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Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads (www.windowscentral.com)

submitted 4 months ago by Alsephina@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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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[+] vzq 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

[deleted]

[-] ivn@jlai.lu 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It has some deal breaking limitations:

No filter list that can be updated, you have to update the whole extension to update filters. This adds delay as it has to go through Google verification process, they could even refuse some updates.
Not every type of rules are available on MV3, so it has to drop some filters.
No CNAME-uncloacking.

[-] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It may still block a relatively large part of the ads, but uBlock is not just about blocking ads. Large parts of it's filterlists are about blocking data mining, shitty cookie prompts and similar things.

[-] CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 months ago

This is the bargaining stage of the five stages of grief.

Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 months ago

It is never going to work the same. They are talking about dropping it entirely.

this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024

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