Google Pushes Unpopular Chrome Update - What to do!
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Manifest V3 is easily the most controversial Chrome update, breaking Ad Blockers and Tracker Blockers on Chrome and all Chromium browsers.Switch to Firefox o...

Most people still haven’t heard of Manifest V3, so if you are one of those not using Firefox, this is for you.

If you’ve been on YouTube or Reddit August last year, you might’ve seen this screen yourself, or a screenshot of someone else getting it. This of course, I am talking about the infamous YouTube ad blocker blocker popup, discussion exploded on Reddit mostly consisting of people complaining about ads, as well as an angry mob storming r/memes, turning it into a Firefox propaganda centre.

About a month later, different adblockrs eventually found their way of bypassing detection, and they work on YouTube again. So natrually Redditors thought they’ve won another war against big tech, completely ignoring Google’s original plan to kill off adblockers by June this year.

So all extensions, including adblockers follows a specification called the Manifest V2. The Manifest allows extensions to do certain things, say accessing browser tabs or to change browser settings. All while putting some limitations, and prevent extensions from doing crazy stuff like installing a virus to your system. But too much limitation, is what pisses off many extension developers about the upcoming ManifestV3.

In this article written by the EFF, they interviewed developers responsible for popular extensions, where most described ManifestV3 as a downgrade, with some accused it for being purposefully bad. I particularly like this one from the creator of SingleFile, “I consider the migration to Manifest V3 to be a major regression from a functional and technical point of view.”

After an update in June this year, a feature called the WebRequest API will be removed, and the adblockers and tracker blockers that depend on this feature will stop working. Since the business model of Google is to track your online activity and then show you personalised ads, it is not difficult to see why this feature is removed.

Not only are they sacrifising user experience for monetary gain, they are forcing the same update on all Chromium browsers as well. I am hereby devastated to inform you that this is not the first time they have done it, and it will not be the last time they will do it.

But there are also good news, non-Chromium browsers will not be affected by the Manifest V3, and if you are already using one, you will be exempt from any future nonsense Google throws in your way. So if you are considering switching to one, unless Safari is your goto browser, which lacks competent extensions support, you can still get your adblockers, another adblockers, all the adblockers.

So are you going to make the switch before the update? Let me know in the comments down below, anyways I will be seeing you in two weeks, have a good one.

An article for more my ranting needs https://gmtex.siri.sh/fs/1/School/Y12/Cssoc/chromium.html

  • infeeeee@lemm.ee
    871·
    2 years ago

    Very useful video. I miss that you don’t list the Chromium browsers. A lot of people, the target audience of this video don’t know that edge, opera, vivaldi, brave are all affected some way.

    • siriusmart@lemmy.mlOP
      224·
      2 years ago

      well, it’s a video making decision. most people these days have virtually negative attention span, and they would click off the video given the slightest chance, and listing Chromium browsers would be too much time for too little argument made.

      I’ve accepted that I’m not mental outlaw and people wouldn’t be tuning in for a podcast, so the best I could do is the minesweep the video and remove any opportunities, because if I don’t do that, most people won’t get past the first 10 seconds, “getting straight to the point” is one of the things I’ve learnt while doing youtube

      • siriusmart@lemmy.mlOP
        283·
        2 years ago

        also, infographics are great for these explainers video, because i could jam pack so much more information that is otherwise impossible, and in 1:53 I’ve referenced “all chromium browsers” with all their logo on screen, which is insanely efficient because with this visual style of story telling I could brought up two points at the same time:

        • chromium browsers are affected
        • these browsers on screen are chromium browsers
  • The Menemen@lemmy.ml
    781·
    2 years ago

    I am on Firefox since I think 2003. Never understood why anyone would use a non-free browser, even if it sometimes works faster. People are weird.

    • Skepticpunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      451·
      2 years ago

      Chrome had a bigger ad budget and had a good amount of hype when it was released, since Google was still well-regarded when it was released.

      • nelson@lemmy.world
        431·
        2 years ago

        Firefox also had a period where it was slow AF. I switched to chrome at that point which was a lot faster.

        I’ve ( happily ) been on Firefox these past few years though. Firefox addons on mobile devices is a blessing too.

        I enjoyed vivaldi as well before I went back to Firefox. Too bad it’s chromium based :(.

    • S_H_K@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      13·
      2 years ago

      I am one of those “Opera back in thr day” guys so you know the story. I eventually gotten back to use Mozilla Firefox. Chrome had it’s good days but it’s a pionner of the enshitification.

    • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
      10·
      2 years ago

      Same here, even my newly issued work PC always gets the Firefox treatment. Annoyingly, some sites that I need for work (almost, but not quite, zero) just do not work with Firefox, but do with chrome.

      • The Menemen@lemmy.ml
        4·
        2 years ago

        At my work PC they blocked all, but chrome… And I really don’t think Chrome is superior to Firefox at this point of time.

        • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
          6·
          2 years ago

          They sort of tried at my last job… There’s portable, non admin installs of Firefox available. The tricky part was ssl inspection certificates, but even that is easier than it used to be.

    • viking@infosec.pub
      18·
      2 years ago

      Is amp still around? Those cancerous links drove me back to Firefox after years of using Chrome, they hardly ever worked.

        • viking@infosec.pub
          51·
          2 years ago

          I’m still using google search, just deactivated amp. Initially with a Firefox add-on, now I think that’s a native feature.

          But Google search results are increasingly bad, what alternative do you recommend? I’ve dabbled with bing and yandex (which is honestly quite good, but… Russian) and would like to have a real alternative.

          • pirat@lemmy.world
            2·
            2 years ago

            Spend some time finding a few good searxng instances. Also, the language setting affects the results a lot, so make sure to change it based on what you’re searching for. I mostly use “english [en]”, but for local searches I change it to my native language, or to the language of the relevant country.

            • viking@infosec.pub
              2·
              2 years ago

              I keep coming across kagi but haven’t used it yet. Think I’ll give it a try finally.

                • viking@infosec.pub
                  2·
                  2 years ago

                  Yep I’ve just signed up for the free trial and will use it in parallel to google to get a feeling for the difference. Since I’m using google with anti-tracking and adblock, I don’t really get annoyed by the site itself, more like the crappy top-ranking SEO pages. Back in the days, the front page was all I ever needed, now I feel like the good results start on page 2.

          • toastal@lemmy.ml
            33·
            2 years ago

            Brave Search has been alright, tho I’m not entirely sure how their algorithms are working & they index much slower so they probably aren’t doing full aggregation themselves nor does it seem that they are just using Bing like DuckDuckGo. Yandex is great for image search & I use their translation service even if it’s a little weaker just to spread my data across services instead of centralizing. Even if I preferred content written by a human, a lot of general queries it seems I am more prone to reaching for an LLM …even tho it could be a hallucination, a lot of the content written by folks on the highest SEO sites are just as much bullshit.

    • Night Monkey@sh.itjust.works
      101·
      2 years ago

      Google has the lions share of the browser installs. If this were not the case, you can bet Google would never dream up this nonsense to begin with.

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
    331·
    2 years ago

    Already moved to Firefox on my phone. The only browser on mobile that I know of that supports extensions, giving me ad-free youtube and dark mode on websites ever since vanced was shut down.

  • nickm8@lemmy.world
    31·
    2 years ago

    TLDR: Google’s Manifest V3 will stop many ad blockers from working on Chromium browsers. This is to increase ad revenue. Non-Chromium browsers like Firefox won’t be affected.

  • UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world
    30·
    2 years ago

    I’m gonna be cocky and sit on my high horse to say I switched back to Firefox many years ago when they got rid of the memory leaks

    • gjoel@programming.dev
      202·
      2 years ago

      Firefox - Accidentally introduces memory leaks. People flee in droves.

      Chrome - Intentionally introduces privacy leaks. People go “eh” end keep using it.

      Gotta protect that memory!

    • RippleEffect@lemm.eeEnglish
      12·
      2 years ago

      Yeah Firefox definitely had issues but right now I think it’s the best browser available.

    • banazir@lemmy.ml
      3·
      2 years ago

      The last time I remember Firefox having serious memory leaks they called it Firebird. Guess I’ve been lucky. Or in a comfortable ignorant haze.

      • nix@midwest.socialEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        It had a leak a few years back. Not a huge one, but it’d add up on devices that had a ton of tabs or were always on.

    • siriusmart@lemmy.mlOP
      6·
      2 years ago

      well a bit more on that, since i record my audio an audacity, there are 3 types of noise suppression i could do

      • the first one of course is no noise suppression at all
      • then there is the standard noise suppression
      • and then there is the new RNNoise suppression

      RNNoise is the best at removing noise, but it also cuts off all the deeper parts of my voice (i think, because I have no way of knowing how I really sound like), so here its a tradeoff between getting the entirety of my voice, or absolute silence, here i chose my voice

  • BallsandBayonets@lemmy.world
    20·
    2 years ago

    Left for Firefox when they announced this update. I still have to use Chrome when I work in Google drive since basic functions like copy/paste don’t work in non-chrome browsers, but even without this update the minute+ time it takes for chrome to open reminds me I made the right decision.

    • macattack@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      Same. It was definitely an adjustment as a former ChromeOS user. There were some minor issues like getting playback for streaming services and maybe 1-2% of the unique websites I visit not being built properly for Firefox but it’s pretty infrequent and you develop a quick workflow to resolve the issues. I have a backup version of Chromium that I use as an emergency browser.

      I use a Firefox fork (Floorp) which gives me PWAs capabilities which was the last hurdle for me.

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
      2·
      2 years ago

      I keep Cromite (on Android) and Chromium (pc) around for those sites that are so poorly coded I have to use a chrome-engined browser.

      It’s really annoying.

      At least those 2 browsers are fast (and I keep history turned off because I only use them for crappy websites).

  • p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world
    20·
    2 years ago

    It’s a good thing I’m a Firefox boy. I’m honestly fucking sick of companies making free money off me at my inconvenience while I get nothing in return.

  • Misk@lemmy.world
    93·
    2 years ago

    The only thing keeping me from making the jump to Firefox is the fact you still can’t create shortcuts to web pages that open in their own window like apps the way you can in chromium browsers. I find that feature incredibly useful so I’m sticking with thorium/librewolf etc for now. But once the enshittification is complete I guess I’ll have to learn to live without it because I definitely aren’t giving up ad blockers for it.