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Here's what's happening to ad blockers in Google Chrome (and other browsers)
(www.spacebar.news)
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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Eh, on Linux, it's probably in your package manager, and likely already installed. Just be careful with Ubuntu since they use snaps.
Be careful?
Firefox auto-updates with the snap version, whereas it doesn't with most package manager versions. So if it updates while you're using it, it won't let you open new tabs without restarting it (Firefox, not the machine), which can interrupt your workflow. On other distros, that only happens when installing updates manually, which isn't an issue because you're aware of it.
This is second hand info though since I don't use Ubuntu, so YMMV.
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A really good chrome clone using Firefox. It's my go-to browser.
Only issue is that it's a little slower to update than Firefox direct.
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TL;DR use FF
(and other browsers)
... that aren't Firefox.
The article talks about Firefox too.
Since January 2018, 42% of malicious extensions use the Web Request API.
That's like making knifes illegal in general because they have been used in a certain amount of murder cases.
And now, a new golden age of malvertisement will emerge...
Indeed. What a f-ing stupid argument: "We cannot trust the extensions that the user installed, therefor we give malware from advertisers free roam!"
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This finally made all my Chrome friends switch to the fox. about time
I mean it's just a browser. Bit of fiddling with the saved password and your go to go again to never look back. If they value their users they will improve again like Firefox did in the background over years.
I only hope a good search engine will appear again. I don't like the alternatives.
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Run a pihole or similar
Your web browser is just one piece of software on your network capable of displaying ads and collecting data
Network-level adblock cannot replace browser-level adblock and vice versa
Both… both is good
That’s reminds me, I should go update mine.
I'm only familiar with pi holes on a cursory level, but you have to update them manually? This is a bit of a turn off.
You could schedule it with cron. You usually don't need to update the lists very often though, and you don't want to either as you're just wasting the bandwidth of the hosts of the lists, who aren't making any money off hosting them.
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uBlock Origin for Chrome has over 34 million installations according to the Chrome Web Store
Oh wow, that is very surprising to me. I somehow expected a billion of installations. Especially when I saw the screenshots without it in the article, how can anyone browse the web without it?
Adblock users are still a statistical minority of web users. Most people don’t care (as evidenced by Netflix’s ad tier gaining subscribers every quarter) or don’t know those extensions exist.
There are other ad block options. And there is Firefox. I use Vivaldi browser, it has a built-in ad blocker, just like many other browsers. I just wish Vivaldi would be Firefox based.
But Firefox has a installation base of 2.8% and Chrome 65%. The Firefox uBlock Origin installations are in my opinion statistically insignificant, so are Brave browser installations which are even lower.
If you like this article, please consider following the site on Mastodon/Fedi, email, or RSS. It helps me get information like this out to a wider audience :)
I didn't even click the article. Here's Why -
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What a garbage article. Chock full of google propaganda and fear mongering.
What specifically is "google propaganda and fear mongering" in the article?
Mentions UBlock seems.to be fast and safe, but that the API used lets extensions look at everything you do amd can dramatically affect browser speed. Implying that UBlock Origin is responsible for Chrome being such a memory Hog and that they, not Google, are the ones after your data.
That performance cost seems to be negligible in uBlock Origin and other popular ad blockers that have focused on optimization [...], but there were probably other extensions not doing that well.
The article goes out of its way to not do what you're accusing it of. I don't understand how you've managed to read the article as having the opposite slant as what it actually does.
Except the part where it didn't imply that at all?
That performance cost seems to be negligible in uBlock Origin and other popular ad blockers that have focused on optimization (uBO has an explainer wiki page), but there were probably other extensions not doing that well. It’s not hard to see a situation where multiple poorly-optimized extensions installed using the Web Request API could dramatically slow down Chrome, and the user would have no way of knowing the issue.
I don’t think that’s necessarily the case: Google knows as well as I do that a total crackdown would give governments like the European Union and United States more ammo for antitrust lawsuits.
They do not care, never have, never will. Cost of operation.
It would also be a motivator for more people to switch browsers, which would weaken Google’s browser monopoly.
Not enough even care that would make noticable difference in market share.
A lot of people were upset 23 years ago when Windows ME removed real mode DOS, too.
And they all stopped using it, right? Right?
The new Declarative Net Request API is still a downgrade in capability compared to the older API, but the feature gap has closed significantly.
Chrome now allows extensions to include 100 rule lists, with up to 50 lists active at once. There are also additional filtering options, including an option to have case-insensitive rules, which cuts down on duplicates in filter lists. The maximum number of filter rules now varies by use case — an extension can now have up to 30,000 dynamic rules (filters downloaded by the extension) if they are deemed as “safe” (block, allow, allowAllRequests or upgradeScheme), an additional 5,000 other types of dynamic requests, and more filters included in the extension package.
for context, EasyList is just one of the lists enabled by default in uBlock Origin and other ad blockers, and it has over 75,000 rules.
Can you math? Feature gap almost same as before.
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Seemed pretty level headed and surprisingly well written to me.
What’s Google?
A misspelling of googol, which means 10^100^.
I think I've made this comment before, but I really wish people would learn more about technologies like pihole. Get the ad once, get the hyperlink, add it to blacklist.
I run a pihole as well, but it is a very rudimentary tool compared to browser based adblockers like uBlock origin. It can only block DNS queries, and can't for example block ads if they are served from the same domain as the main site (i.e. youtube) or block specific elements on a page or block a specific script from running.
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Until that ad also happens to be for a legitimate website you want to visit. I'd rather have a adblocker I can change right there in the website
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