11 mo. ago • 100%

Chrome’s next weapon in the War on Ad Blockers: Slower extension updates

arstechnica.com Chrome’s next weapon in the War on Ad Blockers: Slower extension updates

When ad blocking is a cat-and-mouse game, make the mouse slower.

19 comments

Chant it with me, friends!

Stop 👏 using 👏 Chrome 👏!!

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I grow happier by the day for being a dedicated Firefox user.

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I use Firefox btw

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- Which browser do you use though?
  
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In addition to what was already said - use Firefox instead of anything chromium-based - I think it's equally important to stop using the services offered by big tech companies and not just try to keep using them on our terms. Google wants me to watch a ton of ads on YouTube? Fine, I'll stop watching it. In fairness, on my smart TV, YouTube ads have been what I consider adequate, while Twitch can be a disaster. The alternatives already exist with Peertube and Owncast. Are they perfect yet? Far from it probably but there won't be big improvements if nobody uses it.

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I'm waiting to see Youtube block me using Vivaldi w/uBlock Origin on Linux so far. It hasn't happened, am I accidentally doing something awesome to evade their traps so far?

Vivaldi's Chrome-based, so I would presume the same tricks to detect uBlock Origin on Chrome itself would work, or is Vivaldi doing something sneaky?

I have no problem jumping to Firefox the moment they do it -- I just haven't had an issue yet. I should add I'm in Canada, perhaps that is a factor.

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- In-built adblockers aren't going to be affected by MV3 anyway. They are not extensions, thus Google is powerless there.
  
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  That's cool, but YouTube detects Vivaldi's built in adblocker, so it's kinda irrelevant if it's affected by extension policies.
  
  To use YT in Vivaldi, you have to properly configure uBlock Origin (avoid extra filters that interfere with YT) and disable the builtin adblock for YT. And given that Vivaldi relies on Chrome Extension Store for its extensions, there will still be some friction to getting Mv2 extensions after Google pulls the plug on them.
  
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- It hasn’t happened, am I accidentally doing something awesome to evade their traps so far?
  
  Probably A/B testing.
  
  I'm using Adblock Plus on Edge and have the same experience like you. No reaction from Youtube yet to my adblocker.
  
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- Firefox with uBlock Origin on Windows. Nothing so far.
  
  I guess they only want to fuck their own customers so far?
  
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Switching to Firefox is really not needed at all to evade this one. Just switch to a different Chromium browser than Chrome itself, then use your browser's own extension store.

I use Edge, my adblocker is in Edge's extension store. If Google is throttling updates to my adblocker to help in their fight on adblockers, I can just install the one from the Edge Addons store and that problem is solved. I'm sure other Chromium browsers have their own extension store too.

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- Why do you expect that Edge wouldn't adopt Google-like MV3 along with Chrome?
  
  Microsoft adopted Chromium in order to minimise development costs in a product it doesn't see as core, something which would be incurred if it had to maintain its own fork of mv3, and is incentivized through Bing to pursue a similar approach.
  
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- using a chromium based browser is still supporting google's chromium monopoly
  
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  ??? I didn't suggest it would, that's an entirely different topic.
  
  Do I need to read the article, is it actually about something completely different than the headline says? Because that's what I was talking about, the headline, since I've seen that argument before.
  
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I don't know so much about this, but it's funny to see all this while Apple lets me set an ad blocker in iOS settings.

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  Oh no...
  
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🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

YouTube can instantly switch up its ad delivery system, but once Manifest V3 becomes mandatory, that won't be true for extension developers.

If ad blocking is a cat-and-mouse game of updates and counter-updates, then Google will force the mouse to slow down.

The current platform, Manifest V2, has been around for over ten years and works just fine, but it's also quite powerful and allows extensions to have full filtering control over the traffic your web browser sees.

Engadget's Anthony Ha interviewed some developers in the filtering extension community, and they described a constant cat-and-mouse game with YouTube.

Firefox's Manifest V3 implementation doesn't come with the filtering limitations, and parent company Mozilla promises that users can "rest assured that in spite of these changes to Chrome’s new extensions architecture, Firefox’s implementation of Manifest V3 ensures users can access the most effective privacy tools available like uBlock Origin and other content-blocking and privacy-preserving extensions."

Google claims that Manifest V3 will improve browser "privacy, security, and performance," but every comment we can find from groups that aren't giant ad companies disputes this description.

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