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Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Microsoft Edge, Opera to follow (www.neowin.net)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions.

What this essentially means is that the tricks and bypasses that were used to keep MV2 extensions like uBlock Origin and others alive will not work any more on Chrome, or at least not for very long. For example the Windows Registry mod that could extend MV2 availability will cease to function after Chromium version 151.

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[–] 12 points 5 months ago (11 children)

Fine. I propose we create a proxy for hostile web browsers. Install the proxy on your device to run locally. Browser tells proxy to fetch the page. Proxy unfucks it before handing it over to the browser. Someone likely already has something like this out there somewhere.

If they want to turn this into an arms race they absolutely will lose.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Problem is this requires SSL intercept- the browser has to blindly trust the proxy otherwise SSL verification will fail on the browser level

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Antiviruses have been doing this for years.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    Oh I'm not saying it's an unsolved problem. It's absolutely been done, both by antivirus programs and commercial firewalls (although the merits of the ladder are open to some debate).

    I am just saying it adds a potential complication.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Yes it does but we can’t just sit back and give up because it’s more convenient.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Why not? It's what the rest of the browser world is doing... :P

    'Google's dumping MV3 support, guess we have to dump it also, too bad so sad guess there's nothing at all to be done here'.

    Jokes aside- I agree giving up (in any regard, including proxy-side filtering) is the wrong answer. But the more I'm thinking about this, the more I'm convinced that the current essentially Internet-wide reliance on Chromium (with a small carve-out for WebKit) is a real problem that needs urgent attention.

    Mozilla's the obvious choice but they seem determined to piss off their users with UI rewrites and blow all their cash on literally everything other than browser development.

    Sad thing is there's a real opening here. I was a mainly Mozilla user years ago. I switched to Chrome because it was fast- there was a youtube ad (which actually aired on TV for a while) showing Chrome rendering a webpage in 100ms. Those days are of course long gone. Partly because Chrome is now bloated with a ton of Google shit, partly because with fast javascript rendering, web developers started treating javascript as 'free' so now a news article comes with 10+mb of tracking code that literally runs an auction client side for advertisers to bid on the opportunity to bother you and many of the most basic websites are rendered client-side because why not.
    Point is though- come up with a FAST, standards compliant rendering engine that can compete with Chrome, with no bloat, and push it as 'we are what Chrome was- fast, effective, clean'.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    So long as they get paid while the ship sinks, they don't care.

    Why give a shit about the digital commons if it isn't making you, specifically, money hand over fist. Short sighted idiots.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I actually believe this is an unwinnable scenario for clients. Just whenever the block app/db updates, automatically check if ads are blocked. If they are, have an engineer or AI iterate until it no longer is the case.

    And the reason why blocking solutions can't do the same is that there's cery kittle money in it and not enough people working for free on it. Or that's atleast my hypothesis..

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