Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers

[DoctorG]

@luizavvv Oh, yeah, Mozilla is independent from big companies money - NOT. Most users ignore that and gives a sh.... when money comes from US companies and tax evasion "foundations".

Yes, it is sad that there is no free browser engine. But we live in a real world outside of a Stallman FOSS universe.

[Catweazle]

@luizavvv , FF is subvencioned by Google, in change Mozilla send data to Alphabet.inc, a Google advertising company.

[xyzzy]

Some good news, I suppose -- the full transition to Manifest V3 has been delayed/postponed: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/more-mv2-transition/

[Hadden89]

@xyzzy So the chromium community pressure meant something, after all. Now they have a lot of time to amend the worst aspects of the declarative API and keep their predominant market share =3

[xyzzy]

@Hadden89 I wouldn't go that far. It's just my opinion, but I don't believe that Google could care less about what users think. The only thing that would matter to them is if enough people stop using Chrome (and actually uninstall it, and switch to another browser) and stop using their services.

So the chromium community pressure meant something, after all.

Manifest V3 contains a number of disruptive changes that affect non-content-blocking extensions as well. The new timeline basically gives enterprise customers more time to migrate their extensions before Mv2 support gets removed from the codebase. For Vivaldi, it also means more time before they need to make changes to the underlying code to keep their content blocker operational.

It also would not surprise me if Google was quietly working on additional changes to their codebase to make life more difficult for Vivaldi, Brave, and others to maintain support for effective content blocking.

[Ayespy]

@xyzzy said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:

It also would not surprise me if Google was quietly working on additional changes to their codebase to make life more difficult for Vivaldi, Brave, and others to maintain support for effective content blocking.

What would surprise me would be if they WEREN'T doing so.

[bariton]

Yes, they develop their client for google services.
Perfect from the view of google, as about everybody uses this engine.
We can't expect a lot of merci, its a business model.

But I don't know how to judge really, they give us a lot for "free", maps, street view, search, mail, 15 gb storage, well.

We just have to accommodate to V3 - and fear to see V4 coming up : -)

Disclaimer: ads are unwanted, disturbing, useless, uncomfortable, and who knows what.

[Catweazle]

@bariton , the underlying problem are not the ads, but the personalized ads, because this involves the collection of personal data and tracking our activities, to sell it to advertisers. This, apart from an invasion of our privacy, is synonymous with a security risk online, since there is no way to verify how these companies treat and protect this data. The multiple cases of leaks of sensitive data in the past, including bank and medical data, show it.

Besides, in the case of search engines, the addition of causing the effect of the bubble filter and the interested manipulations of the information.

These surveillance advertising practices are criminal and directly violate the basic rights of users. No private company has the right to spy on us and the authorities only if there is a court order in this regard in specific cases.

Google certainly has excellent services, but this hardly gives it the right to spy into our private lives, even going as far as reading our mail, if we use Gmail. There are other ways to make money for these companies that do not put our privacy and security at risk.

[bariton]

@Catweazle Yes its right what you say. Is the expression "digital prisoner" invented already? : -)

[Catweazle]

@bariton , digital prisoner if the user does not know the implications of using certain "so good" products, I prefer to do what is necessary to give these companies the door in the nose, if I can not avoid them.

(Vivaldi blocker, JShelter and Site Bleacher extensions, DNS crypt in the OS)

[bariton]

Thank you, I will take a look.
The only extension of defense here is Cookie AutoDelete, seems like Site Bleacher.

[Catweazle]

@bariton , Site Bleacher is better, it deletes not only cookies, also cache, serviceworkers and all other crap of no whitelisted sites.

[bariton]

Cookie AutoDelete does that, too.

[Catweazle]

@bariton , well, it's similar, there are also other, like Forget Me Now, which delete the most, but the Fingerprint Beacons are covered by the JSshelter I use.
I found this comparative

Cookie AutoDelete

• cache
• cookies
• indexedDB
• localStorage
• plugin data
• service workers

Forget Me Now

• cache
• cookies
• indexedDB
• localStorage
• plugin data
• service workers
• downloads
• form data
• history
• passwords

Site Bleacher

• cache
• cookies
• indexedDB
• localStorage
• plugin data
• service workers
• file systems
• webSQL

[bariton]

Thank you, I will read in their forums/issue trackers to see what's going on there.

[LocutusOfBorg]

@Catweazle said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:

the underlying problem are not the ads, but the personalized ads, because this involves the collection of personal data and tracking our activities, to sell it to advertisers.

Personalized or not they both can be major issues. If advertisers had their way you would get a tenth of you screen for browsing the content and the rest would be all ads. Hence why a lot of us don't allow ads at all. I have seen what a lot of sites look like with no ad blocker and it looks like Vegas when they had all the neon signs.

[LocutusOfBorg]

@Catweazle said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:

@bariton , Site Bleacher is better, it deletes not only cookies, also cache, serviceworkers and all other crap of no whitelisted sites.

Cookie Autodelete, Clear Cache, Close All & Clean.

[xyzzy]

@LocutusOfBorg said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:

@Catweazle said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:

the underlying problem are not the ads, but the personalized ads, because this involves the collection of personal data and tracking our activities, to sell it to advertisers.

Personalized or not they both can be major issues. If advertisers had their way you would get a tenth of you screen for browsing the content and the rest would be all ads. Hence why a lot of us don't allow ads at all. I have seen what a lot of sites look like with no ad blocker and it looks like Vegas when they had all the neon signs.

I have a big problem with how the advertising ecosystem operates, and the lengths that companies will go to to harvest personal data, build profiles about our browsing habits and track our movements across the Internet.

Stuff like this bothers me as well: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/09/22/forbes-website-served-malware/

However, ads also fund the free content that we enjoy. It's unfortunate that the business model of the Internet is so hopelessly broken, and that we are still struggling with trying to find workable solutions that can reward content creators and still respect consumers.

[Catweazle]

@LocutusOfBorg , I agree that the ads on the pages can be quite annoying and deserve to be blocked. But these, although they can be annoying, as a general rule they have no further consequences, okay, if they are animations they take away bandwidth and costs if you browse with a data plan.
But if they are based on your history and activities on the network, that is, your data that was recorded and sold to these advertisers, this, apart from an intrusion on your right to privacy, can have dangerous consequences, depending on whose hands this data ends up.

They are filling us with advertisements daily, on TV, in the streets, brochures in mailboxes, spam in the mail to an absurd degree and nobody pays attention to them anymore, therefore their use in itself is quite absurd.
But more on the internet, because there they steal our resources. But worse is the surveillance, since on the internet the lack of privacy is directly synonymous with the lack of security.

[LocutusOfBorg]

@Catweazle said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:

But more on the internet, because there they steal our resources. But worse is the surveillance, since on the internet the lack of privacy is directly synonymous with the lack of security.

More over the lack of freedom. Loose your privacy loose your freedom. As for ads that collect data we are all aware of how bad that is. What I was getting at is I don't mind a few non-intrusive ads at the top, sides, and or the bottom of a page to help support a site. I just don't like turning off all extensions and going to a site just to see how bad it's gotten and seeing so much ad bling that it's almost impossible to concentrate on the actually site content.