Google is Killing uBlock Origin. No Chromium Browser is Safe.
Google is Killing uBlock Origin. No Chromium Browser is Safe.
We’ve been anticipating it for years,1 and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the ...
What pisses me off is seeing more and more "You need to upgrade your browser for this site!" when using Firefox.
Having to use a spoof header gets frustrating frequently too.
In my head I respond “you need to upgrade your website to handle my rad browser, fellas”
I haven't seen such warnings for years anymore
Several of my utility companies and bank sites do this still. It's absurd and in the stranger places.
I haven't seen this warning in 6 years
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This has been done for decades. It is PR 101, and it is done to indoctrinate and subsequently normalize XYZ onto the average consumer/citizen.
In Marketing, you get taught that the average person has a memory of 3 to 6 months for issues like this, at the most. So, if you can afford to stretch something for longer, than acceptance on average, will always go up. Attention span are short. In other cases, it alleviates any cases of legal liability. Since no one can say they were not warned.
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It has always been a common strategy. Aim for the extremes, and then move to your actual goal to seem reasonable and make the opposition think they won.
uBlock may have enough support to start their own maintained fork, and be the upstream for all the other quiet browsers. That dude is like THE ONE GUY that makes chromium sane, and doesn't even take donations?!
That's madness, I was literally about to donate to him today but I check the site you're absolutely correct. No donations :(
This article has some misinformation in places. Like it claims Vivaldi's ad-blocker cannot be investigated further because the project is closed source, but the only closed source part of Vivaldi is the UI (approximately 5% of the total code). The ad-blocker C++ code is published along with the other 95% of the browser's code.
I was actually under the impression the whole browser was closed. Thanks for the clarification
No worries, it's not surprising you thought that because there are quite a lot of people out there like OP who spread complete misinformation about browsers they dislike/don't use.
It is, it is just source available. Still closed source.
You don't think a tarball dump is harder to investigate than a CVS repository? I never claimed it was impossible to investigate further, just that it was harder to.
Where is the misinformation?
But that's not what you claimed. Direct quote from the article (bold emphasis is mine):
Vivaldi users point out that the built in blocker is noticably worse than uBlock Origin, with some guessing that Vivaldi doesn’t fully support uBlock Origin filterlists (Vivaldi is closed source, so it’s harder for users to investigate).
You clearly implied that the reason Vivaldi's source code regarding ad-blocking is harder for users to investigate is because it's closed source. This is not true.
My dad used to watch TV and I always wondered why given how shit it was, nothing but ads. He told me about how great it used to be when he was a kid. I can't help think the same thing is happening now with the internet. It's dying. It's already shit compared to 10 years ago and I only see it getting worse. Our generations will cling to it remembering what it used to be though, just like he did.
We will have services to scrape the internet to cleanup the garbage.
The difference between linear tv (that your dad watched) and the internet is that there is no alternative to the latter.
Lemmy's kinda helped me see a different perspective. It's just old man talk. Like, the internet is still there. Everything that once was, still is. Just a lot more shit the rest of everyone is usually using. Stop trying to keep up with everyone using all these popular sites for everyday life like they did with TV. Find obscure websites and dedicated forums for your topic. Don't rely on Googletm to find the internet for you. Before, you actually had to find a site (magazines, social/network circles) then hope that site had a search function if you're looking for something particular (this is the old internet everyone craves lol, it wasn't perfect by any means/rose tinted glasses).
You can use the internet just like you did back in the day and have the same experience. It's just that the majority of the world uses the connection for a "TV"-like feed with main popular sites and apps. There's still more people using and improving the "old internet" compared to the 90's, so it's only a net positive in my book.
In an ideal world the headline would be “Google kills Chrome by preventing users from blocking ads”.
History repeats itself.
Some Old Thing (software/website/service/whatever) becomes bad, and people get really upset. Initially, many say that SOT is going to die. Techies switch from SOT to New Great Thing. For a while, techies at NGT celebrate and pat each other on the back for making this brilliant move.
Meanwhile, normies at SOT continue to use it. They hate it at first or even complain about it, but eventually they get used to how bad SOT is. Every now and then, they hear about NGT, but they just can’t switch because reasons.
After a few years it’s clear that, SOT hasn’t died yet, but also continues to have quite a few users too. Some people end up using both, while a small group of people vow to never touch SOT ever again. SOT and NGT both continue to exist, because apparently there are enough users for both.
I’ve seen these things happen so many times, that it’s about time to point out that there’s a pattern. Just look back at any tech controversy over the past 30 years and you can see it usually follows this pattern pretty well.
I finally switched to Firefox when I couldn't remove the ads on my casual browsing. Now I'm told Firefox isn't cash money either? Wtf is going on here.
forks of firefox still keeping things going such as mullvad browser, waterfox, librewolf
WaterFox!
If the other main Chromium based browsers can figure out (or keep in the instance of having their own extension stores) how to support for V2 extensions. Then it would be easier to recommend replacing Chrome to normies and other folks with those options. As one of the main issues comes down to lots of sites (especially stuff like school or work) doing the modern version of IE and are coded to really only work with Chrome.
I was advising customers to just use Edge if they needed Chrome for those reasons. And a lot of them did since it meant not installing extra programs. Though it is currently hard to recommend Edge due to MS seeming to find more and more "features" to add that make shit really annoying and scummy. It is like they are trying so hard to make it not worth using at all. So Brave and Vivaldi are the new options I tell people about.
Brave's main downside (IMO) is the crypto stuff maybe confusing/pointless for folks. Vivaldi's main downside (and upside for users that love it) is how overwhelming levels of customization settings. But they both don't have their own extension stores. Opera could also work since they have their own extension store. I hate how it and the GX version love to automatically set themselves to launch on Windows startup (fuck all of them that try to do this as well).
You should check the provenience of your alternatives. Except maybe Vivaldi these aren’t really better.
Brave is the offspring of "libertarian" (sociopathic authoritarian billionaire supporting JD Vance) Peter Thiel.
https://marketrealist.com/p/who-owns-brave-browser/
Thiel, among other things, founded palantir, facial recognition software used by police worldwide.
https://www.palantir.com/platforms/
He hates the western world. Hates democracy.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/donald-trump-steve-bannon-peter-thiel-214490/
Openly states his plans to destroy the economy and implement a crypto financial system.
https://www.axios.com/2023/03/14/founders-fund-run-silicon-valley-bank
And, this is true, he's the current president of the bilderberg group.
https://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/meetings/meeting-2024/participants-2024
He is not your friend.
He should never be trusted.
Brave is not the private browser you think it is.
By supporting brave you are supporting an authoritarian technocratic state.
I don't love Peter Theil by any means, and his association with any project is, to my mind, enough to completely discredit it.
But I get a little worried when it starts turning into references to the bilderberg group, and whatever that link is to NCIO.ca is just completely nuts, low evidence jumping to conclusions.
He certainly has crazy ideas, but I think it crosses the line into conspiratorial to suggest he was instructed by Germany to act as a foreign agent to sabotage the global economy.
Which lines of its libre software source code are malicous?
Brave also uses chromium.
Before Brave better use https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium
Brave is a series scam company
You want free and private internet - Ok You don't want ads - Ok So who is going to give you something for free and why?
Funny as the internet was designed as being free.
Maybe just educate yourself a little. In general, not just about that.
Oh well? I think you should educate yourself a little, it was never designed to be free, it was designed for army for long distance fast and reliable communication, later evolved to be a service, no service is free, providers aren't gods to give you anything for free.
FOSS Communities:
Ok So who is going to give you something for free and why?
People who value the ability to do publish information, or engage in personal expression, for starters.
I don't mind ads so much. What I don't want in invasive tracking and collection of every scrap of data they can to push ads on you. Give some dumb ads based on the damned contents of the page and I would be fine. But no, ads is basically a synonym for tracking these days.
Ad block is the number one thing you can do on the Internet to reduce your risk to exploits, phishing, etc. The US government recommends the use of ad block specifically for this reason. Usage of ad block is basic internet security hygiene.
I know what adblock is and how works, I use, that doesn't change the fact it is just ruining free internet, if everyone used adblockers google, youtube, gmail and all other apps would not be free (you think why youtube ads are getting longer and longer?) If you use something for free, you either abuse someone's work, or you sell your data, no free things on this world.
If you've got no purpose hosting a website, don't. We don't need you.
I knew it will be downvoted, but you have to realize, nothing is free in this world kids, I don't like it too, but it is what it is.
Bro's paying for grep.
Ok boomer
posted on social media developed for free using a standard specced out for free running on servers people are allowing you to use for free...
Whether or not current models are sustainable is beside the point. Obviously they aren't, ad blockers weren't developed for shits and giggles but to stop increasingly intrusive practices.
nothing is free
Plenty of things can be and are free at the point of service/point of consumption/utilization.
That's all they need to be. And there just has to be enough willpower to do that from enough people.
You’re paying for the air you breathe? Lots of things are free. Capitalists who want you to pay for what you shouldn’t will try to convince you otherwise.
This world is what ever we make it, and literally everything we need to live is free, from water to food to shelter. The earth literally just does all that.
I love how they gave a TL;DR right at the beginning of the article, it made me stay and read the rest out of respect for the author.
Google lives of the ads (among the things), of course a browser they develop is going to screw the add-ons that block ads. Solution: avoid google if you want an ad-free internet.
Edit: typo