Hey all, I was about to setup uBlock Origin in chromium, when I saw the notice that it may soon be ended due to not following best practices, etc. I looked this up and some articles and posts state that Chrome is discontinuing content blockers / ad blockers soon. Will this apply to the chromium app in Linux?
Other than for testing purposes, my usage of Chromium is for the ability to make some sites into webApps. I just like some to be isolated with their own window and icon. The standard response I see to pretty much anyone is that they should switch to Firefox and stop wanting the webApp. I saw some comments that Firefox does not and will not implement webApps due to some security issues (?? not sure why). I don’t understand how it is difficult just make a standalone window with a custom icon choice. I see no reason that has to compromise anything at all, but I am not a developer.
I’m getting off-track here. So, is Chromium going to go the way Google wants it to go for Chrome? It was my understanding that Chromium is kind of an offshoot and not just up to Google in terms of its course. Will we be able to use extensions that Google doesn’t want, and have to get them from a new repository instead of the chrome web store?
Any insight on this would be appreciated, thanks.
They are deprecating the underlying technology(called manifest V2 or MV2 for short) and replacing it with a different one(MV3) that lacks some of the capabilities for some kind of adblocking.
So yeah, it’s pretty much dead on chromium. The developers of brave have commited to provide a best effort support for their browser though: https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
Firefox on the other end has no intention of deprecating support for MV2 so any browsers based on that are fine. Keep in mind MV3 supports some adblocking and some Adblockers have already moved to it, it’s just a lesser extent.
There’s a less capable Mv3 port of uBlock Origin by the original developer, called ‘uBlock Origin Lite’: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh
I use Chromium only very rarely, so I don’t know how effective it is, though.
It’s effective for probably most typical users (set it and forget it), especially if you “up” the permissions. Downside is the filter rules have to be bundled in the extension, so it doesn’t update dynamically.
I used it on a relatives computer recently. On streaming sports sites it got about 90% of ads but did miss the transparent overlays that open a new page when clicked. UbO handles all of that just fine.
Yeah I saw it.
Brave and Vivaldi have both mentioned they intend to support V2 ongoing.
Brave was more like screw them we got this.
Vivaldi was hesitant and said they would do it as long as they could.
worth clarifying though afaik brave has said they won’t remove v2; not that they will continue to support it… ie if there’s a breaking change in upstream chromium, i’m not sure i have confidence that they’ll spend a bunch of time working around it
They also specifically said the way they block ads is not relative to V2 or V3. They said that even if V2 is completely destroyed they will still have the same ad blocking they have now.
It’s also not clear how long they’d be able to keep that up anyway, given… https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/28/brave-lays-off-27-employees/
In the case of Brave (or Vivaldi, to a certain extent) it doesn’t matter too much, as it has a very capable built-in adblocker. It’s not an extension, so it is not going to be weakened by MV3.