We’ve been anticipating it for years, and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.
Now that it is finally happening, many seem to be oddly resigned to the idea that Google is taking away the best and most powerful ad content blocker available on any web browser today, with one article recommending people set up a DNS based content blocker on their network 😒 – instead of more obvious solutions.
I may not have blogged about this but I recently read an article from 1999 about why Gopher lost out to the Web, where Christopher Lee discusses the importance of the then-novel term “mind share” and how it played an important part in dictating why the web won out. In my last post, I touched on the importance of good information to democracies – the same applies to markets (including the browser market) – and it seems to me that we aren’t getting good information about this topic.
This post is me trying to give you that information, to help increase the mind share of an actual alternative. Enjoy!
It blows my mind that there are major companies that are actively, and very publicly- working their asses off to undermine the interests of their own customer base. And not only are they still are enabled to exist- they’re profits are constantly growing. Which means, despite their nefarious and intrusive updates to their services…. People are eating it up!
Nothing will change until people do the work to make that change.
Take YouTube for example:
They have screwed people over time and again. From their content creators, to those that enjoy watching them. Yet- those that hate it so much would seemingly never organize themselves to boycott their services on a level that will ever hurt them.
So they continue to do it unstopped.
Nothing changes until something changes. It isn’t ever easy, but if you want it to happen badly enough, it is always worth it.
All it takes is for someone to stand up and take the reins!
(I cannot be that person as I have ADHD and will probably forget that I wrote this come later this afternoon)
Hate to break it to you, but you are not Google’s customer. Don’t believe me? How much did you pay for Chrome?
This move is in fact being made with their actual customers in mind.
You’re correct, but your argument is bad. I also paid $0 for Linux.
And look how many Linux distro producing companies there are that are the size of Google or that earn even a significant fraction of what Google earns.
Linux is a totally different ballgame. It started out with open source and free access in mind. Linux distros are often made by volunteer developers who do it for the love of the game, non-profit companies, or companies that have found some way to monitize it like RHEL. And companies certainly pay for support, standardization, and exhaustive stability validation. There’s also the commercial use of Red Hat’s customizations, and arguably faster responses to patching vulnerabilities.
Sooo… those that buy ads you mean.
Google is an advertising company. Vertical integration ftw?
I just use DNS or VPN for adblocking , no need for browser addons
To my knowledge, DNS blockers not only miss a ton of ads, they also trigger several false positives.
A better solution is to switch to something not chromium like Firefox or whatever alternative the next Linux person to read this comment recommends
Ublocks lists are available as hostlists as well. Yea Firefox for the PC , vanadium (chromium) for the phone. No problem running all of it as well , if you have a little bit of power to spare. Haven’t had any issues on adguard DNS plus proton adblock
Firefox also has a mobile app with full extension support on Android, including uBlock origin
Yea problem is however that using Firefox on Android is using Firefox and chromium WebView. Så twice the problems. Sticking to vanadium. No issues at all as far as I noticed regarding adblocking. Next phone will hopefully be a Linux one. If there ever is such a thing that works and matches mid-top level androids. Then it will be a Firefox based one (not the standard one as it is riddle with Google stuff)
I’ve been using Firefox on Android since it came out. I’ve had 0 issues.
And as far as I’m aware, the newest version of Android Firefox (previously called “preview” doesn’t use an ounce of chrome, even for temporary browser pages
Yea try to uninstall the chrome WebView :) . You are using Firefox and chrome. Firefox do have a close connection to Google also telemetry. https://itsfoss.com/librewolf-vs-firefox/
Hardened Firefox, here I come.
For people who want to keep using Chrome for whatever reason, remember to disable auto-update.
Never updating your browser again is a pretty bad idea when it comes to security
Can I just add a different perspective on this?
My dad is really old (like early baby-boomers), and I am basically the in-family tech support when the home computer starts acting strange.
Well, right after google rolled out this update, my dad clicked on what he thought was an online shopping link. It was actually an ad for a toolbar add-on.
QueueCue like 6+ hours trying to uninstall that add-on and the bundled software.I never had to worry about that in the past with him because I had u-block origin installed. Now I need to find something else that can run quietly in the background. And probably a better antivirus.
Is there any organization out there that could actually promote an “Acceptable ad standard”? Like, maybe even something within web specs?
A long time ago, ads were slightly irritating, rarely useful, and considered a necessary evil for gently monetizing the web. We’ve had this slow evolution to draconian tracking nightmares that are genuinely dangerous and often written by malicious untraceable actors. I almost feel like we could pressure back towards decent ads if there was some standard by which they only received basic info about the user, showed basic info about a product, didn’t pollute the experience or ruin accessibility, and were registered to businesses by physical address with legal accountability for things like false advertising.
That is…perhaps a vain hope though. It’s just hard to picture futures where all websites run off of donations or subscriptions, because advertising is fucking hell now.
You mean like https://acceptableads.com/ which is only supported so far by Adblock Plus (and its parent company)?
The problem is until there is some kind of penalty for being too annoying or too resource consuming, it will always be a race to the bottom with more, worse ads. As people add ad blockers to their browsers, the user pool that isn’t running them begins to dry up and more ads are needed to keep the same revenue. This results in even more people blocking them.
Two of the things I had hope for on the privacy side was Mozilla’s Privacy-Preserving Attribution for ad attribution and Google’s Privacy Sandbox collection of features for targeting like the Topics API. Both would have been better for privacy than the current system of granular, individual user tracking across sites.
If those two get wide enough adoption, regulation could be put in place to limit the old methods as there would be a better replacement available without killing the whole current ad supported economy of most sites. I get that strictly speaking from a privacy perspective ‘more anonymous/private tracking’ < ‘no tracking’ but I really don’t want perfect to be the enemy of better.
Acceptable Ads is bullshit on many levels:
- It’s made by an ad company
- The same ad company runs multiple popular ad blockers (including AdBlock Plus)
- There are no standards on privacy invasion
uBlock Origin, or at least uBlock Origin Lite on Chromium-like browsers, are must-haves.
The best browser you can set up for a family member, IMO, is Firefox. Disable Telemetry (which should rid them of Mozilla’s own ad scheme too), install uBlock Origin, remind them to never call or trust any other tech support people who reach out to them, and maybe walk them through some scam baiting videos.
I’m still evaluating which Chrome-likes are best at actual ad blocking, and the landscape is grim.
Firefox needs to work on ensuring seamless compatibility with more websites, web apps and so on, because I’m personally very bored with my kids’ schools and related services sending out emails and forms with links that simply won’t open in FF but are clearly expecting Chrome or Edge where they work fine. Yes, this is on the lazy developers, but if FF want wider scale take-up outside of geeky niche groups then this is the stuff they must fix.
I can’t think of a single example where a web page doesn’t work on FF.
if FF want wider scale take-up outside of geeky niche groups
Lol. I remember when FF was the most popular browser.
I just need a „install as app“ Feature in Firefox, that is not as pain as the webapp Manager app we currently have
On mobile it’s the three dots then the install button that has an image of a cellphone?
I guess, I only know the way on iPhone using “add to homescreen”
What do you mean “install as app”?
Install PWA so that you can start those as normal native apps without it looking like a website in a browser (remove unnecessary window decorations) and cache js for ever, so that the PWA can be used offline, if features are not dependant on API calls
People you can still block the shit of using DNS Adblockers . There are a some free like Mullvad DNS and Adguard.
That’s not as effective, since it can’t block anything that’s hosted from a hostname that also serves regular content without also blocking the regular content. It also can’t trick websites into thinking that nothing is blocked and it can’t apply cosmetic rules. I use it for my devices, but in browsers I supplement it with uBlock Origin (or whatever is available in that browser).
Yeas. But for me is enough .
