- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmit.online
“Time to switch to uBlock Lite or another ad blocker”
No. Time to switch to Firefox or derivative such as Librewolf.
Unfortunately I’m stuck with Chrome at work so having something like Ublock Lite available is somewhat helpful. I just hope it still blocks youtube ads because they’re the worst.
I strongly suspect that is exactly what they’re trying to stop.
You can’t run
firefox --profile /somewhere
or (Windows) Firefox portable?Firefox portable keeps me sane at work. I don’t give a shit about the IT policy of either chrome or edge.
You should be able to bring up
about:profiles
in your browser and set up and launch profiles from there.
ah you too work for a company that will let you install firefox but no extensions or addons??
fml
We handle a lot of IP so I can’t install anything on the PC that isn’t pre-approved (like MS Teams). I am able to add certain extensions like Ublock but not others like Keepa (Amazon price tracker).
Can you install Brave? Because that has ad-block built-in.
My company enforces specific add-ons for Firefox so I installed and use LibreWolf which our admins don’t lock down - only Chrome and Firefox. I wanted a browser that I would use separately from my work that didn’t specifically need their add-ons which include traffic sniffing crap. I know that if I want to do any personal browsing and guarantee it’s personal, I should use my own device but I was honestly just annoyed by the additional CPU cycles the security add-ons were using.
I am running a portable LibreWolf on my work issued, locked-down-with-a-chastity-belt-and-thrown-the-keys-into-the-fires-of-Mount-Doom-in-Mordor laptop with uBlock extension installed.
Try that and see if it works.
clearly not that locked down if they’re allowing an external device access. cute story tho
Did they mention external device access? I only see a mention of portable LibreWolf which I assume is referring to the “can just be ran from a folder dropped anywhere on the filesystem” version of portable, not necessarily that it’s an external device.
This sort of exaggeration is typically used for comedic effect. Sorry for trying to throw a smile on a random person’s face. You must be very fun to hang around at parties.
Contact the admin
I consider browser ab blocking a reasonable accomodation for ADHD and I’m not even joking. I haven’t had to ask for this yet but, seriously. Banner ads are extremely distracting.
I think it makes sense
it seems to work on youtube so far, but that could also be due to the previous custom filters I installed months ago when yt ramped up their “no adblocker” campaign. UBO still works in the sense that all of the filters and lists you’ve installed are still there and functioning, you just can’t update the extension. I’m still running UBO alongside UBO lite and it’s working fine for now (knock on wood) until I can afford a new Windows machine.
when I swapped my laptops, I already had chrome on the newer ones which I’m still using, but when I heard about this ublock origin saga, I started putting all my passwords in protonpass, and customised my Firefox install to my liking, CSS and everything. All ready to switch now, and I’m gonna be thanking my past self profusely for actually choosing to switch instead of vegetating.
Brave is actually very good and seems to have a great blocker
ps. their mobile browser has also been great on older phones
Is Brave the one with the built-in crypto scheme and its own ads?
not enabled by default, but if you want to use them, yes
i haven’t seen a single ad or been annoyed by any crypto shite so far
I installed Brave earlier this week and that’s mostly true. There’s some built in stuff that will show by default, notably the toolbar buttons and the notification style alert on the new tab page for one of those things mentioned, but you can just close the notification and remove the toolbar buttons and you’re set.
That said, I think it’s still in the data monetization market like Alphabet with anonymized tokens, though I don’t remember the details.
this is disabled by default, i think that is the BAT system that also uses crypto somehow
i also made a handful of tweaks to tidy up the UI, easily done in the settings
ps. Brave has also built-in P2P and TOR features among other features
actually an interesting browser
Be careful with the Tor features, they allow you to open some onion sites but don’t supply the extra anonymity/security of the actual Tor browser.
good point, i think this feature just makes it easier to access TOR domain sites without an extra browser rather than being the anonymity tool that TOR browser is
Yup, it’s my backup to Firefox if I need a Chromium browser for whatever reason.
No. Brave has a history of modifying links you click on to add affiliate information. The only time to use Brave is if user agent spoofing for “chrome only” websites doesn’t make it work.
ps. i also first started using Brave when certain streaming sites refused to work in Firefox :)
thanks, but it’s a performance/timing/codec issue on an older laptop as the same sites work fine on a much higher spec machine
they appear to have stopped that 4 years ago and apologized for the mistake
Right, but I don’t trust them as a result and I don’t feel comfortable recommending them or not pointing it out. Meddling with links you click is malware behavior.
they have not acted as malware since correcting this mistake
Also the recent case when they installed VPN. In general, they give off the impression that they don’t respect users’ consent a lot. Mozilla has been similarly sneaky, like with the opt-out ad tracking recently - thus I would only consider Librewolf or hardening - but Brave seems to be more extreme in their advertising business.
the VPN was a feature of the software at the time and not enabled unless you signed up but as you point out if software changes its service without explicitly telling users these days it feels bad
Welll yeah - point was that they installed a service without consent. And not just a browser feature, but something crossing a whole another boundary. AFAIK also, while the tunnel itself was not enabled, the service itself was turned on automatically.
according to the minutes of research i did ;-) i got the impression the service was disabled by default. i don’t know the tech details otherwise so i don’t know if it made the system vulnerable or unstable in any way. i didn’t find anything like that.
more to the point is that they should have said that VPN resources were being installed
To add: the CEO got kicked out of Mozilla and switched to crypto after he was caught donating to outlaw gay marriage.
that was before 2008 as far as i can tell, has eich and/or the organisation continued to act homophobicly?
He got caught sending money to a bigoted organization, got in trouble, and then embraced dark money.
Until he makes it right to the LGBTQ+ community and makes his finances public, only a fool or another bigot would give him the benefit of the doubt.
i didn’t see any mentions of eich using dark money can you link me to more info? that’s interesting
You are being obtuse because you don’t mind supporting homophobia but don’t want to feel bad about it.
i was just checking to see if you were making things up
Lynx
Firefox with uBlock Origin add-on will sort many chrome issues.
Chrome only exists to download Firefox.
Just like how Micro$oft Windows is advertsiting Linux, Google Chrome advertsites Firefox!
LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX
winget install firefox
No chrome (or edge) needed
You mean ’apt’.
‘Yum’ could work too.
Fun fact,
apt
apparently is an alias tozypper
on my openSUSE Leap system.you mean
{...}: { programs.firefox.enable = true; }
Your package manager of choice :)
Microsoft Edge: “Thank you, Chrome, for sharing the load.”
Sad saga, but here we are. I remember when Chrome was new and brought much needed speed and low resource usage to the browsing experience of the day. I even got email from a Chrome engineer once about a bug I mentioned in a forum, asking me for more information.
Google was already an ad company by then so anyone could have looked forward to this inevitability. Some did. Most of us did not.
Chrome has just always been there for some younger people but it will now live in my memory as a fully encapsulated end-to-end enshittification experience that I really should have always expected.
And just like it used to be with Internet Explorer, I am forced to use Chrome at work all day because thats the IT & security approved / enterprise-managed browser.
Made me feel better when I said I wish I knew what would come, back in the day when I was installing Chrome for people - and someone here replied “hey we all wish we knew when we did that” 🫂
I, too, switched to Chrome around when they launched due to drastically better performance. But shortly after (a couple years?), I found out Opera had similar performance and had cool other features, so I switched to that. Opera then converted to a Chrome-clone, so I switched to Firefox, which had largely caught up w/ performance by that time.
If you have the option, request that Firefox be added to the supported app list or whatever by your IT team. Tell them you need some Firefox-specific extensions or something for your job.
I don’t really care what’s installed on my work computer, which I use solely for work purposes. Should I?
You’re the one using it, so I should think so…
Imagine having an OS that doesn’t come with a proper package manager (and Firefox installed by default, for that matter).
Tell that to the unwashed masses.
Google Chrome’s
uBlock Originphaseout has begunMy phaseout of Chrome was complete a long time ago.
I never phased into Chrome
I used it for a while. It honestly was a really good browser for a long time but since everything started going this shit it quickly fell from my good graces.
The only time I even think of missing it is when I have to open a page that is optimized against Firefox on purpose because the developers decided to use some janky Javascript plugin and didn’t test.
I have always used Firefox on all my devices, except for one: the Chromebook I was forced to buy because of compatibility with my college’s test proctoring spyware.
On that device, not only did uBlock Origin quit working the other day, but today Chrome even kept disabling uBlock Lite with the error message that “This extension reloaded itself too frequently”. It could be some kind of legitimate bug, but it sure feels a lot like foul play on Google’s part.
I don’t understand why all these chrome derivatives and firefox don’t just band together and extend manifest v3 with some vendored standardised extension that addresses the limitations.
Browsers do that for CSS and JavaScript features already. An extension could just check if the browser supports the “unlimited filters” option and use it if its available.
I have never researched it but heard that the permissions of manifest v3 are much better for privacy.
I am in favor of removing manifest v2 if the vendored extension becomes a reality.
Browsers already have too much complexity, lines of code and feature creep.
Firefox implements v3 without the restrictions.
From what I understand, the limit on the lists is not the only problem with it - my main concerns are a) lists only being able to update together with the extension itself and b) some features apparently being fundamentally disallowed, like the element picker I am dependent on.
Chrome is the adblock-block? You might have outblocked me today, but I’ll firefox you away!
🎶 I want to see your adblock-block-block
🎶 Your adblock-block
the company said it would start turning off Manifest V2 extensions
…in time for Black Friday & the holiday sales?
It’s totally ok. I’ve phased Chrome out in the beginning of the year already.
I frequently forget that chrome is installed on my phone. The only time I’m forced to use it is about once a year when I order Papa John’s Pizza takeout. Their checkout page doesn’t seem to work in any other browser.
It’s so Papa John’s to support only one browser.
I’ve been dual welding browsers since chrome came out. The second they started talking about deprecating manifest 2, I test drove Vivaldi and Brave. Now they’re set up as my second.
I tried to convert over to Libwolf, But it absolutely massacres my passkeys.
I plan to main Firefox until they do something stupid which I think is inevitable with their recent statements.
I’m just hoping that by the time The other Firefox shoe drops there will be something else viable on the market. I don’t know how long Brave and Vivaldi can hold out with chromium changing underneath them
I wouldn’t trust Brave as it has a poor track record for privacy and is often used as a crypto miner behind the scenes.
That’s a fairly long time ago now and the crypto token crap is off by default. As far as I know they are the only browser with a paid development team that is trying to combat YouTube ads. And they’re blocking technique is unique amongst the options we have. If it comes down to using Brave for YouTube, I have no problem with doing that.
Vivaldi, run by the old opera team, has their own adblock built into the app itself
And that’s why I keep them in the running. They openly claim that they intend to support V2 for as long as they are able but they admit the possibilities of having to push that code in if chromium made it difficult enough to maintain.
Yup. I always get shat on for mentioning that the crypto crap is off by default. I quite like the idea behind it, have the browser send you ads and then allow you to choose what to do with the earnings but in practice it doesn’t work so well sadly
Yeah, sadly, bringing Brave into any browser conversation is like saying, “Please take a dump on my face.” And I get some of the vitriol. Brave would likely sell you down the river for $7 if they thought they could get away with it, but so would two-thirds of the browsers out there. Even Firefox, the last true holdout at the moment, is hungry. I hope they find a rev stream before they do something drastic.
I like the concept of letting you choose the ads you see and earning some of the compensation. But it needs to happen at the advertiser level. I’d like a world where I pay a little to the browser, a little to the originator, and maybe get a small pool to dedicate to a site or cause I want to patronize.
The only thing stopping me moving to Brave is the awful bookmark sync implementation… when I used it for a small period in the past it was keeping some I’d long deleted on other devices etc
I also would prefer it to implement bookmark separators (like both Vivaldi and FF do) but I can live without those if they sorted out the sync.
Yeah, I don’t use their sync for bookmarks. I just keep the plugins the same with that. I installed the X bookmarks plugin everywhere and just do a manual export/import when I want to. Is keeping my toolbars lined up between all the different browsers.
Oof I was considering LW but now am worried about the passkeys. Was that from an import or a remove and recreate?
Been meaning to try Zen but maybe I should test more before trying either
It won’t trigger or accept my Bitwarden passkeys, and on google, if I do the use other device, it pops on my phone for bio auth, but the browser just never accepts the credentials.
I’d try it if I were you, I do a lot of strange things. just check to make sure they work for you first.
We got here by using their softslop… only way to kill them is now to move on to different merchants. deny parasite the profits.
Gaming 101
pro gamer move
I stopped using adblockers and simply set the entire operating system to use Mullvad’s DNS over HTTPS/TLS, specifically the
adblock.dns.mullvad.net
option. It doesn’t have all the other uBlock features, but all ads are blocked in all browsers.The big problem with DNS-based ad-blocking is that it doesn’t prevent redirects. Sure, you’ll get redirected to a harmless blank page, but then you need to go back to the previous page. You don’t have that issue with uBlock.
It also doesn’t prevent advertisements carried through the website’s own domain. For example, lots of video platforms send their advertisements through the same domain as the content’s domain, so if you block that domain, you’ll also block the possibility of watching any content there. That’s why you need to have ad-blocking within the browser.
Also doesn’t do cosmetic filtering - like, it would remove the ad, but not the HTML box that used to contain it.
Yes, that happens when I click affiliate links. Blank page and then I go back.
I like nextdns.io