this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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We’ve been anticipating it for years, and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.

Now that it is finally happening, many seem to be oddly resigned to the idea that Google is taking away the best and most powerful ad content blocker available on any web browser today, with one article recommending people set up a DNS based content blocker on their network 😒 – instead of more obvious solutions.

I may not have blogged about this but I recently read an article from 1999 about why Gopher lost out to the Web, where Christopher Lee discusses the importance of the then-novel term “mind share” and how it played an important part in dictating why the web won out. In my last post, I touched on the importance of good information to democracies – the same applies to markets (including the browser market) – and it seems to me that we aren’t getting good information about this topic.

This post is me trying to give you that information, to help increase the mind share of an actual alternative. Enjoy!

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[–] [email protected] 170 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 56 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 151 points 2 months ago (3 children)

We kept Firefox alive for you all these years. You're welcome.

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[–] [email protected] 98 points 2 months ago (24 children)

Finally made the switch to Firefox just 2 days ago. Great so far.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 months ago (19 children)

be sure to check out the extensions, there's several that are game changers.

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 months ago (1 children)

lol. Obligatory “you guys use chromium?”

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (21 children)

Can I just add a different perspective on this?

My dad is really old (like early baby-boomers), and I am basically the in-family tech support when the home computer starts acting strange.

Well, right after google rolled out this update, my dad clicked on what he thought was an online shopping link. It was actually an ad for a toolbar add-on. ~~Queue~~ Cue like 6+ hours trying to uninstall that add-on and the bundled software.

I never had to worry about that in the past with him because I had u-block origin installed. Now I need to find something else that can run quietly in the background. And probably a better antivirus.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

Nooooo, but MV3 is all about security!

This is how I know this is bullshit. I was reading the article and thinking "So, let me get this straight. The ads aren't the security risk. It's the ad blockers!"

Sure. Pull the other one.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 months ago

Kids, remember, Google is an advertising company.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 months ago

Honestly I'd say the Internet isn't safe, and it's because of Google, fuck you Google. It's not just the wine I've been drinking, it's true dammit.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 months ago

Welcome back to Firefox everyone! At least if you're as old or older than I. 😁

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

You can always keep Chromium installed for the odd site that doesn’t work in Firefox (my daily driver). I do web development and test in every browser and I almost never encounter sites or features that don’t work in FF. The only one I can recall is something in the Azure Portal, probably because Microsoft wants you using Edge.

Typically, Safari is the laggard and any developer worth their salt would make sure their site works on iPad and iPhone. When a new web standard is released, usually Chromium supports it first but even then, not always. And web developers usually don’t use features that aren’t implemented across the board yet. I know I go to caniuse.com before I use something fresh out the oven.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 months ago (35 children)

Firefox needs to work on ensuring seamless compatibility with more websites, web apps and so on, because I'm personally very bored with my kids' schools and related services sending out emails and forms with links that simply won't open in FF but are clearly expecting Chrome or Edge where they work fine. Yes, this is on the lazy developers, but if FF want wider scale take-up outside of geeky niche groups then this is the stuff they must fix.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 2 months ago (25 children)

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If your site doesn't work on Firefox your site doesn't work. As web developers your job is to develop applications for the web not for one specific browser. This goes double for essential services.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago

Firefox can't fix all the broken sites in the world, but they do investigate issues reported to https://webcompat.com

You can help by reporting sites that don't work for you.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Okay that's fine, but when websites are effectively writing

if user_agent_string != [chromium]
     break;

It doesn't really matter how good compatibility is. I've had websites go from nothing but a "Firefox is not supported, please use Chrome" splash screen to working just fine with Firefox by simply spoofing the user agent to Chrome. Maybe some feature was broken, but I was able to do what I needed. More often than not they just aren't testing it and don't want to support other browsers.

The more insidious side of this is that websites will require and attempt to enforce Chrome as adblocking gets increasingly impossible on them, because it aligns with their interests. It's so important for the future of the web that we resist this change, but I think it's too late.

The world wide web is quickly turning into the dark alley of the internet that nobody is willing to walk down.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Slack calls disabled for firefox users, but if you change the user agent to chrome it works...

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What you're talking about is webcompat and is a very complicated issue. Also I've talked to some Mozilla devs who gave me multiple examples of Chromium rendering something wrong, and they'd have to intentionally break Firefox to render it incorrectly too, just so the end user would get a more consistent experience. Of course these issues happen more and more when things are only tested for one browser.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago

Also Firefox mobile has nearly all of the extensions as the desktop version so it's more similar across all of your devices. Personally, I use LibreWolf on desktop and Mull on mobile, but they're just tweaked versions of Firefox with some bloat and telemetry removed and preconfigured to be more private.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yet another reason to never use Chrome

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You can make a windows registry change to have Chrome let you keep using uBlock Origin, with the V2 manifest. It will buy you six more months, basically the enterprise support period.

There was a handy shortcut created by the Security Now podcast you can use as a one-click file to update the policy. The show notes also give a more detailed breakdown of what's going on.

The relevant section in the notes is page 10. The link to the file is page 12. https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-995-notes.pdf

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Or just use Firefox and not deal with that.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago

After i uninstalled chrome some time ago, i noticed it had been slowing down my entire system even when its not on. There is nothing of worth in using it or any other browser derived from it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Honest question here, since chromium (vs chrome) is open source, can someone not fork an older version, or remove the new code blocking ublock?

I mean i assume it cant be done, but i dont know why

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 months ago (3 children)

It can be done, but then whoever forks that will need to stay on top of keeping that fork up to date with other changes in the original chromium, and that gets harder and harder to do as time goes on and more changes are made to the same or related parts of the codebase.

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