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Comment by OsrsNeedsf2P | Hacker News Reader

The day Firefox drops MV2 is the day I find a new browser. We're already at <1% usershare, it's not like there's safety in numbers here

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What exactly is your gripe with MV3?

Many people seem to treat it synonymously with "no more procedural request blocking", but that's not a thing Mozilla ever did:

> For Manifest V3 extensions, Chrome no longer supports the "webRequestBlocking" permission (except for policy-installed extensions). Instead, the "webRequest" and "webRequestAuthProvider" permissions enable you to supply credentials asynchronously. Firefox continues to support "webRequestBlocking" in Manifest V3 and provides "webRequestAuthProvider" to offer cross-browser compatibility.

The permission model also seems much more reasonable (less permissions have to be requested upfront at install time) than MV2, so I actually hope Firefox does deprecate it at some point.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-manifest-v3-adbl...

> What exactly is your gripe with MV3?

Running an adblocker is the defining feature of the extensions API. ublock origin has 5x as many users as the second-most-popular extension [1]

Supporting ublock isn't just a nice-to-have add-on feature for an extension API, it's literally the only thing most users care about.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/search/?promoted=re...

But MV3 supports uBlock Origin Lite.

Which, in my experience, blocks ads just as well, but also lets pages load significantly faster.

MV3 supports uBlock.

It supports limited ublock functionality, not all of it, which will gradually be exploited by ad corps like google unless you think those are saints

The point is that it supports everything that currently matters in any substantial way.

Lots of people have been pointing out that ad companies will figure ways out around it. But they really haven't been.

MV3 and UBOL have been in wide usage for about a year and a half now. And nothing has been changing. Adblocking continues to be great.

The fact of the matter is, the ad block lists were getting so large and the JavaScript functionality was slow and it was significantly impacting page load times. UBOL uses vastly more efficient compiled code that is part of the browser and is just a far better ad blocking experience altogether.

But I guess that just doesn't fit the narrative that people want to believe, where MV3 was part of a big evil plan.

the narrative that google, largest ad company proposed MV3 which limits current functionality of UBO so that UBO Lite can be implemented? Yeah, such a narrative... It's clear google is our buddy here who will never squeeze and exploit any option to push more intrusive and targeted ads and we should totally trust it

It supports everything on Firefox on MV3, but not on Chrome.

Just as one example: Chrome + uBOL on Reddit will show you plenty of "Sponsored" stuff. You can use Inspector to find the offending CSS classes and then use `display: none` on them with something like Stylus[0], but not everybody wants to play that whack-a-mole game on the many sites that push uBOL past its blocking capabilities.

[0]: https://github.com/openstyles/stylus

Reddit's sponsored posts are blocked by default in uBOL when using _optimal_ (default) or _complete_ mode.

I will recheck my uBOL settings, then, sir. Thank you for your work!

EDIT: I did have it set to `Complete,` so perhaps I have something else going on.

Best is to report the issue using the "Report an issue" in the popup panel while on Reddit site. There could be other issues causing this, for instance if you didn't grant uBOL the permission to inject scripts on the site. Depending on which browser/os the issue occurs, we should be able to narrow down potential causes.

As the creator of UBO, what are your thoughts on uBO vs uBOL? Do you think Firefox’s MV3 will be an issue down the line?

> There could be other issues causing this, for instance if you didn't grant uBOL the permission to inject scripts on the site.

Bingo. That was it. Again, thanks.

Most definitely not as well.

It most definitely is as well. In fact it's better because you don't have the slower page loading times anymore.

And everyone I know who used UBO and switched to UBOL has had no complaints about ads not being blocked.

Whereas people who don't actually use it love to continue to insist that it's this degraded experience that doesn't work as well. And usually when one of them comes up with an example of some ad not being blocked, it turns out because they hadn't configured UBOL to use complete blocking mode.

> And everyone I know

Everyone who you know is irrelevant. I've tested and see that ads pass through, and tracking passes through with uBo light on Chrome. I can see it in the browser trace, and I can see it in DNS logs.

Your test is irrelevant. There is always going to be some tiny percentage of ads that passed through with any ad blocker. So the fact that you have seen ads passed through with it doesn't actually mean anything.

The only thing that means anything is how well it operates with your average browsing on a daily basis. And it's such a popular extension because it does an amazing job at blocking ads. That's just a fact. The only people who seem to claim otherwise appear to be the ones with an ideological axe to grind. It's silly.

Your opinion is nothingness. I've tested on the same page that uBo on Firefox blocks more than Chrome, and especially it blocks hidden tracking. That's the reality. All else is irrelevant.

Your one-page test is "nothingness." The internet does not consist of one page.

And other things are relevant, like resource usage.

So you’re familiar with everybody’s web browsing? Impressive!

> It most definitely is as well.

No. uBlock Origin works best in Firefox: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

uBlock Origin Lite can't do everything uBlock Origin does: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...

If Lite is working for you then good. If you want fuller capability then you want uBlock Origin in Firefox.

UBO lite has a long list of all the types of filters that aren't possibly under MV3: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...

Not sure about page load, but CPU time is about the same between the two: https://x.com/gorhill/status/1792648742752981086/photo/1

This list only applies to Chrome, so it's completely irrelevant when talking about Firefox.

Reading comprehension is the defining feature of a good commenter.

Firefox's MV3 implementation doesn't remove the original netRequest API though IIRC.

Look I'm not an expert in web browsers, but I defer to those extension authors who definitely are. There's some reason uBO doesn't work well in MV3 even though they tried. Whatever technical explanation there is for why MV3 is fine, there's some caveat not mentioned.

That’s because Chrome removed an important API in their MV3 implementation, not because the MV3 specification mandates said removal.

Firefox supports webRequestBlocking with MV3, so even if they fully remove support for MV2, ad blocking is still available.

Mozilla refused to approve MV3 version of uBlock Origin

That's a problem, but an almost completely orthogonal one to MV2 being deprecated.

I wouldn't say completely orthogonal.

That's probably why they qualified it with 'almost'.

I would say "almost orthogonal".

Like "partially pregnant" :)

How are correlation or orthogonality binary conditions? Things can be almost (but not entirely) unrelated to other things as well.

Why? Any links to this decision?

I take it they mean this https://www.neowin.net/news/ublock-origin-lite-maker-ends-fi...

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197#issueco...

I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout.

Brave still allows you to install uBlock & some other extensions that should technically not be supported under MV3, but they still ship it with support for those.

Just heard about Helium browser, which is just dechromium + uBlock and it's still beta.

> I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout.

My last hope is ladybird right now, I don't use Firefox or Chrome as my main browsers anymore, and use them only within temporary sandboxes. Without history, without cookies, without logins for the most part.

You use ladybird as your primary web browser? And it works?

For the most part, it doesn't. It's not a consumer ready browser, but a pretty nice little rendering engine. If you use ladybird as bindings, it's a bit unstable right now because they are refactoring a lot of parts in the codebase.

I built my own tools on top of it, mostly to use internet websites and selfhosted kiwix archives with my local agentic env.

I guess what I am saying is that I don't have a primary browser anymore. Not a browser where I just can trust it that it doesn't do shit with my data. Being able to selfhost kiwix is a superb internet experience if you build your own search dashboard for it, I can fully recommend it.

Have to merge my things upstream with ZIMdex when I have the time (probably around June).

[1] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp

[2] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/zimdex

It seems to me that --unless you really, strictly compartimentalize your browser usage--, using multiple browsers will only supply your data to more parties.

Ladybird supports MV2? I had no idea they have extensions.

Ladybird is many years away from being usable by a casual human. The hope is it turns out to be a great browser eventually.

> Firefox is the last holdout.

Nope, FF is being infiltrated by adtech for last year or two. Last holdout is Safari now :)

>Last holdout is Safari now

Why do people say crap like this... Safari was the first browser to completely remove mv2. From all the major browsers Safari has the worse adblocking experience and support for adblocking extensions...

> Why do people say crap like this...

1. Third-party cookie blocking by default — 2003 (Safari 1.0); industry first.

2. Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), using on-device machine learning to identify and limit cross-site trackers — 2017; industry first.

3. Storage Access API prompts for embedded third-party content (e.g., social login widgets) — 2018 (ITP 2.0); industry first (co-developed by WebKit, later adopted as a web standard).

4. Full third-party cookie blocking (no exceptions) — 2020 (ITP in Safari 13.1); industry first for a major browser.

That's what the marketing department says.

Ad/tracking blocking is one of the things that can only be trusted if it's open source, i.e. uBlock Origin.

By the way, does this Adblock Engine actually block trackers? Or it just stops the ads from displaying?

ITP is mostly part of WebKit and open source.

Apple only does things to progress their own business model. Apple failed at becoming an ad business so they pivoted to subscriptions and app revenue. Now they are building an ad business. Just look at their ad revenue.

You cannot install uBlock Origin on Safari.

The Lite version, same as on Chrome, is actually available for Safari. Still not as good as the full one on Firefox though.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...

Exactly.

what's the diff between lite and full? i dont even remember what i use on safari, wipr or something. mostly use firefox but sometimes i casually just let things launch in safari

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...

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

really appreciate you dropping links thank you!

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825

I don't know if Edge supports MV2, but they do have uBlock available and it works just as well as on Firefox.

It may look like it works "just as well" but that's not true. There are numerous things that impact performance and effectiveness that are not possible with chromium-based browsers, or at least have to be done inefficiently, including

* pre-fetching

* html filtering

* use of WebAssembly

* data compression and private/incognito mode

Edge has its own extension API in addition to the Chromium one, it's possible that they've managed to mitigate or eliminate these problems.

Helium still supports MV2, because the upstream hasn't removed related code. They basically turn on/off some macros to enable MV2 again. And this won't last long for sure.

Safari still supports MV2

If Raymond Hill says blocking doesnt work anymore, ill use... umm... Lynx?

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