this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I have seen so many inbuilt ad blockers of browsers fail, especially at YouTube, even before the recent changes, that I was surprised to see them still being used and promoted by eg. Louis Rossmann.
IMO basically nothing can beat addons, at least if seen for all browsers or just firefox.
Browser devs can't focus on ad blocking functionality. And their team developing ad blockers will certainly be smaller than the team of devs for adblock addons; the browser just needs somewhat functional stuff while the addon depends on delivering a very good to perfect to be used and to receive donations.
On chromium, with Manifest V3 at our doors, built in ad blockers will win over addons by far, just because they have more power.

This creates an interesting situation, at least in my mind fed by my bubble:
Tech nerds will use firefox, probably with adblock addon
Tech illiterates will use whatever comes preinstalled - Edge, without any adblock
Users that know the concept of browsers will probably use Chrome, or other browsers they heard before - possibly a Chromium browser with built in blocker

Now, what happens if the built in blockers fail - again and again and again? Will the somewhat knowledgeable user care and switch to another browser, maybe the one pushed the most for adblocking: FF with uBlock?