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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

It's not the uBlock Origin extension that needs saving for "better" adblocking, it's the capabilities of the now discontinued by Google / Chrome extension supporting framework known as Manifest V2.

The 'newer' Manifest V3 replaced the V2 webRequest API with a more limited declarativeNetRequest API.

The original allowed the intercept and blocking of network requests in real-time as generated, the replacement allows a limited subset of filter blocking after requests have been sent and returned.

ie: V2 allowed for less network traffic and greater amount of filtering, V3 provides slower page completes and limited filtering.

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Manifest V2 functionality that has been cut out was used only in adblockers, right?

And we have adblockers built-in in various browsers now.

So since we have built-in adblockers, we don't really need MV2 functionality anymore? Why oppose MV3?

I mean why people want to oppose MV3 instead of simply asking your favorite browser to expose the browser-specific API for missing functionality, like it was done "in the old days"?

If Google wants to block MV3, then let it block it, and ask browsers to expose missing API. Of course this won't happen in Chrome, but back in my days when software was limited, we simply stopped using it in favor of more complete software.

I'd suggest you sleep on that comment and come back with fresh eyes and a clear head; as is, the logic isn't as joined up as you might think.

I'm afraid I've already spent many nights sleeping on that exact same view.

If you're more enlightened, then the best you can do is to explain it to lesser beings, not virtue signal that you know better but others are unworthy of your knowledge.

mv2 can stop tracking in ways mv3 cannot.

I understand that. But multiple browsers have cloned uBlock-like ad blocking as their core functionality. For example Vivaldi, Brave. And they don't need MV2 to block ads, and use uBlock filters (easylist, abp filters, etc). So they block ads even if they don't support MV2 anymore.

If you understand that, then why are you saying we don’t need MV2. MV2 does more. It’s better.

We need MV2. But we can't get it. Google is stronger. So instead of fighting for MV2, I say we fight for another set of browser-specific APIs in browsers other than Google's.

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