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Tell HN: uBlock Origin on Chrome is finally gone
The latest version of Chrome (138) removes Manifest v2 and all extensions that rely on it.
Not to defend chrome or chromium, there is a way for chrome users to use manifest v2 in version 138 and above. See the link below.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/discussions/29...

For me, I choose not to manually update my ungoogled chromium to version 138 and above.

  • ews
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  • 5 hours ago
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Moved to firefox and I am glad I did, I want to use a browser that respects my privacy choices
This is the right answer, and more people (especially technical people like frequent HN) should be pointing this out.

"What ads? Oh you must be running Chrome" needs to be the common refrain.

Really hope this ends up being a surprising tide shift. Firefox has dipped really hard in marketshare, but there's no reason it can't start to gain again/grow steadily.

It's really too bad the Firefox tent wasn't big enough for all the alternative browsers that exist (though of course they're not scratching the surface of real usage either). I skipped the whole Arc wave and I'm glad I did -- it's a distraction from Firefox.

Sadly more than just ads. my ublock/pihole rules is mostly tracking ( +80% ) and very little ad rules.
Highly recommend Zen Browser: https://github.com/zen-browser
What do you like about it?
I left Firefox a few months ago because there was a bug in their shader cache, so a lot of stuff was laggy. I was willing to put up with until I got a 360 camera and videos were playing at like 2 fps. This was about six months ago, it’s possible that it’s been fixed, I haven’t checked.

I am using Brave right now, which seems fine. I have no idea if it actually respects privacy but they at least claim it does.

That doesn't solve the issue of ManifestV2 being removed though, Brave will have it removed at the same time as Chrome, when it's pulled from the code base
Brave have not promised to continue to support uBlock Origin ?
nar001 is right. Once it is pulled from Chromium, Brave can no longer support it. Although, Brave's adblocking is just as good out if the box IMO, and it is implemented without the need for Manifest V2, so it will continue to function
Brave has a built in ad blocker.
I know, but for some reason I am adding uBlock Origin as well.
This is a good reason to stick with LTS vesions of firefox
Every browser has occasional big issues. If you haven't seen one yet in (insert browser name here) then you just haven't been around long enough.
  • j45
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  • 5 hours ago
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Would it be possible to just look at the videos in a different browser?
Go with Pale Moon, if you want a privacy-respecting fork of Firefox.
I like librewolf, but it has made similar choices as a fork
Errrr....https://winaero.com/mozilla-has-removed-the-do-not-sell-user...
Did you look at the FAQ page they created afterwards?

'do not sell user data' is too broad legally. It's a challenge in some jurisdictions. So they removed that. But it's not because they sell the data. They do have partnerships (like they did Pocket for example). In this case, they have anonymous stats that they share with others and that, in some jurisdictions, could fall under 'selling user data'

  • M95D
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  • 4 hours ago
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But Firefox is so dependent on google (money, code) that it's absolutely impossible they won't also remove manifest v2. It will just take a little while, for appearances...
Apparently no one remembers when Firefox changed their terms of service literally this year to become adversarial toward their own users.

Librewolf is the way to go now.

No thanks. Their own devs have gladly called the project "very woke", and a "certainly quite political project".
You’ll find that has absolutely nothing to do with the way you choose to use the free software they produce for your benefit.
These days the term "woke" has lost almost all meaning. It used to mean being "awake" i.e. aware of socio-economic factors in society. Today, as far as I can tell, it simply refers to whatever the big corporations/alt-right doesn't like. Just like how they refer to anything left of oligarchy as "communism". To me them calling themselves "very woke" reads as "we are against anti-human behavior", which is a good thing.
so? is the browser any good?
I never had firefox pop up and tell me to attend a drag show or that I need to surf more diverse websites than my usual sports and news sites. how is it woke? I don't care what mozilla the org does. They jsut took a big revenue hit because of the decision against google, they won't have much money for any political endeavors other than maybe privacy and free speech on the web very soon
It crashes every few days for me and has since the last several major releases... enough that I can't rely on it anymore. (UG) Chromium has never crashed on me once.
Have you tried disabling hardware acceleration? I've heard some graphics drivers can be crashy when apps push the boundaries.

I have had crashes with Firefox in a long time.

  • dossy
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  • 6 hours ago
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There's still a way to load it under Chrome 138, but when Chrome 139 lands, that's when MV2 will finally be removed.

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate...

> Just as before, Enterprises using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy will continue to be exempt from any browser changes until at least June 2025. Starting in June, the branch for Chrome 139 will begin, in which support for Manifest V2 extensions will be removed from Chrome. Unlike the previous changes to disable Manifest V2 extensions which gradually rolled out to users, this change will impact all users on Chrome 139 at once. As a result, Chrome 138 is the final version of Chrome to support Manifest V2 extensions (when paired with the ExtensionManifestV2Availability key). You can find the release information about Chrome 138 and 139, include ChromeOS's LTS support, on the Chromium release schedule

In current chromium source, it seems still possible to force manifest v2 extensions with `kAllowLegacyMV2Extensions` feature flag?

https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chr...

This however is a good time to export any extension preferences, because once it's removed you won't be able to access them.

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  • 5 hours ago
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Advertising company forcibly disables software that stops the spread of malware.

Why would they do that?

The plausible deniability reason is that Manifest V2 gave way too much power to extensions, which is true.

... except that we already execute remote JavaScript on our browsers constantly. And we do it, usually, unconsentually. Versus extensions, which are a deliberate thing you need to install.

  • j45
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Users clicks feed the creation of value
BRB, training an AI to find the optimal cat photos to promote to maximize ARPU.
HN was so hyped when chrome came out. Pushing it hard. A few people were saying, um guys, chrome is made by a company that sells ads, this is not going to work out well.
Children who were born when Chrome came out can vote in the midterms next year. If your prediction takes as long to mature as a newborn baby, it's maybe _too_ prescient.
It's been a good 16 years, though.
Firefox is still a great browser with probably the best devtools.
Seems everyone is releasing a browser nowadays. (Not literally, this is a figure of speech.)

Perhaps uBlock/uMatrix needs its own browser.

Mozilla is "all in" on surveillance advertising. From its press releases and strategic initiatives (for lack of a better term), it appears to believe online advertising is essential for the www to exist. Whereas, it has never stated that "ad blockers" are essential for the www to exist.

Yeah but it's always a fork of firefox or chrome. I have seen nothing to indicate they are not all in on surveillance advertising. They are looking into "anonymous group advertising" by interest, now can someday reverse engineer that and figure out that you like boutique spicy pickles? maybe? I have my doubts.
  • chis
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Has anyone made the switch to firefox? I’d be sad to lose my nice google profile integration to chrome and the password manager. And whenever I try Firefox it feels a little bit jankier and slower, but that might just be in my head
I did, a few months ago when they disabled uBlock on my Chrome.

The experience has been a delight. It runs smoothly, I can customize it more than Chrome (compact mode being one example [1]), and with the official iCloud Passwords extension I get to use the same password manager I use on my iPhone.

I don’t think I’ll ever go back. Best part being, if I need something that Chrome provides and Firefox doesn’t, I can potentially implement it myself, and contribute to a proper open source project while I’m at it.

1: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/compact-mode-workaround...

You will lose the password manager, but switch to 1Password -- it's way better anyway. Also, if you use Android, Firefox Mobile, with ad-blocking there, is the real killer advantage of Firefox.
You can export your passwords from chrome as a CSV and then import them into Firefox's password manager. Although, best would be using an external password manager that always keeps your passwords encrypted, like bitwarden. Remember to delete the file (shred even) and reboot so your passwords aren't hanging around in disk/memory. Same goes for bookmarks, although those are less sensitive.
Yes. Firefox has its own password manager and profile system. Once I copied the chrome settings to firefox, I closed chrome and rarely open it these days.
Sure, years ago, and it's been great. I do keep Vivaldi around as a Chrome-variant for those sites that need it, and appreciate their general approach. However, Firefox has the things I need, e.g.:

- Various integrations, such as password managers. - uBlock Origin - Temporary containers - so even those sites that save cookies, are really saving them ephemerally until that container closes.

  • p_ing
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  • 7 hours ago
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uBlock Origin Lite is still there
Librewolf works fine for me. Comes with uBlock Origin installed.
Among the neater features of the full-featured uBO is its ability to load userscripts from external sources.

While there's much talk about uBlock Origin with Mv2 other losses include the last remaining Javascript managers for Chromium like ScriptSafe that have no Mv3 counterpart.

  • xanth
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Is edge also following suit?
  • p_ing
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In the past Microsoft said they would. It would be a large engineering effort to preserve Manifestv2
  • rasz
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For microsoft its a joke to support. We are talking about _one hook_ into Chrome internals for declarativeNetRequest to work.
  • eviks
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And unfortunately not a single great alternative as the better chromium forks don't plan to support it either...
Try Waterfox (if not Firefox), and UBlock Origin Lite if staying on Chrome.
Strange, still enabled and working for me.

Chrome 138.0.7204.101 uBlock Origin 1.65.0

Google. The Advertising Company.
I fucking love how they are not just deleting it from my addons, but FORCING ME TO DELETE. They just dropped pop up "uhm.... it's unsafe, so... WE RECOMEND TO DELETE IT", and then won't let me to turn it on again.
I think uBO Lite works just fine for 99% of users.
It’s the principle. When they’ve shown they’ll jank one extension because it doesn’t align with their business model, they’ve shown they’ll jank any extension in the future as they see fit.

I’m voting with my feet.

They didn't yank an extension.
Same. I didn't even enable complete blocking just default one. I'm not too concerned about invisible trackers, I use meta products daily. Just the visible ads.
Yeah, I switched a while ago and it’s has 0 impact on my browsing.
Social Fixer is gone too. What to do?
Brave?
so i use adguard in chrome now
adguard is a way to go. their app kills these ads perfectly
I tried to move to brave, but I'm really disappointed in it. It frequently crashes, and it's slow to create new tabs/windows. The only reason I stick to it is due to the browser having ad block built in
  • mattl
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  • 7 hours ago
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Firefox is still there, but Mozilla is adding AI slop to it too. I’d love to see an extension to disable all that stuff, or ideally get rid of it and make it an extension
Zen browser is pretty minimal in terms of bloat carried from FF

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41303974

How come Zen looks a lot like Arc? https://arc.net/
Inspired by arc, but still supported.
It's heavily inspired by Arc
Just use LibreWolf on desktop and IronFox on Android.

They basically strip out all the anti-privacy, anti-user "features" from Firefox.

You can use Librewolf, or the Firefox-based browser from Swedish VPN company Mullvad.
+1 for Librewolf, but this is the first time I've heard about Ironfox.

https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox

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@dang this looks like a spam. I saw 2 more posts
Ladybird ladybird
Ladybird doesn't support ublock origin either, nor does it even allow for ad blockers extentions like Chrome still does.