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Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

> The recent nerfing of ublock origin has already had me feeling iffy on things.

What did they do to ublock origin? The single best Chrome extension ever. If it stops working and I must suffer YouTube ads again, it's bye bye Chrome.

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I'm assuming this [0] is what the commenters are referring to. Google is proposing changing web request api, which can break how ublock origin works.

Also, this [1] happened.

[0]: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-chrome-manifest-v3-ad-... [1]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/745

They're going down the Safari line of limiting the number of rules an extension can use, significantly reducing the efficiency of adblockers.

If it goes as planned, you won't see ads on YouTube for sure, but there likely won't be enough space to add rules for less mainstream ad networks and some of the specific sites you visit.

It's a lot more than just limiting the count; expanding the count would not offer equivalent functionality. Basically they're hobbling adblockers' ability to compete in the arms race, which makes sense as Google is an advertising company.

Context and receipts are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23170485

If Youtube ads mean that much to you, why not just pay for it? I'm all for ad blocking (I use ublock too) but if I heavily use a site that offers me a way to pay a reasonable price, I think it's the right thing to do. Uploaders with monetized videos still get paid that way (and I don't want to bother with Patreon etc, that doesn't nearly scale to everyone I watch videos from).

Eventually there's a whole deal of stuff you end up paying for, a few bucks at a time. I draw the line somewhere. Ads are one such line. I won't watch them anyway, so their only purpose is to annoy me -- and I tend to swat away annoying things.

Never let anyone make you feel bad for blocking ads. It's the right thing to do.

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