Google Pushes Unpopular Chrome Update - What to do!
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Manifest V3 is easily the most controversial Chrome update, breaking Ad Blockers and Tracker Blockers on Chrome and all Chromium browsers.Switch to Firefox o...

Most people still haven’t heard of Manifest V3, so if you are one of those not using Firefox, this is for you.

If you’ve been on YouTube or Reddit August last year, you might’ve seen this screen yourself, or a screenshot of someone else getting it. This of course, I am talking about the infamous YouTube ad blocker blocker popup, discussion exploded on Reddit mostly consisting of people complaining about ads, as well as an angry mob storming r/memes, turning it into a Firefox propaganda centre.

About a month later, different adblockrs eventually found their way of bypassing detection, and they work on YouTube again. So natrually Redditors thought they’ve won another war against big tech, completely ignoring Google’s original plan to kill off adblockers by June this year.

So all extensions, including adblockers follows a specification called the Manifest V2. The Manifest allows extensions to do certain things, say accessing browser tabs or to change browser settings. All while putting some limitations, and prevent extensions from doing crazy stuff like installing a virus to your system. But too much limitation, is what pisses off many extension developers about the upcoming ManifestV3.

In this article written by the EFF, they interviewed developers responsible for popular extensions, where most described ManifestV3 as a downgrade, with some accused it for being purposefully bad. I particularly like this one from the creator of SingleFile, “I consider the migration to Manifest V3 to be a major regression from a functional and technical point of view.”

After an update in June this year, a feature called the WebRequest API will be removed, and the adblockers and tracker blockers that depend on this feature will stop working. Since the business model of Google is to track your online activity and then show you personalised ads, it is not difficult to see why this feature is removed.

Not only are they sacrifising user experience for monetary gain, they are forcing the same update on all Chromium browsers as well. I am hereby devastated to inform you that this is not the first time they have done it, and it will not be the last time they will do it.

But there are also good news, non-Chromium browsers will not be affected by the Manifest V3, and if you are already using one, you will be exempt from any future nonsense Google throws in your way. So if you are considering switching to one, unless Safari is your goto browser, which lacks competent extensions support, you can still get your adblockers, another adblockers, all the adblockers.

So are you going to make the switch before the update? Let me know in the comments down below, anyways I will be seeing you in two weeks, have a good one.

An article for more my ranting needs https://gmtex.siri.sh/fs/1/School/Y12/Cssoc/chromium.html

  • infeeeee@lemm.ee
    1072·
    7 months ago

    Very useful video. I miss that you don’t list the Chromium browsers. A lot of people, the target audience of this video don’t know that edge, opera, vivaldi, brave are all affected some way.

    • siriusmartOP
      244·
      7 months ago

      well, it’s a video making decision. most people these days have virtually negative attention span, and they would click off the video given the slightest chance, and listing Chromium browsers would be too much time for too little argument made.

      I’ve accepted that I’m not mental outlaw and people wouldn’t be tuning in for a podcast, so the best I could do is the minesweep the video and remove any opportunities, because if I don’t do that, most people won’t get past the first 10 seconds, “getting straight to the point” is one of the things I’ve learnt while doing youtube

      • siriusmartOP
        283·
        7 months ago

        also, infographics are great for these explainers video, because i could jam pack so much more information that is otherwise impossible, and in 1:53 I’ve referenced “all chromium browsers” with all their logo on screen, which is insanely efficient because with this visual style of story telling I could brought up two points at the same time:

        • chromium browsers are affected
        • these browsers on screen are chromium browsers
      • LWD@lemm.ee
        47·
        7 months ago

        Brave can keep the old APIs but they’ll still be affected, because developers for Chromium-compatible browsers still have to decide whether they want to create or support apps that will only work in a subset of browsers, and figure out how to distribute them outside the Chromium store.

          • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
            13·
            7 months ago

            Which probably makes use of less tracker blocking techniques than specialized extensions. I mean, uBlock is able to do a lot of things, partly because of its scriptlets that lists can invoke for certain sites.

            • LWD@lemm.ee
              14·
              7 months ago

              Both uBlock Origin and Brave would be nothing without the maintainers of the filters they use.

              Except uBlock’s devs are transparent and supportive of the list maintainers, while Brave (AFAIK) really isn’t.

              • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
                31·
                7 months ago

                Yeah, this kinda sucks. Well, this is what I get for recommending Brave to people I know. I feared that Firefox would be too great a leap.

      • siriusmartOP
        11·
        7 months ago

        yeah but its not the same, sure you could mod your router or use a pihole to get adblocking, but it is not the same convenience as extensions, and by far ublock origin is the best adblocker no arguments raised.

        moreover companies can’t really do much when they are completely reliant on chromium, and they can’t do much except pulling PR stunts and try to sound like they are doing something while all they’re doing is to merge commits from upstream chromium once in a while

        one example is the “we will continue to support v2” stunt by brave, which is not possible as they have 0 experience maintaining a browser, also vivaldi is absolutely proprietary