uBlock Origin will soon stop functioning in Chrome as Google transitions to new browser extension rules.
The ad company blocking an ad blocker is totally about security
- Google stans
With this change, extensions can “only” alter/inspect/redirect/block 30,000 domains if they use the webRequest API. That’s not enough to build uBlock Origin with, but at least there’s limit now.
That seems like an arbitrary number. Why not 20,000? Or 300,000? What the hell is this limit even for? Even malware can still target 10 domains and do some significant damage. So, what the hell is the point?
Remember, politicians don’t pass racist laws by directly saying they are excluding PoC into the law. They do it by targeting commonalities that happen to apply to PoC.
Google isn’t going to flat-out say they are blocking uBlock Origin. They are going to do it by implementing “security features” that just so happen to target only uBlock Origin.
“For the security” is starting to sound a lot like “for the children”. I hope this works out better than secure boot. When these new ideas emerge that have, let’s call them, “side effects” like disabling ad-blockers or preventing Linux from being installed I am suspicious.
At this point, using Firefox and an ad blocker does more for the climate than paper straws or recycling.
Even with ad blocking, half of consumer internet traffic is ads. Google is contributing to increasing this ratio, where most traffic on the internet will be stuff the client did not request, contributing more to climate change than Bitcoin - not that this makes crypto look better, they are just a useful milestone to compare to with the press they get.
And this doesn’t include the idiotic AI shit they do.
I’m pretty sure the traffic for the ads still gets sent to your device over the Internet, it’s just that the ad blocker keeps it from rendering in your browser.
It’s a mixed bag. Some ads (like some Youtube stuff I guess) are bundled and filtered, but most actually rely on external requests to ad exchanges. What happens mostly is that when there is an ad spot in the page you downloaded, that is in fact a generic request to an ad broker to send an ad instead of a specific ad. That then starts a real time bidding process inside multiple broker networks to find the most expensive (for the advertiser) ad they can show you based on your tracking information and demographics.
And that’s for every ad spot. It’s insanely intricate and frankly wasteful.
More people should use Firefox. Anyone who does not want Google to control the web browser space with a single base. Firefox will continue support uBlock Origin in its full strength. Notice, Google does not “kill” uBlock Origin, but rather weaken it substantially with a new protocol.
But I get it. With such headlines more people will read it. At least it has a good effect of getting attention of people, who would otherwise ignore it.
Its still the same extension, same source code, same logic, just less capable; hence the addition of “Lite” to the name. Originally they wanted release the Lite version with same name, but changed it Lite, so people don’t get confused why its not longer blocking everything it blocked before.
same logic
That’s the point, it isn’t. The good old version was built on logic where the browser would send the downloaded webpage to the extension, and uBO could weed out ads and trackers, and give you the sanitized version. uBOL works completely differently, as it has to ask the browser to clean it out, but the browser will ultimately decide what to actually do, and there are already limitations that impact ad blocking, as the browser won’t accept enough changes to block all the different kinds of shit that comes through.
The other big difference in logic is distribution, uBO relies on outside blocklists to keep up with Google changing Youtube several times a day to keep sending you malware, in the new system, this is not allowed, so it’s on Google to approve a new blocklist as fast as they do their changes - they won’t.
It’s going to be less capable, it’s going to be exactly as capable as Google wants. It might as well be named the Google Ad Blocker if only that didn’t discount the insane work the uBO team does to keep up with Google’s shit.
Its still the same extension, same source code, same logic, just less capable
the same… but not the same… ??
I think the technologies are quite different.
uBOL is entirely declarative, meaning there is no need for a permanent uBOL process for the filtering to occur, and CSS/JS injection-based content filtering is performed reliably by the browser itself rather than by the extension. This means that uBOL itself does not consume CPU/memory resources while content blocking is ongoing – uBOL’s service worker process is required only when you interact with the popup panel or the option pages.
Are you claiming non-lite does the same, plus more?
You say it’s the same source code, but it’s a different source code repository. non-lite, lite.
At this point if you use Chrome I think there is something wrong with you.
I have that problem too but I find using a Chromium-based browser is the solution. I doubt you actually need to use Chrome for these websites you’re having problems with.
i mostly use a vivaldi or opera portable for those. unzip, run, use the temperamental site, close, delete directory. it’s not very often that i have to do this.
but for a couple of pesky sites i do frequent a bit more often, i keep their portable browsers to reuse and have them configured (including addons) specifically for them.
well, there’s a lot wrong with me. but the only reason I use chrome is because when my last windows machine took a shit, I couldn’t afford a new PC so I grabbed a chromebook for $130CAD and I was seriously impressed with how easy and fast it was to use. that was 4 years ago, and now I’m just waiting for google’s hammer to drop so I can switch back to windows.
a chromebook isn’t without its charms, there are features that just make sense to me that are non-existent on windows: for example, you can increase the size of everything on your screen with two fingers on your touchpad. expand to make larger, pinch to shrink it down. seems like a no-brainer for any OS, but windows lacks this feature. and when you’re old af and your eyesight is for shit, this is an extremely useful tool to have available.
but if I can’t block ads then it’s meaningless. there are no redeeming features that could ever outweigh adblock capabilities. once that happens, I’m gone and I’ll never go back to chrome. they can go fuck themselves to death if they’re gonna take away UO
I’m (unfortunately for reasons) running Win11 on a Surface Pro 7 with keyboard, and pinch/pull to zoom works fine in Firefox and Vivaldi, which are the only apps I use the feature on. It produces funky behavior in Explorer and usually does nothing elsewhere.
Is it universally functional in Windows? No. Is it implemented at the OS level? Absolutely.
Fuck chrome, FF ftw.
