For example, with Manifest V2 we can initiate a request from a content script after we begin listening for it from the background script, pass a single-use token in the Accept header, identify the request from the background script based on the token, remove the token from the Accept header and edit other headers before the request is sent to the server, then manipulate the response for that single request and stop listening from the background script.
I use this workflow in Search by Image to grab an image from the page context when no CSP headers are present for the asset, and the image is only served if a certain cookie and referrer is sent. This will no longer be possible to achieve with the current API of Manifest V3. Extensions used for page archival will also be impacted.
Manifest V3 removes a robust toolset that content blockers can use the react to all evasion techniques ad companies implement, and the rest of the extension ecosystem will be part of the fallout.
Ugh this change really pisses me off, truly Google has fallen so far. Kind of like the promise of the web. :(
The allowed length of the rule list is also irrelevant, the API is designed to pose no real threat to state of the art ad serving and user tracking technology.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/decla...
That has me more concerned than anything else. Christ...
Now I've actually got to read the horror that is browser code? I was looking forward to a nice dip into systems for a bit... Archival takes priority though. The signal must be preserved.
Perhaps users will someday "wake up" to realise that so-called updates are not necessarily being remotely installed for their benefit, but for the benefit of someone else. No doubt Google has some parallel construction type explanation why users need V3, but how many folks cannot see that they are letting the fox guard the henhouse.
Perhaps if ads can be blocked, so too can updates. (IME, it's possible.)
(There is a possibility to side load extensions for development purposes, but it's not a real option for end users. All other means of side loading has been killed by Google some years back.)
After the patch has been pushed out, exploits become progressively cheaper so letting users to postpone security updates is a crime.
The only reason why a mediocre ads company like Google is managing to mess up the web is that it has >90% of the browser's market share, if you include all Chromium-based browsers.
If they can periodically break the basic functionalities of web extensions however they like (HTTP calls within extensions, background scripts, ability to manipulate the DOM...) just to ensure that people won't manage to block ads and trackers, and they still get developers to build stuff for their browser and they don't lose a single user, they can really get away with EVERYTHING.
Time to let them know that they can't really get away with everything. Google has been an evil company beyond redemption and with a net negative added value to the industry for too long and now it deserves to go down. MV3 should be the reason why developers should stop building extensions for Chrome, users should stop using Chrome, and other browsers should move to other web engines than Chromium.
If nobody follows Google in their efforts to push for MV3, then we'll be left with a limited browser with limited functionalities and nearly no extensions. Let Google sink in their own sh*t.
As with most things you'll hear comments on HN with both sides liking and hating it but I never experience the terribleness that comes from those that say it sucks. I also don't mind switching to Chrome when I absolutely have to.
edit: I also use FF on Android and I will admit it has a few more issues than it has on my PC, but nothing that is bad enough to make me use Chrome.
Not only that it runs Chrome and Firefox web extensions like uBlock Origin but we will be keeping support for Manifest v2.
Download: https://browser.kagi.com/downloads/Orion.dmg
Report bugs: https://orionfeedback.org/
And I guess you can also give them your email if you want to feel better.
This reddit thread barely seems to understand the issue, never mind the technical deficiencies of the API.
[1]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338
Manifest v3 declarative APIs are a snapshot of what is good enough today (although not quiet yet…), but will very soon be out-dated. Manifest v2, given the huge flexibility provided by its APIs, is a much better platform for innovation and adaptation in this regard.
With manifest v2, browsers are a platform and allow extensions developers to innovate and build powerful new features (some of which were not imagined before, and sometimes end up being implemented by browsers later on). It’s good for users and it’s good for browser vendors. With manifest v3, Google decides that that the status quo today is good enough, forever, and we do not need new things in the future (or at least not unless they decide to implement them in Chrome themselves).
>A request can be blocked (block), allowed (allow), or ignored (noop). A noop rule will cause matching network requests to be ignored by the dynamic filtering engine, but those ignored network requests will still be subjected to static filtering (filter lists).
So the missing limitation in MV3 right now seems to be that things can be blocked or allowed by dynamic rules, but not ignored such that static rules (be they from a list or the user) can take over.
I'm not sure what use case that has exactly, but I'm guessing that could be a problem if a user wants to override an existing filter with a custom, dynamic rule. Is that the right idea?
Google is removing that dynamic blocking ability and providing you with a way to supply a static list of blocked urls instead. No ability to use code to implement a dynamic list.
It's somewhat similar to taking a virus scanner and only allowing it to identify a virus by the filename being in a static, pre-generated list.
Also, Google says they are doing this for privacy reasons. Which is funny, because OnBeforeRequest() isn't going away, just the ability to block a request inside of it. You can still see every request, inject javascript with content scripts, exfiltrate data, and so on. You just can't preemptively stop a url/resource from being loaded using code...only a static list of urls. You can guess the type of extensions that depend on that functionality.
I pointed this out in a thread yesterday too, but the whole point is that you will no longer need to grant "see all my requests" permissions to ad blockers. In fact, due to the removal of the old blocking API, if an ad blocker asks for such permissions it's highly suspicious.
The Chrome devs claim that this is to enhance user security, but I have my doubts about that.
Well, then it means they don't need to monitor their extension store for extensions doing bad things, I suppose it's part of the story.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/intro/mv3-m...
Here is a actual source: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/intro/
Much better article:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-ma...
[0]https://www.zdnet.com/article/opera-brave-vivaldi-to-ignore-...
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/mv2-transition/
> As we look to the future by continuing to iterate on and improve upon Manifest V3 functionality, we also want to share details about the plan to phase out Manifest V2 extensions.
> There are two key dates for the phase-out:
> January 17, 2022: New Manifest V2 extensions will no longer be accepted by the Chrome Web Store. Developers may still push updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions, but no new Manifest V2 items may be submitted.
> January 2023: The Chrome browser will no longer run Manifest V2 extensions. Developers may no longer push updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions.
Sigh. Back to Firefox then. Or perhaps I should just stop using the web for anything except the necessities. Now that I think about it, that would probably make my life better in more than one way.
This is a workaround for the lack of proper UI, maybe mozilla will make a better UI if users start asking for it
Although the profile still serves different purpose from container (like you can have different Firefox account linked/ different extension installed)
I rely too much on separate profiles to disconnect work-related browsing from personal browsing. Separate bookmarks, sessions, browser plugins, sync preferences etc...
A UI that's as powerful is literally all that is needed for me anyway. Its such a shame they've neglected the Profile Manager.
It may be due to my workflow; I simply hit a key combination to either open my personal profile or the one for work, for example.
Nothing fancy... The -P option for Firefox along with the usual key bindings for my window manager
With Firefox I get just-a-browser, and I need more than that. If Firefox had a way for me to manage the browser across devices it would be more viable for me.
This way I can emulate a fresh profile, a restricted profile with tracking protection, and a completely locked down profile with more or less everything disabled. My private Firefox in completely unaffected by my development profiles and I can open multiple profiles at once, theme them differently, and I know exactly which kind of instance I'm using.
It's excellent and works flawlessly for over a decade now.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
I also created a similar bookmark with a JavaScript snippet that removes fixed elements from the page, typically top bars. I now have it in my muscle memory.
The UX could definitely be improved, but it's manageable in my opinion
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...
The firefox profiles work, but they're too bare bones to ACTUALLY be usable. A few major problems I've had are:
* No easy way to start firefox twice in two separate profiles, while having separate task bar icons (which can optionally be pinned) in Windows 10. I did eventually get it to work by mucking about with creating my own shortcuts, photoshopping the firefox icon, using separate themes on both, etc. On Chrome you can just click the profile manager icon and you're pretty much done.
* When firefox is running twice with separate profiles you can't easily change the default profile. So it's awkward to get links from other applications to open in the firefox instance you want.
* Speaking of, sometimes firefox would just give me the "Firefox is already running" dialog when clicking a link. Only fix I found was to terminate all firefox processes, start my two profiles again and then click the link again.
It would be lovely if firefox made the profiles easier to manage and switch between.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/opera-brave-vivaldi-to-ignore-...
EDIT: or, to bring up the profile manager:
firefox -P -no-remote
Okay, so you run one of them without no-remote. I had some issues with that, but it mostly works. Now how do you change the default profile? You completely stop firefox, update your shortcuts and finally, in my case, give up on using multiple profiles with firefox on a day to day basis.
in any case, if containers don’t work for you, you can run developer edition for work and standard edition for personal. this is what i do, and the added advantage is that you can use containers on top of it for more granular isolation within each context.
I just want to use the web to access a few of my favorite news sites, use Github, access documentation, watch the (very) occasional YouTube vid, and send email. Am I a dying breed? A mere rounding error in the pie chart of web users? Maybe.
But I am truly at a loss for what to do next. Using the internet without uBO is like sticking needles into my eyeballs. "Switch to Firefox!" they said. I've tried, many times. But I really need some simple things that FF can't provide. Like being able to work with JXA to grab tab URLs for some Alfred scripts and other automations I rely heavily on. There's a 20-year old feature request for this[0].
Ok, Brave then? Probably the best option right now, but it keeps me up at night thinking one day Google will actively start going after the forks, making their lives difficult enough in one way or another to the point that they have to shut down.
Safari? I haven't checked in a while but there were some critical extensions that just didn't exist last time I checked- things like Rich URL[1] for copying tabs as markdown (so useful!). Dev tools were meh.
Just feels like there aren't any good options. Rock and hard place. Google, enough is enough—why are you doing this? (rhetorical. we know why)
[0]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125419
[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rich-url/bkjdcppkd...
For one period google was using those very shady tactics of packaging chrome with unrelated software, literally like a malware. Do you remember?
Chrome itself was one of those amazing improvements.
These days are long gone it seems.
As a matter of fact, the exact opposite seems to be happening right now: every change coming out of a Google seems to improve their lot at the detriment of everyone else, especially their users.
The time to ditch Chrome was ~5 years ago, but if you aren't convinced yet, this latest "improvement" should be the straw that breaks the donkey's back.
I wish them the courage to finally pull the trigger.
privacy badger (if i’m remembering correctly) is based on ubo but specifically curated for privacy (not ad or other blocking), and as such, does most of the customization for you, whereas with ubo, you need to do much more of the customization manually.
so to answer the original question, i think privacy badger, like ubo, does use some dynamic rules, and those would be relegated useless with manifest v3.
If Firefox dies then Chromium would become the de facto rendering engine, and we'll no longer have any meaningful specification for web standards. The web will simply be whatever Chromium does including all its quirks. We've already seen the horrors of that back in the days of IE.
Furthermore, Google is fundamentally an ads company and it should not be the gatekeeper for the internet. I highly recommend reading a recent antitrust filing regarding how Google has worked with Facebook and Microsoft to discourage them from increasing user privacy
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...
Google has a secret deal with Facebook called "Jedi Blue" that they knew was illegal and has a whole section describing how they'll cover for each other if anyone finds out. Google has a team called gTrade that is wholly dedicated to ad market manipulation.
Google had a plan called "Project NERA" to turn the web into a walled garden they called "Not Owned But Operated". A core component of this was the forced logins to the chrome browser you've probably experienced.
Google is willing to do almost everything to prevent people from circumventing their ad exchanges which is what AMP is all about. Google habitually does insider trading on their ad exchanges in every way possible.
The exchanges are also rigged so that google wins on bids where they aren't the highest bidder. A large amount of people inside Google are aware of all of this.
Google has worked with Facebook and Microsoft to discourage them from increasing user privacy, lamenting occasions where they prioritized their reputation over their collective business interest.
>After discussing this with several content blocking extension developers, we have decided to implement DNR and continue maintaining support for blocking webRequest
Then they say blockingWebRequest will be eventually deprecated:
>We’d like to note that it’s still very early to be talking about migrating extensions to Manifest v3. We have not yet set a deprecation date for Manifest v2 but expect it to be supported for at least one year after Manifest v3 becomes stable in the release channel.
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-updat...
> After discussing this with several content blocking extension developers, we have decided to implement DNR and continue maintaining support for blocking webRequest.
They're adopting v3 but not removing this critical use-case.
Last time I checked, the author was going to attempt a port of uBlock to Manifest v3:
https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/ntlgkv/commen...
I'm down to email someone, put up a banner on my website or call, I don't know.
Making some noise alongside the switch is a more effective way of preventing user-hostile changes.
i need them because of my bookmarks. i have close to 6000 bookmarks. 20 years and counting of curated and tagged web links. chrome syncs them across all my devices. i have to do the import gymnastics once in a while for edge and safari. but that's it.
why are bookmarks still browser-specific and not a OS-level feature? why do we need all that import/export gymnastic?
bookmarks are links to web sites, apps, or pages. they should have never been browser-specific. i want to be able to access them from all my devices. they should have been like my photos, or my music collection. and yet, they are not...
but all the major browsers have sync. you can export them from chrome and import them into brave
and btw if you use a lot of bookmarks (i do too) you might love this graphical bookmark manager YASD - you can browse bookmarks as thumbnail images of the site -- much easier to browse them for the link you want):
i know that pain far too well :)
i created a custom chrome extension that opens a random bookmark in a new tab to check the link. this helps me fix dead links but it is a very slow process. sometimes i go over them manually and remove a bunch.
thanks for the link.
Was a bit rough around the edges at the beginning, but it got quite good.
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-updat...
I first installed Tree Style Tab. I then removed the tabs at the top of the window and added a permanent status bar to the bottom of the window using userChrome.css: https://i.imgur.com/PIONywj.png (edited to add, my userChrome.css: https://gist.github.com/anthonyclarka2/155c038de96e91894cbd4... ) (EDIT: I added some extra css to this to set the titlebar and system UI buttons - use the first revision if you don't want that)
The tree style tabs are wonderful. I can see a grouping of tabs, see which tab is the "parent" of a bunch of pages. I often have a root tab with Jira current sprint, then a ticket sub item, then branching from that I have various documentation and github pages open. All of those pages together form one mental "unit" of related information and work.
I'm sorry to post this in a somewhat unrelated thread, but I'm geeked out by how well this works! Firefox is better for my needs anyway, because I can tag bookmarks. Much easier to find saved pages through searching tags for "emacs, babel, python" for instance. Or "firefox, tabs, css"
*On-topic:* This move by Google is going to lose them a ton of browser users, I think. People love blocking ads! Especially tech-minded folk, who are often asked to recommend software or repair things for less knowledgeable or comfortable people.
I'd also like to see a Chromium fork that continues to allow the Manifest V2 API.
Edited to add:
I had to add the following to move the system UI buttons to the same "bar" as the rest of the UI in Firefox:
/* Adding empty space for buttons */
#nav-bar {
margin-right:80px;
}
/* For dragging whole window by mouse*/
#titlebar {
appearance: none !important;
height: 7px;
}
/*
Fix for main menu calling by Alt button
THIS BREAKS THE UI FOR ME!!
*/
/* #titlebar > #toolbar-menubar {
margin-top: 10px;
} */
/* Move minimize/restore/close buttons to empty space */
#TabsToolbar > .titlebar-buttonbox-container {
display: block;
position: absolute;
top: 17px;
right: 1px;
}
Maintaining a Chromium fork that deviates from upstream is a full time job that requires about 3-5 engineers. My day job's sibling team maintains such a fork.
Development also seems to have stalled while a big new version is being developed behind closed doors.
You're wasting a bit of vertical space though with that empty titlebar. I turn off the titlebar for all windows in KDE Plasma and add this (https://github.com/psifidotos/applet-window-buttons) applet to the panel.
- similar to what others mentioned, I'm running a browser at 50% width of fullscreen (27", 4K display). This is ideal for most websites: it's about as narrow as most websites would natively be. However, this means there's no horizontal space left to sacrifice.
- I've been hard at work eradicating non-standard/exotic tools/workflows/etc. from my life. Maintainers abandon software regularly and then you're left stranded, perhaps your entire workflow gets turned upside down. Good old regular tabs "just work" and do so everywhere. The more you customize your setup, the more you're stranded on foreign territory. There's value in just getting used to what's there by default, to a degree.
TST essentially turns the 1D tab row (let's call it list) into a nested structure. And that really is fantastic. However, I think I'd hope and wait for that to become mainstream and officially integrated and wide-spread, if ever, before relying on it. The usual, top-row tab bar with some 2-dimensional twist seems promising.
Explain it like I'm 5: A) to get rid of the top tabs I copy-paste your userChrome.css and put it where?, and B) will that have any other effects?
B) I don't know! :) It's easy to revert though.
I agree with your statement that wide text is difficult to read. In Emacs I use Olivetti mode to narrow my text windows, I should probably do something similar for hackernews or other sites that would benefit from narrower windows.
In Firefox, there's reader mode too, which makes things much easier to see.
Right now, suspended tabs in FF still take memory and slow the browser down, and are cumbersome to search through.
Basically, I'll need to marry Tab Suspender with Tab Session Manager, then perhaps borrow the UI of Tree Style Tabs.
Definitely going to give that a try, thank you!
It would just need a (regular to get security fixes) rebuild with an extra patch applied. Something that Linux distributions do all the time for Chromium.
The question is just who could maintain the extra patch.
Why does anyone use Chrome anymore? Firefox is better in every way, and it isn’t tied to the biggest data harvester the world has ever known.
Mozilla isn't perfect though. I don't understand the decision to get rid of lockwise, my default password manager on iPhone and Android.
» https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29321796
I don't get why they removed FTP browsing either
» https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27896541
Oh and is the source code for Pocket's server infrastructure available publicly as was promised when pocket was integrated into Firefox?
Don't get me wrong. I love Firefox. I just think we have a lot of room for improvement.
Maybe it's just a MacOS thing, but parts of Firefox are a mess and it has downsides compared to Chromium or Safari.
- Javascript-heavy sites are often slower on Firefox for me.
- On the security side of things (sandboxing, etc), Firefox often lags behind Chromium.
- There's a site or two that don't work well. Sometimes it's the site's fault, sometimes it's Firefox that is lagging behind on something.
- It would use way more power than Chrome until last year. It has improved and I think they're more or less the same now, but both are still worse than Safari.
- Profile management is there, but nothing compared to Chromium. And no, containers are not the same thing (although they are nice).
- The UI is all over the place. You have windows that still look like Firefox 3... and they've been through 2 or 3 major UI redesigns. The margins on the bookmarks bar doesn't even fit the new design. There are amateur projects out there that do a better job at this.
- Talking of bookmarks, why the heck the cmd/ctrl+click behaviour is different on bookmark links and links on web pages?
- It doesn't handle different languages well. No in-page translation, no automatic language detection for text correction, etc.
Firefox works. If Chromium disappeared tomorrow, it would be good enough for many... but is it the best browser? For uBlock Origin? Sure! But is it the best browser overall? Nope. At least not on Macs.
If Mozilla wants people to use Firefox, they need to create a better product because the "help the open web!", "google bad!", etc, only works with people that use HN.
Sandboxing is a mix.[1]
It seems like Safari gets new features last usually. And other browsers never won't lag Chrome when the only criterion is if Chrome supports something.
What windows look like Firefox 3? What's wrong with the bookmarks toolbar margins? What amateur projects do a better job?
Ctrl+click opens a menu for bookmarks and links. Cmd+click opens a new tab for bookmarks and links. The only difference is Cmd+click on a bookmark switches to the new tab. I guess you want to open bookmarks without switching?
Best is subjective obviously. I wouldn't even say there's 1 best browser for me.
[1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/12/webassembly-and-back-again...
This is what keeps me away. There are extension options on desktop but no solution for mobile.
I stopped using Firefox largely because I got tired of having to pause when commenting to deal with its spell checker. Firefox has worse spell checking by far than any other major browser. It's also worse that LibreOffice which is odd because it uses the same open source spell checker as LibreOffice (and as Chrome and MacOS). All the words mentioned below were handled correctly in the other browsers (and LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, and Apple TextEdit).
Here are words I submitted to their spell checker error Bugzilla bug over a year ago that are still not fixed: manticore survivorship ferrite massless rotator dominator untraceably synchronizer.
Here are words I reported about 11 months ago that are still not fixed: another's backlight coaxially hatchling impaction intercellular irrevocability licensor measurer meerkats mischaracterization misclassification misclassified partygoers passthrough plough retransmission seatbelt sensationalistic trichotomy underspecified untyped.
Here are words that I reported that are now fixed, but took a year or more to be fixed: all-nighter auditable automata blacksmithing bubonic cantina commenter conferenced epicycle ethicist fineable initializer lifecycle micropayments mosquitos pre-programmed preprogrammed prosecutable responder solvability spectrogram splitter subparagraphs subtractive surveil tradable transactional tunable verifiability verifier ballistically chewable counterintuitive exonerations mistyped phosphine programmability recertification shapeshifting tradeoffs webmail.
Chrome does have a spelling annoyance. It frequently flags "of". It seems to be flagging it for grammar, not spelling, since rewording the sentence after the "of" can make it go away.
This is a bit annoying, but an order of magnitude or more less annoying than Firefox's false flagging because I can always immediately recognize that I have in fact spelled "of" correctly. With Firefox's false flagging of words like "manticore" or "survivorship" or "ferrite" I'd have to check a dictionary or the web.
Plus they fire CEOs who are against at-will abortion, so they’re literally against my religion. And they’re not selecting on technical ability but on political opinions.
I think you've got a few wires crossed. The Brendan Eich controversy was over his donation to support Prop 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.
I find it really funny that your outrage cannon is locked and loaded, brandished and pointed...but you've completely forgotten your justification for bearing arms.
Hey, any outrage will do, right? Fire away!
I personally find the Firefox UI very annoying and slow. Every time I try it, I end up back at Chromium within a week.
That said, I'll take an annoying UI over broken ad-blocking...
That has been my experience as well
Edit: I'd appreciate it if someone could respond to the points I made rather than simply complain about why they don't like ads.
They could have been good citizens, but they've proven time and time again they'd rather be the scum of the goddamned earth and use every annoying and malicious trick in the book to fool you into paying attention to their bullshit for the second or two it takes to make their shit go away instead. Not to mention all the overhead of their shit making everything fucking slow as hell.
The question is how far Google wants to take Manifest V3. The current path will mean a huge boost for browsers with Manifest V2 capability, e.g. Brave, Firefox and to some extent Safari.
The idea that they have to profile and track your every move all over the internet in order to try and sell you stuff you don't really want or need.
Example: If I go to a pet supply web site, an ad for dog food is perfectly understandable --- maybe even welcomed. But just because I was profiled visiting and maybe even buying, I shouldn't be bombarded with ads for cat food all over the internet.
Even worse is the fact that over time, your profile becomes incredibly detailed. They sell this info to their "affiliates" -- which is basically any data broker willing to pay for it. Next thing you know, your insurance rates are being increased based on something they found in your profile.
For the individual consumer, there is nothing good about privacy invasion and personalized ads.
I don't even care about that, what gets my goat is that ads pileup significantly slow down pages and increase energy consumption; and sites still get plastered to unreadability.
no need to be exclusive, both can be a problem.
That's not true. If I'm forced to see ads they might as well be personalized. Hell, sometimes (rarely, I'll admit) I even find some things that interest me, like new products or services. Personalized ads work, there is no way around it.
What irks me about these complaints is not complaining about ads, we all know they are annoying, but the faux moral high horse people, especially in this supposedly ultra rational community, put themselves on. I mean, it's not like you are begging to be paying a subscription to get rid of ads. For most sites you are still going to be browsing there with your adblocker even if the "legal" opportunity to get rid of ads is offered. If the ads weren't personalized you would complain about how irrelevant they are or something in that vain. You are not avoiding websites that display ads you find annoying you just block them. So please, stop with the moral high ground. You block ads because you can and because it's easy and, on the face of it, harmless.
Yes, the data gathering can be abused, like anything, really.
Modern ads are surveillance tech and I want to see that die at any cost. Ads would then either have to adapt to stop being surveillance-based or the most interesting "content creators" would adapt to monetize in other ways.
I really don't see a future in which interesting "content" just stops existing just because tracking ads don't exist. If people want things, they will appear and eventually will be able to be monetized in some way.
Yeah, which explains why journalism has pretty much collapsed in the past few decades.
It's all the low effort, spammy targeted crap that is the problem imo.
And 'ads also help small businesses to grow' is bs if you ask me.
- online ads are largely for the big business as small business gets crowded out & out-spend on search terms etc.
- targeted ads do not contribute meaningfully to conversion if you look close enough. Conversion metrics are crap as they do not account for the huge selection bias involved.
- marketing in general contributes nothing to society, it is all busy-work that changes nothing but maybe moving some people around between brands. It is a zero-sum game where the everybody keeps spending more and more and more for less impact & the market as whole is not impacted.
- 70 to 90% of all clicks & impressions are by bots.
- Content creators get jack shit for advertisements, if you pay like 1$ a month for someone's patreon or whatever you are generating more revenue then watching a thousand ads.
And then there is all the nefarious uses of targeted advertising that follow from it...
As far as I'm concerned, we'd all be better off if that entire industry was nuked off the face of the Internet.
On a larger scale, I believe the mental health harms to the general populace of incessant and emotionally manipulative advertising is far worse in consequence than some artists not earning money (and I've supported myself writing fiction, I'm not dismissing creators here). If artists earned money but it required 80% of the population to become hooked on bath salts, I'd consider that a problem.
Also, I have MS and that includes some twitches/spasms + I'm slightly visually impaired so I have some accessibility stuff set up and jumping/moving ads etc. are a common issue for me, as is engaging on accident through a finger/hand spasm. Now consider how many people are elderly or have vision issues; I feel like ads are uniquely predatory to certain populations.
> I'd appreciate it if someone could respond to the points I made rather than simply complain about why they don't like ads.
I'd say explaining to you why they don't like ads should help you understand why they think it's a good idea to remove the primary source of revenue for content creators, if that primary source is ads.
Here's the worlds smallest fiddle.
If your primary source of revenue is automated advertising, I don't care if you lose money. Sorry not sorry. Get some sponsorships, exclusive content, whatever. But if you want to sell my information to companies to build a profile on me and then invade my life with all manner of annoying distractions using that data, you want me to feel bad when I put a stop to it because you didn't get your penny from me? Cry about it if you want.
Seriously, fuck ads. We have offered a truce to the ad companies before. Put a banner at the top. Slap a commercial in a video. But that's not good enough for them, they autoplay videos and popups and tracking pixels and 10 ads in a video. And then when we tell them where they can go stick it they act like we are stealing. So fuck them, they can go hungry, and if you intend to monetize me by funneling my attention to them, you can go hungry too.
Yes, people are that adamant about blocking ads. I block all ads. I don't need my mind polluted with noise and my life to be about stepping over dogshit every step I take and I don't need spyware running in my browser.
Nobody wants to hear the stupid jingles on YouTube every 5 minutes (yes, I've had them every 5 minutes). I'm sick of lazy loading ads shifting content and then when I interact with the main content spring to life with that interaction and start playing audio.
I don't want ads at all, period. Their abusive history is enough reason for that.
I do not care if the website owner goes broke, if they want to live off of it charge for it. If people don't want to pay then a lot of people need to realize their content isn't all that valuable in the first place. It is great that small businesses can use ads, but unfortunately the market has ruined it for everyone by being so lax with the experience as a whole. Ads lie and sell you shit, so everything that shows up is probably shit.
Internet ads can be irritating and the pervasive cross site tracking and profiling bothers me, but I don’t have fundamental issues with advertising generally. What is totally unacceptable is being served ads with malicious payloads on major websites.
If a website wants me to take their “please disable your adblocker” popup seriously they need to make 100% sure they don’t serve ads that instantly redirect the browser to a fake facebook phishing website that breaks the back button. Until then it’s adblock everywhere and the same for all of my friends and family to whom I give computer help.
Then there are also the ads that are annoying: those with moving parts or sound. I will always block those.
I use uBlock primarily as a line of defense, not just to avoid annoying ads.
As an example, a few years ago the ad network of a newspaper here in Norway was hacked. Anyone visiting their site (or affiliates) would silently and without any user interaction get infected with a banking malware.
The malware that time would cause bank transfers made through the online banking site of the most popular bank here to go to a different account than the one specified. It could have done something else.
Then one day in the middle of class I start hearing sound coming out of the speakers which disrupted the class. The site had put an ad on it with an autoplay video. I put ublock origin on it right away.
HN users tend to get annoyed by (1) ads, (2) paywalls, and (3) articles without enough research (aka time aka money). I'm cognizant of the fact that HN isn't a hive mind, and so these complaints aren't necessarily coming from the same people—but some certainly are.
Well, which is it? Or do we expect content creators to work for free?
If we have to pick a poison—and, well, I think we do—the ad model has one major advantage: accessibility. If we want to make information available to as many people as possible, an ad-supported model is the way to do it. Paywalls lock out everyone at the lower end of the income bracket, and force everyone consume content from only a smaller number of sources (since subscribing to every website is impractical).
This isn't to ignore all of the negative social consequences of advertising. The question isn't whether ads are bad, because they absolutely are—the question is whether they're worth the cost of accessible journalism.
Tracking based Ads generated by Google Ad-words and other networks should cease being viewed by content creators as the "primary source" of revenue, creators need to get creative and come up with better, most lasting revenue sources. Many already have, from direct memberships, merch, first party ads, but I am sure there are other more creative ways to make money
The lazy days of "just toss an adwords tracking cookie everywhere for the fast cash" is over, and I for one will celebrate the death of Ad words and all the other tracking ad networks
