Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers

Preorian

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

Mv3 is a chance

Let's be clear here, Mv3 is a detriment and a way for google (*phtui*) to protect their ad-scheme/revenue, not a "chance" to make something better.

zakius

@Preorian it's bad enough it may push browser vendors to offer more than terrible Mv2 extensions can do now, so in that way it is a chance
Chromium variant of uBO is severely crippled due to API limitations and bugs but is considered good enough by many, when even that becomes unavailable it may motivate teams to start working on native, fully fledged content blockers

Preorian

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

to offer more than terrible Mv2 extensions can do now

Oh please, this is pure nonsense.. "terrible" Mv2 extensions? Really? Can't take you seriously after that. Like i wrote earlier, I very much doubt that Vivaldi would put so much effort and manpower that they would reach even close to what gorhill have over the years with uBO. And also, there's a trend with how Vivaldi develops new features with just basic functions, they implement them and then might fix them a bit (if at all) but that's it, many of the new features are just implemented and then abandoned with basic functions, the focus seems to be to implement as many new features as possible, which unfortunately has left a mark on the quality and usability of the new features. Also I have seen lately that the quality overall has degraded, there are more and more bugs. I never thought I would say this after switching to Vivaldi (Firefox user after good-old-opera was sold who waited for Vivaldi to became good enough as a daily driver), but Firefox (with all it's faults and annoyances) starts to seem as an viable option. Vivaldi should focus more on stability at the moment.

zakius

Mv2 are bad and you can't deny that, they can't do basic things
even WE are less crippled, though still a bad joke when compared to Firefox extensions and everyone knows it
the only browser that has even more limited extensions capabilities than Mv2 is Safari and that shouldn't surprise anyone either

and sure, I know V is mostly focusing on "can we slash this on our checklist already?" and that's frustrating, but what else we have in the store? it's either Mozilla getting proper management or Vivaldi polishing things that desperately need attention for years, browsers are way too complex and these two are our only probable options, even if unlikely

and when it comes to content blocking in Chromium, the under the hood work is already done and open source, it just needs more configurability (which obviously can be a huge pain and resources drain and I am well aware of that) but at least the filtering engine is there and has all the required capabilities so there's much less work to do if someone decides to use it

so we have to show we expect configurability from... browser that promises it, it shouldn't be too much to ask when that's the whole point of V's existence, right?

I'm not holding my breath, I'm not keeping my hopes high, but if there's a chance let's show we need this

and Quantum is the only viable option for now, thanks to the hackability, but at some point it may lose that

treego

In Vivaldi, I trust!

Thank you!

julien_picalausa

@preorian: The code of ublock is open source. It's entirely possible to take inspiration from it for our own implementation. It isn't a fast process, but it is much faster than reinventing everything ourselves. The only reason development on our adblocker have stalled is because I have been a bit too busy with sync as of late.

julien_picalausa

@zakius: Our solution is native. Fully implemented in C++.

Pathduck

@julien_picalausa Any chance we some day can have a logger like uBO to show what requests are being blocked and why? It would really help troubleshoot blocker issues

Or maybe is there a way to see some log at the moment? Maybe something in the console?

zakius

@julien_picalausa if it is native it shouldn't rely on the extensions API at all, though may use some of the internal parts used to implement it, possibly the wording of the article was misleading

julien_picalausa

@zakius: It's not relying on the extension API. It's relying on an underlying, internal API, which is also used by the extension API.

zakius

@kalebepalasouza we are well aware it is ABP compatible so when using the same lists it will perform the same, but uBO has a lot of extra functionalities that help a lot and that's what we're asking for, uBO when using the most basic mode with no extra config is merely the more performant option (than other extensions), but when user decides to dive deeper (and we are here exactly for that) the whole new world of possibilities appears

julien_picalausa

@pathduck: You can see what is blocked using devtools. It won't tell you which rule caused the blocking though. But I agree it would be useful to have.

AryanDevasagayaum

@julien_picalausa: I have a crazy idea. Why not integrate Ublock origin within Vivaldi? I noticed that the current Vivaldi ad blocker and tracker is relatively less efficient and effective compare to Brave shields and Ublock origin itself.

MV3 from what I heard (correct me if I am wrong), will limit the powers of any adblock even the legendary UBO. Sure your adblock will survive but looking at its current state idk how well it might do in the future. Why not work with the UBO team?

Pathduck

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

You can see what is blocked using devtools.

That's what I do now. Then I disable the active lists one by one until I find the culprit. Then search through it trying to find the rule in question and see if I can make an exception in my personal list.

Generally I just use uBO - this is more for troubleshooting other user's problem

Let's say it was really tricky to figure out a couple of days ago when the EasyPrivacy list ended with just ||

SwiftyPop

Since Vivaldi's cosmetic filtering is currently quite poor and many websites can identify the Vivaldi Ad-Block, I wish all of Ublock's functions are included into it. Even though I am aware that Ublock is still usable on desktop, the problem with Ublock not blocking ads and trackers in web panels has not yet been resolved. I occasionally experience pop-up advertisements, is that normal? Stock Chrome doesn't even permit these pop-up advertisements to display. Brave and Ublock, in my opinion, are significantly superior to Vivaldi. Even if Brave doesn't have thorough logs, it is still a far better browser than Vivaldi, therefore I switch to it.

Cqoicebordel

Isn't there a way to keep Manifest V2 alongside the V3 ? Could V maintain that code ?

mynameismon

Has the idea of collaborating with other Chrome based browsers to keep Manifest V2 and create an alternative extensions store come up at any time?

Stardust

Perhaps, wise to move away from Chrome?

Yes!

uBlock Origin has become a such an essential extension, that it makes sense to use the browser that supports it the best.

I don't see the point of using an internal Vivaldi ad-blocker because it's too basic and uBlock Origin exists.

Hadden89

@Cqoicebordel guess it will be a chromium enterprise policy: usually they last for months and then go out of support. You still may need to side load and whitelist the extension IDs because they could be still marked as unsupported, then.
V-team is pretty much waiting active chromium/ext-devs response to react. Is a big ecosystem.

Catweazle

I have no doubt that Vivaldis blocker will continue to do its job well, the main problem I see is that with Mv3 the Chrome Store loses validity for other privacy extensions, since these cease to exist in the Store or only continue in a "decaffeinated" form. This means, the most complicated thing for the team is going to create a own store, at least for the most relevant extensions.
In any case, I recommend for those who want to avoid surprises and privacy gaps, to use for the desktop apps such as Pi-Hole or better Portmaster.