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Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

358 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Reminder to switch browsers if you haven't already!

Google Chrome is starting to phase out older, more capable ad blocking extensions in favor of the more limited Manifest V3 system.
The Manifest V3 system has been criticized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation for restricting the capabilities of web extensions.
Google has made concessions to Manifest V3, but limitations on content filtering remain a source of skepticism and concern.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Back in the Dim Times (1990s), before ad-blockers appeared, there was a program called WebWasher. It's basically a proxy server you run on your own computer and it contained all the ad filters. You just configured your browsers network setting to point to WebWasher and it would handle all the ad filtering.

So even if companies completely remove extension support from their browsers, we'll still have an alternative. :)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

That man-in-the-middle principle doesn't work with TLS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But ads are still often delivered by content delivery which is blockable by domain, hence the reason piholes work. Not that in-stream ads aren't the future, perhaps, but life finds a way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

What you're describing is not a man-in-the-middle proxy, but a simple DNS block. That's a very crude approach to blocking ads and notoriously doesn't work for YouTube and Google ads because they're served from the same domain.

I run a pihole myself but there's still a huge difference between browsing with pihole only and pihole+ublock. It's certainly not the answer to the Manifest V3 shenanigans.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Still not unheard of today if you're using a VPN. For example, if you're using Mozilla VPN (Mulvad), in the DNS settings it gives you choices between regular DNS, DNS + ad blocking, or DNS + ad blocking + tracker blocking.

I did not know about WebWasher, that's very interesting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Hey that's awesome! Thanks for sharing