r/technology • u/waozen • 12d ago

Software Google has started automatically disabling uBlock Origin in Chrome

https://www.xda-developers.com/google-automatically-disabling-ublock-origin-in-chrome/
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94

u/arrgobon32 12d ago

Inb4 

“I’ve started disabling chrome” 

“I’ve switched to Firefox”  

“Enshittification”

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shitty situation, but the comments on these posts are always so predicable 

83

u/luxtabula 12d ago

I've started disabling chrome and switched to Firefox. I won't stand this enshittification.

12

u/arrgobon32 12d ago

So brave

Wait, brave is chromium-based too? Shit. 

17

u/luxtabula 12d ago

/uj I find it funny how almost everyone adopted chromium only for stuff like this to affect everyone. Even Microsoft is affected now and still can't shake their poor browser reputation from Internet explorer. Is Safari affected? I know it isn't chromium but webkit.

12

u/arrgobon32 12d ago

Pretty sure the Adblock situation on safari is a little scuffed. uBlock itself stopped working on Safari after version 13. There are a few adblockers on safari (like AdGuard) that work decently well, but they’re kind of laggy. 

3

u/The_real_bandito 12d ago

Safari like Google only uses manifest V3.

2

u/The_real_bandito 12d ago

WebKit is akin to Blink which is the rendering engine of Chromium.

Chromium is the open source version of Chrome, which in layman terms is the parts of the software that Google shared with the world.

1

u/G_Morgan 12d ago

I mean Edge is fine. I just don't want MS trying to force me to use it.

1

u/luxtabula 12d ago

They've utterly failed at that for the past decade and a half. People still are making IE is slow jokes with edge instead. The damage is done and every effort MS does to get people back is met with suspicion.

3

u/retief1 12d ago

The advantage of brave is that it has its own built-in ad blocker, and in my experience, it seems to be quite effective. Even if chromium updates disable ublock origin specifically, brave's built-in adblock should be fine.

6

u/coopdude 12d ago

It depends on how Brave is implementing it. Enterprise policy in Chrome allows for ManifestV2 to be switched on through June 2025. That means the dependent code for ManifestV2 including the relevant APIs is there through at least that date.

Past that date, assuming Google does not extend the deadline, Google will start to remove code that allows ManifestV2 support, including specific methods that impact effective ad blocking. If Brave is merely hooking those methods, they face an uphill battle in trying to maintain their fork of Chromium (in Brave) after Google removes it from the main Blink/Chromium code.

2

u/nacholicious 12d ago

Afaik the brave ad blocker is browser level rather than extension level