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Ask HN: Is uBlock Origin removed from Chrome extension?

43 points| magundu | 1 year ago

Today I noticed uBlock origin is removed from Chrome. Can someone explain why?

What are the alternatives to uBlock?

48 comments

order

endgame|1 year ago

The technical reason was that uBlock Origin uses the "Manifest V2" extension interface. The new "Manifest V3" standard ever-so-coincidentally doesn't provide the tools necessary for thorough ad-blockers like UBO.

You should switch to a browser that maintains support for good ad-blockers.

MR4D|1 year ago

And this is why I agree with the government that Google has to sell off Chrome.

This behavior just pisses me off. “Don’t do evil”, my ass.

nemomarx|1 year ago

Chrome is removing some features that Origin depends on now. There's Ublock lite or moving to Firefox to keep using Origin.

thekevan|1 year ago

While some here don't seem to like it, instead of replacing uBlock O, I suggest replacing Chrome with Brave.

pcdoodle|1 year ago

Brave is great. Even my Mom uses it and now "hates commercials"

solardev|1 year ago

If the DoJ manages to make Google sell Chrome before the new administration, will that stop this disaster?

gpm|1 year ago

Probably.

There's no good technical reason why ublock and similar addons are being un-supported, merely Google's whims. If a non-advertising company buys it they won't have any reason to go through with this.

I can only imagine that there will be a whole new can of worms though, trying to maintain a technically complex project with no revenue stream, likely loss of a lot of the core developers, and chaotic management.

It might well recover and turn into a fine project. In the meantime though, firefox seems like the best bet whether chrome is removed from Google or not.

dartharva|1 year ago

Probably not. I'd reckon even the other corporate donors and contributors to Chromium apart from Google will be in favor of Manifest V3 and killing content blockers.

kadoban|1 year ago

Doubtful, but possible. But, there's no way that will be finished before the new administration.

kkfx|1 year ago

AFAIK there are no Chrome uBlock alternatives, while there is a Chrome alternative with uBlock, Firefox. Beside that, you can set

    "ExtensionManifestV2Availability" = 3;
as see https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/ apparently till June 2025 to keep Manifest v2 extensions like uBlock fully working, I've rebuilt my NixOS with Chromium this morning and uBlock was there so it's not removed at least if you have the aforementioned option set.

chris_wot|1 year ago

Stop using Chrome if possible. Use Firefox.

Funes-|1 year ago

I just use brave now. Comes with decent ad blocking out of the box.

modzu|1 year ago

brave can use the same filters too

TiredOfLife|1 year ago

As nobody has linked to it jet https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/... That is the v3 manifest version of uBlock origin by the same author.

In my couple week usage it's the same in blocking as uBlock Origin.

tyingq|1 year ago

It is the hobbled version of uBlock origin, missing features.

It may do about the same for general ad blocking now. But, advertisers are now aware there's much less potential to drive people to heuristic-capable ad blockers because that now requires more than "install this plugin".

So now, they can be more aggressive about going around ad blockers.

_blk|1 year ago

The move to the API seems motivated more by keeping the ad profitability model up than being about technical/security reasons. While I'm glad we're not in the IE4 vs. web standards days anymore, with Edge now also being on Chromium-base, there's too many interests in that one hot spot. How did the old saying go? Power corrupts, absolute power ...

HKH2|1 year ago

Corruption exists because people refuse to do inconvenient things.

gnat|1 year ago

Anyone have a recipe for running pihole on one’s laptop and proxying traffic through it? One you’ve used and can endorse pls. I too can Google. :)

quickslowdown|1 year ago

I don't think that's a good idea, it should be a separate, ideally hardwired device (or VM on a host with an Ethernet connection).

But I wonder if you could run the PiHole (or Technitium, or AdGuard Home, etc) in a container with Podman or Compose, and set your DNS to 127.0.0.1? I feel like that would create some kind of feedback loop.

duringmath|1 year ago

uBlock origin lite.

_blk|1 year ago

It's the best they can do on the new API but it's not the same product.

magundu|1 year ago

Thanks. How to get back previous configuration in uBlock advance user setting?