Even if bigs exists to work around what Google is doing, that isn’t the right way forward. If people don’t agree with Google move, the only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome (and all Chromium browsers). Hit them where it hurts and take away their monopoly over the future direction of the web.
pjmlp · 1h ago
A monopoly achieved thanks to everyone that forgot about IE lesson, and instead of learning Web standards, rather ships Chrome alongside their application.
janalsncm · 13m ago
“Sorry, we don’t support any browsers other than Chrome”
I agree exploiting a bug isn’t a sustainable solution. But it’s also unrealistic to think switching is viable.
oehpr · 2m ago
Keep chrome installed and fall back iff forced to. That way the majority of usage statistics show up as other browsers so when developers are making guesses at which browser to support, those statistics will push them away from chrome.
Additionally: you would be surprised how infrequently you have to switch to chrome
tankenmate · 2m ago
By that logic attempting to change anything at all is not viable; e pur si muove.
xg15 · 17m ago
> Hit them where it hurts and take away their monopoly over the future direction of the web.
Because that has worked so well so far...
high_priest · 2h ago
Its not happening
agile-gift0262 · 1h ago
I switched to Firefox and it's been wonderful. I wonder why I didn't switch earlier. It's only been a couple of months, but I can't imagine going back to a browser without multi-account containers.
galangalalgol · 1h ago
The only time I've used anything but firefox for the last. Well probably since netscape honestly? I am so old. Is to get the in flight entertainment to work on american, but firefox has worked for that for a few years now. People say chrome is faster and in the early 2000s I might have agreed, but now I really don't understand why anyone not on a mac or iphone isn't using Firefox. It is great.
nfriedly · 1h ago
Firefox is great on Mac too.
You have a point about iPhones, though. It's almost pointless, but not quite: it does get a few features, like cross-platform sync. "Real" Firefox is one of the things that keeps me on Android.
galangalalgol · 1h ago
Can you still get real Firefox on mac? I thought they forced chromium on there now too? The only time I got MacBook I put linux on it within a few months.
SllX · 31m ago
So a couple of things.
1) Apple would never force "Chromium" on any of their platforms. You might be mistaking it for WebKit, but browsers are not required to use Apple's shipping version of WebKit on a Mac either.
2) Firefox on every single platform not on the iPhone & iPad uses and has always used Gecko. I'm not aware of any other exceptions besides those two platforms, but the Mac definitely isn't one of them.
nicoburns · 19m ago
macOS isn't locked down like iOS. There are things like SIP which prevent some hacking/customising of the system, but:
1. These can all be disabled by advanced users (largely without consequence)
2. They dont prevent things like installing apps or even gaining root access in the first place.
The very fact that you can install Linux is evidence of the different approach taken with macs (you can't easily install Linux of ios devices)
pdpi · 35m ago
I assume that, by Chromium, you mean WebKit. At any rate, how or why would they have blocked Firefox on a machine where you can compile your own code?
tmnvix · 1h ago
> Can you still get real Firefox on mac?
I have always been able to.
MangoToupe · 39m ago
You can use whatever you want on macos
tmnvix · 1h ago
> I really don't understand why anyone not on a mac or iphone isn't using Firefox
I'm on a mac and happily use Firefox. Have done for over a decade. It would take a lot to encourage me to move to a proprietary browser (Edge, Chrome, Safari).
Maybe I'm out of touch, but the attachment to Chrome that some people seem to have (despite the outright privacy abuse) is baffling to me. I mean, ffs, are a couple of minor UI compromises (not that I experience any - quite the opposite) enough to justify what I consider a frankly perverted browser experience? I'm inclined to conclude that some people have little self respect - being so willing to metaphorically undress for the big G's benefit.
xg15 · 15m ago
That's nice for you, but the monopoly is still there. In fact, you've strengthened Google's side in antitrust proceedings where they pretend they are not a monopoly because a small number of people use Firefox.
guywithahat · 27m ago
I prefer Brave to Firefox, just because Mozilla is a pretty questionable company when it comes to ethics and censorship. That said, switching away from chrome is clearly the way to go imo
madeofpalk · 25m ago
Mozilla is more questionable than Google? By using Brave you're still staying within the Google ecosystem, sending them the signal that their Chromium internet is the better one.
I swear - people have such a hard on for hating Mozilla because it fails to live up to an impossibly high standard, while giving all the other corporations doing actual harm a free pass.
yedpodtrzitko · 17m ago
I'll bite - if you dont use Firefox because of "questionable ethics", then I am quite surprised you decided to use Brave, considering their controversies. Also Brave is still based on Chrome's engine, and I dont think they'll be able to maintain their fork long-term, so if the reason to switch was to break the Chrome monopoly, then I'm not sure this switch really counts.
myko · 19m ago
Brave seems much more questionable concerning ethics, given Eich's history
evo_9 · 20m ago
Ditto - I’m on Zen browser a FF fork, it’s a clone of Arc and quite love it. No way I’m going back to chrome or any chromium browsers.
lytedev · 2h ago
It definitely is, buy I think the silent majority just don't care all that much. Is that what you're referring to?
Etheryte · 2h ago
I don't know, I switched to Safari and it was painful for like two hours and then I stopped thinking about it. The only thing I somewhat miss is the built-in page translate, but I don't need it often enough to be bothered much.
notatoad · 1h ago
switching to safari because chrome disabled the good adblockers is completely counter-productive. safari has never supported the good adblockers.
Fire-Dragon-DoL · 1h ago
I find switching from chrome to safari essentially doing nothing. If you switched to a non-big-company owned browser, it would make sense but Apple has plenty of lock in which is as bad as chrome lock in.
creato · 1h ago
It's especially silly in this case because Safari extensions have always been equivalent to MV3 functionality.
lapcat · 46m ago
This is not accurate. Safari had webRequestBlocking functionality from 2010 to 2019 and indeed a version of uBlock Origin for Safari. What is true is that Safari was the first browser to ditch webRequestBlocking, replaced by its Apple-specific static rule content blocker API.
Otherwise, though, Safari still supports MV2. Everyone seems to think webRequestBlocking is the only relevant change in MV3, but it's not. Equally important IMO is arbitrary JavaScript injection into web pages, which MV2 allows but MV3 does not.
MV3 is so locked down that you can't even use String.replace() with a constructed JavaScript function. It's really a nightmare.
Google's excuse is that all JavaScript needs to be statically declared in the extension so that the Chrome Web Store can review it. But then the Chrome Web Store allows a bunch of malware to be published anyway!
fny · 1h ago
I'm a huge fan of Orion by Kagi: you should have a look! It's a little rough around the edges but the extension support on iOS is amazing.
const_cast · 1h ago
Orion is the only viable option on iOS IMO. The fact that, to this day, Safari has no way to block ads on iOS means it's just awful. Before Orion, I avoided using my web browser like the plague, because the experience was just bad.
Now I'm on Android, and Ironfox is pretty good and Firefox is also available. The browser story on Android is leaps and bounds ahead of iOS.
tech234a · 1h ago
Actually there are several adblockers available for Safari on iOS; the functionality was introduced in 2015. Adblock Plus and Adguard are some of the larger extensions available, and now uBlock Origin Lite is now being beta tested for Safari on iOS.
ndiddy · 17m ago
I find the "switch to Safari" talk amusing because the adblockers available for Safari are functionally equivalent to the MV3 API that everyone's complaining about. The problem with the "static list of content to block" approach that Safari and MV3 use is that you can't trick the site into thinking that ads have been loaded when they haven't, like MV2 allows via Javascript injection. The effect of this is that you'll run into a lot of "disable your ad blocker to continue" pop-ups when using an adblocker with Safari, while you won't see them at all when using an adblocker with Firefox.
const_cast · 1h ago
I've never used these, but if I had to guess: these probably don't have the same power as full Manifest V2 extensions.
Also names like "Adblock Plus" scare me. I don't want someone I don't trust getting my web activity.
Fire-Dragon-DoL · 1h ago
I don't use any Apple product, so no Orion for me
vehemenz · 1h ago
Apple isn’t selling my data, and they make the best consumer hardware, so at this point there aren’t many downsides to Apple lock in.
The greatest trick the Ad ever pulled was convincing the world it didn't exist.
scarface_74 · 1h ago
No company sells your data. They sell access to you based on the data they have about you. Apple is no different
Fire-Dragon-DoL · 1h ago
The lock in is a downside.
zer00eyz · 14m ago
I don't think in this case your argument is as clear cut and the use cases that people have today arent solved by the choices out there.
George Carlin: "You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities, they're on the same boards of directors, they're in the same country clubs, they have like interests, they don't need to call a meeting, they know what's good for them and they're getting it."
The interests of APPLE (who makes money on hardware, and credit card processing) don't align with the interests of Google (who makes money on ad's). I am all for open source, I'm all for alternatives. But honestly if you own an iPhone and a Mac then safari makes a lot of sense. I happen to use safari and Firefox on Mac and am happy to bounce back and forth.
I also keep an eye on ladybird, but it isnt ready for prime time.
And I'm still going to have a chrome install for easy flashing of devices.
mattkevan · 1h ago
Safari has had built-in page translate for years now. It’ll detect different languages and show a translate option in the site tools menu. Works well.
Etheryte · 1h ago
I'm aware of this, but in my experience it's pretty bad. It doesn't even cover all European languages, never mind the rest of the world. For the languages it does support, it's always a lottery whether it works with that specific site or not. I've tried using it a few times, but it's not even remotely close to what Chrome does.
al_borland · 19m ago
It happened before, multiple times.
phendrenad2 · 2h ago
A lot of people seem to believe that switching to a de-Googled Chromium-based browser isn't good enough. I think that's a psyop promoted by Google themselves. Firefox is different enough from Chrome that it's a big jump for people who are used to Chrome. Brave, custom Chromium builds, Vivaldi, etc. are all very similar to Google Chrome, they just don't have Google spy features.
The argument that "Google still controls Chromium so it's not good enough" is exactly the kind of FUD I'd expect to back up this kind of psyop, too.
sensanaty · 1h ago
> Firefox is different enough from Chrome that it's a big jump for people who are used to Chrome
I find this notion completely baffling. I use Chrome, Firefox and Safari more or less daily cause I test in all 3, and other than Safari feeling clunkier and in general less power-user friendly, I can barely tell the difference between the 3, especially between chrome and FF (well, other than uBlock working better in FF anyways).
xboxnolifes · 43m ago
Firefox has multiple, user-affecting, memory leaks related to Youtube (unconfirmed if just youtube), going back at least 7 years. Tab scrollbar as no option to be disabled, so I had to write CSS to get tabs into a form close to what I would like similar to chrome. Tab mute icon has no (working) option to disable the click event, so I had to write CSS to remove it.
I made some other changes, but I forget what. At least FF still has the full uBlock Origin.
oblio · 10m ago
Just bite the bullet and use Tree Style Tabs or Sideberry.
I didn't, for decades, but it was a mistake.
const_cast · 1h ago
I agree, there's little to no friction in switching to Firefox and I have never, not even once, noticed a difference with websites. The same is not true for Safari.
jasonfarnon · 3m ago
I get serious slowdown with multiple (3--5) youtube tabs open in firefox, but not chrome. Seems to happen when tabs are open for a long time (weeks), so probably some leak. Lots of others mention it on forums.
maest · 1h ago
There are definitely website that do not support Firefox, especially in the US.
Whole portions of the Verizon website, for example. Or the website of a well known kindergarden I was researching recently.
const_cast · 1h ago
I'm sure they exist, I've just never seen them. I use banking and websites like Netflix, too. And, if I had to wager, you could bypass a lot of this "doesn't work on Firefox" by just changing your user agent.
I think it's a case of yes, it does work, but web developers don't think so, so they implement checks just for kicks.
sensanaty · 45m ago
> And, if I had to wager, you could bypass a lot of this "doesn't work on Firefox" by just changing your user agent.
Indeed, even in the codebase at $JOB that I'm responsible for, we have had some instances where we randomly check if people are in Chrome before blocking a browser API that has existed for 2 decades and been baseline widely available. These days 99% of features that users actually care about are pretty widely supported cross-browser, and other than developer laziness there's literally no reason why something like a banking app shouldn't work in any of the big 3.
I guarantee you that if you set your `userAgent` to a Chrome one (or even better yet, a completely generic one that covers all browsers simultaneously, cause most of the time the implementation of these `isChrome` flags is just a dead simple regex that looks for the string `chrome` anywhere in the userAgent), all problems you might've experienced before would vanish, except for perhaps on Google's own websites (though I've never really had issues here other than missing things like those image blur filters in Google Meet, which always felt like a completely artificial, anti-competitive limitation)
stevage · 44m ago
Me too. On mac, FF and chrome basically look and feel identical. Only devtools are quite different.
jeffbee · 1h ago
The stuff INSIDE the viewport is pretty much the same across them all, but on the daily it makes a big difference how your other services integrate with the browser. Someone who is all-in with iCloud, macOS, iOS etc might find it annoying to use Firefox without their personal info like password and credit cards and bookmarks. And the same would be true I guess for Google fans switching to Safari and not having those things.
Phemist · 47m ago
I once made a comment along these lines (de-Googled Chromium-based browser isn't good enough, as it supports the browser monoculture and inevitably makes Chrome as a browser better) and got a reply from from Brendan Eichner himself.
His point was that there isn't enough time to again develop Firefox (or ladybird) as a competitive browser capable of breaking the Chrome "monopoly". I don't know if I really agree.
Evidently, Google feels like the time is right to make these kinds of aggressive moves, limiting the effectiveness of ad blockers.
The internet without ad blockers is a hot steaming mess. Limiting the effectiveness of ad blockers makes people associate your browser (Chrome in this case) with this hot steaming mess. It is difficult to dissociate the Chrome software from the websites rendered in Chrome by a technical lay person. So Chrome will be viewed as a hot steaming mess.
I guess we will soon see if people will stay on Chrome or accept the small initial pain and take the leap to a different browser with proper support for ad blockers. In any case the time is now for a aggressive marketing campaign on the side of mozilla etc.
I am in no way affiliated with Google. So if you still think this is a PsyOp, please consider Hanlon's Razor:
> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Although, please also consider that Hanlon's Razor itself was coined by a Robert J. Hanlon, who suspiciously shares a name with a CIA operative also from Pennsylvania. It is not unimaginable that Hanlon's Razor it in itself a PsyOp. ;)
poly2it · 1h ago
Isn't that the exact argument behind the Serenity project? I legitimately feel there is a grave issue with the internet if one wallet controls all of the actual development of our browsers. Control over virtually all media consumption mustn't be in the hands of a corporation.
nicoburns · 12m ago
> I legitimately feel there is a grave issue with the internet if one wallet controls all of the actual development of our browsers.
Aside from Ladybird and Servo, it mostly is one wallet. Chrome and Firefox are both funded by Google, and Apple also receives significant funding from Google for being the default search engine in Safari.
Btw, some informal estimates at team sizes (full-time employees) of the various browsers (by people who have worked on them / are otherwise familiar):
Chrome: 1300
Firefox: 500
Safari: 100-150
Ladybird/Servo: 7-8 (each)
Which gives you an idea of why Chrome has been so hard to compete with.
phendrenad2 · 55m ago
The argument just doesn't hold water, though. That's like saying Y Combinator shouldn't be the only company paying for our tech forum. It's perfectly fine unless Y Combinator decides to ruin HN it somehow. And, if they did, wouldn't people just switch to one of the many HN clones overnight? That's what's known as FUD - "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt". FUD is often spread about the present, but it's often just as useful to spread it about the future. "Don't use product X, the company that owns it could make it unusable someday". Part of me thinks Google keeps threatening to disable adblocking (but never actually does it) as part of a grand strategy. But part of me thinks it's just a coincidence that Google isn't capable of pulling off such a tricky psychological operation.
al_borland · 6m ago
The HN comparison doesn’t really hold water. There are a lot of options for tech news and forums. Lots of platforms, self-hosting options, with many business models, or simply self-funded.
That is very different than a world where every browser relies on Google for the core of their browser… and those who don’t rely on Google for funding (as they pay a lot of money to be the default search option in major browsers). Even Microsoft gave up on making their own browser, and now depends on Google. They used to own the entire market not so long ago.
People are saying this is a psyop, but I’m not sure what Google stands to gain from giving off the impression that they are seeking to control the entire market so they can steer the direction of the web for their own profit. That doesn’t make them look like the good guy, and should keep them neck deep in anti-trust filing from various governments. Where’s the upside? People feeling like they don’t have an option, so they give up and settle like Microsoft? Is that the angle?
krackers · 3h ago
>They decided it wasn't a security issue, and honestly, I agree, because it didn't give extensions access to data they didn't already have.
So they admit that MV3 isn't actually any more secure than MV2?
Neywiny · 3h ago
I'd be shocked if anyone actually believes them. This article starts with the obvious conflict of interest. Of course letting an extension know what websites you visit and what requests are made is an insecure lifestyle. But I still do it because I trust uBO more than I trust the ad companies and their data harvesters.
Barbing · 3h ago
I wish I could browse the web kinda like this but minus the human:
Make Signal video call to someone in front of a laptop, provide verbal instructions on what to click on, read to my liking, and hang up to be connected with someone else next time.
(EFF’s Cover Your Tracks seems to suggest fresh private tabs w/iCloud Private Relay & AdGuard is ineffective. VMs/Cloud Desktops exist but there are apparently telltale signs when those are used, though not sure how easily linkable back to acting user. Human-in-the-loop proxy via encrypted video calls seems to solve _most_ things, except it’s stupid and would be really annoying even with an enthusiastic pool of volunteers. VM + TOR/I2P should be fine for almost anybody though I guess, just frustrated the simple commercial stuff is ostensibly partially privacy theater.)
One of the main goals of MV3 seems to be nullifying protection against tracking URLs. Most of the discussion about adblocking technically "still working" under MV3 misses this point. It doesn't matter if you're actually served ads or not, when when your underlying habits can still easily be collected from the combination of fingerprints and tracking URLs.
I believe them. The restrictions are reasonable and appropriate for nearly everyone. Extensions are untrusted code that should have as little access as possible. If restrictions can be bypassed, that's a security bug that should be fixed because it directly affects users.
I also think uBlock Origin is so important and trusted it should not only be an exception to the whole thing but should also be given even more access in order to let it block things more effectively. It shouldn't even be a mere extension to begin with, it should be literally built into the browser as a core feature. The massive conflicts of interest are the only thing that prevent that. Can't trust ad companies to mantain ad blockers.
GeekyBear · 1h ago
> Extensions are untrusted code that should have as little access as possible.
It's entirely possible to manually vet extension code and extension updates in the same way that Mozilla does as part of their Firefox recommended extensions program.
> Firefox is committed to helping protect you against third-party software that may inadvertently compromise your data – or worse – breach your privacy with malicious intent. Before an extension receives Recommended status, it undergoes rigorous technical review by staff security experts.
Does the extension function at an exemplary level?
Does the extension offer an exceptional user experience?
Is the extension relevant to a general, international audience?
Is the extension actively developed?
jowea · 2h ago
Why am I not allowed to trust an extension just as much as I trust the platform it is running on? This is the same logic behind mobile OSes creators deciding what apps can do.
Barbing · 2h ago
Would that rip off the how-do-we-fund-the-web bandaid, forcing new solutions? Worry about the interim where some publishers would presumably cease to exist. And who would remain afloat—those with proprietary apps, as Zucky as they are, I’d guess…
UBO is absolutely incredibly important. Figure you might know more than me about how journalists and reviewers and the like can still earn a keep in a world with adblockers built in to every browser.
matheusmoreira · 2h ago
> Would that rip off the how-do-we-fund-the-web bandaid, forcing new solutions?
Absolutely. The web is mostly ad funded. Advertising in turn fuels surveillance capitalism and is the cause of countless dark patterns everywhere. Ads are the root cause of everything that is wrong with the web today. If you reduce advertising return on investiment to zero, it will fix the web. Therefore blocking ads is a moral imperative.
> Worry about the interim where some publishers would presumably cease to exist.
Let them disappear. Anyone making money off of advertising cannot be trusted. They will never make or write anything that could get their ad money cut off.
People used to pay to have their own websites where they published their views and opinions, not the other way around. I want that web back. A web made up of real people who have something real to say, not a web of "creators" of worthless generic attention baiting "content" meant to fill an arbitrary box whose entire purpose is to attract you so that you look at banner ads.
sensanaty · 1h ago
I get what you mean and I think we align here, but I trust the uBlock team infinitely more than I trust Google to make my own extension decisions. I know there's a subset of regular users who fall for all manner of scam, but Manifest V3 doesn't even solve any of those issues, the majority of the same attack vectors that existed before still exist now, except useful tools like uBlock can no longer do anything since they got deliberately targeted.
Besides, there's ways of having powerful extensions WITH security, but this would obviously go against Google's data harvesting ad machine. The Firefox team has a handful of "trusted" extensions that they manually vet themselves on every update, and one of these is uBlock Origin. They get a little badge on the FF extension store marking them as Verified and Trusted, and unless Mozilla's engineers are completely incompetent, nobody has to worry about gorhill selling his soul out to Big Ad in exchange for breaking uBlock or infecting people's PCs or whatever.
breve · 1h ago
The best bypass is to use Firefox. uBlock Origin works best in Firefox:
Well, in his defense it would have been patched immediately after the first adblocker used it, and he would have gotten nothing at all out of it.
Oh wait he got nothing at all anyway ;)
m4rtink · 2h ago
Would be quite different if they patched it and broke important extensions, possibly facing serieous outcry and bad publicity.
deryilz · 1h ago
I agree that would change things but I can't picture an open-source extension with millions of users pivoting to rely on something that's clearly a bug.
rollcat · 1h ago
Important extensions like, dunno, uBlock Origin?
eddythompson80 · 18m ago
Yeah, surely if chrome broke important extensions people will get mad and switch.
devnullbrain · 1h ago
That's what they already did.
freed0mdox · 2h ago
Not really, this sort of fame farming is what makes candidates stand out in infosec interviews. A bug in Google systems is good for his future career.
throwaway73945 · 3h ago
So OP got Google to patch a harmless "issue" that could've been used by addon devs to bypass MV3 restrictions. Hope it was worth the $0.
BomberFish · 1h ago
Said bypass would exist for maybe a day max before getting nuked from orbit by Google. If anything, there was a non-zero chance OP would've gotten paid and he took it. I don't blame him.
StrLght · 2h ago
I don't agree with this conclusion. Google is fully responsible for MV3 and its' restrictions. There's no reason to shift blame away from them.
Let's do a thought experiment: if OP hasn't reported it, what do you think would happen then? Even if different ad blockers would find it later and use it, Google would have still removed this. Maybe they'd even remove extensions that have (ab)used it from Chrome Web Store.
Hizonner · 4m ago
> Maybe they'd even remove extensions that have (ab)used it from Chrome Web Store.
So now it's abuse to make the user's browser do what the user wants, for the user's benefit, to protect the user from, you know, actual abuse.
Barbing · 2h ago
Indeed.
Perhaps a hobbyist would code “MV2-capable” MV3 adblocker for the fun of it, forking UBO or something, as a proof-of-concept. How much time would anyone spend on its development and who would install it when the max runway’s a few days, weeks, or months?
DALEK_77 · 1h ago
It seems someone's already done it. It requires some extra setup, but I managed to get it working on my machine.
Really? You think Google is that dumb? As soon as any ad blocker that people actually use implements it, it'll be patched. It's not something you can exploit once and benefit from it forever.
antisthenes · 2h ago
Yeah, that was my take as well. OP did some free work for a megacorp and made the web a little bit worse, because "security, I guess" ?
Good job.
deryilz · 2h ago
Sometimes you get $0, sometimes you get more. I would like to mention this stuff on my college applications, and even if I tried to gatekeep it, it'd eventually be patched. Not sure what your argument is here.
sebmellen · 2h ago
Incredibly impressive to do this sort of work before applying to college!
mertd · 2h ago
The author claims to be 8 years old in 2015. So that makes them still a teenager. It is pretty cool IMO.
9dev · 2h ago
Are you guys honestly arguing like the zero day industry would, for a vector that couldn’t be used by any ad blocking extension since Google has them under an electron microscope 24/7? To pick on a very young, enthusiastic programmer? What the hell??
busymom0 · 2h ago
Google would have found this bug if any extensions tried to rely on it and patched it instantly anyway.
In the "cons" column, Brave is still a for-profit and has a bunch of features that continue to give some people the ick. In the "pros" column, there's a bunch of "how to debloat Brave" content showing how to improve the default kitchen-sink confifguration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6cKFliWW6Q
rollcat · 1h ago
It's the same Blink engine underneath. Talk about lipstick.
I'm not aware of a Blink-based browser that isn't dropping manifest V2. That would be a soft fork, and wouldn't survive long.
bigstrat2003 · 47m ago
The point is you don't need to worry about manifest v3 interfering with ad blockers, because Brave has an ad blocker built into the browser. Also makes it a good Chromium-based option for mobile, since you can't install extensions on Chrome mobile at all.
Not being able to run Twitch on it has me switch for brief periods.
deryilz · 52m ago
From my experience (as a Brave user), using a User-Agent switching extension and setting it to Firefox for twitch.tv gets around that :)
sundarurfriend · 1h ago
Heh, funny, Twitch was the primary reason I installed Brave because it was being glitchy on Firefox (at the time years ago - no longer the case). I've never had trouble with Twitch on Brave.
bung · 1h ago
You're personally unable to look at twitch on it?
Supermancho · 1h ago
The adblock causes a twitch stream error. I can watch until the first ad. This is annoying, so I switch to vanilla chrome.
heraldgeezer · 1h ago
You can turn off the adblock per site.
Do you even try to use software you are using? Click shield icon and turn off...
Supermancho · 1h ago
> Do you even try to use software you are using?
GL with whatever.
No comments yet
Etheryte · 2h ago
Of all the browsers you could be using, giving your data away to sketchy crypto bros should really not be at the top of the list.
Supermancho · 2h ago
It's the top of the list because it works so well. I forget it's a different browser most of the time. I was able to turn off everything extraneous that I was concerned about. Brave is also Open Sourced.
No comments yet
bigstrat2003 · 45m ago
I really don't care about crypto stuff. If you do, I can understand why that's a dealbreaker for you. But for me, it doesn't matter at all. I just turn the crypto features off and continue on my way.
bung · 1h ago
Might as well edit and add some suggestions
daft_pink · 3h ago
So what’s the conclusion? Can we use a different Chrome based browser and avoid MV3? What’s the decision for privacy after this has happened?
perching_aix · 3h ago
This blogpost covers a workaround they discovered that would have let MV3 extensions access important functionality that was not normally available, only in MV2.
This workaround was fixed the same year in 2023 and yielded a $0 payout, on the basis that Google did not consider it a security vulnerability.
The conclusion then is that uBO (MV2) stopped working for me today after restarting my computer, I suppose.
j45 · 3h ago
The little I've read bout this says that maintaining MV2 might be something as well.
If other chromium based browsers didn't have this issue, that would be great, but likely in time Youtube won't support browsers that don't have MV3. Probably still have some time though.
SSchick · 2h ago
Switched to Firefox yesterday, I suggest you do the same.
dexterdog · 1h ago
If you're going to switch you should switch to a better option. I've been using librewolf for years since Firefox doesn't have the best track record either.
dwedge · 2h ago
Are they still funded to the tune of a billion a year by Google so that Google can pretend they don't have a monopoly? Are they still intent on redefining as an ad company?
Brian_K_White · 1h ago
The google money isn't any great gotcha. It's wrong of them to have grown to be so dependant but so what? All it means is that some day the funded development will stop, just like all the forks are already.
Let them take google money for as long as it flows. You can switch to librewolf at any time if FF itself ever actually goes bad in any critical way. But there's not a lot of reason to do so until the minute that actually happens. Go ahead and take the funded work and updates as long as it exists.
j45 · 1h ago
When the billion began Chrome wasn't even a browser yet.
j45 · 2h ago
That's a good reminder to update Firefox.
I tend to oscillate back and forth every few years gradually.
Lately not Chrome proper, there are some neat browser takes worth trying out like Vivaldi, Brave, Arc, etc that are Chromium based.
urda · 1h ago
You bypass it by installing Firefox.
qustrolabe · 1h ago
Firefox is awful. Both as a browser itself and as a base for other browsers. Such a shame that Zen didn't use Chromium :(
dangraper2 · 12m ago
Weird, Firefox blows Chrome out of the water. What do you smoke?
crazygringo · 2h ago
> Adblockers basically need webRequestBlocking to function properly. Pretty convenient (cough cough) for a company that makes most of its revenue from ads to be removing that.
Why does this keep getting repeated? It's not true.
Anyone can use uBlock Origin Lite with Chrome, and manifest v3. It doesn't just work fine, it works great. I can't tell any difference from the old uBlock Origin in terms of blocking, but it's faster because now all the filtering is being done in C++ rather than JavaScript. Works on YouTube and everything.
I know there are some limits in place now with the max number of rules, but the limits seem to be plenty so far.
zwaps · 2h ago
It is true though. Like, literally.
Why do you think it is called Lite?
crazygringo · 2h ago
> It is true though. Like, literally.
Doesn't seem true to me. If it's true, then why is uBlock Origin Lite functioning properly as an adblocker for me?
> Why do you think it is called Lite?
Because it's simpler and uses less resources. And they had to call it something different to distinguish it from uBlock Origin.
rpdillon · 1h ago
One of the most frustrating things about these discussions is that it-works-on-my-machine effect. Anecdotal evidence is easily surpassed by a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that are changing. Here's what the author of uBlock Origin says about its capabilities in Manifest V3 versus Manifest V2.
> About "uBO Lite should be fine": It actually depends on the websites you visit.
Not all filters supported by uBO can be converted to MV3 DNR rules, some websites may not be filtered as with uBO. A specific example in following tweet.
You can read about the specific differences in the FAQ:
My personal take is if you're a pretty unsophisticated user and you mostly don't actually interact with the add-ons at all, Manifest V3 will probably be fine.
If you understand how ads and tracking work and you are using advanced features of the extension to manage that, then Manifest V2 will be much, much better. Dynamic filters alone are a huge win.
ufmace · 1h ago
I agree with crazygringo that uBlock Origin Lite seems to work fine for me as far as blocking ads on the websites I visit.
I also agree that these discussions can be frustrating. In my opinion, that's because people claiming that Lite isn't good enough only seem to post super vague stuff, like links to the FAQ that list a bunch of technical details about what it can't do, when I don't understand the practical upshot of those things. Or vague assertions that it's not doing something which is allegedly important, where it's never actually explained what that thing it's not doing is and why it's important.
I have yet to see anybody show a specific example of a website where Lite doesn't actually work well enough. Or of any other specific thing it's not doing. I don't think I should have to read a series of 20 web pages dense with specialized technical details to understand what it's supposedly not doing. If it can't be explained simply and clearly what it's not doing that's so important, maybe it's not actually missing anything important at all.
I suppose I am a unsophisticated user of web browsers. I never got around to understanding or interacting with all the details of what "proper" uBO can do. Yet I still seem to browse the web just fine, and even build webapps sometimes, and I don't see any ads. So what's this great thing that I'm missing?
rstat1 · 2h ago
Its called Lite because it has tons of missing functionality from the not-Lite version that make the not-Lite version more effective as a content blocker.
crazygringo · 2h ago
It's not "tons of missing functionality". It still blocks all the ads in practice.
Maybe it's less effective in some theoretical case, but not anything I've seen. People talk as if it's only blocking 10% of the ads it used to, when the reality seems to be 99.999% or something. And it's faster now.
And they removed stuff like the element zapper but that has nothing to do with Manifest v3. It's because they literally wanted it to minimize resources. You can install a dedicated zapper extension if you want that.
I genuinely don't understand where this narrative of "adblockers don't work anymore on Chrome" is coming from. Again, it's just not true, but keeps getting repeated like it is.
So your argument is that if an extension could block even a single ad with MV3, it means that ad blockers function properly in MV3? Do you not agree that "properly" means "having all the functionality they had with MV2"?
jwrallie · 50m ago
> Whether or not ublock lite is missing functionalities because of MV3 is irrelevant to the original statement that adblockers need webRequestBlocking.
It can be relevant depending of how you define properly. If it depends on any of those functionalities that are missing, then it’s relevant.
ltbarcly3 · 10m ago
I was able to bypass the chrome changes by installing firefox. Honestly it's better than I thought it would be, and I have no serious complaints, or broken sites. Yay web standards.
fracus · 1h ago
> But I don't know how to make an adblocker, so I decided to report the issue to Google in August 2023. It was patched in Chrome 118 by checking whether extensions usin
Well, thanks for nothing?
deryilz · 1h ago
Author here, sorry. I don't think any open-source extension (especially large adblockers with millions of users) could actually get away with using this bug, because Google is paying close attention to them. It would've been patched immediately either way.
bradgessler · 1h ago
Try Safari, Firefox, or any other non-Chrome browser.
delduca · 29m ago
Safari + Wipr2 FTW!
znpy · 1h ago
Somebody should probably fork chromium.
I remember when Firefox was getting traction, it had a killer feature: speed.
A chromium fork could come with a simple killer feature: bringing back the possibility of blocking requests.
I’m pretty sure it would quickly gain traction.
raspasov · 58m ago
I use Safari.
heraldgeezer · 1h ago
Just use Firefox with ublock origin. On Android too. Nightly has tabs on tablet.
At work I use Edge (MS integration w SSO and all). Edge has some nice features like vertical tabs and copilot. (yes, email writing with AI is nice)
We are allowed Chrome and FF so have those too with ublock on FF. Chrome is 3rd choice if a site really needs it and for testing.
OlivOnTech · 1h ago
Firefox has had vertical tabs (and tabs groups) for few months now
heraldgeezer · 1h ago
Indeed. I love the FF vertical tabs too, I should say.
Too bad the work one is still locked to 128 ESR :(
orliesaurus · 3h ago
I honestly thought reading this blog post was quite refreshing and I had a little smirk at the caption of the photo. Thank you for sharing!
deryilz · 1h ago
Author here, thank you! A lot of the comments here are more general arguments about MV3 and Google (which I kinda expected) but I'm glad see someone who liked my post :)
Even ignoring the adblock issues, Chrome isn't worth it... Google themselves spy on you with it. Cockblocking adblock just puts extra emphasis on what you should have already known.
victor9000 · 2h ago
And FF + UBO also works great on Android
ujkhsjkdhf234 · 2h ago
No judgement but I would love to hear from Google employees who worked on this. Do they believe they are improving the internet in any way?
stackedinserter · 1h ago
"Job's shit but pays a lot"
crinkly · 2h ago
Signed up to complain about this. YT is no longer worth watching ads for. Anything that is worth paying for, the money needs to go via Patreon so the publisher isn't demonetized at a whim. The rest is brain-rot, utter shit and a lot of damaging misinformation. I hope it dies. While it remains easy to do so, I will "steal" with yt-dlp and proudly watch it ad-free on VLC on my computer. If they break that then I'm no longer interested.
When this became adversarial, which was a battle that lasted the last year of inconvenience I ended up dumping every Google thing I have. So the Pixel is GrapheneOS now with no Google crap. Browser is Firefox. Email has moved from Gmail to Fastmail with a domain.
My Google account is closed after 20 years. The relationship is dead. They can do what they want. I don't care any more.
hengheng · 2h ago
You didn't really mention what aggravated you.
crinkly · 2h ago
Initially the increase in frequency of the advertising on Android youtube app. Followed by uBlock being broken in Chrome. Followed by uBlock being tarpitted in Firefox. Followed by FreeTube client getting 403 IP forbidden requests and DRM content shovelled down which could not be rendered.
They just did everything to make sure I watched the ads and burn all my bandwidth, which can be somewhat limited and expensive as I travel a lot.
myko · 13m ago
Did you consider YouTube Premium? It works really well and no ads. Seems like a pittance for the service YouTube provides
labrador · 3h ago
I'd gladly pay for YouTube without ads if I trusted that it would remain ad free, but the track record from various companies on this is not good.
Karsteski · 3h ago
I tried paying for YouTube premium then they fucked around by not giving me all the features I paid for when I was visiting another country. There's no winning with these people.
dandellion · 2h ago
I paid premium a few months, then they added shorts and there was no way to block them, so I installed a blocker and stopped paying for it.
jamesfmilne · 3h ago
I've been paying for YouTube premium for probably 2 years now. Never had any inserted ads. Only the "this video is sponsored by" stuff, which you can just skip over.
I can't possibly go back to non-Premium YouTube, and if they mess around with Premium I'll probably be moving on from YouTube.
raincole · 2h ago
Youtube premium has been ad-free for 10 years. What kind of track record do you need? 20 years? 100 years?
vinyl7 · 2h ago
Netflix and other streaming sites have ads on some paid subscriptions. First they start with ad free subs, then introduce ads and introduce a higher priced tier to get rid of ads
WrongAssumption · 46m ago
Can't you just stop subscribing when that happens? You aren't signing a 5 year contract.
raincole · 1h ago
So if one supermarket sold expired food, we should avoid another supermarket that has not been doing that for 10 years? Google/Youtube doesn't own Netflix. If anything, the reasonable response would be to unsub Netflix and sub its competitors, like, uh, Youtube.
npteljes · 2h ago
I just pay them until it works, and I'll reconsider once it changes. Don't worry about track record, you can stop paying anytime.
jorvi · 2h ago
Don't let everyone responding gaslight you. YouTube Premium is absolutely stuffed with ads[0] (sorry, 'promoted content' / 'sponsorship'). The only probable explanation I have for this is that Google has successfully boiled the frog and people mentally don't even register these things as ads anymore.
And that's not to mention pretty much every single creator stuffing sponsored sections into their videos now. We have Sponsorblock for now, but I imagine Google will try to introduce random offsets at some point which will render Sponsorblock mute. Maybe an AI blocker will rise up in the future?
At any rate, fight fire with fire. Just use every bit of adblocking on desktop, Revanced on Android and hope that Revanced or Youtube++ comes to iOS 3rd party stores at some point.
Edit: since people are too lazy to click on the link and instead ram the downvote button in blind rage, image 1 and 4 contain straight up ads, unconnected to creators.
jowea · 2h ago
I think people just decided it doesn't count as ads when it's the creator doing it. And it feels more tolerable since the money is going to the creator that they probably like instead of megacorp Google.
jorvi · 1h ago
1 and 4 contain straight up ads.
imiric · 1h ago
I'm honestly baffled why anyone who objects to ads would still want to use any of the official YouTube clients. Whether or not they show ads to you on YouTube, they still track your every move and use it to improve their profile of you so that they can show you ads on any of their other platforms, sell your data, or whatever other shady business they do behind the scenes to extract value from it.
Adtech cannot be trusted. I refuse to support their empire whether that's financially or with my data and attention.
iLoveOncall · 3h ago
So pay now and stop paying if they introduce ads? It's not like it's a lifetime subscription.
I've been paying for it for a year+ for my girlfriend who was watching more ads than content and we've never seen ads since.
labrador · 3h ago
That's good to know. I was hoping for a reply like yours. I will subscribe. YouTube is an amazing resource for human kind and I agree those of us who can afford it should pay to support it.
j45 · 3h ago
Totally, there's not a lot of places to vote with your dollars to get rid of interruptions like Ads, and also get back a lot of time of your life.
stefan_ · 2h ago
They rolled out the Chrome "kill adblockers" update globally then unleashed the new wave of YouTube "anti-adblock" a month later. While in a literal losing court case thats suggesting Chrome be split out from Google as a whole. They must be so confident nothing can touch them.
matheusmoreira · 3h ago
Paying to avoid ads just makes your attention even more valuable to them. Always block them unconditionally and without any payment.
Ads are a violation of the sanctity of our minds. They are not entitled to our attention. It's not currency to pay for services with.
ThunderSizzle · 51m ago
Or rather, don't use YouTube without paying.
Youtube isn't free, and unlike a simple blog, requires tons of infrastructure and content creation. None of that is free, and people wanting that to be free is why we're in adscape hell.
Edit: I'd love for a competitor to youtube, but there isn't. Rumble isn't a real competitor, and none of my favorite channels place their content there either.
I wish there was a youtube alternative that was more of a federation, but every attempt I've seen of federations have been mess.
theoreticalmal · 2h ago
That’s quite a stretch. I loathe ads as much as anyone else here, but I don’t consider being exposed to them as violating the sanctity of my mind (is my mind even sacrosanct, such that it could be violated?) it’s just something I don’t like.
And yes, attention is absolutely a currency that can be used to pay for things. Like any other voluntary transaction, no one is entitled to my attention unless we both voluntarily agree to it.
card_zero · 2h ago
That implies voluntarily paying attention to adverts, as an informal contractual obligation. You aren't allowed on Youtube any more because you haven't been allowing the adverts to influence you enough. You can't look away or think about something else, that's cheating on the deal.
sensanaty · 57m ago
Advertisements have been proven countless times to be a form of psychological manipulation, and a very potent one that works very well. After all, if it didn't work we wouldn't be seeing ads crop up literally every-fucking-where, including these days even in our very own night sky in the form of drone lightshows. The ad companies have huge teams of mental health experts in order to maximize the reach & impact of their advertisements on the general populace.
Ads are so powerful that they've even managed to twist the truth about plenty of horrific shit happening to the point of affecting the health and safety of real people, sometimes literally on a global scale. Chiquita bananas, De Beers, Nestle, Oil & Gas companies, and must I remind you of Tobacco companies (and surprise surprise, the same people who were doing the ads for Big Tobacco are the ones doing ad campaigns for O&G companies now)? There have been SO MANY examples from all these companies of using advertisements to trick and manipulate people & politicians, oftentimes just straight up lying, like the Tobacco companies lying about the adverse health effects despite knowing for decades what the adverse health effects were, Or Oil & Gas companies lying about climate change via comprehensive astroturfing & advertisement campaigns [1].
This all barely scratches the surface, too, especially these days where you have platforms like Google and Meta enabling genocides, mass political interference and pushing things like crypto scams, gambling ads and other similarly heinous and harmful shit to the entire internet.
The TL;DR of all of this is that yes, advertisements absolutely are psychological warfare. They have been and continue to be used for absolutely vile and heinous activities, and the advertisers employ huge teams of people to ensure that their mass influence machine runs smoothly, overtaking everyone's minds slowly but surely with nothing but pure lies fabricated solely to sell people products they absolutely do not, and will never need.
> I don’t consider being exposed to them as violating the sanctity of my mind
I do. I think it's a form of mind rape. You're trying to read something and suddenly you've got corporations inserting their brands and jingles and taglines into your mind without your consent. That's unacceptable.
> attention is absolutely a currency that can be used to pay for things
No. Attention is a cognitive function. It has none of the properties of currency.
These corporations are sending you stuff for free. They are hoping you will pay attention to the ads. At no point did they charge you any money. You are not obligated to make their advertising campaigns a success.
They are taking a risk. They are assuming you will pay attention. We are entirely within our rights to deny them their payoff. They sent you stuff for free with noise and garbage attached. You can trash the garbage and filter out the noise. They have only themselves to blame.
dangraper2 · 9m ago
Not mind rape, actual rape.
luoc · 3h ago
Can you elaborate a bit? Why would that make my attention more valuable than other's?
tyre · 3h ago
If you are a paying subscriber, you are self-identifying as (likely) a higher net-worth. The problem for ad platforms allowing paid opt-out is that the most valuable users leave the network.
Then they have to go to advertisers and say, “advertise on our network where all the wealthier people are not.” A brand like Tiffany’s or Rolex (both huge advertisers) aren’t going to opt into that.
layer8 · 2h ago
A YouTube subscription doesn’t exactly break the bank. Being able to afford it doesn’t make you wealthy.
Apart from that, you can bet that YouTube is pricing it in a way that they aren’t losing out compared to ad revenue.
h2zizzle · 1h ago
It's a decent chunk of change for the sole purpose of avoiding ads on a single platform that barely pays the people actually producing the content. If you're looking to access premium content and YouTube Music, it's a slightly better value proposition (but only slightly, because YTM sucks, especially compared to what GPM used to be). For that ~$120 a year, you could buy a bunch of Steam games to occupy the same amount of time as your YT habit. Or you could buy a sub to services like Nebula which actually pay content creators decently. Or you could buy an external hard drive, install yt-dlp, and embrace Talk Like A Pirate Day, Groundhog Day-style.
layer8 · 1h ago
I mean, yeah, if you don’t actually get much use out of YouTube, then it might not be worth it to you. But that’s the same for all streaming services. And I wasn’t commenting on whether it’s worth it or not, which of course is subjective, but on how big an expense it is in absolute terms. The former doesn’t relate to the “higher net worth ads” argument, the latter does.
Personally I do like YouTube Music, due to all the user-uploaded content that isn’t available on other platforms.
h2zizzle · 54m ago
$12 is a week of chicken thighs, man. It's enough gas to make $60-$80 running UberEats orders. In America. In "absolute terms", it's $100+ dollars a year to turn off ads on a single platform for content the creators are compensated pennies for.
People who choose that without much thought - because it's barely an expense for them - are definitely tending towards "higher net worth" nationally, let alone globally. A lot of those people just don't realize it, because the entire point of seeking that kind of status is so that they can enter a socioeconomic bubble and not have to care about annoyances (like advertising).
matheusmoreira · 2h ago
Because by paying you are demonstrating you have more than enough disposable income to waste on their extortion. You're paying for the privilege of segmenting yourself into the richer echelons of the market. You're basically doing their marketing job for them and paying for the privilege.
At some point some shareholder value maximizing CEO is going to sit down and notice just how much money he's leaving on the table by not advertising to paying customers like you. It's simply a matter of time.
Take a third option. Don't pay them and block their ads. Block their data collection too. It's your computer, you are in control.
krelian · 2h ago
You gotta love the mental gymnastics people will go through to convince themselves that not paying and blocking ads is the morally correct thing to do.
If you truly have those beliefs the right moral action is to not use YouTube at all but god forbid you'd have to make any sort of sacrifice.
dangraper2 · 7m ago
It is still my right to murder to uphold your lack of morals
card_zero · 2h ago
I don't use Youtube at all, but I keep thinking I'm missing out and should make the effort to find a way to circumvent tracking. I can't see that the morality points to an obligation to absorb adverts. There can be no contract on the basis of what your mind must do.
Edit: let's step through this. If I use a towel placed over the computer to block ads, that's morally the same as using blocking software, I think? If I block the ads by putting my fingers in my ears and staring at the ceiling, also the same thing, morally. If I block them by watching them in a negative frame of mind, saying that I dislike ads and won't do what they suggest, I'm still doing the bad thing, the same as using an ad blocker - if it is a bad thing. My obligation, if it is an obligation, is to be receptive. Otherwise what, it's a sort of mind-fraud?
h2zizzle · 1h ago
Adding: advertisements use as many hacks as possible to grab your attention. You could broadly categorize things that behave in this way as akin to a) a baby's cries (attention-seeking by something that absolutely requires your assistance), b) an alarm (attention-seeking by something that seeks to warn you), or c) being accosted (attention-seeking by something that seeks to harm you for its own benefit). Which are advertisements most closely aligned with? Is it the same across all advertisements, or do intentions vary? People likely assign varying levels of morality to the above examples; does advertising inherit the morality of the most closely aligned example?
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
The point is most people will never pay. That makes the Adblock/anti-adblock war inevitable for them. If you can afford it, you sidestep it. If you can’t or won’t, you don’t. Pretending there is some point where those folks would pay is a little delusional in my view.
j45 · 3h ago
Youtube premium has remained adfree as far as I know.
Best to try it out yourself. I can't watch Youtube with Ads ever anymore.
If a 100% Ad-free youtube premium at the current price point ever went away, something would have to change about the ads.
lpcvoid · 3h ago
Nah, Firefox with ublock origin is better than giving money to google.
iLoveOncall · 2h ago
You also give money to the creators you watch by watching ads or watching with YouTube premium.
You also can't block ads on iPhones, which a majority of the developed world uses. My girlfriend has never watched a YouTube video on something other than an Apple device for example.
heraldgeezer · 1h ago
>You also can't block ads on iPhones, which a majority of the developed world uses. My girlfriend has never watched a YouTube video on something other than an Apple device for example.
People really live like this... ? Like those who watch movies on their phones lmao.
Also, Brave works on iphone -> m.youtube.com adfree :)
Then again I went years not using conditioner and moisturiser for my skin, only deo... We all need tips from people who know better you know. (Im white.)
theoreticalmal · 2h ago
I get an ad-free YouTube experience for $0 with software. Why do you pay for it?
cbeley · 2h ago
Because I want to actually support content creators. I also want it to be more normalized to pay for things vs having ad supported content.
card_zero · 2h ago
Do you think giving money to the world's largest ad agency will encourage them to change their business model?
cbeley · 1h ago
Their business model is already in line with my values. I give them money and in exchange I get an ad-free experience. They don't need to change.
card_zero · 36m ago
If you care about whether content is ad supported or not, then Google are behind most of the world's ad supported content, and need to change, irrespective of your own transaction, unless you think transactions like that will change them. That's why I asked. It would be nice if it worked.
matheusmoreira · 7m ago
Then subscribe to their Patreon instead of paying YouTube.
fakedang · 2h ago
Folks be adopting all sorts of irrational arguments just so they can defend their habits. Do you also prefer having middlemen in other areas such as healthcare and education?
Creators can just as easily pop a Patreon or BuyMeACoffee these days in a few clicks. In fact, most creators constantly admit that Google pays them peanuts for their view counts. But support the leviathan for reasons unknown I guess.
cbeley · 1h ago
I also back people on patreon. Isn't it irrational to expect something for free? If you don't like the service or it doesn't align with your values, simply don't use it.
Also, isn't patreon also a middleman by your definition?
WrongAssumption · 41m ago
Patreon and BuyMeACoffee are middlemen...
dandellion · 2h ago
Plus you can block shorts. You can't do that with premium.
I got fed up and stopped paying for premium, now I get no shorts and no ads, it's a win-win.
naikrovek · 3h ago
I pay for YouTube premium for my family and there haven’t been any injected ads at all. Only the ones that the video themselves have in, which are also very annoying.
I can’t speak for the future, but I’ve had this for probably 5 years and I haven’t seen a single ad, only the videos that I’ve asked to see.
dexterdog · 1h ago
That's what sponsorblock is for
j45 · 3h ago
Same experience.
The family plan is nice to share with family to reduce how much everyone's exposed to ads.
In-Video sponsorships are a pain, sometimes they are chaptered out enough and can be skipped.
If I could pay for an ad-free google search I probably would. Off the shelf, not doing API calls.
It works amazingly well provided a video's been out for at least a half hour or so. It also has the option to skip the "like and subscribe" parts too.
I also tried the https://dearrow.ajay.app/ extension to replace clickbait titles, but decided I'd rather know when a channel/video is too clickbait-y so I can block/unsubscribe.
ThunderSizzle · 44m ago
I wish many of these suggestion worked for casting.
Browser extensions don't fix a chromecast skipping ads, for example. It'd have to be written into the casting client, I'd presume.
j45 · 28m ago
Yeah, this can be a consideration, and also a non-issue with Youtube Premium
ProllyInfamous · 3h ago
If you simply add a `-` (en-dash) between the `t` & 2nd `u` in the URL, your viewing experience automatically skips all external ads, without login/premium.
Syntax: www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w
This also works for playlists, and auto-repeats.
edit: is this getting downvoted because it works and people are worried this service might disappear should this bypass become too popular..? Just curious.
Changing your hosts file helps but it would only block hostnames primarily used for ads and trackers - it wouldn't address those trackers and ads loaded from hostnames shared with actual content. The more sophisticated sites will proxy their tracking and ads through their main app:
E.g. www.cnn.com/ads.js
I prefer having multiple layers just in case anything drops off:
1. VPN DNS / AdGuard local cached DNS
2. uBlock Origin
It's like wearing two condoms (but it feels better than natural).
Beijinger · 1h ago
Why the downvote?
deanc · 2h ago
Chrome full on blocked uBlock Origin (and others) this week. There is still four flags [1] you can play with that will allow you to re-enable it again, but this is a losing battle of course. The inevitable is coming.
Nothing comes close to Safari battery life on MacOS, followed by chrome, followed by firefox in last place (with all its other issues - those claiming otherwise have stockholm syndrome). I've tried taking Orion for a spin which should offer the battery life of Safari with the flexibility of running FF and chrome extensions - but it hasn't stuck yet. As much as I'd like to use FF, I really don't want to shave 10-20% (?) off a battery charge cycle when I spend 90% of my day in the browser.
>>with all its other issues - those claiming otherwise have stockholm syndrome
What issues? Works just as well as Chrome ever did (before they started blocking extensions at least) for me.
Brian_K_White · 2h ago
And I value FF way more than an hour of battery.
All day every day my computer works fine.
That difference in battery, if it exists, doesn't actually materially manifest anywhere. But the difference between FF and anything else matters basically every minute all day.
On top of that, even if I ever did actually run into the difference, needing to plug in before I would have anyway, it's an annoyance vs a necessity. The ability to control my own browser is frankly just not negotiable. It doesn't actually matter if it were less convenient in some other way, it's simply a base level requirement and anything that doesn't provide that doesn't matter what other qualities it might have.
You might say "a computer that's dead doesn't work at all" but that never actually happens. I'd need an 8 hour bus ride with no seat power to get to the point where that last missing hour would actually leave me with no computer for an hour, and that would need to be a commute that happens twice every day for it to even matter.
For me that's just not the reasonable priority.
echelon · 2h ago
This should lead to a full-on antitrust breakup of Google. Period.
They own the web.
I can build my business brand, own my own dot com, but then have to pay Google ad extortion money to not have my competitors by ads well above my domain name. And of course the address bar now does search instead of going to the appropriate place.
I agree exploiting a bug isn’t a sustainable solution. But it’s also unrealistic to think switching is viable.
Additionally: you would be surprised how infrequently you have to switch to chrome
Because that has worked so well so far...
You have a point about iPhones, though. It's almost pointless, but not quite: it does get a few features, like cross-platform sync. "Real" Firefox is one of the things that keeps me on Android.
1) Apple would never force "Chromium" on any of their platforms. You might be mistaking it for WebKit, but browsers are not required to use Apple's shipping version of WebKit on a Mac either.
2) Firefox on every single platform not on the iPhone & iPad uses and has always used Gecko. I'm not aware of any other exceptions besides those two platforms, but the Mac definitely isn't one of them.
1. These can all be disabled by advanced users (largely without consequence)
2. They dont prevent things like installing apps or even gaining root access in the first place.
The very fact that you can install Linux is evidence of the different approach taken with macs (you can't easily install Linux of ios devices)
I have always been able to.
I'm on a mac and happily use Firefox. Have done for over a decade. It would take a lot to encourage me to move to a proprietary browser (Edge, Chrome, Safari).
Maybe I'm out of touch, but the attachment to Chrome that some people seem to have (despite the outright privacy abuse) is baffling to me. I mean, ffs, are a couple of minor UI compromises (not that I experience any - quite the opposite) enough to justify what I consider a frankly perverted browser experience? I'm inclined to conclude that some people have little self respect - being so willing to metaphorically undress for the big G's benefit.
I swear - people have such a hard on for hating Mozilla because it fails to live up to an impossibly high standard, while giving all the other corporations doing actual harm a free pass.
Otherwise, though, Safari still supports MV2. Everyone seems to think webRequestBlocking is the only relevant change in MV3, but it's not. Equally important IMO is arbitrary JavaScript injection into web pages, which MV2 allows but MV3 does not.
MV3 is so locked down that you can't even use String.replace() with a constructed JavaScript function. It's really a nightmare.
Google's excuse is that all JavaScript needs to be statically declared in the extension so that the Chrome Web Store can review it. But then the Chrome Web Store allows a bunch of malware to be published anyway!
Now I'm on Android, and Ironfox is pretty good and Firefox is also available. The browser story on Android is leaps and bounds ahead of iOS.
Also names like "Adblock Plus" scare me. I don't want someone I don't trust getting my web activity.
Sorry to break it to you, but yes, they are.
https://ads.apple.com/
George Carlin: "You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities, they're on the same boards of directors, they're in the same country clubs, they have like interests, they don't need to call a meeting, they know what's good for them and they're getting it."
The interests of APPLE (who makes money on hardware, and credit card processing) don't align with the interests of Google (who makes money on ad's). I am all for open source, I'm all for alternatives. But honestly if you own an iPhone and a Mac then safari makes a lot of sense. I happen to use safari and Firefox on Mac and am happy to bounce back and forth.
I also keep an eye on ladybird, but it isnt ready for prime time.
And I'm still going to have a chrome install for easy flashing of devices.
The argument that "Google still controls Chromium so it's not good enough" is exactly the kind of FUD I'd expect to back up this kind of psyop, too.
I find this notion completely baffling. I use Chrome, Firefox and Safari more or less daily cause I test in all 3, and other than Safari feeling clunkier and in general less power-user friendly, I can barely tell the difference between the 3, especially between chrome and FF (well, other than uBlock working better in FF anyways).
I made some other changes, but I forget what. At least FF still has the full uBlock Origin.
I didn't, for decades, but it was a mistake.
Whole portions of the Verizon website, for example. Or the website of a well known kindergarden I was researching recently.
I think it's a case of yes, it does work, but web developers don't think so, so they implement checks just for kicks.
Indeed, even in the codebase at $JOB that I'm responsible for, we have had some instances where we randomly check if people are in Chrome before blocking a browser API that has existed for 2 decades and been baseline widely available. These days 99% of features that users actually care about are pretty widely supported cross-browser, and other than developer laziness there's literally no reason why something like a banking app shouldn't work in any of the big 3.
I guarantee you that if you set your `userAgent` to a Chrome one (or even better yet, a completely generic one that covers all browsers simultaneously, cause most of the time the implementation of these `isChrome` flags is just a dead simple regex that looks for the string `chrome` anywhere in the userAgent), all problems you might've experienced before would vanish, except for perhaps on Google's own websites (though I've never really had issues here other than missing things like those image blur filters in Google Meet, which always felt like a completely artificial, anti-competitive limitation)
His point was that there isn't enough time to again develop Firefox (or ladybird) as a competitive browser capable of breaking the Chrome "monopoly". I don't know if I really agree.
Evidently, Google feels like the time is right to make these kinds of aggressive moves, limiting the effectiveness of ad blockers.
The internet without ad blockers is a hot steaming mess. Limiting the effectiveness of ad blockers makes people associate your browser (Chrome in this case) with this hot steaming mess. It is difficult to dissociate the Chrome software from the websites rendered in Chrome by a technical lay person. So Chrome will be viewed as a hot steaming mess.
I guess we will soon see if people will stay on Chrome or accept the small initial pain and take the leap to a different browser with proper support for ad blockers. In any case the time is now for a aggressive marketing campaign on the side of mozilla etc.
I am in no way affiliated with Google. So if you still think this is a PsyOp, please consider Hanlon's Razor:
> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Although, please also consider that Hanlon's Razor itself was coined by a Robert J. Hanlon, who suspiciously shares a name with a CIA operative also from Pennsylvania. It is not unimaginable that Hanlon's Razor it in itself a PsyOp. ;)
Aside from Ladybird and Servo, it mostly is one wallet. Chrome and Firefox are both funded by Google, and Apple also receives significant funding from Google for being the default search engine in Safari.
Btw, some informal estimates at team sizes (full-time employees) of the various browsers (by people who have worked on them / are otherwise familiar):
Chrome: 1300
Firefox: 500
Safari: 100-150
Ladybird/Servo: 7-8 (each)
Which gives you an idea of why Chrome has been so hard to compete with.
That is very different than a world where every browser relies on Google for the core of their browser… and those who don’t rely on Google for funding (as they pay a lot of money to be the default search option in major browsers). Even Microsoft gave up on making their own browser, and now depends on Google. They used to own the entire market not so long ago.
People are saying this is a psyop, but I’m not sure what Google stands to gain from giving off the impression that they are seeking to control the entire market so they can steer the direction of the web for their own profit. That doesn’t make them look like the good guy, and should keep them neck deep in anti-trust filing from various governments. Where’s the upside? People feeling like they don’t have an option, so they give up and settle like Microsoft? Is that the angle?
So they admit that MV3 isn't actually any more secure than MV2?
Make Signal video call to someone in front of a laptop, provide verbal instructions on what to click on, read to my liking, and hang up to be connected with someone else next time.
(EFF’s Cover Your Tracks seems to suggest fresh private tabs w/iCloud Private Relay & AdGuard is ineffective. VMs/Cloud Desktops exist but there are apparently telltale signs when those are used, though not sure how easily linkable back to acting user. Human-in-the-loop proxy via encrypted video calls seems to solve _most_ things, except it’s stupid and would be really annoying even with an enthusiastic pool of volunteers. VM + TOR/I2P should be fine for almost anybody though I guess, just frustrated the simple commercial stuff is ostensibly partially privacy theater.)
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/302
I also think uBlock Origin is so important and trusted it should not only be an exception to the whole thing but should also be given even more access in order to let it block things more effectively. It shouldn't even be a mere extension to begin with, it should be literally built into the browser as a core feature. The massive conflicts of interest are the only thing that prevent that. Can't trust ad companies to mantain ad blockers.
It's entirely possible to manually vet extension code and extension updates in the same way that Mozilla does as part of their Firefox recommended extensions program.
> Firefox is committed to helping protect you against third-party software that may inadvertently compromise your data – or worse – breach your privacy with malicious intent. Before an extension receives Recommended status, it undergoes rigorous technical review by staff security experts.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...
Other factors taken into consideration:
Does the extension function at an exemplary level?
Does the extension offer an exceptional user experience?
Is the extension relevant to a general, international audience?
Is the extension actively developed?
UBO is absolutely incredibly important. Figure you might know more than me about how journalists and reviewers and the like can still earn a keep in a world with adblockers built in to every browser.
Absolutely. The web is mostly ad funded. Advertising in turn fuels surveillance capitalism and is the cause of countless dark patterns everywhere. Ads are the root cause of everything that is wrong with the web today. If you reduce advertising return on investiment to zero, it will fix the web. Therefore blocking ads is a moral imperative.
> Worry about the interim where some publishers would presumably cease to exist.
Let them disappear. Anyone making money off of advertising cannot be trusted. They will never make or write anything that could get their ad money cut off.
People used to pay to have their own websites where they published their views and opinions, not the other way around. I want that web back. A web made up of real people who have something real to say, not a web of "creators" of worthless generic attention baiting "content" meant to fill an arbitrary box whose entire purpose is to attract you so that you look at banner ads.
Besides, there's ways of having powerful extensions WITH security, but this would obviously go against Google's data harvesting ad machine. The Firefox team has a handful of "trusted" extensions that they manually vet themselves on every update, and one of these is uBlock Origin. They get a little badge on the FF extension store marking them as Verified and Trusted, and unless Mozilla's engineers are completely incompetent, nobody has to worry about gorhill selling his soul out to Big Ad in exchange for breaking uBlock or infecting people's PCs or whatever.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
>snitches to Google
cool, thanks man
Oh wait he got nothing at all anyway ;)
Let's do a thought experiment: if OP hasn't reported it, what do you think would happen then? Even if different ad blockers would find it later and use it, Google would have still removed this. Maybe they'd even remove extensions that have (ab)used it from Chrome Web Store.
So now it's abuse to make the user's browser do what the user wants, for the user's benefit, to protect the user from, you know, actual abuse.
Perhaps a hobbyist would code “MV2-capable” MV3 adblocker for the fun of it, forking UBO or something, as a proof-of-concept. How much time would anyone spend on its development and who would install it when the max runway’s a few days, weeks, or months?
https://github.com/r58Playz/uBlock-mv3
Good job.
I'm not aware of a Blink-based browser that isn't dropping manifest V2. That would be a soft fork, and wouldn't survive long.
Do you even try to use software you are using? Click shield icon and turn off...
GL with whatever.
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This workaround was fixed the same year in 2023 and yielded a $0 payout, on the basis that Google did not consider it a security vulnerability.
The conclusion then is that uBO (MV2) stopped working for me today after restarting my computer, I suppose.
If other chromium based browsers didn't have this issue, that would be great, but likely in time Youtube won't support browsers that don't have MV3. Probably still have some time though.
Let them take google money for as long as it flows. You can switch to librewolf at any time if FF itself ever actually goes bad in any critical way. But there's not a lot of reason to do so until the minute that actually happens. Go ahead and take the funded work and updates as long as it exists.
I tend to oscillate back and forth every few years gradually.
Lately not Chrome proper, there are some neat browser takes worth trying out like Vivaldi, Brave, Arc, etc that are Chromium based.
Why does this keep getting repeated? It's not true.
Anyone can use uBlock Origin Lite with Chrome, and manifest v3. It doesn't just work fine, it works great. I can't tell any difference from the old uBlock Origin in terms of blocking, but it's faster because now all the filtering is being done in C++ rather than JavaScript. Works on YouTube and everything.
I know there are some limits in place now with the max number of rules, but the limits seem to be plenty so far.
Doesn't seem true to me. If it's true, then why is uBlock Origin Lite functioning properly as an adblocker for me?
> Why do you think it is called Lite?
Because it's simpler and uses less resources. And they had to call it something different to distinguish it from uBlock Origin.
> About "uBO Lite should be fine": It actually depends on the websites you visit. Not all filters supported by uBO can be converted to MV3 DNR rules, some websites may not be filtered as with uBO. A specific example in following tweet.
You can read about the specific differences in the FAQ:
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
My personal take is if you're a pretty unsophisticated user and you mostly don't actually interact with the add-ons at all, Manifest V3 will probably be fine.
If you understand how ads and tracking work and you are using advanced features of the extension to manage that, then Manifest V2 will be much, much better. Dynamic filters alone are a huge win.
I also agree that these discussions can be frustrating. In my opinion, that's because people claiming that Lite isn't good enough only seem to post super vague stuff, like links to the FAQ that list a bunch of technical details about what it can't do, when I don't understand the practical upshot of those things. Or vague assertions that it's not doing something which is allegedly important, where it's never actually explained what that thing it's not doing is and why it's important.
I have yet to see anybody show a specific example of a website where Lite doesn't actually work well enough. Or of any other specific thing it's not doing. I don't think I should have to read a series of 20 web pages dense with specialized technical details to understand what it's supposedly not doing. If it can't be explained simply and clearly what it's not doing that's so important, maybe it's not actually missing anything important at all.
I suppose I am a unsophisticated user of web browsers. I never got around to understanding or interacting with all the details of what "proper" uBO can do. Yet I still seem to browse the web just fine, and even build webapps sometimes, and I don't see any ads. So what's this great thing that I'm missing?
Maybe it's less effective in some theoretical case, but not anything I've seen. People talk as if it's only blocking 10% of the ads it used to, when the reality seems to be 99.999% or something. And it's faster now.
And they removed stuff like the element zapper but that has nothing to do with Manifest v3. It's because they literally wanted it to minimize resources. You can install a dedicated zapper extension if you want that.
I genuinely don't understand where this narrative of "adblockers don't work anymore on Chrome" is coming from. Again, it's just not true, but keeps getting repeated like it is.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
Okay. Sure.
This is demonstrably false, ublock lite proves that adblockers can work without it.
Whether or not ublock lite is missing functionalities because of MV3 is irrelevant to the original statement that adblockers need webRequestBlocking.
uBO Lite is missing plenty of features: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
It can be relevant depending of how you define properly. If it depends on any of those functionalities that are missing, then it’s relevant.
Well, thanks for nothing?
I remember when Firefox was getting traction, it had a killer feature: speed.
A chromium fork could come with a simple killer feature: bringing back the possibility of blocking requests.
I’m pretty sure it would quickly gain traction.
At work I use Edge (MS integration w SSO and all). Edge has some nice features like vertical tabs and copilot. (yes, email writing with AI is nice)
We are allowed Chrome and FF so have those too with ublock on FF. Chrome is 3rd choice if a site really needs it and for testing.
Too bad the work one is still locked to 128 ESR :(
Even ignoring the adblock issues, Chrome isn't worth it... Google themselves spy on you with it. Cockblocking adblock just puts extra emphasis on what you should have already known.
When this became adversarial, which was a battle that lasted the last year of inconvenience I ended up dumping every Google thing I have. So the Pixel is GrapheneOS now with no Google crap. Browser is Firefox. Email has moved from Gmail to Fastmail with a domain.
My Google account is closed after 20 years. The relationship is dead. They can do what they want. I don't care any more.
They just did everything to make sure I watched the ads and burn all my bandwidth, which can be somewhat limited and expensive as I travel a lot.
I can't possibly go back to non-Premium YouTube, and if they mess around with Premium I'll probably be moving on from YouTube.
And that's not to mention pretty much every single creator stuffing sponsored sections into their videos now. We have Sponsorblock for now, but I imagine Google will try to introduce random offsets at some point which will render Sponsorblock mute. Maybe an AI blocker will rise up in the future?
At any rate, fight fire with fire. Just use every bit of adblocking on desktop, Revanced on Android and hope that Revanced or Youtube++ comes to iOS 3rd party stores at some point.
[0]https://imgur.com/a/3emEhsF
Edit: since people are too lazy to click on the link and instead ram the downvote button in blind rage, image 1 and 4 contain straight up ads, unconnected to creators.
Adtech cannot be trusted. I refuse to support their empire whether that's financially or with my data and attention.
I've been paying for it for a year+ for my girlfriend who was watching more ads than content and we've never seen ads since.
Ads are a violation of the sanctity of our minds. They are not entitled to our attention. It's not currency to pay for services with.
Youtube isn't free, and unlike a simple blog, requires tons of infrastructure and content creation. None of that is free, and people wanting that to be free is why we're in adscape hell.
Edit: I'd love for a competitor to youtube, but there isn't. Rumble isn't a real competitor, and none of my favorite channels place their content there either.
I wish there was a youtube alternative that was more of a federation, but every attempt I've seen of federations have been mess.
And yes, attention is absolutely a currency that can be used to pay for things. Like any other voluntary transaction, no one is entitled to my attention unless we both voluntarily agree to it.
Ads are so powerful that they've even managed to twist the truth about plenty of horrific shit happening to the point of affecting the health and safety of real people, sometimes literally on a global scale. Chiquita bananas, De Beers, Nestle, Oil & Gas companies, and must I remind you of Tobacco companies (and surprise surprise, the same people who were doing the ads for Big Tobacco are the ones doing ad campaigns for O&G companies now)? There have been SO MANY examples from all these companies of using advertisements to trick and manipulate people & politicians, oftentimes just straight up lying, like the Tobacco companies lying about the adverse health effects despite knowing for decades what the adverse health effects were, Or Oil & Gas companies lying about climate change via comprehensive astroturfing & advertisement campaigns [1].
This all barely scratches the surface, too, especially these days where you have platforms like Google and Meta enabling genocides, mass political interference and pushing things like crypto scams, gambling ads and other similarly heinous and harmful shit to the entire internet.
The TL;DR of all of this is that yes, advertisements absolutely are psychological warfare. They have been and continue to be used for absolutely vile and heinous activities, and the advertisers employ huge teams of people to ensure that their mass influence machine runs smoothly, overtaking everyone's minds slowly but surely with nothing but pure lies fabricated solely to sell people products they absolutely do not, and will never need.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE
I do. I think it's a form of mind rape. You're trying to read something and suddenly you've got corporations inserting their brands and jingles and taglines into your mind without your consent. That's unacceptable.
> attention is absolutely a currency that can be used to pay for things
No. Attention is a cognitive function. It has none of the properties of currency.
These corporations are sending you stuff for free. They are hoping you will pay attention to the ads. At no point did they charge you any money. You are not obligated to make their advertising campaigns a success.
They are taking a risk. They are assuming you will pay attention. We are entirely within our rights to deny them their payoff. They sent you stuff for free with noise and garbage attached. You can trash the garbage and filter out the noise. They have only themselves to blame.
Then they have to go to advertisers and say, “advertise on our network where all the wealthier people are not.” A brand like Tiffany’s or Rolex (both huge advertisers) aren’t going to opt into that.
Apart from that, you can bet that YouTube is pricing it in a way that they aren’t losing out compared to ad revenue.
Personally I do like YouTube Music, due to all the user-uploaded content that isn’t available on other platforms.
People who choose that without much thought - because it's barely an expense for them - are definitely tending towards "higher net worth" nationally, let alone globally. A lot of those people just don't realize it, because the entire point of seeking that kind of status is so that they can enter a socioeconomic bubble and not have to care about annoyances (like advertising).
At some point some shareholder value maximizing CEO is going to sit down and notice just how much money he's leaving on the table by not advertising to paying customers like you. It's simply a matter of time.
Take a third option. Don't pay them and block their ads. Block their data collection too. It's your computer, you are in control.
If you truly have those beliefs the right moral action is to not use YouTube at all but god forbid you'd have to make any sort of sacrifice.
Edit: let's step through this. If I use a towel placed over the computer to block ads, that's morally the same as using blocking software, I think? If I block the ads by putting my fingers in my ears and staring at the ceiling, also the same thing, morally. If I block them by watching them in a negative frame of mind, saying that I dislike ads and won't do what they suggest, I'm still doing the bad thing, the same as using an ad blocker - if it is a bad thing. My obligation, if it is an obligation, is to be receptive. Otherwise what, it's a sort of mind-fraud?
Best to try it out yourself. I can't watch Youtube with Ads ever anymore.
If a 100% Ad-free youtube premium at the current price point ever went away, something would have to change about the ads.
You also can't block ads on iPhones, which a majority of the developed world uses. My girlfriend has never watched a YouTube video on something other than an Apple device for example.
People really live like this... ? Like those who watch movies on their phones lmao.
Also, Brave works on iphone -> m.youtube.com adfree :)
Then again I went years not using conditioner and moisturiser for my skin, only deo... We all need tips from people who know better you know. (Im white.)
Creators can just as easily pop a Patreon or BuyMeACoffee these days in a few clicks. In fact, most creators constantly admit that Google pays them peanuts for their view counts. But support the leviathan for reasons unknown I guess.
Also, isn't patreon also a middleman by your definition?
I got fed up and stopped paying for premium, now I get no shorts and no ads, it's a win-win.
I can’t speak for the future, but I’ve had this for probably 5 years and I haven’t seen a single ad, only the videos that I’ve asked to see.
The family plan is nice to share with family to reduce how much everyone's exposed to ads.
In-Video sponsorships are a pain, sometimes they are chaptered out enough and can be skipped.
If I could pay for an ad-free google search I probably would. Off the shelf, not doing API calls.
It works amazingly well provided a video's been out for at least a half hour or so. It also has the option to skip the "like and subscribe" parts too.
I also tried the https://dearrow.ajay.app/ extension to replace clickbait titles, but decided I'd rather know when a channel/video is too clickbait-y so I can block/unsubscribe.
Browser extensions don't fix a chromecast skipping ads, for example. It'd have to be written into the casting client, I'd presume.
Syntax: www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w
This also works for playlists, and auto-repeats.
edit: is this getting downvoted because it works and people are worried this service might disappear should this bypass become too popular..? Just curious.
More concerning is that social fixer was turned off: https://socialfixer.com/
MFGA Make Facebook Great again ;-)
E.g. www.cnn.com/ads.js
I prefer having multiple layers just in case anything drops off:
1. VPN DNS / AdGuard local cached DNS 2. uBlock Origin
It's like wearing two condoms (but it feels better than natural).
Nothing comes close to Safari battery life on MacOS, followed by chrome, followed by firefox in last place (with all its other issues - those claiming otherwise have stockholm syndrome). I've tried taking Orion for a spin which should offer the battery life of Safari with the flexibility of running FF and chrome extensions - but it hasn't stuck yet. As much as I'd like to use FF, I really don't want to shave 10-20% (?) off a battery charge cycle when I spend 90% of my day in the browser.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1lx59m0/resto...
What issues? Works just as well as Chrome ever did (before they started blocking extensions at least) for me.
All day every day my computer works fine.
That difference in battery, if it exists, doesn't actually materially manifest anywhere. But the difference between FF and anything else matters basically every minute all day.
On top of that, even if I ever did actually run into the difference, needing to plug in before I would have anyway, it's an annoyance vs a necessity. The ability to control my own browser is frankly just not negotiable. It doesn't actually matter if it were less convenient in some other way, it's simply a base level requirement and anything that doesn't provide that doesn't matter what other qualities it might have.
You might say "a computer that's dead doesn't work at all" but that never actually happens. I'd need an 8 hour bus ride with no seat power to get to the point where that last missing hour would actually leave me with no computer for an hour, and that would need to be a commute that happens twice every day for it to even matter.
For me that's just not the reasonable priority.
They own the web.
I can build my business brand, own my own dot com, but then have to pay Google ad extortion money to not have my competitors by ads well above my domain name. And of course the address bar now does search instead of going to the appropriate place.
Google is a scourge.