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Comment by simcop2387 | Hacker News Reader

Mostly so, it's got all the limitations of Manifest V3 which prevents it from doing a good bit of blocking, https://ublockorigin.com/#manifest-v3-section

In particular:

* Cannot use all filter lists simultaneously (rule limits apply)

* No cosmetic filtering in the default mode

* No scriptlet injection by default

* Limited dynamic filtering capabilities

* Requires broader host permissions upfront

But it's definitely still better than no adblockers

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> it's got all the limitations of Manifest V3 which prevents it from doing a good bit of blocking

The only mainstream browser left that can still run the full version of uBlock Origin is Firefox.

All the others have the same limitations imposed by Manifest V3.

iOS Firefox the same though.

Thanks Apple for inflicting the Safari monopoly to all iOS users.

Let’s be real, this is more of an anti-monopoly

i only wish updates weren't tied to OS version

I agree with this, but on macos they are not entirely tired. On iOS because of the way iOS gets performance (as far as I understand it to be the case) through the iOS shared cache, there really isn't a way to totally decouple safari from iOS.

I guess you could allow an alternate newer safari, but the one that comes with the OS would have to be linked into the blob.

If they can do it on the desktop, Apple can do it on mobile as well.

No, the two are not architected the same. I believe it’s shipped as a dylib on macOS.

It is not

It's a really huge deferent from chromium reaching 90%+ browser share. So yes, it is in fact an anti-monopoly browser. iOS isn't even at majority market share in most places in the world.

It is not, because a random user is not able to use it. A thing only affects a monopoly when it is a choice a consumer can make.

You could say that iphone is an anti-monopoly option vs android, but not that Safari is an anti-monopoly option vs Chrome.

Then on top of that, even for users that do happen to "live in Canada"(1) already, Safari isn't a choice, it's the only allowed option, and full octane firefox is also not available as a choice. (firfox as a front-end to safari is essentially meaningless)

(1) saying "you can use Safari, because you can switch to iphone" is the same as saying you can have something, just move to Canada", ie, invalid and likely disingenuous, because likely the speaker understood that perfectly well.

So, yeah "let's be real" indeed. There is no way to paint Safari as any sort of anti-monopoly.

This user choice argument isn’t what makes safari monopolist. It’s that for some countries iOS has majority share these days, and safari is pushed on users through it.

That’s why I was kinda trying to say it is anti-monopoly monopoly.

If Apple supported read+execute pages for third party applications, it might give users more choice but it would also have the consequence of ushering in the way for total browser domination by chromium. I’d argue that is an even worse scenario as far as monopoly is concerned.

That is a not entirely bs angle.

I’m weighing two bad outcomes here. I think it’s a lot worse if there’s only one browser for the entire web than it is for there to be one browser for one singular platform.

Brave said they will be keeping its functionality.

Brave also has native rust based psudo reimplementation of ublock, so it also doesnt necessarily need the functionality to accomplish what most people end up needing it for.

Brave has certainly said a lot of good things while doing quite [0] a lot [1] of bad [2] things [3] that make me think it's mostly just marketing to lower-knowledge users that's carrying it forward. I see so many 'privacy' influencers that recommend it and Chromium, and then Firefox with no mention of FOSS options like LibreWolf, Tor Browser, IronFox, etc

[0] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/15790

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-browser-brave-busted-f...

[2] https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-browser-installs-vpn-wi...

[3] https://www.atlas.science/news/the-shady-world-of-brave-sell...

Yep, I don't trust Brave. A web browser holds so much power over your digital life that it cannot be entrusted to a company that consistently and egregiously compromises its ethics for profit. Most of these examples border on scam behaviour... par for the course for the cryptocurrency space!

For all their faults, Mozilla has never done anything that holds a candle to the kinds of stunts Brave keeps pulling.

Which is even more noteworthy because Brave is led by an ex-CEO and influential top exec of Mozilla's.

I wonder if he'd have done the same at Mozilla.

He was kicked out of Mozilla for being homophobic. No joke.

Wrong and defamatory. Ouch for your wallet.

more specifically, it was for donating to homophobic political groups trying to pass Prop 8 which made gay marriage illegal in California [0]

the measure passed by 5% [1] - people were fairly incensed that Mozilla Foundation money (paid to him via his salary) might go to future donations of the same kind

I'm sure people will say things about 'well of course he's legally free to do as he wants with this money' but then so too is the desire by employees to not want to be working under someone who has done something ideologically abhorrent to them. and given the multiple controversies that crop up about Brave seemingly every year where they push some combination of crypto, browser AI, etc, it's probably for the best

[0] https://www.inc.com/jeremy-quittner/mozilla-ceo-brandon-eich...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8

And yet the democratic process was subverted by the measure being overruled. Moot point.

That's actually incorrect. Democracy doesn't mean allowing mob rule (or manufactured "consent") to trample fundamental human rights.

The judicial branch is part of the US democracy, this was not subversion of the democratic process.

Judges are elected/nominated depending the jurisdiction and in this case the decison of a District judge (nominated by George W Bush, through indirect democracy) stands: that proposition is unconstitutional, and the people who tried to appeal that decision in upper courts had no standing to do it (they suffered no personal and concrete injury from this decison).

would love to live in a society where past harms and mistakes could simply be forgotten because the law has moved forward. I imagine a lot of low-level drug possession charges would be forgiven under that ethical conceit

but since we're a long ways from that reality, the least we can do is to look for accountability from influential people with the same strictness we have for the poorest and least powerful

Well no he quit after a few days. He wasn't fired.

That said I do think the uproar was mostly justified. Mozilla is a very progressive organisation and the foundation is basically an NGO. The CEO should fully stand behind its values. At many companies these things aren't core values but at Mozilla they are.

They're not just an employee, they're a figurehead. It's part of the job. Nobody complains if an individual contributor is doing something like this.

And really, if a CEO at a conservative company or foundation would go and join the pride parade I'm sure they would find themselves in trouble too.

All valid.

I'm a Firefox user.

Depending on money from Google is worse than the aggregate of Brave behavior, for me.

Brave and Vivaldi built their own blockers, they aren’t addons.

Firefox has also adopted and supports Manifest v3, but Mozilla did not adopt all of Chrome/Chromium’s Manifest v3 restrictions.

In Chrome/Chromium, Manifest v3 largely replaces extension-controlled network blocking with a more restrictive «declarativeNetRequest», whereas Firefox, by contrast, has deliberately kept support for blocking «webRequest» functionality.

Importantly, the full uBlock Origin is a Manifest V2 extension. The Manifest v3-compatible version is uBlock Origin Lite, which has fewer capabilities.

Cosmetic filtering and script injection both work fine, they’re just off by default. Everybody works around rule count limits by making the one app register itself as like six different “Safari extensions”, it’s just clutter not a limitation. It requires no permissions up front and later permissions only granularly and rarely, for me only on YouTube, while the Firefox version does require unrestricted access to all domains. I have never seen a “dynamic filtering capability” it lacks or an ad it can’t block, do you have any examples?

yea but also idk if its OT but i pay for apple news premium and its just all ads in safari. like whats the point, like its cheaper to bundle and share with my family. but why am i see ads withing News app when i pay this should be a given.

You're seeing ads while paying because you're paying. If you stop paying you won't see ads while paying anymore. Why would you reward such behavior?

That's one way to look at it, but in theory, you're paying to access news stories that otherwise would not be available. I've never seen a feature of paying for the "plus" to be ad free. That's like suggesting paying for a subscription to a newspaper or magazine would be ad free when paying for it just gave you the access to it. This is how it has always been, so expecting the leopard to change its spots is kind of silly

It's not silly. If you're satisfied with seeing ads in a paid product then that's fine, but the other person clearly is not. Cancelling a service because it doesn't meet your expectations is perfectly reasonable. It doesn't matter how "it's always been".

What I like about uBO Lite in Safari is that I can use it without allowing it access to any of my data (it works in a purely declarative mode if you want). Even if it’s unlikely that uBO would be sold to a sketchy company, at least this provides protection against any supply chain attacks.

Yes, that was Google’s justification for killing MV2. It isn’t wrong, of course, but I insist on defining my own security posture and I prioritize adblocking.

Regarding the cosmetic filtering and scriptlet injection, are these even relevant? Most uBO users already give full access to the extension, so they'll probably do the same to uBOL to (most permissions + complete filtering mode). So basically they will have these features anyway.

Cosmetic-based filters and scriptlet injection-based filters work by default, they are enforced in _Optimal_ and _complete_ filtering modes. The default filtering mode is _optimal_.

You can have virtually unlimited amount of rules, its just a limit per list, the number of lists aint really limited.

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