Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Opera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes (2019)

zdnet.com

52 pointsddtaylor48 comments

Thread from 3 years ago, 252 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20137669

Even today uBlock Origin is not able to run as intended by the author in Chrome (and maybe all other Chromium-based browsers). According to gorhill, the only browser that is able to unleash uBlock Origin's full potential is Firefox.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

brave blocks those for ~2 years now:

https://brave.com/privacy-updates/6-cname-trickery/

Luckily not many ads seem to be using these evasion methods, so Ublock works just fine on Edge in most cases.

Ad domains being cloaked through CNAME records is really common nowadays (actively used by Adobe, Criteo and Eulerian, etc), and most analytics and ad software providers employ these tactics.

https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/web-trackers-using-cname-...

https://medium.com/nextdns/cname-cloaking-the-dangerous-disg...

I use Ublock and never see these, so I guess it depends on your definition of "really common".

They are more common when using trackers and analytics (in the title of both the articles I linked), which you don't "see", unlike ads. It happens in the background

Two very interesting points from the article:

First, Google lied (or, at the very least, strongly bent the truth) about the performance impact of content blockers in order to push the Manifest V3 API[1].

Second, in February 2019, Google promised that the WebRequest API was not going to be "fully" removed, yet went ahead and did it anyway - another lie/strong bending of the truth.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-backtracks-on-chrome-mo...

Dont forget claims of privacy implications, while leaving inspection ability as it was in V2.

Here's a more contemporary article: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-ma...

Also: https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/08/google_blocking_priva...

According to this, Google wants to drop Manifest v2 support in Jan 2023.

Any recent statements from Brave and Vivaldi creators about what they are planning to do with Manifest V3 and its restrictions for ad blockers?

Brave's adblocker is not an extension so it doesn't care. It also doesn't care about the Chromium API limitations snd does CNAME uncloaking like uBO on Firefox.

Vivaldi will try to keep V2 functionality as long as its in codebase, meanwhile implementing own (lame static, pretty much 100% same thing V3 offers) adblocker.

Is there any reason to not just revert the changes that remove it from the codebase? Obviously maintenance had a cost, but would their be much bitrot?

Vivaldi cant afford it. Microsoft could easily maintain V2 indefinitely, but dont want to. Brave no idea. Opera is all a big scam nowadays.

I mean, my question is what the real cost is. It's a standard that's fixed. Are there big Chromium rearchitectures that make v2 hard to keep?

Edge will be moving to Manifest v3 within the next year: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions-c...

Too bad. I used it occasionally and was happy to still have uBlock Origin.

This was a huge opportunity for Microsoft to gain tens of millions of new users overnight, but it seems Bing execs are all powerful and override common sense https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/25/duckduckgo-privacy-microsoft-...

That’s a shame. I kinda liked edge.

I don’t use Chrome. Use mainly Firefox. But I might not even bother having chrome installed anymore.

FF is my daily driver, but I find I need to occasionally open something in Chrome to make it work. I've taken to using Vivaldi for that purpose.

according to brave, edge sends home too much of your private data:

https://brave.com/learn/best-private-browser/

Brave is awesome and runs circles around the others. Librewolf is technically more private but breaks too much of the internet. Firefox has jumped the shark as of late.

I’m surprised why Opera doesn’t come up more often in HN discussions. Sure it is not open source like Firefox but it is pretty performant and a competitor to Chrome which we all agree is a good thing.

Opera was sold to China, nowadays they run predatory loan scams in Africa https://hindenburgresearch.com/opera-phantom-of-the-turnarou...

It’s built by the creators of Vilvadi before they sold it to a Chinese company.. which seems like a good reason to avoid both of the browsers.

Reddit is also (partially) owned by a chinese company - people complain but ultimately not going to stop people from using. That's just global capital at work. Opera's team is still in Norway.

Yes, I think it's worth noting that Opera is still located/incorporated in Norway so they are still under the jurisdiction privacy laws there.

What are privacy laws in Norway comparing to Sweden (where they're pretty relaxed for corporations and goverment)?

No engineers are situated in Norway for Opera AFAIK.

what came of this? I don't use Chrome

It's moving forward, which is unfortunate because whatever Chrome does, all other browsers eventually adopt or mimic, even Firefox.

Firefox will be adopting the V3 API but it will not be dropping anything from V2. Their goal is to support all use-cases from V2 without requiring everyone to do major re-writes [1].

1. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-fi...

We've heard that song and dance before. Firefox features always take the same path: start as regular part of the browser, then accessible through an extension, then you have to set an about:config flag for the extension to work, then you have to set a flag and modify some configuration files, and then you can go fuck yourself if you needed that.

Things seem pretty different this time.

Maybe not. This seems like a very easy gap in Chrome's armor.

"Firefox - we still have adblock"

Part of why Chrome gained users was it's adblocking in the first place.

Google deal brings Mozilla 90% of its revenue [1]. Money talks.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28954390

me not using Chrome is exactly what came of this

Before this becomes another metoo thread: I think Google is pushing the boundaries testing how far they can go. For many of us this was the thin red line, but probably the society at large hasn't noticed - or maybe they don't care. My predictions is that Google continues to make small steps in the same direction, with these small steps totaling to something that would cause a public outcry if implemented all at once.

This is why I ignore people who say about $TOPIC, "that's just a slippery slope argument." The fact is, people/companies/governments engage in slippery slope tactics every day, on purpose, because they know those tactics work.

Google did the same sang with G plus a couple years ago attempting to require people use their full names when signing up for accounts. There was an outcry and they backtracked on that but look where we're at now. In my view they're definitely moving the surveillance state forward in small increments. There was an article awhile back [linking Google to the CIA](https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...), not sure how true it is.

I think that "boiling the frog" is a valid way to describe this strategy, and it's one that a lot of other companies (Microsoft with their resurgence of anticompetitive tactics) and governments implement today, because it's effective. Look around and you'll find it everywhere.

if you quickly swat at a fly on a window, the fly jumps and flies away. if you slowly lower the swatter and then jump the last inch, the fly will never see it coming and gets squished on the window

humans are exactly the same

This is from 2019. Has Manifest V3 already been implemented? I did notice my adblocker plus extension no longer has element blocking capabilities recently.

Manifest v3 is implemented however developers can no longer submit new MV2 extensions to the chrome web store. In January 2023, developers will no longer be able to update existing MV2 extensions and finally support for MV2 extensions will be removed in June 2023.

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/

In reality they wont maintain own fork of webRequestBlocking. All three implemented own internal adblockers with lot of uBlock functionality missing.

To be fair, extensions are a security nightmare. I think like 100% of boomers have at least one malicious extension installed.

If only Chrome forced you to publish them in a store where they could review them or take action if they are malicious...

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