Google's API changes mean only paid enterprise users of Chrome will be able to access full adblock

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/31/conflict-of-interest-2.html

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I feel nicely rewarded for sticking with firefox all this time*…

Does seem to be the best option right now IMHO

*TBH, main reasons being i had a setup that worked, it synced settings/tabs to my phone and laziness to change.

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Wow. That’s uh, that’s a ballsy choice there big G.

Well, so much for the dominance of Chrome!

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If you want to continue using Chrome without ads consider installing a Pi-Hole on your network:

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Just use Firefox, i only have chrome installed in case any of my extensions bork a site. I’m currently running into issues with FF that even when i disable extensions some sites remain glitchy

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I’d heard of this, and it sounds great… but am a little leery of it, as it ‘lives’ between me and the internet.

Have there been any code security reviews to ensure that it’s not just a fancy keylogger?

Came to say this. I have Diversion installed on my Asus/Merlin router. Works wonderfully.

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Yikes, that image.

Eh? Seems to me the result is the same if you block unwanted content after it loads, except that you lose some of your bandwidth and processing power.

I’m hopeful about Brave. It might turn out to be the Google slayer.

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Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:67.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/67.0

^^ Best way to browse the internet

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Is firefox still a memory hog? I switched to Chrome because FF started to be a huge drain on my computer, but that was several years ago.

That and the tracking still happens.

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What a horrible picture. Unicorn, plz.

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TBH, going on memes alone ( i haven’t tried chrome in years) The consensus seems to be that chrome is the massive memory hog of browsers nowadays…

Possibly relevent YT video…

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Take a look at their Privacy page then maybe ask around in the forum? It is open source but I don’t know if it has yet been audited.

In an unrelated note, the recent FF updates with per-tab sandboxing lets me open silly amounts of tabs at once without issue…

I read A LOT of webcomics.
With the several-versions older build i had to split my webcomics bookmark folder into two, as opening them all at once would break the tabs in firefox (ie unclosable zombie tabs)

With recent versions, i can happily open 80+ tabs* all at once with no risk of crashing, it’s great :slight_smile:

(*used to max out at about 60)

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I’m using Falkon, which comes with Chakra. No real reason except website logs need to see that there are a few of us Linux users out there. Suck it big tech!

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I’ve been using Vivaldi with uBlock origin for a while now. The install process to put uBlock on Vivaldi is through the Chrome web store (it’s a Chromium based browser). I wonder how long I’ve got until I switch to Firefox.
I used to let the ads run until one of my favorite youtubers said “Your time is worth more than I get paid. Install an ad-blocker and don’t look back.”

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I always find this particular topic really weird, because Google is essentially re-implementing the same content-blocking mechanism that Apple has been pushing with Safari/WebKit ever since they added content blocking to iOS, and it actually works just fine. There genuinely are privacy benefits to removing an ad blocker’s ability to process all of your network traffic while still retaining network access for itself.

one casualty of that change is ability to block unwanted content before its loads, something that would effectively kill privacy tools and ad-blockers.

This is just factually incorrect. I’ve been using 1Blocker for iOS and macOS since they came out, and in addition to hiding page elements, the rule sets they provide to Safari explicitly outline things that the browser shouldn’t even make a request for. In the few places where I do still run into ads (like gamepedia’s wiki collective, which unfortunately hosts the Minecraft wiki), I’ve been able to build custom rules to eliminate them. It even covers video ads, though Twitch somehow still sneaks one through on occasion.

All of that said, the last time I checked in on this debate, the biggest technical problem people has was that the rules that Google is letting blockers write weren’t as flexible as Safari’s, and the maximum size wasn’t as expansive. If those issues haven’t been addressed, then Google’s implementation will definitely be inferior to Apple’s, but the underlying premise is sound and actually pretty well battle-tested in the real world by now.

Also, please stop using Chrome anyway. It’s technically open-source, but Google pretty much exclusively drives its development, and the knock-on effect of the world’s biggest web property having the power to make your experience on their platform preferentially worse if you dare to use a competitor’s browser is… well, it’s certainly not good.

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All of this ^^^^^^^^ applies equally to me.

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