- cross-posted to:
- firefox@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- firefox@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
Firefox says it will keep supporting uBlock Origin even as Microsoft Edge and other Chromium browsers phase it out under Manifest V3.
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If they ever stop supporting it I will continue to use the last version to support it, any website that breaks compatibility with this Firefox version can get fucked.
That’s a significant security risk, unfortunately.
If that happens, I’d suggest a fork with a built in blocker, one that still gets security patches from upstream Firefox.
Exactly. Ublock origin is notable only for being part of 0 ad companies and 100% trustworthy. The blocking lists are universal. If it’s built into the browser, you’re golden
i mean… blocking lists are universal, but the other features ublock offers are not - i’m making heavy use of ublock’s dynamic filtering panel and per-site switches. one important thing i use ublock for is to whitelist which sites get javascript permissions and to get rid of remote fonts to make pages more readable. those features need manifest v2.
if firefox drops manifest v2 and you’re relying purely on those inbuilt blocking lists then you might as well use the manifest v3 version of ublock without seeing a difference, right?
if firefox drops manifest v2
I think they said they will go out of their way to keep the extension APIs in Mv3 that uBlock needs
you might as well use the manifest v3 version of ublock without seeing a difference, right?
Can confirm, I was thinking about switching off of Chrome due to this but since I don’t use the custom stuff (much) I’m not noticing a difference with the v3 compatible “light” version of uBlock Origin.
Well…
With a fork, one is very dependent on the browser dev. Not just on their benevolence, but on their security practices too. And on them pulling in upstream security patches, quickly.
TBH, this is why I do finance stuff on vanilla Firefox. I love browser forks, I really do, but I’m a bit more cautious with them, too.
“Dev” as if it’s just a singular person
Most of the forks are teams of 10-20 devs
The most used forks are usually larger teams tbf, not a single dev
True, sometimes. But they don’t have the sheer manpower dedicated to security that Mozilla has, nor the institutional policies that try to mitigate losing a key/account or something like that. Also, technically, vanilla Firefox is first to get the zero-day patches before they filter downstream.
Not that the forks are dangerous or anything, generally.
I’ll just spend my reading time reading more books than I do now. Forcing me to look at ads will not work.
wait for 4g books that serve you unskippable ads
Librewolf would probably still support it
librewolf does not have much developer capacity to maintain such heavy patches. you may remember some chromium forks telling they will maintain a patch when google completely removes this API from chromium, but it seems none of them will follow through. I can’t really fault them because it is likely a gargantuan task. but I’ll fault them for claiming something they (should) have known they can’t deliver. but my point is if vivaldi and others can’t keep it, how could librewolf?
I’d probably go retro, use something like Dillo and stick to more classic webpages. Or go full Gopher/Gemini.
as a websev, you’re gonna have a bad time
I can’t imagine using the web without firefox and ublock. Even the cookie consent popups are awful.
Seriously. I clear my cookies on Firefox exit because I don’t want their shit on my computer if it isn’t needed.
This would cause me to see them every single damn time.
Yeah, the user experience of “just wipe cookies on browser exit” is a lot better than “have a million prompts all over zillions of sites”.
However, regarding “every single damn time”…some sites can have their “do you want cookies” popup just blocked by the Firefox I still don’t care about cookies addon. It’s not a solution for every site out there, but it’ll get a lot of them.
It’s also possible to use another extension, Behind the Overlay on some sites. This does require a click, so manual action, but it tries to identify “pop-over” content that covers up the browser window and remove it with that click. It’s really intended as a more-general solution to “pop-over” stuff, but cookie pop-ups often take this form and can be dismissed.
You can also just enable one of the “Cookie notices” lists in your ublock settings, no need for another extension.
Especially considering how many extensions have been found to be malware lately
have a million prompts all over zillions of sites”.
I’m using Ghostery to automatically reject all of those. They pop-in and almost immediately disappear.
Ghostery blocks trackers then sells data about your tracking blocking habits. It was the first tracker blocker I heard of but Privacy Badger is the better one nowadays.
Not true since 2017 (and even before that it was kinda’ disputed). The adblock part of the business went to Cliqz, a German privacy-focused browser, backed by Mozilla.
I have downvoted your comment because it’s repeating a popular myth, nothing against you personally.
I recommend using the extensions Containers and “temporary containers” instead. This way you can keep cookies for specific containers / websites but all the other cookies get deleted.
LibreWolf, WaterFox and Vivaldi
Zen, though I think that’s basically Firefox under the hood.
vivaldi recently disabled uBO and said it’d soon be unsupported. you can re-enable for now
I was using vivaldi and they were kind enough(seriously) to inform me that they don’t support ublock anymore maybe a week ago.
Not sure about the reason but I think that it’s a technical thing the Google changed to deliberately make it easy to end ublock on a lot of browsers. Might not be the only reason(actual tech upgrades) but I believe it’s part of the reason since major conspiracies seem much more likely these days.
Anyway, I switched back to Librewolf even though it can’t play x.265 files (jellyfin). Anything that kills the use of ublock is dead to me even though they have their own shitty, bullshit blocking solution. It’s never going to be as good as ublock edit grammar and shit
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s been a very well published and discussed process.
There are exceptions but browsers are either reconfigurations of firefox, like librewolf, or reconfigurations of google chrome, like vivaldi.
Some dweeb will be along in a moment to tell us all how vivaldi is not merely a reconfiguration, but the point is …
google changed the manner in which plugins can interact with the web page you see. In recent months you could re-enable the old plugin interface by recompiling with a different configuration, but once google makes a change that breaks that old interface then you can’t just re-enable it.
Anyway, I switched back to Librewolf even though it can’t play x.265 files (jellyfin).
you should check that again, Firefox gained support for it last year.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Guides/Formats/Video_codecs#hevc_h.265
check the browser compatibility column in the table. it seems maybe Firefox is the only one supporting it even for those without hardware acceleration?
Admittedly, I haven’t tried too hard to get it working in any of the FF browsers lately…my unraid server blew up and it was handling hardware acceleration with a cheap intel vid card. I haven’t felt like messing with until now so I’ll give it a shot. Thanks for the info
edit: no transcoding when l tried an x.265 in regular firefox. sweet
I didn’t know that, well glad I went to LibreWolf.
…may you elaborate?
LibreWolf has it pre-installed and is Open-source. It worked on waterfox an Open-source fork of Firefox, last time I tried.
As for Vivaldi I guess use Brave instead.
Brave is the money generator of a far right hate group. Fuck Brendan Eich, fuck their ad replacement scam, fuck everything Brave.
Really??? I had no clue!!!
I just got back into being into the open source life after going back to Ubuntu after almost 20 years later. I stopped using Ubuntu in 2009 when Pigeon was an aio instant messenger client.
… Well shit. Yeah fuck that guy.
And Brave, don’t forget brave
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Not to defend Brave (seriously, don’t use Brave), but it has built-in ad-blocking.
As long as chromium is open source I see no problem down the line… and if Google one day stops the funding of open source projects, well, the Firefox is also toast
Ublock Lite still works in Chrome (and it still blocks YouTube ads, not sure about cookie popups), but you get no control over the filters. Just a slider with some presets to choose from. So while better than nothing, just stick with Firefox.
Now that MV2 is dead in chrome, i wouldn’t bet on YouTube ads being able to be blocked by UBlock Lite for much longer.
Pretty sure full ublock origin still works in helium no?
Pretty sure I’ve read months ago that the maintainers said they’ll try to support it as long as possible but at the moment v2 support is removed from the source code, they’ll won’t have the resources to add it back again.
Being unable to use manifest v2 extensions anymore on most chromium based stuff has resulted in me writing off almost all browsers that are base on chromium. Kudos to Firefox for continuing to support it! Let’s hope that does not change at all anytime soon.
fortunately uBlock still works on Helium
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So, I can finally point and laugh at the people who were saying that the manifest V3 thing was a non issue because their ad blocker was still working ?
no, because their ad blocker is still working
At a lower efficiency than before, and a lot of stuff now won’t get blocked because of the limit in definitions.
Define “lower efficiency”, please.
only ads on big sites or ads by big providers are blocked. cookie prompts and other annoyances much less, because there is a great variety of them. data mining and hardware fingerprinting cannot even be thwarted anymore.
sure, if you only care about ads, but not at all about your privacy, it does not mean much to you. personally I would rather see ads (topic based) than give up my privacy, and the complete uBlock Origin is very useful for privacy too.
only ads on big sites or ads by big providers are blocked
This is false.
cookie prompts
Not part of any adblocker. Some, like Ghostery, have a separate mechanism to auto-reject these. I switched from uBO to Ghostery because uBO wasn’t doing anything against those.
data mining and hardware fingerprinting cannot even be thwarted anymore.
That’s not an adblock feature and there are hundreds of other extensions that handle that, like PrivacyBadger. Ghostery says it also handles trackers, but I haven’t verified that.
I would rather see ads (topic based) than give up my privacy, and the complete uBlock Origin is very useful for privacy too.
Look up tools made specifically for it, then. Also: privacy related stuff is not affected by Manifest v3, no?
Not part of any adblocker. Some, like Ghostery, have a separate mechanism to auto-reject these. I switched from uBO to Ghostery because uBO wasn’t doing anything against those.
this is false. and instead of just claiming so, here is proof: there are built-in (but disabled by default) blocklists specialized for cookie prompts and such
That’s not an adblock feature
and as I said, uBO is not just an ad blocker, so saying xy ad blocker can replace it well is false.
and there are hundreds of other extensions that handle that, like PrivacyBadger
except that not really. Because again, the required browser APIs were removed, and even before that, privacy badger was not so effective
Also: privacy related stuff is not affected by Manifest v3, no?
everything is effected that:
- needs to block network requests, including loading of certain site scripts
- depends on an up to date list of things to block
this is false. and instead of just claiming so, here is proof: there are built-in (but disabled by default) blocklists specialized for cookie prompts and such
Let me rephrase then: cookie prompt blocking capabilities are not tied to the Manifest version (clearly, as exemplified by things like Ghostery). uBO could easily switch to Mv3 and still do those things.
and as I said, uBO is not just an ad blocker, so saying xy ad blocker can replace it well is false.
But we’re discussing the ad-blocking features, because these are the ones affected by Mv3, no?
All these other features exist and are perfectly fine in other extensions.
except that not really. Because again, the required browser APIs were removed, and even before that, privacy badger was not so effective
Define “not so effective”. What’s “effectiveness” in this case?
everything is effected that:
- needs to block network requests, including loading of certain site scripts
- depends on an up to date list of things to block
OK, but again: what’s the difference for the end-user? Does it impact resources utilisation? Website loading times? Reactivity? I don’t see a difference in how my uBO browser behaves vs how my Ghostery browser behaves, so what am I losing because of the Mv3 switch?
Now I’m curious how anyone could possibly have a non obvious definition of ad blocker efficiency.
Well, considering I’m using a different adblock and I just… Do not see any ads on the web, how do you measure the efficiency of uBlock to be better? Resource consumption?
yeah, my point is that was never the concern of such people
No, because ad blocks work perfectly fine.
I’m using Ghostery on Vivaldi (Chromium-based) and it works perfectly fine, including blocking ads during YouTube videos.
No idea why uBlock specifically is being blocked, but it’s not like you can’t have an ad-blocker anymore.
Out of curiosity, why do you use Ghostery rather than uBlock Origin? It was quite controversial back in the day, but seems to be open source and stuff now. I still don’t see any advantage over uBO, though, so I wonder what would move you to use it instead.
I started using Ghostery because it had a cookies auto-reject mechanism. The ad-blocking stuff came in later, which I didn’t even realise, but I installed it first on a new device, did some browsing, noticed there’s no ads, and thought “well, good enough”.
I do miss the custom HTML-element cutting, though.
Alternate headline: Firefox is now the only browser worth using.
And in any case, lumping Firefox as one browser is disingenuous. There are numerous Firefox forks, just like every other major browser is in fact a Google Chromium fork.
That will totally lead to websites not supporting or even blocking Firefox. Together with uBlock capitulating against Facebook and all those age registration nonsense, I really am scared about the future of the web.
I jumped to i2p for this reason. I think internet is dead, we will have to have a double identity to avoid brainrotting
That’s what the user agent string spoofer is for.
When I did a site that didn’t play nice with one of my various Mozilla Gecko/Fusion browser flavors, I try a different one.
When they all are failing, not just WaterFox, I either fire up DuckDuckGo Browser or Safari if on a Mac.
If that were to fail I probably would quit using that service.
My actual Google account isn’t allowed on most of my computers anymore, since I DeGoogled, and only have it operating in very sandboxed environments like one Vivaldi browser that lives inside of a VM.
Other adblocks still work. I’m using Ghostery on Vivaldi (Chromium-based) and it works perfectly fine, including blocking ads during YouTube videos.
No idea why uBlock specifically is being blocked, but it’s not like you can’t have an ad-blocker anymore.
No idea why uBlock specifically is being blocked, but it’s not like you can’t have an ad-blocker anymore.
because google took away the API for network traffic filtering. all that current filtering addons can do is pass a very brief, rarely updated network filter list to the browser, and insert cosmetic tweaks to the pages you visit. they can’t look anymore at all details of any network request and decide what do to. except on Firefox, where it has not been taken away.
OK, sure, but what are the actual, real-life consequences of that?
I don’t see any ads online. So ad-blocking still works. What doesn’t work?
OK, sure, but what are the actual, real-life consequences of that?
uBlock Origin and any other effective content blocker had that as its most important weapon, without exaggeration. it has many other techniques for specific circumstances, but preventing to load the ad scripts, and preventing network requests that send back data to the advertising company, are universally a powerful tool.
I don’t see any ads online. So ad-blocking still works. What doesn’t work?
you don’t see them because addons can still insert unlimited cosmetic tweaks. CSS snippets that make specific elements hidden. but the ads are still loaded, consuming network and CPU resources, and the ad framework still collects usage, interaction and device data.
also, the addons now can’t regularly update the lists even for what cosmetic tweaks to apply. google has decided it does not allow addons in their addon store that fetch filterlists from the network. this means these addons need to embed the lists in themselves. list updates are released much less frequently, and can have several days delay while google decides whether the updated version contains something malicious or otherwise unacceptable to their policies. compared to that, uBlock Origin on Firefox updates the lists every day by default, with no delay, as it fetches the lists directly from their websites.
uBlock Origin and any other effective content blocker had that as its most important weapon, without exaggeration. it has many other techniques for specific circumstances, but preventing to load the ad scripts, and preventing network requests that send back data to the advertising company, are universally a powerful tool.
You’re just repeating what you already said.
My question is: since there are (and always have been) other privacy-oriented extensions (e.g. Privacy Badger, Ghostery) and they still work just as they always have, what is the advantage of specifically using uBO with Mv2?
you don’t see them because addons can still insert unlimited cosmetic tweaks. CSS snippets that make specific elements hidden. but the ads are still loaded, consuming network and CPU resources, and the ad framework still collects usage, interaction and device data.
I just loaded up YouTube and didn’t see a single call to a known ad server, so this seems to be false.
Also: the CPU usage of loading even a couple MB-worth of ads is negligible compared to the overall resource hungriness of Chromium.
(…) list updates are released much less frequently (…)
I did notice that every now and again YouTube would block me from using it due to detecting the adblocker, but is that an inherent disadvantage of Mv3? And why wouldn’t the extension developers then embed the updated filter lists and just release them as extension updates? Does Google limit the frequency of those?
I just loaded up YouTube and didn’t see a single call to a known ad server, so this seems to be false.
of course you didn’t. on youtube ads are not served from different domains. have you ever heard about pihole not being able to block youtube ads? that’s why. every ad is literally a video uploaded to youtube, it is even possible to watch them as videos, with their own video page.
Also: the CPU usage of loading even a couple MB-worth of ads is negligible compared to the overall resource hungriness of Chromium.
not always the case, differs by ad and ad framework, but the memory savings are still significant. and the difference matters more on weak computers, old computers, battery powered computers and when you are on a metered network.
I did notice that every now and again YouTube would block me from using it due to detecting the adblocker, but is that an inherent disadvantage of Mv3?
I don’t know if that’s what causes that. but not being able to update filterlists independently means that nobody can react quickly to when a website starts detecting a content blocker, or when ads start reappearing. the needs to wait for the next addon update, which may take multiple days.
And why wouldn’t the extension developers then embed the updated filter lists and just release them as extension updates? Does Google limit the frequency of those?
because all addon updates go through a review. the effectiveness of it is largely debatable, but it delays updates significantly.
of course you didn’t. on youtube ads are not served from different domains. have you ever heard about pihole not being able to block youtube ads? that’s why. every ad is literally a video uploaded to youtube, it is even possible to watch them as videos, with their own video page.
So it’s not a privacy issue, it’s an ad issue. Which doesn’t show, it’s blocked.
What does uBO do different here?
or when ads start reappearing. the needs to wait for the next addon update, which may take multiple days.
Just FYI - that only happens to me on YouTube every once in a while. Like, three times this year for a day or two.
Meh if a site doesnt work on firefox I move on. I dont want all the shit that comes with visiting from chrome. If I cnt buy because of cookies or ads then I wont buy from them.
first it was the news sites, then the shops and venues, but I didn’t speak up because I haven’t used them anyway.
then the utiliies companies did that, but I didn’t speak up, so far as I can pay the invoices personally it’s not a big deal.
then came the government sites, but meh, I can just go in person! sure it takes away many hours but it’s not worth the hassle to complain!
and by that time nothing else was left either, because all the other sites dropped support in the meantime, while I did not have the time anymore to notice it.
Fair point, I am speaking up though, I wont give them my money.
That will totally lead to websites not supporting or even blocking Firefox.
A lot of websites that really should be testing for this don’t work on Firefox.
Absolute worst case Firefox can focus on feature parity(as it already has a lot of), and lie on the UserAgent
Kids today don’t know that’s how life started for Firefox. Except the browser it had to copy was closed source.
and reddit is aggressively try to force thier login popup at everytime, it hasnt rolled out completely. but people already reported.
Yep with the login for old.reddit I’ve officially stopped using it completely. No I will not run their Javascript.
What are people who were IP banned supposed to do? We can’t sign in because we were banned. I hate ai but at least when I have a question I used to ask reddit it give me an answer at least close to what I’m looking for.
i notice just today, they are hiding comments until you login. seems like a new development, thats not being reported or posted anywhere. i waited a whole year and a different fork to make a new account, i thinks its safe to wait a long time before using reddit again.
I would have to get a new router which is doable if I absolutely needed to but I’m now getting a phone any time soon unfortunately. But honestly? It was just a time suck. All I did was argue with stupid people. I think I’m better off without it.
does anyone happen to know if helium browser will keep supporting mv2/ublock origin beyond the removal of mv2 from chromium?
I think the idea is to stop people from browsing and make them rely on ai
uBlock origin lite still works fine and is good enough for me and most others
Vivaldi phases it out? I haven’t been off mobile in a while so I didn’t know that was planned. Waterfox still does ok.
Zen Browser ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
If it goes… I don’t know what I’ll do.
Go out and touch grass probably.
Get a hobby.
Perfect my molotov recipe.
The best extension :)
+ a mediocre browser
What is mediocre about it? What would be an example of a good browser, and what are the differences?
Don’t feed the troll, down vote and move on
Nothing is mediocre about it. All of the “best” browsers are based on FF’s Gecko engine. Maybe they have complaints about Mozilla or the weird stuff they’ve been doing with FF recently. But the actual Gecko engine is solid, and it’s what all the best browsers are based on.
im an old web dev and im stuck in my shitty ways which includes not liking how ff is the only effing browser that takes extra effort to make the front-end look and function correctly. tbh, i do use ff on android 99% of the time, but ff on desktop breaks too many sites if you have any inkling of ff’s security turned on.
im not wrong, you all are just fanboys
Yeah, but it does run uBlock Origin, renders web pages just fine, can do WebRTC, and even has support for bookmarks and pinned tabs. What else do you want from a web browser?
Chrome’s advantages were in the security and performance departments. But Firefox isn’t that much worse.
Why?
It’s bait. The only “better” browsers are downstreams of FF.
No, you’re a towel
complaints not parsed into action items aren’t worth anyone’s time.
you assume im here to enrich your online experience. im not. parse your own shit
3 days later and that’s all you’ve got? No wit in that staircase. The only time you’re worth is the catharsis in telling you to kick rocks; so kick rocks.
Yes, 3 days later because I’m not terminally online like you
yeah no you’re still not worth my time. time to block your little wet fart of an existence. byeeeeeeeee
No, you’re a mediocre browser
And his mom is too
His dad is a great Bowser though
Can confirm; Dan’s mom = very mediocre. Not worth the journey to her house 3/10.
Gotem!
this is legit one of the funniest comebacks
unlock origin lite still works great for me
