Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective.

(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months).

At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).

  • 🖖USS-Ethernet@startrek.website
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    48 minutes ago

    When is this happening? I’ve been telling my wife and kid that they need to stop using chrome for a year, but ublock is still working for them and blocking YouTube ads. They are the type that won’t switch until it becomes a problem for them.

  • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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    56 minutes ago

    Move, yeah. To Firefox… meh. The writing’s not on the wall yet, but we’re not going to ignore the very heavy signaling Mozilla has been doing for years now.

    • cmhe@lemmy.world
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      15 minutes ago

      DNS ad blockers are not sufficient to block all ads and often overly broad. So they have much higher rate of false positives and negatives compared to in-browser ad blockers. Differentiating between ads and useful content based on domain names will become more and more difficult. Both might use some url from the same cloud provider, and blocking those breaks a lot of stuff.

    • Flying_Hellfish@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      porque no los dos? I use both and there are things uBlock can catch/block that AdGuard Home doesn’t seem to be able to. That said AdGuard makes mobile pages readable, when most these days are a complete nightmare of ads

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    57 minutes ago

    I heard that google is sending fake focus groups invites to males around your area. Yeah, it’s true! Someone gullible enough to drive to their facility and sit in their special google chairs. Once they sit, the chair 💺 traps them and a small machine arm approaches in between their legs, injects local anesthesia and procedes to remove the genitalia. It was a really well done Fox News report that I heard on MPR. It’s supposed to be part of alphabet’s war on cancer. They will eventually have the robots smart enough to remove only cancer cells. But yeah, for now it’s removing the whole thing. So be on the lookout for that. And ads! I hate the ads!

  • MC_Lovecraft@lemm.ee
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    3 hours ago

    I remember the internet before Google, and how game changing it was to have all of the internet indexed in one place (even if that wasn’t actually quite true back then). If you had asked me 15, 10, even 5 years ago if I would be cheering its downfall and yearning for a return to a simpler, far less centralized internet, I would have called you crazy. And yet here we are.

    • turtletracks@lemmy.zip
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      1 hour ago

      Right? I don’t think anyone using Chrome with adblockers is just gonna be like “oh well, guess we got ads now”

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    5 hours ago

    I downloaded Librewolf today - the privacy oriented fork of Firefox!

    Good to see there are browser variants that aren’t just Chrome.

    • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      I’ve been using librewolf for a several months. Be careful because streaming doesn’t always work on it due to DRM features, and YouTube has been spotty AF. With YouTube it might start the video a couple seconds into it, buffer for no discernable reason, or just skip a few random seconds.

    • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Until you actually need a chromium based browser. I get so annoyed when this happens.

      • LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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        1 hour ago

        Almost 20 years and I’ve never needed a Chromium browser for anything. I’m sorry you were forced to use such garbage ass software.

        • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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          23 minutes ago

          I have chromium installed for the sole reason to cast some streams to my remote TVs. Otherwise it stays closed. I tried some work around with FF, but I couldn’t get it to work. It’s only once or twice a week for live sporting events, so I can stomach it.

          • LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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            19 minutes ago

            I understand where you’re coming from. It’s never happened to me, but if a website didn’t work with Firefox, I would just assume it’s a shit site ran by rookies who know nothing, and move on to a different site. I understand most people don’t have that kind of principle though.

            • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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              16 minutes ago

              It’s not that the site doesn’t work in FF, it’s that casting the stream from that site to a remote TV in the house is only possible in chromium, at least with my current device setup. If I just watch on my computer, I watch in FF.

              • LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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                14 minutes ago

                Ah, you did say that. I’m sorry for my misunderstanding. I’ve never tried that, and you’re the first I’ve seen to mention it. I concede to your argument.

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        3 hours ago

        In what situation do you need one?

        I’ve been using Firefox for over a decade and have literally never once needed to open a different web browser. For anything, ever. This is a very common complaint that tons of people seem to have that I have never seen happen even once out in the wild.

        • Zetta@mander.xyz
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          2 hours ago

          I also use Firefox on my work computer, I need to quickly authorize a login in the browser before the local “app” opens (“app” because it’s just a webpage pretending to be an app) and I just recently got a notification that slack won’t support Firefox anymore so please switch to chrome. The fucking animals.

        • suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.ml
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          3 hours ago

          Several government websites for the state of Pennsylvania complain and refuse to work if they detect that you aren’t using chrome/edge/safari.

          • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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            2 hours ago

            You can spoof your useragent to appear as chrome. And you should as it makes your browser less “unique”

          • poke@sh.itjust.works
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            2 hours ago

            Do the sites work if you use an extension that lies to them about what browser you are using?

        • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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          2 hours ago

          Firefox is getting so small it’s starting to disappear out of the testing matrix. Confluence has issues with it, you can’t always log into Vanguard on Firefox, many news website layouts have overlapping elements on Firefox, quite a few shopping websites too (H&M in Europe has a long-standing but with putting stuff in the shopping basket until they revamped their website a couple of months ago). Etc etc. I see it ALL the time.

      • Supervisor194@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        As if installing and using something else means you can’t have Chrome lying around for that one stupid website.

        • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          And I do. Sometimes I’ll just fire up Edge if Chrome isn’t installed since it’s chromium based.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        There’s still Vivali which is Chromium based and still supporting V2 extension (like uBlock) until June 2025. Its not a full fix, but its a stay of execution. That said, I’m a FF primary user.

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          2 hours ago

          Vivaldi isn’t entirely open source, if that matters to you.

          Brave would be my recommendation, I just disable the crypto stuff.

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        3 hours ago

        If people used other browsers, then the market share would change and this would become less and less of a problem.

    • Album@lemmy.ca
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      5 hours ago

      yep firefox with arkenfox for me, same deal as librewolf. And Mull on mobile.

      Switched about 2-3 months ago thinking it might be difficult or impact me negatively or something but its been easy and great.

      • kitnaht@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        You know the problem I have with Librewolf? – Fuckall nobody knows how to spell it.

        The beauty of Firefox is that even the densest idiot knows how to spell those two words. And with attention spans the equivalent of a gnat, people need to have things simplified for them as much as humanly possible.

        Fortunately enough, Firefox is about the only one with a renderer that isn’t controlled by Google, but - even now they’re shifting to a pro-advertising stance and backing off of the privacy orientation that they took just a year or two ago.

        • Supervisor194@lemmy.world
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          Yes, and we will drop Mozilla when it drops uBlock as well. We will all get behind whatever open-source browser stops ads, and it will very quickly become the most widely used browser. Why? Because everybody despises fucking ads and you can’t curb-stomp them into liking ads, that’s why.

          Google can spend all the money it likes trying to piss on users and tell them it’s raining but at the end of the day, a new king will be crowned and if it isn’t Chrome and it isn’t Firefox, then it will be something else.

          And no, FOSS doesn’t need money behind it. FOSS needs a dedicated community behind it. Assertions to the contrary are FUD constantly being seeded by Google, Microsoft and their ilk to destroy competition. This is an existential necessity for Google, you can bet they are doing everything in their power to maintain the status quo.

  • AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca
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    4 hours ago

    The lack of HVEC/h.265 support is kind of a deal breaker in firefox (windows nightly builds don’t count as done). I need it to view h.265 security cameras and the occasional movie streamed via browser.

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    2 hours ago

    I just installed Postmarket OS on my Arm based Chromebook, to be able to switch to Firefox.

    • prole@sh.itjust.works
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      4 hours ago

      yt-dlp is the gold standard. Not only for YouTube either. Check out the man page, the amount of shit it can do is insane.

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      4 hours ago

      yt-dlp is what i normally use, tho its only got a command line interface. I think someone’s made a GUI for it, but I’ve never tried it.

    • Grangle1@lemm.ee
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      3 hours ago

      A great privacy focused client for YouTube is FreeTube. Uses a native API or Invidious for playback, and you can download and share videos from it. Doesn’t give any identifying info to Google/YouTube and I’ve never once dealt with an ad. For mobile, Grayjay and NewPipe are similar apps.

  • PunchingWood@lemmy.world
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    Well, looks like then I might have to start shutting down my use of Chrome.

    I used to be fine with adverts, not a big deal. Until they became insanely intrusive. Noticed that YouTube recently stopped to even show the countdown to skip or the length of the actual ad on some devices/apps, so it’s always guesswork when you can actually skip or how long it would run after the skip becomes available. And the amount of ads going in videos is getting disgusting as well, I know it’s partly up to the creators, but fucking hell I often get ads like not even a minute into the video already, often running longer than the time I’ve spent actually watching the video.