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 …
I hope they end up killing Chrome.
I think you’re being optimistic about the number of people who both use adblockers and who care enough to switch browsers.
Yeah I fear society will get to the point in corporate autocracy, or corporate-feudalism where Google sues uBlock Origin out of existence (for lost revenue).
…and that’ll be a dark day, and it will be hard not to blame the people who just put up with ads and a loss of privacy. Who can just stomach Surveillance Capitalism’s incredibly flawed and one sided nature.
Those people are laying bricks for the foundation of a society I don’t agree with, and don’t want to participate in.
Based on every browser statistic page I can find, about 2/3 of mobile traffic is through Google Chrome. There’s no ad blocker on that.
And mobile traffic is significant nowadays - it comprises around half of all traffic anywhere, despite requiring the viewer to be hunched over a phone or tablet.
Not that many people use real computers any more. At work, you may need to use a computer, but you probably can’t change the browser. At home, you have the PCMR folks who use a computer and probably also care about browsers. Everyone else just uses a tablet or a phone for browsing the web.
Speaking of the web, most people interact with specific websites through an app and an API, so they don’t even launch the mobile browser until they have to visit a site that doesn’t have an app. The world has changed and browsers aren’t as relevant as they used to be.
Are there raw numbers on how many people use web browsers in general? Firefox releases a report, and it’s definitely been dipping, but that dip might be accounted for by a switch to other browsers (based on its percent of market share).
I’d be curious if you had any good sources for this, because my searches are mostly yielding crappy listicle blogs.
I don’t have numbers that would directly address that. However, there are lots of statistics on the number of mobile users vs desktop users when it comes to the traffic in general. This trend has been clearly visible for about 15 years now.
Here’s something I found on a short notice. link
What? They’re not going to kill their own browser that they virtually exclusively control. Why would they kill one of their biggest cash cows? Google is an ad company, and they want control of the client software that we use which they pump ads to and exfiltrate our identities from.
Whoosh
I think they were talking about Chrome becoming obsolete. Unlikely but not impossible
I moved back to Firefox a few years ago on desktop and mobile. It’s perfectly fine and seems less laggy that Chrome.
b-b-b-but brave will still pay me brace bux if i watch their ads right???
Yeah we’ve known this was coming ever since Manifest V3 was a done deal. We’ve had years of foreshadowing and months of warning to get off Chromium.
Vivaldi is including its own adblock outside of the manifest system that uses many of the same blocklists that uBlock does (although at this point you have to add them manually) and hopes to get near the same functionality by the time it is pulled and Mv3 is implemented. They originally had plans to offer a Mv2 compliant area but after seeing how Mv3 was going to be implemented, they changed there plans to many users dismay.
I don’t think many people use Vivaldi. Also it is mostly proprietary so that’s a hard pass for me.
Roughly 92% of the browser’s code is open source coming from Chromium, 3% is open source coming from us, which leaves only 5% for our UI closed-source code.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser-open-source/
Only the UI part is not open source.
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What’s the point of keeping part of the UI closed source?
I’ve seen their reasoning, but I don’t agree with it. The biggest counterexample to their concerns are other browsers: Firefox is no trouble maintaining its IP, and Brave is fully open source yet has not been formed once AFAIK.
In my personal experience, and with great regret, I must say that Brave does a better job with its built-in ad blocking than Vivaldi has. Even after I did my damnedest to tweak the ad blocker settings (adding more lists from more sources, removing the “allow some ads” list, etc).
Brave itself is filled with ads. Crypto wallets, BAT, VPNs. I just want a browser.
But how else will Brandon Eich fund his homophobia and covid conspiracies?
I’m very aware of its built-in bloat, but the ad blocking still seems to perform more like an MV2 ad blocker than an MV3 one (more is blocked even when using the same lists), and it allows you to natively select individual elements to block yourself.
I’ve scene posts about Firefox enterprise from a business perspective. I wonder if we will see Firefox suddenly show up more in the business world. Ublock origin can save you from phishing links and malwarertizing
My company allow the usage of Firefox, Chrome and Edge and these browsers are mandatory installed on our corporate computers. But, our users just pick the Chrome and Edge.
You got to force it then
Be the shitty admin you want to see
Firefox exists and that’s enough
Yeah, agreed
Total ignorant question: how hard would it be to fork (and mostly maintain) chromium keeping manifest V2 support?
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Other Chromium browser vendors have claimed that they will continue to support MV2 based content blockers, later revealing that they were unwilling to support the code once Google removed it.
Xitter doesn’t load for me but this is quoting Brave so I’m not so sure about that
(edit: Though I think Brave has a builtin adblocker so you may not even need it. However, just don’t use Chromium anything at all)
Xitter doesn’t load for me
xcancel.com still works… for now.
Though I think Brave has a builtin adblocker
Further down the article it says “Brave has a number of feature gaps compared to uBlock Origin, resulting in worse effectiveness as well.” It’s hard to beat uBO.
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I believe Brave’s ad blocker is based on uBlock.
nope, it’s made from scratch in rust
You’re right, I found it here. I thought it was based on uBlock because there’s a UI somewhere in Brave for ad blocking that is suspiciously close to uBlock’s UI for blocking specific elements on a site.
there’s also a phyton library that lets you use brave’s adblocker on other browsers like qutebrowser
oh, thx for saying. i also thought it was based on ublock, though im not sure where i got that information from
I think people pushing the Brave browser are partially incentivized to do so by the cryptocurrency.
yeah the only point it has thats actually interesting is crypto, though for anyone who doesnt care about it will probably not like the browser (seriously what does it have that others dont?)
Absolutely not. It’s the least shitty Chromium based browser by far. https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/#brave
i kind of doubt brave is less shitty than degoogled chromium. also, the whole crypto thing already makes it shittier than most others.
I see where you are coming from but degoogled chromium is ridden of the “bad” stuff that Chrome adds, it does nothing to actively fix what is unhardened in both Chrome and Chromium.
It’s also the more relevant criticism, the entanglement of Brave with crypto, but within the chromium ecosystem, it IS the best you can get.
I use
archfirefox btw.
I use brave for years and I’m not into crypto at all. That’s the most convenient browser I found for iOS with adblocking.
Same reason. Such huge amounts of downvotes every time I mention Brave. I get it, the CEO is dick. Most are.
Sure, but you don’t have to support it: https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-xpm-2014-apr-07-la-fi-mh-prop-8-campaign-20140407-story.html
Problem is Mozilla leaders aint much better. I use both roughly equally. Still waiting for other browsers to take off.
Given that Eich was the leader of Mozilla for a short while but he found it hard to stay kinda makes me think Mozilla’s leaders are currently better (or at least more acceptable). Can you point to leadership at Mozilla as “bad”?
All true, I’m pretty much saying all are pretty bad. To quote a post from Reddit:
“Reasons to stop supporting Mozilla:
While Mozilla laid off 250 employees then gave their Execs got a colossal salary raise
Delving into politics
Their last major innovation is piggybacking on Mullvad to make a VPN UI which mandates a Mozilla account, so basically a shittier non-anonymous version of Mullvad. (Full disclosure I think Mullvad is pretty damn good, just Mozilla’s spin on it is garbage). Even Firefox relay is a complete cashgrab compared to its independent alternatives like anonaddy.
Mozilla doesn’t deserve your donations nor your usage. They are paid off by Google to make their grubby search engine the default. They don’t need your money.
The Mozilla we knew is not the one we have anymore”
Here are the links;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary-achievements_correlation_controversy
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/
https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-signs-lucrative-3-year-google-search-deal-for-firefox
I’d like a more independant way to browse the web, a browser has become as important as my OS and I want to see a Linux of browsers!
Wasn’t Brave doing some shady stuff a while back?
Seconded.
