Google’s campaign against ad blockers across its services just got more aggressive. According to a report by PC World, the company has made some alterations to its extension support on Google Chrome.

Google Chrome recently changed its extension support from the Manifest V2 framework to the new Manifest V3 framework. The browser policy changes will impact one of the most popular adblockers (arguably), uBlock Origin.

The transition to the Manifest V3 framework means extensions like uBlock Origin can’t use remotely hosted code. According to Google, it “presents security risks by allowing unreviewed code to be executed in extensions.” The new policy changes will only allow an extension to execute JavaScript as part of its package.

Over 30 million Google Chrome users use uBlock Origin, but the tool will be automatically disabled soon via an update. Google will let users enable the feature via the settings for a limited period before it’s completely scrapped. From this point, users will be forced to switch to another browser or choose another ad blocker.

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  • haui
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    101 month ago

    Not sure firefox will be on our side after the recent ad tracking debacle. If they implement one more anti consumer feature I‘m jumping ship.

    • @przmk
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      281 month ago

      Jump ship to what? Not like there’s s lot of choices out there. You could always try LibreWolf.

        • @przmk
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          131 month ago

          They plan a release for 2028. It’s going to be a while before it can be used for everyday browsing.

          • @[email protected]
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            61 month ago

            That’s true, but it’s worth waiting. Until then Librewolf is probably the best choice.

      • haui
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        41 month ago

        That would be my first address, assuming the librewolf folks will never accept anti community code, hopefully.

        If everything fails i‘m fine to join a small project and help with it. I have some skills and can contribute financially.

      • TWeaK
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        31 month ago

        Plenty of Firefox forks out there.

        • @[email protected]
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          261 month ago

          Purged of unwanted and intrusive features, UBO pre installed, and is pre configured for increased privacy.

          • @[email protected]
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            31 month ago

            Tried librewolf recently and although worked well (linux mint) had all sorts of scaling issues and wouldn’t keep my settings. Just using as a backup to FF until I can figure it out. FF only just started failing to play YT unhindered.

            • @[email protected]
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              31 month ago

              Things are getting strange if you activate too much privacy settings. For example, all websites appear in light mode (because most people use light and thus is less value to track you) and for some reason, webUI with integrated terminals were not able to draw the ASCII text, it was just rainbows 😂 (proxmox and hombridge)