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
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.
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
I thought Brave wasn’t affected by this
Edit: yeah, Brave mentioned they won’t be impacted by this
https://community.brave.com/t/v3-manifest-will-it-improve-brave-with-other-joining/527963
Brave can keep the old APIs but they’ll still be affected, because developers for Chromium-compatible browsers still have to decide whether they want to create or support apps that will only work in a subset of browsers, and figure out how to distribute them outside the Chromium store.
True. But I believe brave’s filter list at the very least, will still work.
Brave has it’s own issues. Like their owner being a total POS for example.
So, Google thinks they own the whole Internet now, and will force ads over every single website. AMP wasn’t enough for them. I used to love Google, but now I pretty much hate them.
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.
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.
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.
ex-GX user here. i do not miss chrome.
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.
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 :(.
Would you consider Firefox better then duck duck go ?
Here is a breakdown of why it is much better (near to the bottom): https://divestos.org/pages/browsers
TLDR: Webview browsers are bad for privacy.
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
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!
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.
I have one word of wisdom for you, my brother:
Revanced.
I personally enjoy connecting to Invidious via Clipious. On my Debian laptop, I use FreeTube for the same, although I think a web-hosted frontend for Invidious directly loads videos way faster.
I don’t care I use Internet Explorer
