The new MV3 architecture reflects Google’s avowed desire to make browser extensions more performant, private, and secure. But the internet giant’s attempt to do so has been bitterly contested by makers of privacy-protecting and content-blocking extensions, who have argued that the Chocolate Factory’s new software architecture will lead to less effective privacy and content-filtering extensions.

For users of uBlock Origin, which runs on Manifest V2, “options” means using the less capable uBlock Origin Lite, which supports Manifest V3.

    • @umbrella@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      yeah the solution here is so simple, yet most people seem allergic to firefox.

      • @Cold_Brew_Enema@lemmy.world
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        126 months ago

        I have serious video playing issues on Firefox. I thought it was ublock, so i tried turning it off but video and live streams still take forever to load they freeze, too. My computer is very powerful so that’s not the issue. No idea what is.

      • @brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I don’t on mobile because it’s way too slow.

        But I guess that isn’t applicable to this post because mobile Chromium doesn’t have ublock anyway…

        And on linux, I have firefox issues with wayland because of some Nvidia thing. Chromium too, but its less severe and I can actually get GPU acceleration working.

        • @jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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          276 months ago

          How is Firefox slow? What exactly are you using Firefox for on mobile? These are honest question, I don’t understand.

            • @micka190@lemmy.world
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              266 months ago

              Not to be the guy that deepthroats Mozilla or anything, but these benchmarks show it being at worst 1 second slower.

              Like, Firefox really isn’t noticeably slower than other browsers in the vast majority of situations.

              • @BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                You’re not wrong, but it should be noted that ‘at worst 1 second slower’ means a lot more when the fastest time is under 2 seconds. Saving 1 second is kind of a big deal when you only have 3 to work with. Closing that much of a gap would be a huge win for Firefox.

                Also worth noting that many of the linked tests are also not directly based on time, and the difference in benchmarking is still fairly substantial. With the exception of the singular test that it came out on top on, the best case among these benchmarks is that firefox mobile is 15-20% slower than Chrome. These benchmarks even include Mozilla’s own Kraken benchmark (where it still comes in last among these results).

                Lastly, do want to say that I hope mobile firefox can catch up on these, but they’ve got a lot of work to do and the odds are stacked against them.

              • @Imprudent3449@lemm.ee
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                36 months ago

                Like, Firefox really isn’t noticeably slower than other browsers in the vast majority of situations.

                I imagine there is a bigger difference on older phones though. An imperceptable difference could easily become unbearable when the phone is a little outdated. I experience it at work using a slightly older PC on Windows 10.

            • @jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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              46 months ago

              It’s one thing to fail benchmarks, but another thing to be perceive so slow that you’d rather use chrome. Maybe I just have low standards in that regard.

          • @brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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            66 months ago

            An old Snapdragon 845 phone, lol. A razer phone 2.

            It just feels sluggish. Pages render slower, especially larger ones, and it eats more battery, especially with extensions like adblockers running.

            It’s especially apparent because the RP2 is like the oldest 120hz phone. Bromite (aka chromium) feels like butter in comparison.

            • ayaya
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              6 months ago

              Same story for me on a OnePlus 5T which is the even older Snapdragon 835. Firefox is genuinely unusable. I tried Mull and Iceraven too. For several months I tried to put up with it, but they were all a slow and buggy mess. Switched to Brave and it works fine.

              I use Librewolf on my desktop for the record.

        • @Naich@lemmings.world
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          246 months ago

          Firefox on mobile has extensions. You can have whatever ad blocker you want. You can automatically replace pictures of trump with kittens. I’m sure there are other extensions that are useful too. I’ll take that over some negligible purported speed increase any day.

          • @vonbaronhans@midwest.social
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            136 months ago

            Once Firefox on mobile got extension support, I switched over immediately to use a decent adblocker. Made sure every app that opens a browser opens in Firefox. Has made my mobile browsing experience so much better, of my goodness.

        • @Saltarello@lemmy.world
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          56 months ago

          mobile Chromium doesn’t have ublock anyway…

          Kiwi browser on Android is Chromium based & has had the ability to add extensions such as uBlock for years

          • @brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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            36 months ago

            Indeed, though I prefer skipping extensions on mobile because (as said above) native implementations tend to be faster and more power efficient.

            Ublock is probably an exception though. It’s quite fast.

      • @pyre@lemmy.world
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        116 months ago

        it wasn’t marketing wank. it was a significant performance difference. people forget Firefox 3.x but i remember. it was fireslug more like.

        • @Covenant@sh.itjust.works
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          36 months ago

          Exactly, i went from firefox to chrome because the performance. Got back to firefox a couple of years ago because the performance didn’t mather between those two.

        • @Grabthar@lemmy.world
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          26 months ago

          I dunno man. I quickly learned to avoid Chrome at all costs because of the performance. Even when it was supposedly “good”, it was always a massive memory hog. Never had that issue with Firefox, and if it ended up taking a few seconds longer here and there to load a page, it would pale in comparison to the overall hit to the system from Chrome. Like being penny wise and pound foolish.

  • @foggy@lemmy.world
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    726 months ago

    Now every public school that uses Chromebooks is going to have children get served ads on taxpayer dollars?

    What could go wrong?

    🍿

      • @Stovetop@lemmy.world
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        156 months ago

        It’s a sad state of affairs modern schools have when an instructor tries to pull up a video on YouTube or other sites to use in class, and an entire classroom of children have to sit through the unskippable ads.

        I guess I’ll take that over the TV documentaries my teachers used to record on VHS that had commercials to fast forward through, but the modern internet truly sucks.

        • @helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
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          76 months ago

          Yup and a significant portion of those ads are definatly not school appropriate… From the mobile game ads that show a mostly naked lady, alcohol, soft-porn (chatbot type stuff), jump scares and whatever other crap google exempts from their “guidelines” for a quick buck.

          The only (official) way to have all kid firendly ads is to use YouTube Kids, which also blocks all the usefull educational videos for anyone older than 4.

    • @corvett@lemmy.world
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      66 months ago

      Google’s Admin Console has an option to continue enabling Manifest V2 extensions. Most schools would be wise to lock down which extensions they let users install anyway, and the zero trust approach is to just deploy what’s needed for access to curriculum.

    • @bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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      46 months ago

      Gotta get em while they’re young, marketing execs drooling over the new wave of consumerist indoctrination!

    • @grue@lemmy.world
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      26 months ago

      It is a good point: other platforms [other than iOS] have an easy solution (Firefox), but on Chromebooks you’re relatively locked in because you have to jump through hoops installing the Linux environment in order to use it.

  • Altima NEO
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    696 months ago

    Good thing I’ve always used Firefox.

    Chrome always seemed more of a curiosity than something I needed to use. I never saw the need to switch from Firefox when Firefox did everything I wanted.

        • @bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          It just has a crap load of software packages it depends on to work properly (though a number of them seem like fonts). I have reasonably fast computer, and it’s been compiling for about 45 minutes at this point.

            • @bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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              56 months ago

              Just did with librewolf-bin, thanks. I always forget to look for the binary packages specifically on AUR.

          • @TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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            36 months ago

            Ah compile… guess I’ll stick with regular Firefox. There are some magiks I don’t tamper with.

                • Refurbished Refurbisher
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                  86 months ago

                  It’s really nice. It’s compatible with all Linux distros and it provides some configurable sandboxing via bubblewrap that you don’t get with other repos. The sandboxing is easilly configurable using a GUI like Flatseal.

            • @grue@lemmy.world
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              46 months ago

              I mean, if you’re intimidated by compiling you probably shouldn’t be using Arch to begin with.

              (I’m hoping that you didn’t understand the “on AUR” part of the comment as well as the “dependencies” part, and actually use a more reasonable distro that isn’t subject to the issue @bobs_monkey is complaining about.)

                • @grue@lemmy.world
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                  36 months ago
                  • Arch is a Linux distribution that intentionally requires a bunch of relatively-complicated manual steps to install, so “I use Arch BTW” has become a meme among people who want to brag about how ‘l33t’ they are.

                  • AUR is Arch’s package manager.

                  • A package manager is a software database that lets you easily install apps with a single command (e.g. [tool-name] install [app-name]) along with all the software libraries they depend on (i.e. their ‘dependencies’), such that you only need one copy of each library no matter how many apps use it.

                  (Without a package manager, there are two other ways installing apps can work: either an app can come with its own copy of all its dependencies, which means it takes up a lot of disk space unnecessarily, or the user can be responsible for installing all the dependencies separately, which is a gigantic pain in the ass. Windows takes the former approach, while Linux, before package managers were invented, tended to do the latter because open-source software was distributed mostly as source code you had to compile and link yourself.)

    • @TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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      96 months ago

      Anyone that’s used Librewolf mind offering their opinion on it? That description sounds pretty sweet.

      • Ace! _SL/S
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        6 months ago

        It’s the best. Deletes all cookies and browsing data on exit by default. I changed it to keep history and cookies for a handful of sites

        Turned up uBO to strict mode and installed JShelter to get rid of most clientside fingerprinting (this will cause some breakage on a site by site basis though, which is quick to be fixed. Mostly on sites that are dynamically managed by JS instead of the way it’s meant to be)

        • SaltySalamander
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          26 months ago

          Deletes all cookies and browsing data on exit by default

          This would make for an extremely annoying browsing experience.

          • Ace! _SL/S
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            36 months ago

            True

            That’s why I changed it to keep all history and cookies on pages I whitelisted

          • Ace! _SL/S
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            6 months ago

            Not really, NoScript prevents executing all JavaScript by default. JShelter instead strongly limits what JS can do and spoofs some values to throw of fingerprinters. It also has a network boundary shield (mostly blocking cross sites post/get requests. Same for lan to prevent your local network being scanned etc). And it comes with a fingerprint detector which allows you to see which websites want to track you the most (I avoid those whenever possible)

      • @Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        76 months ago

        It is pretty sweet. Used it as my main browser for a year. It comes pretty hardened. Try it out for sure its worth it.

      • BarrierWithAshes
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        46 months ago

        I quite enjoy using it. Stays out of the way, boots instantly, is very plain looking.

      • @Teknikal@lemm.ee
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        26 months ago

        It’s a bit too restrictive by default imo, good for privacy but you will need to change quite a few setting if you want to browse normally.

        Despite my opinion it’s the browser I use most on my laptop.

      • imecth
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        16 months ago

        I’ve had librewolf specific bugs absent in firefox, definitely not a strict upgrade.

      • megane-kun
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        16 months ago

        I’ve used Librewolf until pretty recently and I say it’s not for everyone. It’s hardened Firefox made into its own thing for people who want the benefits of hardened Firefox but don’t want to go through the effort of hardening their Firefox install.

        There are some sites that wouldn’t work in the strictest settings. As far as I remember, the most problematic sites with Librewolf are those that demand way too much in terms of privacy and security, so I took it as a given that if a site doesn’t work with Librewolf (with me using the default settings), it’s not worth it to enter to begin with.

      • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼
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        16 months ago

        It’s great. It’s essentially Firefox, but without the unnecessary bullshit like Sponsored sites or Pocket integration, and it has some quite significant privacy and security improvements. Also comes with uBlock Origin pre-installed.

  • @JCreazy@midwest.social
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    306 months ago

    I switched to Firefox the same time I switched to Linux and I switched to Linux with the reddit enshittification.

  • @Swarfega@lemm.ee
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    256 months ago

    I still prefer Chrome over Firefox but I’ve been running Firefox for over a year now and won’t go back to Chrome because fuck Google. Also stopped using Google for searching and not being tracked is very very noticeable.

    • @Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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      -26 months ago

      Tried using chromium based browser instead? You are not mainlined into Google that way. Vivaldi is absolutely great. It’s got way better baked in features than chrome which can reduce need for extensions and it has a strong commitment to pushing chromium as far as possible to be privacy conscious. Runs and syncs across Android and pc as well.

      • DacoTaco
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        136 months ago

        Those are all chromium based. They all are connected to google and will all have the manifest v3 change.
        That is unless they will support v3 but keep some doors open for content blockers ( this is mozillas plan )

        • @Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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          16 months ago

          Yes all chromium based browsers are chromium based. What do you mean by they are connected to Google? Yes Google provides the chromium code, but my Vivaldi browser isn’t connecting to Google servers or sending them anything

          • DacoTaco
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            6 months ago

            What i meant is that chromium is owned and managed by google. If chromium ( and therefor all chromium based browsers ) gets a change, they all do by default. Things like vivaldi or brave will get this change unless they specifically implement ways around it, which i dont think they will.
            Though its way less than chrome, chromium still has links with google and has been found to ping google once in a while even though youre not using google.

            To be accurate, chrome in itself is a chromium based browser. Its chromium with google stuff slapped onto it.

            Its because of this that i find the “but im using [chromium based browser here], so i wont be affected by change x” a false one, because they will.

              • DacoTaco
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                46 months ago

                I am corrected, thanks :) Im legit surprised they did anything towards the issue, so thanks for pointing it out.
                That said, ad blocking is only a part of the problem and there are a lot of extensions that work on content loading in browsers that are going to be invalidated with the chromium update that an integrated ad blocking feature ( that i hope you can customise to your hearts content ) will not fix…

  • @ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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    226 months ago

    Honestly this might be a good thing. It might push more users to Firefox causing more competition for Chrome/Chromium.

  • @brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Going to plug Cromite (a continuation of Bromite) for a great Chromium fork with built in adblocking, and no nonsense like Brave or whatever: https://github.com/uazo/cromite

    Also great on Android (which it was originally developed for).

    Forks maintained by a hero dev are less than ideal (and not sustainable TBH), but this is where we are…

  • @TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world
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    66 months ago

    Google is such a greedy group of jackasses. Using their browser monopoly to shore up their ad monopoly should be a crime.

  • Alphane Moon
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    66 months ago

    Guess, I will need to stop using Chrome unless I have no other option (I mostly use Firefox, but I occasionally use Chrome).

    • @kusivittula@sopuli.xyz
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      46 months ago

      i use vivaldi for my school stuff. wonder if the v2 version of ublock will keep working. and the built in blocker in brave?

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    26 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    "Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension.

    The most salient of these is the blocking version of the webRequest API, which is used to intercept and alter network traffic prior to display.

    Under Manifest V2, it’s what extension developers use to stop adverts, trackers, and other content appearing on pages, and prevent certain scripts from running.

    The new MV3 architecture reflects Google’s avowed desire to make browser extensions more performant, private, and secure.

    Li acknowledged the issue by noting the ways in which Google has been responsive, by adding support for user scripts, for offscreen documents that have access to the DOM API, and by increasing the number of rulesets in the declarativeNetRequest API (the replacement for webRequest) to 330,000 static rules and 30,000 dynamics ones.

    And by the beginning of 2025, when the API changes have been available for some time in the Chrome Stable channel, Manifest V2 extensions will stop working.


    The original article contains 589 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!