Google looks to be fully shutting down unsupported extensions and ad blockers in Chrome, such as uBlock Origin – which might push some folks to switch to Firefox

ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 1148 points – Google looks to be fully shutting down unsupported extensions and ad blockers in Chrome – which might push some folks to switch to Firefox
techradar.com

Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective.

(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months).

At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).

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I downloaded Librewolf today - the privacy oriented fork of Firefox!

Good to see there are browser variants that aren't just Chrome.

yep firefox with arkenfox for me, same deal as librewolf. And Mull on mobile.

Switched about 2-3 months ago thinking it might be difficult or impact me negatively or something but its been easy and great.

You know the problem I have with Librewolf? -- Fuckall nobody knows how to spell it.

The beauty of Firefox is that even the densest idiot knows how to spell those two words. And with attention spans the equivalent of a gnat, people need to have things simplified for them as much as humanly possible.

Fortunately enough, Firefox is about the only one with a renderer that isn't controlled by Google, but - even now they're shifting to a pro-advertising stance and backing off of the privacy orientation that they took just a year or two ago.

Yes, and we will drop Mozilla when it drops uBlock as well. We will all get behind whatever open-source browser stops ads, and it will very quickly become the most widely used browser. Why? Because everybody despises fucking ads and you can't curb-stomp them into liking ads, that's why.

Google can spend all the money it likes trying to piss on users and tell them it's raining but at the end of the day, a new king will be crowned and if it isn't Chrome and it isn't Firefox, then it will be something else.

And no, FOSS doesn't need money behind it. FOSS needs a dedicated community behind it. Assertions to the contrary are FUD constantly being seeded by Google, Microsoft and their ilk to destroy competition. This is an existential necessity for Google, you can bet they are doing everything in their power to maintain the status quo.

And no, FOSS doesn't need money behind it. FOSS needs a dedicated community behind it

how do you imagine a Linux-sized community getting built around firefox in a few days? and even that is a bad example, because a lot of linux devs are paid by their employer from a company anywhere on the world

Nice straw man. Nobody said the community was going to "Linux-sized" nor that it was going to be built in a "few days," nor that it was going to have paid devs. It's like you're being intentionally obtuse.

There are already multiple supported forks of Firefox and while it doesn't take much to maintain such forks when they are being fed a large part of the codebase by Mozilla, if you think such a project would not pick right the fuck up where Mozilla left off if Mozilla tried to pull a Google and get behind Manifest V3, you are, I believe, mistaken.

Mozilla itself owes its existence to Netscape's failure in the face of unfair competition by Microsoft's Explorer. Netscape released its source code, Mozilla was founded and the power of open-source created Firefox. Chrome's halfhearted support of Mozilla is itself owed to the fact that they don't want to get spanked over Chrome like Microsoft was over IE.

Until you actually need a chromium based browser. I get so annoyed when this happens.

Almost 20 years and I've never needed a Chromium browser for anything. I'm sorry you were forced to use such garbage ass software.

I have chromium installed for the sole reason to cast some streams to my remote TVs. Otherwise it stays closed. I tried some work around with FF, but I couldn't get it to work. It's only once or twice a week for live sporting events, so I can stomach it.

I understand where you're coming from. It's never happened to me, but if a website didn't work with Firefox, I would just assume it's a shit site ran by rookies who know nothing, and move on to a different site. I understand most people don't have that kind of principle though.

It's not that the site doesn't work in FF, it's that casting the stream from that site to a remote TV in the house is only possible in chromium, at least with my current device setup. If I just watch on my computer, I watch in FF.

Ah, you did say that. I'm sorry for my misunderstanding. I've never tried that, and you're the first I've seen to mention it. I concede to your argument.

I'm in the slow process of replacing devices with HTPCs then I won't need to cast anything. Unfortunately computers and time don't grow on trees.

As if installing and using something else means you can't have Chrome lying around for that one stupid website.

And I do. Sometimes I'll just fire up Edge if Chrome isn't installed since it's chromium based.

In what situation do you need one?

I've been using Firefox for over a decade and have literally never once needed to open a different web browser. For anything, ever. This is a very common complaint that tons of people seem to have that I have never seen happen even once out in the wild.

Several government websites for the state of Pennsylvania complain and refuse to work if they detect that you aren't using chrome/edge/safari.

You can spoof your useragent to appear as chrome. And you should as it makes your browser less "unique"

While you can do this, it's not clear to me that you should. There are a number of additional laws having to do with perjury and misusing goverment sites and while I would undoubtedly agree with you, were you to assert the application of those laws to the utilization of a user agent switcher is a ridiculous overreach, I am just as certain I have no desire to be in the hot-seat on the day we all find out.

Oh wow I didn't know that. I'll have to double check for the states that are relevant for me.

I imagine many people naively install a privacy extension and unknowingly have altered useragents

Imagine the government coming after someone, demanding they give Google their fair share

Yeah, because career-minded prosecutors and judges never fuck over little people for minor, technical, harmless violations of the law. 🙄

Do the sites work if you use an extension that lies to them about what browser you are using?

I also use Firefox on my work computer, I need to quickly authorize a login in the browser before the local "app" opens ("app" because it's just a webpage pretending to be an app) and I just recently got a notification that slack won't support Firefox anymore so please switch to chrome. The fucking animals.

Sounds like Salesforce acting like Salesforce.

Probably slack is going to have to be ditched on the grounds they have decided to ditch Firefox.

Flashing ESPhome devices. I just had to re-flash one via serial the other day and it requires chrome AFAIK.

I use Librewolf on desktop and Mull on mobile. I have a few extensions on both, which could definitely contribute to issues. When I have issues (usually government sites or financial stuff, sometimes DRM-related stuff for media) it's easier to just use a Chromium-based browser with no extensions than try to troubleshoot specifically what's causing the issues. I keep Falkon (desktop) and Vanadium (mobile) installed for this purpose.

I get the feeling a lot of issues people are having in Firefox might be due to extensions or settings, which gets "fixed" by using another browser (which happens to be Chromium-based because most browsers are) and they blame the issue on Firefox itself.

Firefox is getting so small it’s starting to disappear out of the testing matrix. Confluence has issues with it, you can’t always log into Vanguard on Firefox, many news website layouts have overlapping elements on Firefox, quite a few shopping websites too (H&M in Europe has a long-standing but with putting stuff in the shopping basket until they revamped their website a couple of months ago). Etc etc. I see it ALL the time.

Chromium isn't as problematic as Chrome.

There's still Vivali which is Chromium based and still supporting V2 extension (like uBlock) until June 2025. Its not a full fix, but its a stay of execution. That said, I'm a FF primary user.

I see Vivaldi, I upvote.

I'm already mad about having to potentially abandon my highly customized Vivaldi should ublock lite not work up to my standards

Is a combo of ublock lite and Vivaldi's own blocker insufficient? They made updates to allow custom lists, I think. What about a network wide blocker like a pihole or adguard.

Vivaldi isn't entirely open source, if that matters to you.

Brave would be my recommendation, I just disable the crypto stuff.

Brave's CEO is so anti-gay, he dished out 4-figure checks to fight gayness.

I'm not a fan of that, and Brave has issues with being Chromium-based, like Vivaldi.

I'm sorry, but that is an instance of separating the art from the artist, I really don't care.

Brave is a series scam company.

If people used other browsers, then the market share would change and this would become less and less of a problem.

I already use Firefox full time and recommend others do as well.

I've had that once, as well as some websites running inexplicably slow on FF.

I changed my user agent to a recent Chrome one and that solved it issue.
Moral of the story? Websites are discriminating.

I've been using librewolf for a several months. Be careful because streaming doesn't always work on it due to DRM features, and YouTube has been spotty AF. With YouTube it might start the video a couple seconds into it, buffer for no discernable reason, or just skip a few random seconds.

I use firefox but I have to change my useragent string to chrome with an extension to get YouTube working.

Might be worth having a look to see if it fixes your issues

Yeah, I have noticed it too. I sometimes just use mpv instead to play YouTube videos instead, but that also has its limitations

Oh? I noticed that issue last couple of days using invidious on librewolf, and thought it was YT doing invidious shenanigans again.

There's no need to wait. Just switch to Firefox now. All the cool kids have already done it.

Some of us never left.

Some of us switched to Chrome when it was legitimately better, but are back now.

i switched to chrome when I was too young to understand anything, and I'm not even sure if it was better for any extent. have switched back 5+ years ago

The cool kids are switching to Librewolf because whatever is happening at Mozilla is increasingly concerning by the day.

Uh-huh. Which uses Mozilla's renderer. So, all those upstream commits in Libewolf's code base are coming from where, exactly?

bad changes aren't really happening in the renderer, are they?

No, but Librewolf and Iceweasel and all the other forks are ultimately wholly dependent on Mozilla and Firefox continuing to exist. If Mozilla techbros themselves into imploding entirely and goes bankrupt, for instance, all of those other fork projects are also by association toast.

I was pretty sure manifest v3 had already happened - but when I knew it was coming, I went ahead and switched ahead of time. Came with the extra bonus that now I'm ad free on mobile too! Mobile websites are absolutely filthy with popovers and 2 sentence paragraphs with an ad between every paragraph. I'm sick of it. And unfortunately I spend so much more time browsing the web from my phone these days than my desktop - so when I swapped on pc to Firefox, it was such a relief to have browser extensions on my phone now too.

I remember the internet before Google, and how game changing it was to have all of the internet indexed in one place (even if that wasn’t actually quite true back then). If you had asked me 15, 10, even 5 years ago if I would be cheering its downfall and yearning for a return to a simpler, far less centralized internet, I would have called you crazy. And yet here we are.

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

It wasn't hard to foresee. We knew these kind of things could happen. The internet used to be very out spoken about it. That ethos is long gone. What's equally disappointing is tech nerds selling out for bigger paychecks.

That's because the OG visionaries of tech are gone, and have been replaced by MBAs and techbros.

I don't understand seemingly intelligent people who still blindly use chrome at this point...

For those of us who work in (or love) tech - we (myself included) grossly overestimate how much the general public cares about, or cares to be informed about, this stuff. Heck, even people in tech who know better.

I wish it wasn’t the case but look how long and hard Microsoft moved on Internet Explorer and ActiveX back in the early days of the web.

Google and Chrome is just another bit of history repeating.

As an aside, I’ve been using Zen for about a week and it’s been wonderful. Easy transition from Firefox because it largely is Firefox, so all my containers, extensions, and settings carried over. Zen’s workspaces provide exactly the promise I’d hoped “tab groups” brought with Safari (but never worked right). I just wish there was an equivalent to the Hush plug-in on Safari (even after a year of full-timing FF, consent-o-matic is quite poor).

Yeah I work in tech and I'm the only one that cares enough to use Firefox. All my colleagues use chrome or chrome with makeup.
Maybe ad blocking will be what broke the camel's back, but I doubt more than a few will care enough to switch.

I kinda have to at work. Our classroom computers reset between classes and Chrome is the only browser installed. I might ask IT about that, moving forward, given uBlock getting neutered soon.

when you ask them, don't only mention ublock, but the privacy aspects of only allowing the browser of the largest data collection fueled ad company

Honestly, our IT peeps aren't idiots. They'd probably agree with me. It's admin who make the overall decisions. I might be able to swing "also Firefox" to be included when they inevitably update the repo.

I have a similar issue at my school as well. Chrome is the only allowed browser, and each of us have to use our own school email as our login session in chrome, so we get that much of user space, and that actually works quite decently. I had ublock installed on my user account so far, but if it breaks, I'll just have to suffer. Although, the real problem is that the school I work in uses some digital books that only work 100% in Chrome, and all show some form of weird behaviour in non-chromiun based browsers. And there's a 0 chance they are changing it.

And the only place I can think of where uBlock is not getting neutered anytime soon is in LibreWolf.

Firefox is fucking with uBlock Origin, too? I was not aware.

I didn't say anything about Firefox fucking with uBlock Origin, but was merely suggesting to try LibreWolf as its a hardened Firefox fork that comes with uBlock Origin preinstalled.

It's not about intelligence it's about what keeps you up at night. Most people aren't bothered by cookies and ads, somehow.

this is something i cannot understand. my brain would fking die from the seizures the modern, ad infested web induces.

And the creepiness. Advertisers can deduce many habits based on the information you give them. Some techniques can tell when people are pregnant before they do based on their pathing inside the store, for instance.

And yet, all they continue to sell me is a dryer when I just bought one a month ago.

It used to be worse. Pop up ads are mostly a thing of the past. The web used to be an advertisement shit hole and there were no ad blockers back then.

Regardless, you're right. I don't understand why or how people could be ignorant of the existence of adblock in 2024 unless they're boomers.

Since ads began, there have been ad-blockers. You just didn't know about them.

Most people are stupid, myopic imbeciles that arent bothered by anything until it personally affects them.

Then they'll howl like wolves at the moon about the great injustice of it all, and how could anyone allow this to happen.

The problem here is not just Chrome (as in Google Chrome) but Chromium, the web engine behind many browsers out there (such as Opera, Vivaldi, Edge, among many many others). For now there are two main web engines available, those being Chromium and Gecko (Firefox, Palemoon and many other Firefox forks). The deprecation of Manifest v2 is a Chromium change that includes (and focuses on) Chrome.

You'd be amazed at what seemingly intelligent people will do or say or believe.

I know people who I thought brilliant until they said they were voting for trump. Way to shatter my opinion of you, jagoff.

I'm only using it atm for extensions that are, ironically enough, blocked on Firefox.... Though thats only one website in particular.

blocked? that sounds weird, can you give a few examples?

Unrelated one- https://www.neowin.net/amp/ublock-origin-lite-maker-ends-firefox-store-support-slams-mozilla-for-hostile-reviews/

The two in I use are for twitter-

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/blue-blocker/ - Blocked in Firefox since after 0.3.5, which makes it useless since 0.3.5 was prior to the forced change to x, iirc.

https://github.com/dimdenGD/OldTwitter - Removed from Firefox entirely. Still available on Chrome.

Combined those two make the site look like old twitter, lets me save videos with a right click, and blocks twitter blue users automatically.

While this will drive some users to Firefox, we all know it won't be enough. Too many people simple don't know, or don't care, it won't affect their lives in any meaningful way, or so they will believe. Google will be harming the tech illiterate and normies (sorry for the slur) because money, bullshit, and to drive the stake deeper into the monopoly. If you have older family members using chrome, sit them down and explain to them the dangers of the internet without adblock.

It gets me thinking. Tech literate people are the types to install blockers, and would be the same type of people both motivated and knowledgeable about how to switch browsers. On the line of thinking it seems like it is just going to drive them away from Chrome. Tech illiterate people remain unaffected since they are getting ads anyway.

But then on the other hand, if someone is tech literate then why are they even still using Chrome? Does such a person value whatever advantage Chrome theoretically provides over their ad-blocking?

as a chromium browser user - i've been meaning to switch to firefox, and i know it'll take me maybe a day, but it feels like so much workkkk. In a similar fashion i've been meaning to switch to Linux for ages too. I guess it just hasn't gotten bad enough for me to take action

as long as my adblockers & script blockers work, i'm not forced to upgrade to win11, and win10 still has security updates i don't think it's pushing on my discomfort buttons strong enough. I know the day will come, but like with a lot of things in my life - why do something today when i can do it tomorrow?

if that helps, switching browsers is a lot easier than switching your OS. the automatic import brings over most of your data (bookmarks, passwords, history, ...), and you only need to handle the addons, if you had any, and the browser settings if you need anything from there

What do you mean "work"? What is it that needs to move?

You just fire up Firefox and start using it. It'll even scrape your chrome setup to move bookmarks and stuff over.

It's not an OS. It's an application.

i don't use chrome itself. i have a lot of saved things, roughly a million tabs open at every moment, and passwords saved which i do not remember

There's extensions to export all your open tabs and then a similar extension to import those tabs and open them as a session in Firefox. Source: I, too, have a million tabs open at every moment, and had to do that to transition myself. Same for exporting/importing passwords.

This is all mostly automatically transfered over.... I don't know about passwords though

I'm not sure if Firefox pulls passwords when you import your data, but you can manually export passwords from Chrome and import them into Firefox.

If you have tabs like that, they're not "open". They are crumbs left as you wandered the internet. You're not going back to them. Do yourself a favour and close them.

It's like having thousands of unread emails in your inbox. At some point you have to stop kidding yourself you're going to read them.

I feel you. It's vey much a convenience thing, and sitting down with something you're used to.

That’s some procrastination going on. Sometimes you should force yourself to start doing something for a minute or so and things will eventually change.

I use Opera for myself, but I have to use Chrome for work reasons (user profiles for different work areas based on whatever email is being used at the company computer). Thing is, Firefox also lacks the feature that makes me use Opera: speed dial. My Opera starting page is my speed dials, and speed dials are 10x better than just bookmarks, and I wouldn't want to go through all the trouble of transfering literally hundreds of saved pages to standard bookmarks. But, if ublock fully stops working, guess I'll have no choice.

I don't know what exactly speed dialsare in opera, but firefox's homepage can show website tiles in multiple rows

Chrome devtools and debugger are awesome

If you have older family members, you could try just installing Firefox for them and tell them it's their internet now. This worked for me parents.

Not for mine, they couldn’t make the switch even though everything was the same

I even changed the icon to Chrome’s

Waiting for Mozilla to shoot their own foot again

Make sure to shit on them every fucking time anyone says the name "Mozilla", that'll help us not have anything except Chrome in a couple years.

It's fine, there are open source projects underway. If any one of them gains traction, it could happen to Mozilla what happened to Unity with Godot. Here's to hoping they get their act straight sooner tan later.

Oh, bullshit. There is nothing that has 1/100th of the effort that goes into gecko, because maintaining a web browser is ridiculously difficult. You're living in a dreamworld if you think any other project is within a lightyear of Firefox.

idk why people think that these foss projects will be fully finished super quickly every time mozilla or google does some stupid shit. firefox exists solely because of googles funding due to web browsers being expensive/difficult to maintain. the effort being made for ladybird is amazing, but holy shit we are NOT gonna be at the 'firefox and chrome alternative' level unless they gain massive funding.

maybe i should get back into gemini

Didn't they just announce recently that they were going to work more with advertisers? https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/improving-online-advertising/

How to improve online advertising: Step 1: remove all online advertising

People completely misunderstand this feature (which is only a temporary prototype anyways), and I think that’s entirely Mozilla’s fault. They do a really poor job explaining it.

Usually ad networks implement sophisticated tracking, which works in a highly invasive way. They need the telemetry to watch their campaigns. Firefox now offers the option to collect a minimal amount of data for them and inform the network indirectly.

This is a good thing for the end user. The trackers are not needed, you gain privacy. Disabling the option makes it so you’re instantly tracked MORE.

Mozilla shouldn’t have staged this as an opt-out of the new system. You actually OPT-IN to networks running their old scripts on your machine to collect your telemetry:

[ ] Allow ad networks to run their own telemetry

(Beta functionality, some advertisers may still run their own trackers, even when this option is disabled.)

That would be the same thing, but communicate what it’s doing.

The fact that advertisers like Meta might be on board with this should be exciting to people. That they are even considering giving up so much data and now only receive a single number of impressions per campaign is very unexpected.

Also, none of this matters if you block ads anyways. If you don’t load the ad, neither the networks script runs its telemetry, nor does Firefox increase the counter for the campaign id.

If you're wondering what's every involved party's gain in this, an interesting read is the IPA white paper, where the overall design targets for the system are stated: Interoperable Private Attribution (IPA), 2022

In particular:

In designing IPA, we set out to find a win-win-win solution for cross platform attribution measurement that met our goals across privacy, utility, and competition.

• ⁠Privacy: data collected about the user is minimized, protecting the end-users privacy. • ⁠Utility: the telemetry process is unified and simplified across all platforms, reducing the costs • ⁠Competition: it will be an open, standardized system, accessible to everyone

Just to be clear, I dislike the way Mozilla rolled this out. They already have a "Studies" checkmark that people can enable if they wish to participate in stuff like this. That Mozilla treats this prototype differently is actually not ok, and breaks trust with their users. But as far as I'm concerned, this is a completely separate topic from the update content, which I wish to be successful.

Firefox now offers the option to collect a minimal amount of data for them and inform the network indirectly.

This is a good thing for the end user.

I'm not sure that collecting data is actually a good thing for the end user, but to each their own I suppose.

Yeah, the reason they could be collecting data, is to feed it to an AI.

It's an improvement over the current systems. Incremental improvements to the state of things can be a good thing too.

What about waiting for Google to shoot their own foot again, even though that already has happened numerous times?

They just did, they are gonna work more with advertisers.

When is this happening? I've been telling my wife and kid that they need to stop using chrome for a year, but ublock is still working for them and blocking YouTube ads. They are the type that won't switch until it becomes a problem for them.

I think that's the point: Google has been shutting down Manifest V2 extensions one step at a time, and it's been experimenting with anti-ad-block tech on YouTube with one user group at a time.

I've fully switched to Firefox everywhere. The only thing I'm missing is a lightweight browser which is not based on chromium for my potato tablet. jQuarks viewer is a good one but can be dumb sometimes, it opens image instead of the link for eg.

You could always try Firefox Focus to see if that will run on your potato tablet and is lightweight enough for you.

Not sure if they're still round, but I used to use opera.

Opera ditched their browser engine. They use chromium now.

And now there is a need to ditch chromium on the grounds of what Google is doing to enshittify Manifest v3.

I find it funny how so many people are switching back to firefox but its been my default since I was like 10. I had crappy laptops when I was young and it was the only one that worked, it works amazingly for my modern computer.

Yeah, I remember when Chrome was first released, I was already on Firefox, and I downloaded and tried Chrome....

I absolutely hated the UI, and kept on using Firefox.

Over the years, I have seen many articles about how Chrome is better because it is faster, I never had an issue with Firefox, so I kept using it.

The only time I swiched from Firefox since version 1.0 was when they launched the Australis redesign as it made it look like a boring chrome copy.

I swiched to Pale Moon, a Fitefox fork which kept the old UI, then when they released the Quantum redesign, I switched back.

Same for me. Cool my commonly used Websites load 0.05ms faster - idc. Still gonna use firefox

My biggest gripe with Firefox is that if I'm too fast and start typing into the address bar when it first launches, it'll clear the auto text selection and start prepending my input onto the URL.

What's a good YouTube downloader these days?

yt-dlp is the gold standard. Not only for YouTube either. Check out the man page, the amount of shit it can do is insane.

yt-dlp is what i normally use, tho its only got a command line interface. I think someone's made a GUI for it, but I've never tried it.

yt-dlp continues to be the best option for me.

if youre just looking for a downloader website with zero setup of your own there's cobalt

A great privacy focused client for YouTube is FreeTube. Uses a native API or Invidious for playback, and you can download and share videos from it. Doesn't give any identifying info to Google/YouTube and I've never once dealt with an ad. For mobile, Grayjay and NewPipe are similar apps.

The downloading on freetube is so bad as to be functionally broken, and based on what reading I did to try to get it good, it sounds like it's gonna stay how it is forever.

Basically it should be considered a lie to advertise freetube as having a working download function, even if it can technically do it. I wish it were better because it's a neat little program for viewing without mucking up recommendations!

Screen capture while the video is running, like the VCR days of yore

Nah, man. I point a Betamax camcorder on a tripod at my 4K, 16bpp graphics workstation monitor to make sure I really capture all those pixels.

Google, fuck you and your ads too:

Agreed, but I don't understand the point of this image? Am I dumb?

It's good that I use Firefox and will continue to be ad free then, eh?

I sure hope so. I've been on team Mozilla for a long time, but right at this critical moment they are starting to wobble. Their CEO seems to be steering them in a direction that I don't agree with.

(I still believe Firefox is the best option right now; but I'm a little concerned for the future.)

I switched to Firefox over the summer and have been mostly happy with my decision.

However, there have been a LOT of issues with video playback on certain sites and I really don't know how to fix them. Searches have been just about useless in regards to finding a fix. The worst one is Nebula. The video often just freezes while the audio just keeps trucking along like nothing is wrong. This has happened to a more limited extent with some YouTube videos as well. And the TAB crash on some sites is quite infuriating.

The lack of HVEC/h.265 support is kind of a deal breaker in firefox (windows nightly builds don't count as done). I need it to view h.265 security cameras and the occasional movie streamed via browser.

Edit: For those suggesting multiple browsers I could just use Edge if I wanted to.. still better compatibility as it is essentially chromium.

I have a list of other things that don’t work reliably in Firefox such as various video conferencing tools so no, I am not going to switch to Firefox as my primary browser again anytime soon.

I was a Firefox user for many years but there are too many daily things I use now that prevent me from using it as a primary browser for work and causal use.

Cool thing is you can run multiple browsers. So just use Chrome for your cameras and Firefox for everything else.

Why would I use multiple browsers if I can achieve nearly everything in one? I would much rather use Edge or Safari for everything than Firefox plus another browser.

Because Edge has also moved to Manifest V3 and Safari uses WebKit which doesn’t have the same degree of blocking. I mean, you do you, enjoy your ads.

True, but the other argument is just try adblock lite, it works fine.. It isn't as powerful but I would rather have a fully functional daily browser than one with lesser video playback and conferencing functions.

I guess when edge stops supporting v2 you'll just look at ads then

I won't

Ad block lite does a good enough job without me changing to be honest, again the point being is that there are more problems with me using Firefox as a primary browser than ad blocking benefits.

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It's going to be internet explorer era again. I wonder which will replace chrome in the future.

How? If you would have said Chromium based era, then sure, possible. Internet Explorer for 64 bit was officially retired June 15, 2022 and permanently disabled through an Edge update.

it's not literally just an analogy how a single browser guided by private corporate interests is treated as the only standard

Chromium based era is what I think we had around 2012 and today. But lately Chromium is not exactly equal to Google Chrome now they been getting divergent.

Browsers with in built adblocker or system wide AdGuard.

DNS ad blockers are not sufficient to block all ads and often overly broad. So they have much higher rate of false positives and negatives compared to in-browser ad blockers. Differentiating between ads and useful content based on domain names will become more and more difficult. Both might use some url from the same cloud provider, and blocking those breaks a lot of stuff.

AdGuard is not a DNS blocker

You where talking about "system wide AdGuard", which is not the browser addon, but an app that uses DNS blocking, be it by either letting people set DNS servers manually, or automatically through VPN. Their VPN does not break TLS connection by inserting custom certificates and MITM proxies, so they cannot read/modifiy content.

It might be possible to use TLS breaking proxies for systemwide ad blocking, but even that wouldn't help, because nowadays a lot of content and ads are loaded dynamically via javascript. So a browser is required to filter ads.

Maybe you are looking for SpamGuard, TrojanGuard, VirusGuard, MalwareGuard, SpywareGuard, RansomWareGuard, etc. instead.

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porque no los dos? I use both and there are things uBlock can catch/block that AdGuard Home doesn't seem to be able to. That said AdGuard makes mobile pages readable, when most these days are a complete nightmare of ads

I was talking about AdGuard, not AdGuard Home.

I misread system wide as network wide. My mistake. FWIW, I still prefer a network wide and browser plugin (ublock and privacy badger) combo.

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Doesn't uBlock Origin already have a Manifest V3 version of the extension?

That's uBlock Origin Lite, which the developer already stated is grossly inadequate for ad blocking.

thr manifest v3 version is basically ublock origin lite, whoch has extremely limited control of what you can and cant do.

uBO Lite.

Not my jam, lacks the power of the original.

If only banks and government websites moved their asses and stopped mentioning Internet Explorer for one more time...

"Might."

Right? I don't think anyone using Chrome with adblockers is just gonna be like "oh well, guess we got ads now"

I'd be really, really surprised if a bunch don't bother doing anything. Maybe most.

I know this is probably true, but I love to fantasize about people being less complacent

Yeah but Mozilla just turned into an ad company. Hard fork time.

Not really. Ads aren't gonna dissappear, with Mozillas tech, they'd at least be more private than what Google will implement.

That's true, Mozilla's vision of ads is much better than Google's. But is there any reasons it will be one or the other? Is there any reason to believe that Mozilla's ads will displace Google's ads? Or are we just going to end up with more ads: Google's very bad ads plus Mozilla's less bad ads.

[edit] Just to be clear - I don't want to sound any Mozilla. Mozilla hasn't actually acted on this yet. Firefox is still good right now, and will continue to be good at least in the short term. It's just that Mozilla have stated their intention to work on making ad systems. So when that actually happens, it will be bad.

Maybe they'll replace ads on sites that let them and block them on other sites? Who knows

I can't imagine a few developers maintaining Firefox without MILLIONS of dollars.

Librewolf didn't take as much adjustment as I would have expected, and it even supports toning down specific security postures for QoL niceties like Firefox account sync. Made the switch just to try it out and haven't gone back. Excited to see what people come up with for more forks/hard forks in the future.

Come and join me in Firefox and try out container tabs. Super powerful when you're trying to keep home and work identities seperate.

I love containerized tabs. They do break online payment for some sites but imo it's worth it. Wondering if there's similar feature / addon in brave / librewolf...

The Fox has been re-promoted to my daily driver as of this year. Chrome still in play for work stuff & sites don't have ads.

Comeon 0.0001%! Let’s get those last 5 people who know what an extension is but were holding out for…???

Yeah… These articles are like reading the tally marks on a prison wall. Let it go.

One of the reasons why I left chomium based browsers even ungoogled chromium (I use chromium alongside firefox but mainly firefox)

My Chromebook heard about it and a few weeks ago developed a display issue. I’m now looking for a new laptop that allows Firefox browser. It’s kind of funny how things work out.

Wait, a Chromebook won't let you use any browser other than than Chrome?

Chromebook won’t let you get browser Firefox unless you switch to Linux but not all Chromebook’s are able to get Linux because of hardware. I was one of those people.

I'm wondering how Apple will handle this in Safari.

When new fearures added to V3, will Mozilla port it to V2 too?

IIRC, they've said they'll implement V3 to maintain compatibility, but they'll also continue to maintain V2. You, the extension developer, will not be forced to use V3 if you don't want to.

educated guess: since firefox is implementing v3 support alongside their v2 extensions, there shouldn't be any issues running v2 and v3 extensions side by side in the foreseeable future

I think they are wondering if one extension can use both v2 and v3 APIs at once? As in whether v3 APIs will be "backported" to allow v2 extensions to use them

Well, looks like then I might have to start shutting down my use of Chrome.

I used to be fine with adverts, not a big deal. Until they became insanely intrusive. Noticed that YouTube recently stopped to even show the countdown to skip or the length of the actual ad on some devices/apps, so it's always guesswork when you can actually skip or how long it would run after the skip becomes available. And the amount of ads going in videos is getting disgusting as well, I know it's partly up to the creators, but fucking hell I often get ads like not even a minute into the video already, often running longer than the time I've spent actually watching the video.

I kinda wish for google CEOs and shareholders to die a horrible, painful death :p

They know that's how peasants feel that's why they feel zero shame or guilt about fuxking people over. We are not human to them anyway.

I just installed Postmarket OS on my Arm based Chromebook, to be able to switch to Firefox.

suddenly 20 new chromium forks appear

Huh, where'd those come from, I wonder. 🤔

So glad I peaced out on Chrome in like 2016 over the ugly curved tabs

https://gist.github.com/velzie/053ffedeaecea1a801a2769ab86ab376

Just stop destroying the www by supporting this toxic monopoly. How in the hell are all of those coping tweaks easier than just switching the freaking browser?! It's like Windows users claiming superiority when they have to have like 10 tools to tweak their operating system, with each year another new one being needed. At what point do you people realize how much you're getting duped and how you are part of the problem that makes this possible in the first place?

I relate to your Windows comment. There was a point where I was that person with a bunch of different tools to modify my OS exactly how I like it, and then I realize I’m just doing more work. If I’m willing to do that work anyway, I might as well have an OS that is more malleable.

Yes, same here. After turning off a bunch of services I noticed update stopped working, but I forgot how I turned off the firewall in the first place to make it work again... Never booted windows again except for that one time to change the polling rate of my mouse (windows only app)

How dare anyone suggest that there's a way to accomplish something!

It's better to just use another browser that's not looking to exploit you

Yeah from one of those companies that pour tons of money into developing and maintaining a web browser without any way to recoup that expense.

They recoup it through shipping a default search engine that's Google in 90% of the world

So they’re just subcontracting the exploitation?

I thought the complaint is that they couldn't recoup development expenses

I've seen countless of those tweaks throughout the years. You can harangue the people using them all you want, but at the end of the day they're hooked on a powerful drug. And they'll do anything to keep their supply.

For those who may not want to click the link, this appears to show a workaround that enterprises might use to bypass the change.

No, enterprises would use the Google admin console as described here.

The above is for a single machine, applied locally.

It looks like it’s the same flag to me. I mean, it’s entirely possible that administration could use a different path to applying the setting, but it has the same name.

Sure, it's the same flag, but using the admin console would apply it to a group of computers. The methods in the github link are to apply it to a single computer.

Only until June 2025 apparently, leave chromium behind already guys.

I would consider even jumping ship further away and don't land on Firefox. They have their own concerning issues as of late. The more privacy minded people may be the only group that cares and that's cool. I'm just adding that before you go to Mozilla check them out further and then decide if it fits you.

Maybe check out other browsers like Vivaldi, too. That is what I currently use now and have been satisfied with it. I use it on mobile and desktop.

Vivaldi is Chromium... Use a Firefox fork at least

Seems like others in my world think similar as me so I'm good with my choice. You do you though. I was simply just recommending that maybe people should look beyond Firefox. If you don't it doesn't bother me. I'll still sleep fine tonight.

You're not looking "beyond" Firefox, you're just staying on Chromium. As unfortunate as it is, your only options these days are Chromium, Firefox and Safari (MacOS exclusive). All Chromium browsers will stop supporting Manifest V3.

Vivaldi will not maintain compatibility with manifest v2, and will instead just rely on their inbuilt ad blocker.

Wasn't there just an article about how Mozilla is claiming ublock origin shouldn't be supported anymore and another one claiming they're starting a focus on ads?

I feel like we're entering a really shitty time for the Internet... Tie that in with Microsucks Recall feature and computing in general is going to suck...

I don't want to go touch grass!!

The closest I can find is

https://www.ghacks.net/2024/10/01/mozillas-massive-lapse-in-judgement-causes-clash-with-ublock-origin-developer/

Which is only the "lite" version (which really has no reason to be used in firefox) and was likely based on an improper scan. Which happens constantly and is usually an email and a few days of waiting rather than immediately going to the press.

If you can find something about Mozilla actually being anti-adblock or disabling manifest v2 that would be incredibly useful. But maybe be aware of what is going on before vaguely making major claims?

IIRC Mozilla doubled down on their v2 support when Chrome announced the shift to v3. But then the Chrome monopoly judgment came down and with it a lot of speculation on Google dropping their funding of Mozilla, so maybe Mozilla could be changing its tune to either protect or find a replacement for that funding? Nothing of substance is happening yet, it's still all speculation, but I do hope nothing like that does happen.

Mozilla has been diversifying for ages, it's what stuff like buying pocket was all about. They should be making around 100m off the side hustles by now, plenty to keep the lights on, but still a small sum compared to the 500m they get from selling the default search engine spot.

Also, just as a reminder: Mozilla doesn't exist to make money for Firefox, Firefox exists to make money for Mozilla's general internet charity work.

Yeah, the "lite" version should only be in the Chromium Store and its for support of the garbage better know as manifest v3 that is better off going to the scrapheap.

In fact, uBlock Origin is one of the officially recommended extensions by Mozilla

uBO Lite was incorrectly flagged as violating policy by someone at Mozilla, but rather than appeal that decision in any capacity at all, the developer just removed the add-on entirely without responding to Mozilla. The original decision was almost certainly just an error.

A web extension isn't going to be that much of a game changer for Firefox. Usage is down, new profile rate is down, concerning financials towards Firefox and this issue has been ongoing for sometime with ublock. This isn't meant to diss ublock though.

I don't have much hope for Mozilla attracting more users to make userbase count impact. Hopefully overpaid execs proves my pessimism wrong about my favorite browser.

I heard that google is sending fake focus groups invites to males around your area. Yeah, it's true! Someone gullible enough to drive to their facility and sit in their special google chairs. Once they sit, the chair 💺 traps them and a small machine arm approaches in between their legs, injects local anesthesia and procedes to remove the genitalia. It was a really well done Fox News report that I heard on MPR. It's supposed to be part of alphabet's war on cancer. They will eventually have the robots smart enough to remove only cancer cells. But yeah, for now it's removing the whole thing. So be on the lookout for that. And ads! I hate the ads!

Firefox isn't far behind now. They just announced ads are coming and they know their platform is used heavily with ad blocking extensions so they'll cut it

Source?

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/improving-online-advertising/

Advertising is like the Kudzu vine: neat and potentially useful if maintained responsibly, but beyond capable of growing out of control and strangling the very landscape if you don't constantly keep it in check. I think, for instance, that a podcast or over-the-air show running an ad-read with an affiliate link is fine for the most part, as long as it's relatively unobtrusive and doesn't put limitations on what the content would otherwise go over.

The problem is that there needs to be a reset of advertiser expectations. Right now, they expect the return on investment that comes from hyper-specific and invasive data, and I don't think you can get that same level of effectiveness without it. The current advertising model is entrenched, and the parasitic roots have eroded the foundation. Those roots will always be parasitic because that's the nature of advertising, and the profit motive in general when unchecked.

Talk about a gross mischaracterization of what is actually said in that blog post. You made it seem like Firefox is getting rid of ad blocking which is far from the truth of what that post says. It doesn't even mention ad blocking. Maybe don't editorialize a post and present it as fact.

Move, yeah. To Firefox… meh. The writing's not on the wall yet, but we're not going to ignore the very heavy signaling Mozilla has been doing for years now.

I've been hearing this for at least a year and a half. Ublock still works fine in Chrome...

You've been hearing about it because there's been a lot of pushback at all stages of them doing it. That doesn't mean it won't happen, they've kept pushing for it and there's no indication they won't go through with it.