We’ve been anticipating it for years,1 and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the ...

We’ve been anticipating it for years, and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.

Now that it is finally happening, many seem to be oddly resigned to the idea that Google is taking away the best and most powerful ad content blocker available on any web browser today, with one article recommending people set up a DNS based content blocker on their network 😒 – instead of more obvious solutions.

I may not have blogged about this but I recently read an article from 1999 about why Gopher lost out to the Web, where Christopher Lee discusses the importance of the then-novel term “mind share” and how it played an important part in dictating why the web won out. In my last post, I touched on the importance of good information to democracies – the same applies to markets (including the browser market) – and it seems to me that we aren’t getting good information about this topic.

This post is me trying to give you that information, to help increase the mind share of an actual alternative. Enjoy!

  • @helloworld55@lemm.eeEnglish
    54•1 month ago

    Can I just add a different perspective on this?

    My dad is really old (like early baby-boomers), and I am basically the in-family tech support when the home computer starts acting strange.

    Well, right after google rolled out this update, my dad clicked on what he thought was an online shopping link. It was actually an ad for a toolbar add-on. Queue Cue like 6+ hours trying to uninstall that add-on and the bundled software.

    I never had to worry about that in the past with him because I had u-block origin installed. Now I need to find something else that can run quietly in the background. And probably a better antivirus.

    • @zarkanian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      15•1 month ago

      Nooooo, but MV3 is all about security!

      This is how I know this is bullshit. I was reading the article and thinking "So, let me get this straight. The ads aren’t the security risk. It’s the ad blockers!"

      Sure. Pull the other one.

    • @Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8•1 month ago

      Is there any organization out there that could actually promote an “Acceptable ad standard”? Like, maybe even something within web specs?

      A long time ago, ads were slightly irritating, rarely useful, and considered a necessary evil for gently monetizing the web. We’ve had this slow evolution to draconian tracking nightmares that are genuinely dangerous and often written by malicious untraceable actors. I almost feel like we could pressure back towards decent ads if there was some standard by which they only received basic info about the user, showed basic info about a product, didn’t pollute the experience or ruin accessibility, and were registered to businesses by physical address with legal accountability for things like false advertising.

      That is…perhaps a vain hope though. It’s just hard to picture futures where all websites run off of donations or subscriptions, because advertising is fucking hell now.

      • @Spotlight7573@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6•1 month ago

        You mean like https://acceptableads.com/ which is only supported so far by Adblock Plus (and its parent company)?

        The problem is until there is some kind of penalty for being too annoying or too resource consuming, it will always be a race to the bottom with more, worse ads. As people add ad blockers to their browsers, the user pool that isn’t running them begins to dry up and more ads are needed to keep the same revenue. This results in even more people blocking them.

        Two of the things I had hope for on the privacy side was Mozilla’s Privacy-Preserving Attribution for ad attribution and Google’s Privacy Sandbox collection of features for targeting like the Topics API. Both would have been better for privacy than the current system of granular, individual user tracking across sites.

        If those two get wide enough adoption, regulation could be put in place to limit the old methods as there would be a better replacement available without killing the whole current ad supported economy of most sites. I get that strictly speaking from a privacy perspective ‘more anonymous/private tracking’ < ‘no tracking’ but I really don’t want perfect to be the enemy of better.

        • @LWD@lemm.eeEnglish
          4•1 month ago

          Acceptable Ads is bullshit on many levels:

          • It’s made by an ad company
          • The same ad company runs multiple popular ad blockers (including AdBlock Plus)
          • There are no standards on privacy invasion

          uBlock Origin, or at least uBlock Origin Lite on Chromium-like browsers, are must-haves.

          The best browser you can set up for a family member, IMO, is Firefox. Disable Telemetry (which should rid them of Mozilla’s own ad scheme too), install uBlock Origin, remind them to never call or trust any other tech support people who reach out to them, and maybe walk them through some scam baiting videos.

          I’m still evaluating which Chrome-likes are best at actual ad blocking, and the landscape is grim.

      • @brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6•1 month ago

        Google would never push this because it would cost them money in the short term, eg, next quarter.

        They can’t have that.

    • @sibachian@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1•1 month ago

      so what you’re saying is; this will bring old-school computer repair shops back? i’m sort of in favor of that 😂