Starting June 2024, adblockers such as uBlock Origin and many other extensions on Chrome will no longer work as intended. Google Chrome will begin disabling extensions based on an older extension platform, called Manifest V2, as it moves to the more limited V3 version.
Fortunately, this is mitigated by not using Chrome.
This is the way
Chrome’s user-base is so large that sites might start explicitly requiring chrome.
Just like they keep insisting we disable adblockers to view them. Both are easy to circumvent, but mostly my reaction is to just close the tab and look for the content elsewhere.
Google has already talked about a plan to cryptographically authenticate a browser. We likely won’t be able to get around that.
Creators really need to release torrents of their libraries of content so that we can access it without having to go through platforms. Maybe release them twice a year? Four times a year? Imagine just pulling up a creator’s torrent, clicking which videos you want to download to watch, then waiting a few minutes and playing it right off of your computer. I bet that could also work with peertube?
Implicitly they often do already because web devs have become more and more lazy and don’t test any browser but the one they prefer themselves.
Google has already talked about a plan to cryptographically authenticate a browser. We likely won’t be able to get around that.
As far as I remember they acted in parallel and pushed the implementation already. They claimed it to be rogue actions of over-enthusiastic devs after the concept paper caused a public outcry.
I haven’t followed that issue but Google will continue to try to close us in, for sure.
There’s literally a work around for Google making YouTube videos
posepause for 5 seconds before playing on Firefox due to adblocker use. It’s to use the adblocker to trick Google into thinking Firefox is chrome.They are also working on ways to let websites cryptographically authenticate a browser. So if they wanted to badly enough, that workaround wouldn’t work.
I don’t necessarily agree. I see what you’re saying but they’ve been losing this pretty much at every turn.
They haven’t really tried because of anti trust. They need buy in from other major players and then they will be successful.
“Security”, haha yeah right
The security of their cash flow.
Literally my reaction when I saw that.
they obviously mean their financial security.
The security of their profits
An extension having access to everything on every page you visit is a potential security issue.
Whether that’s an acceptable risk for you in order to have an extension that blocks ads is another question.
Extensions by definition are a security issue. For that matter, so is being connected to the Internet in the case of a browser.
As far as I know, the plan for Manifest V3 only included removing blocking from the WebRequest API and extensions using WebRequest could still see whatever activity they are given permission to view.
Correct, and the reasoning for removing blocking was performance.
Wouldn’t loading the ads impact performance moreso than loading them? Not really a browser nerd so no idea it just seems like blocking a piece of content from loading outright would be less demanding than loading it.
How the WebRequest API works is:
- Network request is made
- Sent to the WebExtension
- Extension runs arbitrary JavaScript (Slow to very slow)
- Repeat for every extension handling requests
- Results eventually make it to the WebProcess where it belongs.
This is slow and will always be. Their change to remove blocking makes steps 2-4 a copy of the data instead of a synchronous call.
Now an ad can be slower, just by more data or bad JS. But that isn’t Googles concern because they sell those ads.
Ahhhh gotcha, thanks!
My ad blocker is part of my security.
Not your security, silly. Their security (financial).
A push for
securityrevenueObviously, what else would you expect from these big tech conglomerates?
Hmm, weird. Using an ad-blocker is basic security advice at this point because Google and other ad companies don’t vet their advertisers properly, so malware or phishing often makes its way into ads. But yes, believe Google’s lies and stop using an ad-blocker for “security reasons”. Honestly, these shitty big tech corporations should just go fuck themselves.
They mean ad revenue security
Yeah that’s the only kind of security they care about. Fuck Big Tech! And most importantly, stop using their garbage services.
Sent from my iPhone
Not sure what you mean but I use a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS, the most private and secure mobile operating system
Some speculate this is an intentional move by Google due to suspected loss of ad-revenue. We don’t know
Oh, we know. It may technically qualify as speculation, but we know.
This reads like “gun makers softens triggers on guns to improve gun safety” or “baby formula makers poison baby food to build up babies’ tolerance to poisoned baby food”
The FBI recommends that everyone use an adblocker as part of their basic security toolkit.
If your browser vendor has a problem with that, switch to a different browser.
I was about to comment on this, but my Android phone spontaneously rebooted.
Anyway. Before I was so rudely interrupted, I was about to say: Firefox. It is a thing. An awesome thing.
By sheer coincidence I am sure, YouTube (a Google subsidiary) just started “accidentally” degrading their performance on Firefox but not Chrome.
Totally reads like an Onion headline.
Yeah, malware is often distributed via ads. They also track+expose information that could be used for spear phishing, identity theft and so on, if it falls into the wrong hands. So, ad blocking is certainly recommended for security.
It’s funny. Seeing this post was the catalyst for me to finally set Firefox as the default browser on my phone and start using it daily. Going to set it up on my work laptop tomorrow too.
Also stop using Google as your search engine, there are much better options like DuckDuckGo. You can also use Startpage if you like Google search results, it’s a meta search engine that pulls everything from Google without exposing you to Google tracking.
“much better”
As if you get actual results with google now days.
Not perfect but much better than Google
Ha, no. You might have some points, but you blow all your credibility with anybody who has ever used Duck Duck Go.
What’s the issue with DuckDuckGo and why is it worse than Google? Provide actual arguments please.
Q: “dark haired actress from witcher show”
Google: “Anya Chalotra (born 1994 or 1995) is a British actress primarily known for her role as Yennefer of Vengerberg in the Netflix original series The Witcher”
DDG: “The Witcher (TV Series 2019- ) - Full Cast & Crew - IMDb”Q: “AA203”
Google: “American Airlines flight 203, Amsterdam to Philadelphia: Arrived at 308pm”
DDG: “AA203 (AAL203) American Airlines Flight Tracking and History - Flightaware”Q: “time signature of mission impossible theme”
Google: “5/4 time”
DDG: “Theme from Mission: Impossible
American television theme music
“Theme from Mission: Impossible” is the theme tune of the TV series Mission: Impossible. The theme was written and composed by Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin and has since gone on to appear in several other works of the Mission: Impossible franchise, including the 1988 TV series, the film series, and the video game series. Wikipedia…”Q: “Golang test for string empty”
Google: “In Golang, we can do this by:
Comparing it with an empty string.
Evaluating the length of the string; if it’s zero, then the string is empty, and vice versa.” DDG: “https://stackoverflow.com › questions › 18594330 › what-is-the-best-way-to-test-for-an-empty-string-in-go
What is the best way to test for an empty string in Go?”Q: “aoe4 finding landmarks”
Google: “Reddit: How do you know which buildings are landmarks?”
DDG: “https://ageofempires.fandom.com › wiki › Landmark
Landmark | Age of Empires Series Wiki | Fandom”These were just a handful of queries I threw at the two. Google often gives the exact answer with no other searching needed. DDG never does. When the results are links and they’re different, the Google results are simply better. Anybody objective who uses the two search engines knows this. Only someone with an axe to grind would pretend that DDG is anywhere near as good.
Ad blockers: 1, Google: 0
Wtf is with the headline. We all know that is untrue - it’s about Mr Do-no-evil’s bottom line.
But does the average consumer? Because only like 37% of users worldwide use one.
What a messed up title.
The one and only reason they are doing this is to boost ad revenue.
That they even mention the word “security” in this is a farce.
It’s still as insecure as ever, since a malicious plugin can simply spy on and report on your usage.
They meant their (financial) security, not ours.
Good thing I handle all that at the router!
Not same domain ads.
Yeah it doesn’t get everything, but it gets the vast majority of stuff and I’m ok with that. I’ve been working hard at pulling down the videos I want from YouTube and uploading them to my peertube instance so I don’t need to use YouTube directly anymore most of the time.
What tools do you use for downloading? There are a ton of channels I would love to download all the content from. If I could point a tool at a list and just let it do it’s thing, that would be great.
yt-dlp has been working pretty well for me thus far.
And remember to read the help page. You can do batch downloading IIRC with the -a flag pointed at a text file like urls.txt
Put one video per line and it will just chug away grabbing them all for you so you don’t have to type the command over and over again.
Rock on. Thanks!
You can even tweak how it saves the files, what format it outputs, whether it retains subtitles (if they are included in the video), and you can make it spit out a metadata file to go along with the video file which would be useful to keep track of the content or if you use some kind of video library management software that wants publishing date information, author, etc.
