~~https://www.neowin.net/news/ublock-origin-developer-recommends-switching-to-ublock-lite-as-chrome-flags-the-extension/~~

EDIT: Apologies. Updated with a link to what gorhill REALLY said:

Manifest v2 uBO will not be automatically replaced by Manifest v3 uBOL[ight]. uBOL is too different from uBO for it to silently replace uBO – you will have to explicitly make a choice as to which extension should replace uBO according to your own prerogatives.

Ultimately whether uBOL is an acceptable alternative to uBO is up to you, it’s not a choice that will be made for you.

Will development of uBO continue? Yes, there are other browsers which are not deprecating Manifest v2, e.g. Firefox.

  • Dju@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Comment from gorhill (the developer of uBO and uBOL):

    I didn’t recommend to switch to uBO Lite, the article made that up. I merely pointed out Google Chrome currently presents uBO Lite as an alternative (along with 3 other content blockers), explained what uBO Lite is, and concluded that it may or may not be considered an acceptable alternative, it’s for each person to decide.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1ejhpu5/comment/lgdmthd/

    • Telorand@reddthat.com
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      2 months ago

      “uBlock Origin developer slams NeoWin, backpedals on recommendation!” —NeoWin editors, probably.

      • TeoTwawki@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Sounds about right for any news outlet. “Slams” is so overused, and usually nowhere near an accurate euphamism.

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          How did supposedly intellectual people ever conclude that we should use the word “slam” on the daily in headlines?

          It’s straight out of Idiocracy and I will never get used to it.

  • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    They should recommend switching to Firefox instead. It’s clear that Google cannot be allowed to have a monopoly on browsers.

  • uzay@infosec.pub
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    2 months ago

    What the uBlock dev actually said:

    https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/wiki/About-Google-Chrome’s-“This-extension-may-soon-no-longer-be-supported”

    Manifest v2 uBO will not be automatically replaced by Manifest v3 uBOL[ight]. uBOL is too different from uBO for it to silently replace uBO – you will have to explicitly make a choice as to which extension should replace uBO according to your own prerogatives.

    Ultimately whether uBOL is an acceptable alternative to uBO is up to you, it’s not a choice that will be made for you.

    Will development of uBO continue? Yes, there are other browsers which are not deprecating Manifest v2, e.g. Firefox.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        They lost what may end up being the biggest antitrust case in decades. And it’s not weak sauce like the ruling that may get overturned regarding the Play Store monopoly (which is kinda weak since Android manufacturers can and do include other app stores on their phones).

        It had to do with their anti-competitive behavior regarding Online Search. Specifically stuff like paying Apple and other manufacturers to make Google the default or even exclusive search engine, then using that not only to capture the market, but to charge more for ads than the competition they sabotage.

        As a bonus, it’ll probably hurt reddit too, since it almost certainly makes their recent deal with Google illegal.

        It’ll be appealed, but it’s a pretty big ruling. Between the US Courts, EU legislature, and what looks poised to be a flop for Gemini/Bard, Google is on its way to having a real shit year.

    • Crikeste@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      I’m going to call foul play on Judge Mehta’s ruling. They are a direct competitor.

  • Mars2k21@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    This has been a long time in the making…hopefully Firefox will see a market share increase. Google is doing this right as they get slapped by an antitrust ruling ironically lol. If you haven’t already just go ahead and switch, if you like Lemmy you’ll probably like Firefox as well.

    Side note: I try not to be negative here, but this would be a great time for Mozilla to get their act together as an organization. Love Firefox and the idea, but Mozilla has been pissing off the FOSS space for a while now with their decisions. If they’ve improved in recent years, disregard this.

        • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          It should be noted that the advertisers get zero personal information, neither does Mozilla, and it has been designed in a way so that the data is impossible to fingerprint in a way that can tie it back to any individual person, machine, or specific location.

          It’s a way for advertisers (and like it or not, a decent amount of the content we want has to be paid for somehow) to see how effective their ads are without anybody’s privacy being encroached on.

          Should it have been turned on without informing the user? Fuck no. But there’s a lot of misinformation going around about this.

          Personally I’ll still be using uBO, because I despise any ads at all, but if we are to have ads, the system Mozilla has built is just about the most ethical and privacy-respecting way to do it.

    • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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      The tricky part is that Google isn’t wrong about Manifest v3 increasing security for some people. Just allowing any extension to access the full URLs from a webpage is honestly pretty sketchy for most things that aren’t adblockers. Think about Beth in accounting who has 27 bloatware toolbar extensions installed on her home PC, which are happily collecting her full browser history and sending it off to gods know where. Manifest v3 is targeted at increasing security for those users, by making it more difficult for extensions to track you.

      The issue is that it also makes ad blocking virtually impossible, because the blocker is forced to just trust that the browser is being truthful about what is and isn’t on the page. And when the browser (developed by one of the largest advertisers in the world) has a vested financial interest in displaying ads, there’s very little trust that the browser will actually be honest.

      The issue is that there’s not some sort of “yes, I really want this extension to have full access” legacy workaround built in. Yes, it would inevitably be abused by those scummy extensions, which would just nag idiot users to allow them full access. And the idiot users, being idiots, would just do it without understanding the risks. Even if Chrome threw up all kinds of big red “hey make sure this extension actually needs full access and isn’t just tracking your shit” warning flags, there are still plenty of users who would happily give bloatware full access without reading any of the warnings. But it would also allow ad blockers to continue to function.

      • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        The single biggest security improvement you could make for Beth in accounting would be to install UBO. Where do you think she gets all those shitty toolbar extensions? That’s right, from ads.

        This is targeted at destroying adblockers because Google is, first and foremost, an ad serving company. That’s their business model. It incidentally improves security for certain users in certain edge cases, because they need some kind of figleaf of legitimacy.

  • watson387@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    I only use Firefox and have for the past few years. Yesterday I tried to schedule an appointment to get my oil changed at the dealer but was unable because the process on the site just flat-out breaks on Firefox. This is not a complaint about Firefox, but the fact that Chrome is so popular that some websites only work with Chrome. I don’t have a Chromium-based browser installed (besides Edge, which I’ve never opened intentionally) and I despise being on the phone (which is why I was trying to schedule online in the first place), so I just didn’t make the appointment. I’ll go somewhere else to get my oil changed. Sorry for the rant but it was extremely frustrating.

    • cultsuperstar@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Man, you never worked for a large corporation that that had internal web based apps that only work on Internet Explorer and refused to update it.

    • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
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      Chrome is so popular that some websites only work with Chrome.

      It’s the Internet Explorer problem all over again, but this time from an even more invasive company.

      The more people choosing non-Chomium browsers, the better. Keeping them popular enough that most sites have to support them is the only way to preserve what little agency people still have on the mainstream web.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Not necessarily. The problem is often that chrome JavaScript implementation can be ever so slightly different from FFs. Or just that the web devs wrote fragile code that is barely working on chrome and doesn’t work on other browsers, where they failed to test.

          • Victor@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Out of principle, I refuse to pretend I am not browsing with Firefox. 🦊❤️✊ Let website statistics show! And I will boycott sites that break due to not testing on multiple browsers!

            • dmtalon@infosec.pub
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              2 months ago

              That works until it’s your bank or credit card website. I cannot use Capital One’s (CC) “pay bill” any longer.

            • teft@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              I thought like that until youtube started intentionally slowing firefox identifying clients. As soon as I changed my user-agent to match chrome’s the speed was back to normal.

              • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Lol I blocked all but essential JS on YouTube with NoScript and never faced any problems at all. Videos load just fine without extra penalties.

  • anticurrent@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    The best action ublock origions devs can take is drop support for chromium based browsers and retract ublock lite from the chrome webstore.

    I was hopefull for something more than just a wiki page on github. adding a banner to chrome’s add-on menu is way more powerful and far more reaching than what they did

  • Swarfega@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    They should update the Chrome extension to tell people to download Firefox instead

    • r3df0x ✡️✝☪️@7.62x54r.ru
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      1 month ago

      Imagine if Google’s decision to do this to fight adblockers results in them losing the lead in the browser war because everyone switches to other browsers.

      • SSTF@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Dreaming is one thing, but I remain skeptical. Tech people always seem to vastly overestimate how much the average population will react to tech news. Most people don’t care. They should but they don’t. In addition to that, use of Chrome by businesses is heavily entrenched. The IT guys probably hate it on a personal level, but it takes a lot to make business bigwigs change direction away from a “trustworthy” big company like Google.

          • kartoffelsaft@programming.dev
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            1 month ago

            The thing that finally got businesses to finally get off IE wasn’t from the browser being worse than every other option. Heck, it wasn’t even because it was a decrepit piece of software that lost it’s former market dominance (and if anything businesses see that as a positive, not a negative).

            What finally did that was microsoft saying there won’t be any security updates. That’s what finally got them off their ass; subtly threatening them with data breaches, exploits, etc. if they continue to use it. I don’t see google doing this anytime soon, at least not without a “sequel” like microsoft had with edge.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    So many kids with assigned school Chromebooks are going to get fucked over by this. You can apparently install Firefox on a Chromebook via the Google Play Store, but that was disabled on my daughter’s Chromebook. I don’t want her exposed to constant advertising while she’s doing her schoolwork. It’s bad enough that she’s exposed to it the rest of the time just being in America.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      It’s normal for system admins to not let their users install non-whitelist software

      You should PTA to switch from Chrome to Firefox

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I think it’s very unlikely that they would pay for the IT department to install Firefox on every Chromebook. You’re talking 14,000 students in this county and only the kindergartners don’t get Chromebooks.

        • _tezz@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          You might be surprised! This type of change is usually automated and centralized, so an administrator shouldn’t ever have to even touch any of those Chromebooks. Might be worth having a chat with your school administrators.

    • Mwalimu@baraza.africa
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      2 months ago

      I think this is something most people rarely talk about but it strikes home to many of us. As a parent, I have a responsibility to defend my children against this persistent cognitive manipulation and experimentation. Just as I would not want a random stranger at the corner have exclusive attention of my kid and sell them insurance or grammarly or mesothelioma, I would also never want them to have that unfiltered access to my kids online. One can then say AdBlocks are a parental obligation.

              • ARg94@lemmy.packitsolutions.net
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                1 month ago

                You think little kids need to view explicit material? I hope no one trusts you around children. Parents have a right and a responsibility to know and approve of the curriculum taught to their children by state schools financed by their taxes. If they do not approve they should have the right to send their children and their money elsewhere. This will be the law.

                • boywar3@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  And, pray tell, what library or school has pornography in it that is easily accessible to minors?

                  Furthermore, having lived my entire life around educators and now working for an educational institution: parents are fucking stupid lol

                  The sheer numbers of videos of parents bitching and crying at school meetings or libraries about “X book is pornographic” or “this book has witchcraft and should be burned” is absurd. Those mouth breathers don’t even know how to critically examine a fucking facebook post for bullshit, let alone comprehend the difficulty in teaching children.

                  Don’t like your kid learning about how Trans people exist? Go fuck yourself and homeschool your kid so they can be permanently stunted in terms of preparation for the real world. Let the vast majority of regular people make sure their kids grow up socially aware and at least passingly prepared for the future.

                  Also, “this will be the law?” Have you seen the flailing Republican party? Guess what fucker - the average American thinks project 2025 is batshit and the republican party got hijacked by a manchild and ruined their stupid plans. It’s only downhill from here now that they went mask off - most people think they’re nuts.

  • Butterpaderp@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I just got firefox yesterday, cause I noticed youtube started baking unskippable ads into their site.

  • FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    ive gotten almost my entire friend group using either the same fork as me or the original firefox, they all used chrome before. all because google was dumb enough to overstep some peoples boundaries.

  • Axum@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 months ago

    The ‘block element’ picker is the big one that can not be implemented in the lite version.

    Also included block lists can’t update unless the extension itself updates.

    If you’re not stuck on chrome due to workplace policy or something, now is the time to switch to Firefox