But any Chrome users here? Any Chrome users reading this comment? You knew, or should have known, that Google is a snake. You willfully chose to use a browser developed by an advertising company. You've known Firefox was an alternative but you willfully chose not to use it because you placed mild convenience ("Ooooh but chrome is milliseconds faster") before your freedom. You get what you fucking deserve.
It's just not a good idea to let Google hold the keys to anti-tracking tech.
I think this should push people towards DNS level blocking (I use nextdns, personally)
"What are we doing differently in Firefox? WebRequest
One of the most controversial changes of Chrome’s MV3 approach is the removal of blocking WebRequest, which provides a level of power and flexibility that is critical to enabling advanced privacy and content blocking features. Unfortunately, that power has also been used to harm users in a variety of ways. Chrome’s solution in MV3 was to define a more narrowly scoped API (declarativeNetRequest) as a replacement. However, this will limit the capabilities of certain types of privacy extensions without adequate replacement.
Mozilla will maintain support for blocking WebRequest in MV3. To maximize compatibility with other browsers, we will also ship support for declarativeNetRequest. We will continue to work with content blockers and other key consumers of this API to identify current and future alternatives where appropriate. Content blocking is one of the most important use cases for extensions, and we are committed to ensuring that Firefox users have access to the best privacy tools available."
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-fi...
I wish Mozilla would stand up for their vision of the Web instead of being Google's controlled opposition.
Honestly, the reason most ad-blocking works is because publishers haven't bothered with banning it. And that's because power is concentrated with Big Tech that makes a lot of profit already.
E.g., by blocking ads on YouTube, people are now surprised that there's no alternative left, and now Google can milk those users, too.
I’m asking because it seems to be a flimsy defence, even if it’s currently working well.
Isn't the ultimate answer in this arms race a web proxy?
I'm wondering about a two-part architecture. One part in the browser that can inspect the rendered page, and another part between the browser and the outside world, that can block individual elements. Basically re-implement the Web Request API as a web proxy.
For locked-down environments where you can't run a local proxy, the proxy could be an external service.
It makes me hate the work laptop where I can't use it, and any adblocker is just an inferior experience.
And I say this as someone who still uses quite a few Google services. I've managed to get myself off GMail, but it's been a lot harder to ditch the office apps, and Photos.
Here's my current annoyances:
– on Android, scrolling and performance is very poor on certain websites, on a high end phone; this including Mastodon, and my report was dismissed;
– on Android, the UI has issues detecting between light and dark modes at the system level; it has other obvious bugs, too, that are reported but remain unfixed;
– poor integration with the OS for player controls; both Android and desktop (macOS);
- unreliable HDR support; in macOS it works, but I sometimes get flicker, and it might get disabled if the viewport is small;
- poor battery life on macOS; this used to be true for Chromium as well, ans Safari is king obviously, but lately Chromium has an edge over Firefox;
– incompatibility with certain online apps, like MS Teams; in fairness they worked hard to fix Meetup at least;
– poor PWA support, no SSB; on both desktop and Android. I prefer PWAs to Electron variants: better sandboxing, use of browser extensions, often better memory use; see: https://howfuguismybrowser.dev/
– no customizable keyboard shortcuts and poor accessibility preventing OS-level solutions; in macOS I can set shortcuts for Chrome, for various Tab actions, like Pin Tab or Close Others. And Brave/Vivaldi have customization built into their settings;
— poor extensions security: for LanguageTool or Google Translate I'd like the "Click to Enable" option or the ability to disable by default or enable per-hostname;
– unusable profiles – in Chrome different profiles have different history and extensions, so for security purposes they are above Firefox's containers; I actually don't get the point of Containers at all, being useful only for logging into multiple AWS accounts, otherwise they have no privacy or security benefits;
---
Firefox does have certain advantages. They aren't enough to keep me using it, though. But in the interest of fairness:
+ History sync actually works;
+ DNS-Over-HTTPS works with fallback to system;
+ Tree-style-tabs;
+ Better bookmark management;
+ Reader view (Android & desktop);
+ Ctrl+Tab;
+ Non-admin upgrades;
+ uBlock Origin;
+ Total Cookie Protection;
+ Android: multiple search engines;
+ Android: Open in app;
+ Android: Dark reader / uBlock Origin / other extensions;
FF has those kinds of profiles too, if you want to you can start it once using the ProfileManager from the command line, (un-)check the box asking if you want to always default to the last profile used or instead always start FF in the ProfileManager UI from now on, so you can choose on each startup. These profiles are completely separated as well, have their own histories, bookmarks, cookie jars, extensions etc.
FF's Containers on the other hand are a less heavy-handed approach, by staying in the same profile, having the same bookmarks, extensions and history but fully separating the cookie jars, enabling you to have (just as an example) Facebook in its own little world, everything else outside that container and/or in their own specific containers, unable to cross-contaminate (to track you) with third-party cookies and the like.
Basically, profiles and containers are entirely different levels of sandboxing.
You don't need a Facebook container, at least since “Total Cookie Protection”. Which itself it's just a better way to “disable 3rd party cookies”, that doesn't break websites, although Firefox's isolation goes beyond just cookies.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-rolls-o...
And Firefox isn't the only one that does it, although it may be the best. But Safari, Brave Browser and even Chrome have deployed similar protections. See for instance: https://brave.com/privacy-updates/7-ephemeral-storage/
> You don't need a Facebook container, at least since “Total Cookie Protection”.
It's theater because it does nothing in addition to what Firefox already does without use of containers.
But keep installing that add-on if it makes you feel good.