Most people still haven’t heard of Manifest V3, so if you are one of those not using Firefox, this is for you.
If you’ve been on YouTube or Reddit August last year, you might’ve seen this screen yourself, or a screenshot of someone else getting it. This of course, I am talking about the infamous YouTube ad blocker blocker popup, discussion exploded on Reddit mostly consisting of people complaining about ads, as well as an angry mob storming r/memes, turning it into a Firefox propaganda centre.
About a month later, different adblockrs eventually found their way of bypassing detection, and they work on YouTube again. So natrually Redditors thought they’ve won another war against big tech, completely ignoring Google’s original plan to kill off adblockers by June this year.
So all extensions, including adblockers follows a specification called the Manifest V2. The Manifest allows extensions to do certain things, say accessing browser tabs or to change browser settings. All while putting some limitations, and prevent extensions from doing crazy stuff like installing a virus to your system. But too much limitation, is what pisses off many extension developers about the upcoming ManifestV3.
In this article written by the EFF, they interviewed developers responsible for popular extensions, where most described ManifestV3 as a downgrade, with some accused it for being purposefully bad. I particularly like this one from the creator of SingleFile, “I consider the migration to Manifest V3 to be a major regression from a functional and technical point of view.”
After an update in June this year, a feature called the WebRequest API will be removed, and the adblockers and tracker blockers that depend on this feature will stop working. Since the business model of Google is to track your online activity and then show you personalised ads, it is not difficult to see why this feature is removed.
Not only are they sacrifising user experience for monetary gain, they are forcing the same update on all Chromium browsers as well. I am hereby devastated to inform you that this is not the first time they have done it, and it will not be the last time they will do it.
But there are also good news, non-Chromium browsers will not be affected by the Manifest V3, and if you are already using one, you will be exempt from any future nonsense Google throws in your way. So if you are considering switching to one, unless Safari is your goto browser, which lacks competent extensions support, you can still get your adblockers, another adblockers, all the adblockers.
So are you going to make the switch before the update? Let me know in the comments down below, anyways I will be seeing you in two weeks, have a good one.
An article for more my ranting needs https://gmtex.siri.sh/fs/1/School/Y12/Cssoc/chromium.html
I like the artstyle, but the Mv3 blocking API has actually been improved to the point where uBO Lite, the Mv3 version of uBlock Origin, can block YouTube ads and only fails in edge cases.
Also, Safari technically has the same extensions support as Firefox does, but developers have to pay to distribute their extensions. That doesn’t stop the existence of AdGuard.
just realised something, if my understanding is correct, MV3 also banned remotely hosted content, with a publish delay up to 2 weeks google (specifically youtube) can easily break uBO lite if they want to, i dont know if that is how uBO lite works, or if the rules will only be enforced after June, but if it is true uBO lite is not gonna live long either
it’s not the only propose of uBO to block YouTube ads. It’s purpose is to block ads on as many sites as possible without breaking them, and also to block tracking in the same way. That needs a versatile and nouanced blocking list, with more of specific things to block instead of less of rather general things, and that sadly won’t fit in to that small limit.
But there’s more. A lot of uBO’s capabilities depend on being able to act on the requests as happening. Content replacement, response spoofing, a lot of things. Look up uBO’s scriptlets and how are they used, is in the repo’s wiki. That won’t be possible with uBO Lite. It’s called Lite for a reason, and gorhill was (and is) furious for a reason.
Remember, ad blocking is not just hiding them.
I agree that it is awful to remove the API for reasons you’ve mentioned, but my point was that it’s a misconception that Mv3 broke and limped all adblocking. Currently the list is big enough that only edge case trackers aren’t blocked.
I was under the impression the uBO lite wasn’t nearly as good and it missed a lot of ads, it seems like things have changed a bit since I’ve last followed on the MV3 situation.
Also about Safari extension support, I didn’t research anything on this topic, I just thought it’s extension support must be incompetent because the uBlock Origin installation for Safari seemed like a hassle, turns out im not that far off.
The keyword is “a bit”. It is now able to do the most basic things, but probably entirely useless in limiting tracking