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Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week (arstechnica.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Reminder to switch browsers if you haven't already!

Google Chrome is starting to phase out older, more capable ad blocking extensions in favor of the more limited Manifest V3 system.
The Manifest V3 system has been criticized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation for restricting the capabilities of web extensions.
Google has made concessions to Manifest V3, but limitations on content filtering remain a source of skepticism and concern.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Other groups don't agree with Google's description, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which called Manifest V3 "deceitful and threatening" back when it was first announced in 2019, saying the new system "will restrict the capabilities of web extensions—especially those that are designed to monitor, modify, and compute alongside the conversation your browser has with the websites you visit."

Google, which makes about 77 percent of its revenue from advertising, has not published a serious explanation as to why Manifest V3 limits content filtering, and it's not clear how that aligns with the goals of "improving the security, privacy, performance and trustworthiness."

Like Kewisch said, the primary goal of malicious extensions is to spy on users and slurp up data, which has nothing to do with content filtering.

Google now says it's possible for extensions to skip the reviews process for "safe" rule set changes, but even this is limited to "static" rulesets, not more powerful "dynamic" ones.

In a comment to The Verge last year, the senior staff technologist at the EFF, Alexei Miagkov, summed up Google's public negotiations with the extension community well, saying, "These are helpful changes, but they are tweaks to a limited-by-design system.

For a short period, users will be able to turn them back on if they visit the extension page, but Google says that "over time, this toggle will go away as well."

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