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Firefox Has Quietly Integrated Brave's Adblock Engine (itsfoss.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 276 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

I said it for Waterfox and I'm gonna say it again for Firefox: this is good. At worst, it's just fine (Mozilla just uses it internally to replace or supplement its old and incomplete Tracker Blocking system, which never gets the same scrutiny).

The biggest difference between Firefox and Waterfox in implementation is the WaterFox developers noticed this FF change early, and committed to providing full-fledged ad blocking out of the box, which is great news for users.

A few more reasons this is good:

  1. Rust is faster than JavaScript
  2. Native functionality is faster than an extension
  3. Actual ad blocking is something Firefox users have been begging Mozilla to do
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  • [–] 48 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Rust is faster than JavaScript

    isn't ublock's filtering compiled to webassembly?

    Actual ad blocking is something Firefox users have been begging Mozilla to do

    seems a bit dangerous though to risk for a browser with so small market share

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  • [–] 30 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    isn't ublock's filtering compiled to webassembly?

    From my unprofessional glance ar their repository, it uses a little, but not much. Take a look at their code; all or most of the filtering is done in JavaScript, the webassembly appears to be just one two modules. (It's in the "wasm" folder near the top of the list).

    (Edit: I was looking at outdated code; the newer version uses more, but IMO pales in comparison to the JavaScript filtering logic)

    seems a bit dangerous though to risk for a browser with so small market share

    Waterfox has a much smaller market share and much smaller budget, and was able to clear this with search partners just by promising not to block ads on them by default.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Waterfox has a much smaller market share and much smaller budget, and was able to clear this with search partners just by promising not to block ads on them by default.

    my point is not actually about search providers, but more generally websites intentionally breaking support for gecko based browsers. waterfox itself is too little, most developers don't even know about it I think. but firefox is the flagship/reference gecko browser, with more of a measurable number of users. if they implement a good ad blocker in the base browser, that could discourage advertising related sites from serving/supporting this browser.

    brave is different in that it uses chromium, which the sites just happen to support already because of chrome. but firefox support is often not a priority even today

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    firefox support is often not a priority even today

    Dunno if I can name a time it was ;)

    I guess it might be a priority for Mozilla sometimes

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    seems a bit dangerous though to risk for a browser with so small market share

    They should have built it in years ago, but called it "web security filtering" or something and included only a basic security blocklist, but left it easy to add other lists.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Using technology from a known crypto scamming developer is not good.

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  • [–] 42 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

    Using entirely unrelated ad blocking technology is bad for what reason?

    You can feel free to moralize, but be consistent: Mozilla bought an NFT company to integrate their code into Firefox, and that's not the only skeleton in their closet.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I mean what's wrong with buying a company to access it proprietary code. NFTs were a dumb grift, but if the specific software product they offered was sound what's the issue?

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    If the code was good, nothing would be wrong with it. It would be even better if the code was free. And that's my point.

    (In Mozilla's case, it's actually much worse because they bought private customer data along with the technology and then canned the technology while keeping the data, but that's a different story.)

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago

    Why?

    I use Linux. This means everyday I use software developed by Google, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, the US military and the NSA.

    It doesn't really matter who developed or contributed so much as who benefits.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    At worst, it's just fine (Mozilla just uses it internally to replace or supplement its old and incomplete Tracker Blocking system, which never gets the same scrutiny).

    I think you're right but I'm sure they can fuck it up a lot worse than that if they really want to. AI ad detection? Sponsored blocking? New RCE pathways?

    I think its much more likely than not a step forward, and I welcome the change, but recent Mozilla decisions have me watching closely.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    My faith in Mozilla has dimmed a whole lot over the past few years, but if they feel like making Firefox worse, I don't think they need to do it this way. More code does mean more vulnerabilities, but that hasn't stopped them from adding a half dozen other features that could have been extensions. This one could actually be beneficial, as it would cut down on the performance requirements for users, especially mobile ones.

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