable app, it's a matter of them guarding against users quickly accessing a web app without needing to download something from their store (which provides them with profits). They even make money on free apps now!
The entire state of the web is held back because iOS is so popular, and Safari is always behind on feature support especially on iOS. And it really irks me. Many times every browser we support will support a really nice feature, except safari. And sometimes even the latest safari doesn't support something even though the others have for years!
You are lucky not having to support old versions of Safari. The latest safari is always somewhat reasonable to support but Jesus... try supporting anything of complexity on iOS 14. So painful.
I'll check it out. Thanks!
Man, you never worked for a large corporation that that had internal web based apps that only work on Internet Explorer and refused to update it.
I worked somewhere like that back in the 2008-2010 time frame. Thankfully, there was a extension, I believe the name was "IETab", that would spawn a new tab in Trident (IE's browser engine). So you could set certain sites to launch in one of those tabs and everything else would use standard Firefox. None of the people I supported were any the wiser. They just thought everything worked in Firefox.
Granted it was only that seamless because Windows already had that rendering engine built in. There are some extensions that do something similar with Chrome, but because of more modern security standards and whatnot you have to install extension helper applications which is gross.
Are you sure that it was Firefox itself? I find the few times something like that has come up, it was because of extensions (like adblocl, actually).
Delta's website started blocking me due to using Dark Reader, apparently something about detecting that the contents of the page were being altered. And another site worked fine when I disabled unlock; I assume because it was blocking loading some .js that was actually being used for something other than just ads.
As far as I can tell. After disabling all extensions it still didn't work.
On the same day Google was found to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act...
Too bad nothing will come from that.
I’m going to call foul play on Judge Mehta’s ruling. They are a direct competitor.
How the hell is a Judge a competitor with Google for Search?
Because their maiden name is Judge Fasbuk?
What happened?
They lost what may end up being the biggest antitrust case in decades. And it's not weak sauce like the ruling that may get overturned regarding the Play Store monopoly (which is kinda weak since Android manufacturers can and do include other app stores on their phones).
It had to do with their anti-competitive behavior regarding Online Search. Specifically stuff like paying Apple and other manufacturers to make Google the default or even exclusive search engine, then using that not only to capture the market, but to charge more for ads than the competition they sabotage.
As a bonus, it'll probably hurt reddit too, since it almost certainly makes their recent deal with Google illegal.
It'll be appealed, but it's a pretty big ruling. Between the US Courts, EU legislature, and what looks poised to be a flop for Gemini/Bard, Google is on its way to having a real shit year.
This has been a long time in the making...hopefully Firefox will see a market share increase. Google is doing this right as they get slapped by an antitrust ruling ironically lol. If you haven't already just go ahead and switch, if you like Lemmy you'll probably like Firefox as well.
Side note: I try not to be negative here, but this would be a great time for Mozilla to get their act together as an organization. Love Firefox and the idea, but Mozilla has been pissing off the FOSS space for a while now with their decisions. If they've improved in recent years, disregard this.
The tricky part is that Google isn’t wrong about Manifest v3 increasing security for some people. Just allowing any extension to access the full URLs from a webpage is honestly pretty sketchy for most things that aren’t adblockers. Think about Beth in accounting who has 27 bloatware toolbar extensions installed on her home PC, which are happily collecting her full browser history and sending it off to gods know where. Manifest v3 is targeted at increasing security for those users, by making it more difficult for extensions to track you.
The issue is that it also makes ad blocking virtually impossible, because the blocker is forced to just trust that the browser is being truthful about what is and isn’t on the page. And when the browser (developed by one of the largest advertisers in the world) has a vested financial interest in displaying ads, there’s very little trust that the browser will actually be honest.
The issue is that there’s not some sort of “yes, I really want this extension to have full access” legacy workaround built in. Yes, it would inevitably be abused by those scummy extensions, which would just nag idiot users to allow them full access. And the idiot users, being idiots, would just do it without understanding the risks. Even if Chrome threw up all kinds of big red “hey make sure this extension actually needs full access and isn’t just tracking your shit” warning flags, there are still plenty of users who would happily give bloatware full access without reading any of the warnings. But it would also allow ad blockers to continue to function.
The single biggest security improvement you could make for Beth in accounting would be to install UBO. Where do you think she gets all those shitty toolbar extensions? That's right, from ads.
This is targeted at destroying adblockers because Google is, first and foremost, an ad serving company. That's their business model. It incidentally improves security for certain users in certain edge cases, because they need some kind of figleaf of legitimacy.
Ads and crappy installers, all though that seems less common than it used to be. I can't say if that's a general trend or tunnel vision due to me not installing crapware.
If it was about security then they should simply block Manifest v2 extensions from their store or at least start doing some actual verification of the extensions they host. Taking away freedom claiming it to be for security is almost always a lie.
Verify! But what will all the "Cändy Crunch 7 Browser Edition with 12 Free Play Levels" players do?
Can you share some examples of things that pisses off the FOSS space? Mostly just curious to understand more
Here's the most recent example:
It should be noted that the advertisers get zero personal information, neither does Mozilla, and it has been designed in a way so that the data is impossible to fingerprint in a way that can tie it back to any individual person, machine, or specific location.
It's a way for advertisers (and like it or not, a decent amount of the content we want has to be paid for somehow) to see how effective their ads are without anybody's privacy being encroached on.
Should it have been turned on without informing the user? Fuck no. But there's a lot of misinformation going around about this.
Personally I'll still be using uBO, because I despise any ads at all, but if we are to have ads, the system Mozilla has built is just about the most ethical and privacy-respecting way to do it.
Even if Mozilla takes precautions to avoid de-anonymizing our data, any private data sold to data brokers becomes a part of the puzzle for learning our identities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_re-identification
Even knowing something a trivial as two movie ratings led to a 68% success rate in learning an identity.
I suggest you actually look into how their system works. This kind of strategy is not possible with Mozilla's system.
In fact, your very link points to 'Differential Privacy' as a very effective foil to re-identification, and that's basically how the Mozilla system operates.
This is not a matter of Mozilla having a load of data about your account or IP, then Mozilla scrubbing that information then sending the database to advertisers.
I appreciate your informed response but no system other than advertising-abstinence is fool proof.
Im saying this as a supporter. My browser of choice is firefox and I send them money regularly. And I understand their need to generate more revenue. But there has never been a company who has sold customer data discretely. My understanding is that every piece of data that's sold can be de anonymized when combined with other data sets. And the data is horsetraded until it gets into some very marginal actors' hands.
Mozilla's need for money is largely driven by massive mismanagement. It should have been fully funded in perpetuity through establishing a foundation that operates off interest payments but they decided to try and build a headquarters in Mountainview. They also operate offices in some of the most expensive cities in the world. They have made expensive software aquisitions. These are not necessary and have only whetted mozilla's thirst for other revenue sources. It's guaranteed that they will look for more customer data to sell because that's the path of least resistance.
I wish them luck but I also wish they'd not chase advertising money.
As for the "no system is foolproof", you're thinking of implementations, not algorithms. An algorithm can indeed be something-proof. Most "known" algorithms are built on top of very strong mathematical foundations stating what is possible, what is not and what is a maybe.
As for the ads thing, Mozilla is not making a dime off this. It is not monetizable. They're basically expecting that by giving advertisers a fairly "benign" way to do their shenanigans they will stop doing things the way they currently do (with per-individual tracking).
The absolutists might say that there's no such thing as benign ads, however truth is that the market forces behind ads are big enough that you'd get website-integrity-bullshit rather ad-free web. Having tracking less ads is better than having a "this website only works in chrome" or "only without extensions" internet.
Is there any other possibility? Maybe. Is is reasonable to think that the moment tracking starts getting blocked em masse, we risk a web-integrity-bullshit +wherever-said-tracking-can-exist-only internet? I think so.
I think you're right and that I've horribly misunderstood how this data is collected and used. According to their yearly report, mozilla's advertising revenue is explicitly not drawn from user data and is only related to tiles and default search engine sponsorships. The fact that they are not selling this information is heartening and it inspires confidence that they have not flipped on the ad money spigot.
That’s a good thing
Getting trackers out of cookies is something users want
What the uBlock dev actually said:
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/wiki/About-Google-Chrome's-%22This-extension-may-soon-no-longer-be-supported%22
I recommend switching to another browser like Firefox or Librewolf.
I love Librewolf currently but I worry it's going to stray too much from what it originally was like Waterfox and others ended up doing, and then end up randomly breaking compatibility with certain plugins or introducing other issues.
Right now, Librewolf is the best way to experience Firefox. Will that still be the case in 5, 10, 15 years? That remains to be seen. I hope it's still the best way to experience Firefox years from now. Having to change browsers every so often does suck tbh.
Those are jumping to Librewolf from Firefox, keep the following things in mind
Hope you have a good experience on Librewolf. I've been using it for the past 1 year and it's fine.
Meh.
Librewolf already breaks loads of websites with it's fingerprinting resistance - just get used to turning it off.
In any case, you already need a chromium fork handy for all the sites that just plain don't support firefox any more. I've run in to weird issues in firefox that don't arise in chromium several times in the last month. This is going to get much worse.
As for changing browsers. I don't care very much. I don't use many browser features like bookmarks or passwords.
Which websites did you run into issues with Firefox? I haven't had any issues with any websites. I do think you're right that it's probably going to get worse over time, but maybe not if more people make the switch to Firefox.
booking.com is the worst I've encountered. There's a captcha type anti-bot thing that I can't pass with firefox. I think it uses canvas.
edit: another I use all the time is called echo360. It's the platform my university uses to host lecture videos. The player just plain doesn't work in firefox - blank screen.
Using firedragon for desktop (Linux) and between iceraven and mull for mobile
hello, i have chosen to value your opinion above my own based on very shaky reasoning i will not be sharing
I abandoned chrome for being too RAM-hungry when im playing games w the browser open
i abandoned Internet Explorer for being too slow
and i abandoned firefox for being too bloated and sluggish, but that was like 2010 and things change
im currently using Opera but why do you choose firefox over its contemporaries?
Because it’s not based on chromium(blink web engine), there are two other well supported web engines which browsers can be based on, WebKit (Apple), and Gecko (Mozilla).
At the end of the day, if it’s built on Blink, it’s liable to have Google break things they don’t like on the back end. Including ad blockers.
Opera used to be built on it’s own web engine (presto) but since 2013 it’s been built on Blink.
that was a great summary, thank you
trying to research such a broad topic was overwhelming
Firefox is open source and Opera is still based on Chromium (the engine for Chrome, same as Edge and a number of other browsers).
For practical use, Firefox seems plenty fast on my devices including mobile.
Why not just recommend not using Chrome...?
Avoid chromium browsers
...no?
why not?
Why?
a good reason is that they are controlled by Google and without competition they can implement any anti-consumer features they want
No they're not. You don't know what you're talking about.
None of the other Chromium based browsers have the engineering power to go their own way. They are dependent on what Google adds or removes in Chromium.
Wrong again.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox
You know there are other ad blockers? Other browsers have them built into the browser itself so there's no need for any extensions at all.
You realize Mozilla is selling your data, regardless of what extensions you have?
uBO is the best one though. And Firefox is one of the major mainstream browsers. Is easier to get people to change to something well known rather than an obscure browser like librewolf.
Mozilla doesn't sell your data if you use Librewolf (or if you just opt out)
Then use LibreWolf.
I just think it's hilarious that people fall over themselves lambasting private Chromium alternatives while vehemently supporting a browser that is openly selling your data.
I do?
Was that a question? I dunno, do you?
Switching to another Chromium-based browser is a half-measure. Other Chromium-based browsers are on borrowed time.
As time goes on, it will become more difficult for them to maintain v2 support. Nobody has the resources to properly maintain a browser fork with more than minor modifications. And you can bet Google will go out of their way to make this difficult for everybody else.
I mean, sure, use what you're comfortable with if you really can't use a non-Chromium-based browser for some reason. But it means you're likely going to have to jump ship again sooner or later. Why not just jump once, to something with better long-term prospects?
Then again, the folks behind Arc Browser have expressed interest in becoming engine-agnostic, so perhaps there will be a Chromium-free Arc version in the future. That would be very cool.
They don't need to maintain V2, they can bundle native adblockers like Cromite.
And Firefox won't? I just explained why you don't even need v2 support.
Except...all of them?
If and when that becomes a problem, I can change later just like I can today... Today it is not a problem.
What are the main differences, for someone considering going from Firefox to Librewolf?
Librewolf is hardened out of the box whereas with Firefox, you have to harden it yourslf
You should also consider arkenfox user.js
Librewolf is to Firefox what Chromium is to Chrome, essentially. Removed many bloated Mozilla anti-features, has sensible (but not paranoid) privacy and security defaults and ships with uBlock origin pre-installed. You can archive all of that with Firefox, but Librewolf makes things easy for you.
the first comparison is not technically correct, in the sense:
LibreWolf implements additional privacy features and settings on top of Firefox. Chromium is the base browser that everyone else built on top of. It does not implement additional privacy features.
perhaps a better comparison would be: LibreWolf is to Firefox what Ungoogled Chromium is to Chromium
I’ve been eyeing up librewolf, having made the switch to Firefox on all machines a while back.
If I’m using DDG for search, uBlock Origin, bitwarden, strict tracking protection, disabled data collection and ad measurements, and then have https-only in all windows and max protection dns over https, will I see any practical difference?
In this case I do prefer functionality over 100% perfect privacy and anti-advertising. I’m fortunate to be able to run Linux on my work machine (I use mint, btw) and so I use the browser versions of M365 including Teams video conferencing.
So many kids with assigned school Chromebooks are going to get fucked over by this. You can apparently install Firefox on a Chromebook via the Google Play Store, but that was disabled on my daughter's Chromebook. I don't want her exposed to constant advertising while she's doing her schoolwork. It's bad enough that she's exposed to it the rest of the time just being in America.
I think this is something most people rarely talk about but it strikes home to many of us. As a parent, I have a responsibility to defend my children against this persistent cognitive manipulation and experimentation. Just as I would not want a random stranger at the corner have exclusive attention of my kid and sell them insurance or grammarly or mesothelioma, I would also never want them to have that unfiltered access to my kids online. One can then say AdBlocks are a parental obligation.
there has to be collective voices and collective action taken. do parents unions exist?
Usually, they are used to burn books :/
*Limit access to pornography in grade school libraries. Translated your groomer speak to English for you.
What a weird thing to say
You think little kids need to view explicit material? I hope no one trusts you around children. Parents have a right and a responsibility to know and approve of the curriculum taught to their children by state schools financed by their taxes. If they do not approve they should have the right to send their children and their money elsewhere. This will be the law.
And, pray tell, what library or school has pornography in it that is easily accessible to minors?
Furthermore, having lived my entire life around educators and now working for an educational institution: parents are fucking stupid lol
The sheer numbers of videos of parents bitching and crying at school meetings or libraries about "X book is pornographic" or "this book has witchcraft and should be burned" is absurd. Those mouth breathers don't even know how to critically examine a fucking facebook post for bullshit, let alone comprehend the difficulty in teaching children.
Don't like your kid learning about how Trans people exist? Go fuck yourself and homeschool your kid so they can be permanently stunted in terms of preparation for the real world. Let the vast majority of regular people make sure their kids grow up socially aware and at least passingly prepared for the future.
Also, "this will be the law?" Have you seen the flailing Republican party? Guess what fucker - the average American thinks project 2025 is batshit and the republican party got hijacked by a manchild and ruined their stupid plans. It's only downhill from here now that they went mask off - most people think they're nuts.
Nah. I'm gonna keep advocating for sanity in public schools and for parents to have oversight of their children's education.
Lol ok whatever you say. Enjoy the consequences of letting the uneducated run things
It’s normal for system admins to not let their users install non-whitelist software
You should PTA to switch from Chrome to Firefox
I think it's very unlikely that they would pay for the IT department to install Firefox on every Chromebook. You're talking 14,000 students in this county and only the kindergartners don't get Chromebooks.
You might be surprised! This type of change is usually automated and centralized, so an administrator shouldn't ever have to even touch any of those Chromebooks. Might be worth having a chat with your school administrators.
My own daughter is in online school now (it's still a public school, it's just not in a physical location) so she can use her own computer... but I have to do the user agent switcher thing because the school's own website testing software isn't Firefox-compatible. And the school is run by evil Pierson who basically has a monopoly on American public schools, so I'm guessing that's true for all of those Chromebooks out there too.
Still, I might suggest it to them anyway just for the benefit of the other kids.
Yeah, they sign major contracts that have a lot of stipulations so they get the best deals since theyre govt funded. This backfires, ofc, by locking them into bad products.
Im not saying dont try, definitely do.
Should be able to do either remotely or by including it in the image
I imagine personal work is saved to a server not locally
But it doesn’t hurt to try
That's really wild to me. They give each grade school student a chromebook? That is honestly terrifying.
Why is it terrifying? A lot of kids don't have computers of their own and this gives them access to the internet. It's also, in my opinion, a far better way to give kids tests than filling in bubbles on a sheet of paper.
I mean I wish there were other good, cheap options, but there aren't.
I really hate to "back in my day" this but we had computer labs for that when I was younger. And that didn't require giving a monopoly company my name or any other information about me. And I wasn't being ad-tracked all day long going to websites.
Computer labs aren't going to help the kids going home at night to study and I don't really think shuffling kids into a computer lab every time there's a test in any class makes much sense.
I mean, both can be true if we're living in a cloud-based world.
Schools can provide workstations and households can either opt in to using their own computer at home or be assigned a laptop or laptop credit. Choice is the important part here, and limiting kids choices at the benefit of major oligarchy organizations sucks big floppy donkey dick.
Schools are not about choice, they're about an even playing field. You cannot give students the kind of education you can give them on a per-classroom basis if they don't all have access to the same technology. What if a parent chooses to not give the kid a laptop even though the kid doesn't have a computer at home?
You don't advocate for that for the same reason that you don't advocate for parents to choose whether or not their kids get taught about evolution.
Why would that happen? What weird strawman scenario is this?
Who knows? Maybe because they don't allow that demonic technology in their house. People are crazy. It doesn't matter why. Assuming parents, given the choice, will make the correct choice for their child has been shown to be wrong again and again.
But let's say all the kids with notebooks at home don't get them and all the kids without notebooks at home get them. Ok. Now, the software we're using for art class this year runs in Windows. Your kid has a Macbook.
Virtual environments exist and are the backbone of modern IT. Surely we can teach kids how to boot Docker?
Also your demonic line doesnt add up, the ye can still say the Chromebooks are demonic and make the kid leave it outside the house or something.
How about a DNS-based ad-blocking service? NextDNS is pretty good and not expensive. You should check if you can set custom DNS servers on that Chromebook, though.
DNS over https bypasses much of that, right? till you find and block those DNS servers
I have Yunohost installed on my local network and they have DNS adblocking apps that you can install.
You can also very easily install apps like Owncloud to have your own version of Google Drive.
That probably will not be suitable because the Chromebook could leave the home network.
I just got firefox yesterday, cause I noticed youtube started baking unskippable ads into their site.
If any site doesn't work you can try this official addon Chrome Mask. If it works with it on you can report it Mozilla.
Edit: a bit of context:
Thanks for sharing the extension! I just got some passkeys and they just weren't working on several websites for Firefox (looking at you Azure) but that solved the issue immediately!
Be sure to report a bug to Mozilla regarding those pages!
I"m going to try that extension to see if it helps with a couple of websites. So thanks for the recommendation!
If it does help be sure to report it to Mozilla! Otherwise the site admins will just see another Chrome user and have little. Incentive to focus on FF.
I've been using LibreWolf on Desktop and Mull on Android. Basically more securely configured versions of Firefox with the proprietary telemetry and some other stuff removed. Takes some tweaking to get certain websites to work that need more access than they should or use Certificate Authorities that don't have working OSCP servers.
memories of Internet Explorer doing the same thing intensifies
They did? Never used that garbage. Switched from Netscape Navigator to Opera to Firefox.
I used chrome on mobile since in the old days, Firefox mobile was unusable, but that's been years ago.
Now for the 3 websites that stubbornly refuse to open in FF I use Edge on desktop, and kiwi on mobile.
The 'block element' picker is the big one that can not be implemented in the lite version.
Also included block lists can't update unless the extension itself updates.
If you're not stuck on chrome due to workplace policy or something, now is the time to switch to Firefox
Do you know if the lite version still blocks YouTube ads?
AdGuard browser extension is on manifest v3 and they have elements picker feature
Understatement, I know, but I find this so annoying, and it certainly feels malicious.
I was just commenting the other day how ridiculous it is that google search results literally serve up malware to people via paid ads. My neighbor was running into issues where her computer kept getting "infected" and a full screen scam would take control, blaring out a loud message that her computer was infected with a virus, that it was infecting microsoft's servers, and she had to call them now to fix it.
After investigating, I found out that these types of scams are stored as blobs on Microsoft's cloud service, but the links are spread via ads in google search. When I tried searching for the exact search terms my neighbor was using on my own devices and my own network, I found out that google was serving me the exact same ads, aka sponsored links. They look like legitimate results for things that people search for, like showing what appears to be a link to Amazon when searching for a product, even the links will say "www.amazon.com".
Obviously I told my neighbor not to use Chrome and suggested some browser alternatives. I installed uBlock on all the browsers (including chrome) just to be safe. Then I showed her how to tell when things are ads, even when they are deceiving, and to never click on ads or sponsored links under any circumstances.
But it's definitely infuriating that they are serving up malware in their ads, don't respond to reports in a timely manner, are getting people caught in scams that they allow to advertise on their network but then somehow object to people managing those risks by blocking ads from untrustworthy sources, like google.
I just did a cleanup on someone's computer that got this. They actually called the number and got scammed out of their whole life savings. The usual Indian scammers.
The best action ublock origions devs can take is drop support for chromium based browsers and retract ublock lite from the chrome webstore.
I was hopefull for something more than just a wiki page on github. adding a banner to chrome's add-on menu is way more powerful and far more reaching than what they did
i crave decisiveness like that. it would make me so happy if that sort of behavior became the norm.
too many corpos getting away with murder because they are more convenient than their competitors or because switching is too hard
They should update the Chrome extension to tell people to download Firefox instead
Imagine if Google's decision to do this to fight adblockers results in them losing the lead in the browser war because everyone switches to other browsers.
Dreaming is one thing, but I remain skeptical. Tech people always seem to vastly overestimate how much the average population will react to tech news. Most people don't care. They should but they don't. In addition to that, use of Chrome by businesses is heavily entrenched. The IT guys probably hate it on a personal level, but it takes a lot to make business bigwigs change direction away from a "trustworthy" big company like Google.
I mostly agree, but lets remember
So was internet explorer
Chrome was backed by Google, a multifaceted staple of the Internet ecosystem and rolled out with a ton of marketing behind it.
I remain skeptical that Firefox could plausibly overtake Chrome. The mere word of mouth of tech enthusiasts simply isn't enough to make a population majority proactively switch.
And we had it like forever.
"like" being a very important word in that sentence.
The thing that finally got businesses to finally get off IE wasn't from the browser being worse than every other option. Heck, it wasn't even because it was a decrepit piece of software that lost it's former market dominance (and if anything businesses see that as a positive, not a negative).
What finally did that was microsoft saying there won't be any security updates. That's what finally got them off their ass; subtly threatening them with data breaches, exploits, etc. if they continue to use it. I don't see google doing this anytime soon, at least not without a "sequel" like microsoft had with edge.
The vast majority of people aren't even going to know or care. A lot of people will probably just continue on even when their adblocker becomes less effective. Of course the type of people who use adblockers are also more likely to wonder why their adblocker suddenly became less effective and then switch to a browser where it's more effective.
It takes a lot to change the inertia that already exists. People have been predicting the rise of the Linux desktop for at least a decade now and it still hasn't really caught on.
Tech people are niche but over time we will pre-install what we consider "good" on our grandmas, dads, moms, friends, etc... PCs
The older generation demographic continues to shrink, while it seems the great majority of Gen Z and A are perfectly happy to use whatever ecosystem is built into their device. I'm not saying that people shouldn't want better software, merely being realistic about the choices of populations.
I see librewolf in the edge
I switched somewhere in the early 2000s, from Internet Explorer (Microsoft), and never looked back. (Using IE and now Edge as alternatives only, when I get the rare non-functional Firefox issue.) Never created an account either. I manually save and port my bookmarks!
Already switched as soon as I learned of Google’s plans. They can go screw themselves for doing this. Firefox, the land of the free and open source!
ive gotten almost my entire friend group using either the same fork as me or the original firefox, they all used chrome before. all because google was dumb enough to overstep some peoples boundaries.
if you don't mind, which fork are you using? I got my sister to switch to firefox too.
not the original commenter but FLOORP, BABYYYY!!! let's go let's get this floorp action come on floorp is the best reign supreme for a thousand years floorp woooooo
You've watched a lot of Rick and Morty haven't you
n... nuh uh
I use waterfox. They are independent again since last year and their big thing besides privacy is that they carry over a lot of stuff from Firefox that was scrapped with the proton design.
So now we need an adblock blocker blocker to unblock our adblockers
"Yo dawg, I heard you like adblockers..."
Its an old meme sir, but it checks out.
Welcome to Firefox to anyone who is switching. I use a fork for Firefox (Floorp) Becuase I like it's features.
What does that do?
Mozilla telemetry disabled (you can do this on normal firefox)
Some themes
Sidebar extensions
More easily move titlebar (firefoxcss)
Thank you fellow Boob liker.
I switched to Firefox last year when talks of chromium manifest V3 First started popping up. I had used Firefox many years ago when Chrome was first coming out. I was blown away at how well it worked compared to old Firefox, plus how easy they made it to switch. I even changed my phone browser and my desktop browser ties in with it seamlessly. Very happy with the switch and I wish I had switched earlier.
Now, I just wish I could use it at work. Not sure how I'm going to block ads on my work browser.
My work blocks all kinds random software, Firefox included. My workaround is using Brave browser and a service like NextDNS either as an app or as the DNS provider for my home network. It's not perfect but it's flexible enough.
What's odd is that we have Firefox pre-installed on our computers, but installing uBlock causes a lot of websites to stop loading. I forget the error, but I recall doing a lot of searching and it quickly becoming more effort than it was worth at the time since I'd have to do it all over again almost every day.
That's by design. uBlock is blocking ad and spyware network requests. It's common for sites to crash or error because of this. They'll depend on a call to Google or Sentry or DataDog to succeed before continuing with their initialization. As a platform engineer for several web properties, I die a little inside every time I see this happen.
It works flawlessly on my personal devices. I'm assuming the errors are due to something with our intranet security.
Have you tried VPN?
Can't add that to work PCs, plus we already use our own VPN service for external devices
I agree with them. Better switch to Firefox.
@TheImpressiveX
Maybe you should update the title, since it is factually incorrect.
Thanks, fixed.
IIRC the Google crackdown was supposed to happen this past January so Chrome users are lucky they got some extra time to switch.
I haven't used Chrome in years now. Firefox has always been my home.
So what are the consequences of it being flagged? Does it change how it operates?
I don’t use chrome so it doesn’t directly impact me but I like being up-to-date on this stuff
Edit: actually read the article lol so this is related to compatibility with manifest v3
"This warning isn't just for uBlock Origin users. All extensions built on MV2 will display this warning on the Chrome extensions page if users have updated to Chrome version 127. Users of Chrome's Beta, Dev, and Canary channels have been seeing these warnings since June 3, 2024.
Although users can temporarily re-enable their MV2 extensions, Google plans to disable these extensions gradually over the next few months. Eventually, users won't be able to use MV2 extensions at all and will have to switch to MV3 alternatives suggested by the Chrome Web Store."
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/using-ublock-origin-google-chrome-warns-users-it-is-going-to-ban-it/ar-AA1ofsSZ
UBlock for Chrome is going away, no matter what Google says about Manifest.
the creator of ublock also said to chrome/chormium users to use the light v3 version is that right?
The creator(s) did not give direct advise. Probably so they have the time to slowly get people to switch instead of instantly getting shut down by Google.
But people that are going to be using the lite version will definitely get bombarded by Google/Youtube ads very soon and will make the change regardless.
oh
Well I don't use Chrome, so....
I already switched to Firefox after Netscape.
Skipped over the original Mozilla?
o7
I know, that some day I will have to switch to Firefox. But I'm putting it off as long as I can, as I don't like that browser. I will have to instal a shit load of add-ons to get the customisability of Vivaldi, and I doubt k will get it all.
Use https://floorp.app/en
Do you even need uBO on vivaldi, though? A friend of mine recently had an issue of sites breaking, even with all addons disabled. As we found out, vivaldi already has a built-in adblocker, which uses pretty much the same lists as uBO. In the end it turned out to be one of the easylist's borked rules...
Not quite on topic, but: This past week developers at my company have been slammed by the Chrome DevTools debugger freezing when you hit a breakpoint. There's been no tracked bug and no timeline from Chrome on a fix. It's been a little bit of a lesson in having just one browser engine.
I have a Chromebook, what do I need to do to get ubo? From my understanding, Firefox is not supported in the browser so I'd need to get Linux? How does security work with Linux?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browsers/chromebook/
Firewalled for limiting untrustworthy connections to the computer(public networks, hotels, even work).
apparmor for protecting the kernel and controlling file access to applications. SELinux is also a good option but if you need to load kernel modules, it can take a few minutes to sign and register it. It is automated on redhat systems though.
Other than that, do your research and don't run random scripts and install random apps.
I wonder why you’re getting downvoted
I don't know, they're just security measures you can take. Maybe some personal preference thing. I don't bother with the app guard thing and SELinux is pretty annoying with my Nvidia graphics card but a firewall is something I always setup.
I've been using uBOLite for about a year and I'm pretty happy with it. You don't have to give the extension access to the content on the page and all the filtering on the browser engine, not over JavaScript.
I hadn't heard of this.
The FAQ says it's not a 1 for 1 replacement. There's a lot of features which can't be ported.
It's probably better than nothing for most people, but not as good as uBO was.
Still, I wonder why it's not mentioned more often.
Did I miss a piece? I don't see anywhere in the original statement where firefox is actively recommended, just mentioned as an example.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox
I don't want to let go of my poor Vivaldi it's a blast of a browser
Oh, how I get you! I managed to switch to Firefox after a while, but it took some adapting, and still I miss some of Vivaldi's features. That sidebar is simply fantastic.
PPAPI really ruined this all NPAPI FTW
umatrix better
from the umatrix chrome store reviews:
github backs that up https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix
From the looks of things it still works but i'm afraid to recommend something that isn't maintained to normal users.
fair enough, ublock is absolutely better for regular users.
It’s going to have the same problems as uBlock
I only use chrome when checking my Gmail account. Brave is my go-to.
Guess you get to find out if this will be effecting all of chromium or just chrome......
Brave is forked from Chromium so hypothetically they could maintain V2 but they'd need their own store as they currently rely on Googles
Guess we will see if Brave is all talk or not in the coming years.
Brave has added a feature to explicitly enable MV2 apps and install uBo directly from Brave settings. You can also install uMatrix and Adguard MV2 versions also.
Or you could just Avoid chromium browsers and help the browser landscape from becoming a sea of chrome.
And jump to the clone? Mozilla isn't better (consider their recent Ad Privacy clone), they just have less market share.
That said, I use Firefox and Brave. Whatever I feel like at the time.
The clone? Are you implying that mozilla (founded 1998) is a clone of chrome (first launched 2008)?
Just use anything but chome or chromium if you can. Just don't feed the beast now known as alphabet.
There are plenty of browsers built on Gecko that aren’t fire fox. So if you don’t trust Mozilla to build your browser, and don’t want your ad blocker bricked by Google, you have options.
I've been using Chromium because it has excellent profiles support built-in. Firefox's profile separation works via a plugin and is just awkward, unless something has improved recently.
Multi-account containers?
Those don't exactly do what I want -- which is clear separation of different work accounts. I'm not sure if this is what I need though, so perhaps I should take another look at what you suggested.
In firefox, type "about:profiles" in the search bar and press enter. (Please note that this shouldnt open your search engine) This will open a menu in that tab that claims: "This page helps you to manage your profiles. Each profile is a separate world which contains separate history, bookmarks, settings and add-ons." I hope this is close enough to the solution youre after!