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Google cripples ad and tracking blockers: In January, Chromium will switch to Manifest V3 which removes an essential API in favour of an inferior one. As usually, Google is being deceitful and touts security concerns as pretext.

That hits all Chromium based browser, such as my beloved Vivaldi. The team argues with their own browser internal blocker, but that's far worse than uBlock Origin. One of Vivaldi's core promises was privacy, and that will go out of the window. The team simply doesn't react to people pointing that out. They're fucked, and they know it.

So what now? Well, going back to Firefox because that will include the crippled new API for extension compatibility, but also keep the powerful old one specifically so that ad and tracking blockers will keep working. Google has just handed Mozilla a major unique selling point, and miraculously, Mozilla didn't fuck it up.

Comments
  • 4
    If only it included an even older and even more powerful API πŸ€”
  • 7
    @iiii In terms of ad blocking, FF didn't lose power. What they did lose when they transitioned from addons to extensions was the ability to customise the browser so that there was no reason to choose FF over Chrome - and that is about to change.
  • 11
    - - π˜”π˜°π˜»π˜ͺ𝘭𝘭𝘒 π˜₯π˜ͺπ˜₯𝘯‘𝘡 𝘧𝘢𝘀𝘬 π˜ͺ𝘡 𝘢𝘱.

    There's still time.
  • 4
    Thank you, Mozilla! We can have faith in a normal future of web with you sticking to the good guns.

    I don't care that they put something weird in setup process of official Firefox. As long as there are well-maintained no-bullshit forks, we're in good hands.
  • 3
    @vintprox Well maintained? If by that you mean "maintaining superficial features while neglecting to fix 10+ years old incompatibilities with HTML / CSS standards", then sure... I swear, every fucking time I have to fix some weird behaviour on Firefox I find a decade old ticket on their issue tracker with multiple links to whatwg spec, and nothing being done to fix it.

    Pretty sure the main reason Firefox hasn't removed those APIs by now is just because they don't have enough dev force to actually do something with their engine, like fix bugs or develop new APIs.
  • 3
    @hitko They will implement Manifest V3 for being compatible to new extensions, so obviously they have the manpower. It would be even easier to throw out the old API.
  • 1
    @hitko not the FF, he was talking about forks of FF like LibreFox

    but then they might be suffering from those too
  • 9
    Since no one has said it yet, allow me: Fuck google.
  • 5
    @Root Hidden. Dark and deep in the tags, not to be used. Unless at the uttermost end of need.
  • 3
  • 2
    @electrineer i just fucking realized you injected something to make your text in italics.

    how?
  • 3
  • 3
    @Fast-Nop I mean, before, the add-ons could have much more freedom in what they do. Even something like a download manager. Nothing like that exists anymore because the API got sacked in favor of the chromium based API
  • 3
    @Root do not fuck google. We don't want to make it pregnant with more offspring
  • 5
    @iiii We still have the devRant cactus for that job.
  • 2
    @iiii ah, DownThemAll, you were beautiful
  • 4
    Why would a browser focused on anything other than sucking Google's cock opt for using their engine? Brave, Vivaldi, etc. collectively don't have the manpower to maintain Chromium so relying on it was a liability from the start waiting to blow up. I'm not surprised at all.
  • 3
    @Fast-Nop They will, but it will get to GA almost 3 years after the v3 spec was published, or good 2 years after chromium-based browsers already pushed it to GA. And that's a feature where the hardest part was to define the functionality, not the implementation, since it's just a different level of exposing existing core functionality to the user that has mostly already been done for v2. MDN is full of features which already work everywhere but in their own browser, because they have plenty of people to document those features and provide working examples, but not enough core developers to actually implement them. And to further prove my point just look at release notes; 9/10 new features in the last year have been about user interface and experience rather than new "core" features like browser APIs and engine functionality.
  • 4
    @hitko Yeah that's correct, Mozilla has too many people dicking around in easy shit like UI - shoving UI changes upon users who don't even want that.

    That's why I changed to Vivaldi years ago, but now that FF actually does have a serious point, I'll rather accept UI antics than crippled blockers.
  • 1
    @Fast-Nop Well you do you, but Google also has a point here - allowing extensions to read & modify request and responses makes it damn easy for malicious extensions to perform all sorts of shady activities, and scamming people with malicious extensions has been around pretty much since the first browsers added support for addons...
  • 5
    @hitko If only there were some sort of store or so where Google could vet extensions, at least those that use this API.

    I don't believe Google, that's only their deceitful pretext because blockers threaten Google's business that largely consists of invading people's privacy.
  • 2
    @hitko then it could be bound to explicit user approval through a popup, maybe access control could be done on a basis of extension-origin pairs if we want to maximise the granularity of access control. Removing functionality is never the right answer to concerns about security.
  • 2
    @electrineer "There's still time."

    annnnd, jinxed.
  • 0
    @Root tell us how you really feel.
  • 6
  • 1
    @Root checks out πŸ˜‚
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