No, I don't think that is correct. You can still stop a web request, but you can only stop it by providing chrome with a list of url patterns to block. The current method passes the url being requested to the extension, which can then decide to block it or not.
The new way has the extension give a list of patterns to block to chrome, and from there it will block any request that matches.
The stated reason is that this is for privacy, to prevent extensions from being able to gather data about every request a browser makes. Currently, a malicious extension could send every url a user visits to some central collection server. The new way prevents that.
Is the trade off worth it? I personally think no, but I do think many people don't realize that as blockers have the capability to collect every url you visit if they wanted.
