Can&#x27;t they just modify the browser itself with an injection into the executablesurely there is a way around that

&gt;Anyone can build a custom extension to do anything an extension is allowed to doYes, that&#x27;s why google moved to manifest v3 and extensions can&#x27;t do as much.

Anyone can build a custom extension to do anything an extension is allowed to do. I had ~7 standard extensions that I pretty much always install into chrome browser. Over the past month or so I&#x27;ve been using Claude code to build a single custom extension that handles all of the things I used 7 extensions for previously. One extension does everything. You can even use the existing extensions you already use as guides for Claude to make sure all of the features you want are included. One extension to rule them all!

Edge is just chromium under the hood. So not a surprise there, should be easy lift for them.

Related:Microsoft Edge is about to lock out older ad blockers, just like Chrome did<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49220392">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49220392</a>

It&#x27;s good but I find they EOL devices&#x2F;OS&#x27;s earlier than Firefox.

What’s detestable is Firefox’s lack of security and Mozilla’s priorities surrounding it compared to Chromium<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;GrapheneOS&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1unhtxu&#x2F;initial_response_to_a_blog_post_claiming_to&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;GrapheneOS&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1unhtxu&#x2F;initial...</a>

Isn’t Brave just another Chromium variant?Chromium is detestable. In whatever form it takes.

Because Peter Thiel gave them some money, there&#x27;s some secret backdoor code that&#x27;s sending all your information to Palantir?

As someone who lives in a country bordering russia, I will certainly switch to Brave now.

Wasn&#x27;t Brave also founded on the back of a bunch of Web3 nonsense? That&#x27;s always what kept me away. I&#x27;m actually surprised how many fans it has.There was something else they did that was shocking a couple years ago that made me glad I never used it. I went to wikipedia to jog my memory and found this...&gt; In 2020, the company was found to be appending affiliate referral codes to the end of certain cryptocurrency exchange URLs typed into the browser&#x27;s address bar. The practice applied to exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase, and was later discovered to extend to suggested search queries for terms like &quot;bitcoin&quot; and &quot;ethereum&quot;.I&#x27;m not sure why anyone would trust a browser that does this kind of thing. Some could claim it&#x27;s a harmless way to make some extra cash, but it&#x27;s very similar to what Honey was caught doing.

Peter Theil was an angel investor in Brave. That alone is all the reason privacy-minded users need to avoid it.

I think it&#x27;s necessary for the future of the web. Ever since Opera gave up on Presto and Edge gave up on Trident, we&#x27;ve seen a massive and sudden consolidation towards Chromium. It&#x27;s sad how quickly we forgot the lessons we learned from the days of IE&#x27;s dominance

It&#x27;s certainly better than stock Chrome but Firefox becoming relevant again is still the ideal option.

Brave is great. Works across windows&#x2F;mac&#x2F;ios&#x2F;android&#x2F;linux.

In that case Firefox is also out. They have been caught auto installing random hidden extensions with full read&#x2F;write access to all websites and blocking uBlock Origin from working on, for example, the Firefox extension site.

Brave is malware, I don&#x27;t understand how anyone on HN can use it, baffles me every time.They&#x27;ve literally been caught MITMing web pages for their own financial gains.

That&#x27;s why Brave probably built an in-built adblocker written in Rust. Works great on both desktop and mobile.

It&#x27;s on a time limit. Chromium deprecated MV2 but still keeps the webRequest API in the codebase. Google could at any time decide to strip it entirely. Or it could just stop working due to lack of maintenance as Chromium grows.Brave is relying on a fork that takes advantage of the fact that the webRequest API is still technically there

Come on, this was 6 years ago, they have apologized since. Firefox also had trips like pop-up ads in 2023: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36073619">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36073619</a> and ToS rewriting: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43251762">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43251762</a>.Brave is faster, suspends tabs when getting short of RAM with hundreds of tabs, has a first-class built-in ad blocker and fingerprinting protection, is compatible with Chrome extensions, includes Tor support, provides anonymous Brave Search with Goggles out of the box, free and private AI assistant Leo.

Why use Brave rather than FF? Sincere question. Lots of tech minded people choose it, when FF seems like an ideal choice?My reasoning for not using Brave: not only is it a wrapper around Chromium, but their crypto stuff and some dodgy affiliate injection in the past paints them as untrustworthy.

Thank God for the Brave browser. For those disliking their built-in adblocker, there is a Manifest v2 opt-out specifically for uBlock if you need it.

Exactly. The difference between the two is not qualitatively different for 99% of users.

uBlock Origin Lite works decently on Chrome so I doubt this will help migration to Firefox.

What doesn’t work? It’s my daily driver and it renders every website I visit.

What do you think doesn’t work on Firefox? Aside from Google products purposely crippled, everything works just fine in my experience. It’s fast and stable. If there’s a bunch of AI stuff in it, I’ve not seen it. Of course I believe it exists, I just don’t ever read popups anyways. To be fair, I probably use 5% of the browser’s capability (I imagine many are like me). I browse websites and I have UBO installed.

&quot;It kinda works&quot; is factually incorrect.I have used Firefox exclusively every day on macOS for the past year, several hours a day, and have not one single time had to open another browser. None of the customers of my B2B saas use Firefox. Not once have I needed to test in their browsers except quick smoke testing to prove to myself that the rendering and details are identical. All my other browsing is indistinguishable from before when I used Chrome, and from on mobile where I (tragically) am forced by Apple&#x27;s monopoly to use Safari.Do you have evidence to support your false claim?

I daily Zen (Firefox under the hood) and the only thing that I consistently need to open other browsers for is direct USB support (mouse&#x2F;keyboard drivers in the browser). Other than that, I don&#x27;t remember when was the last time something wasn&#x27;t working in Firefox.

If only they focused on making Firefox the definitive good browser instead of a platform for their AI efforts.Firefox will never convince people to leave chrome on philosophy alone. I detest Chrome with a passion and refuse to touch it with a ten-foot pole, but cannot in good faith recommend Firefox to anyone in today’s world. “It kinda works” is about as far a compliment you can give it.

Also, Firebug showed what was possible with developer tools.  Inspecting elements or network requests or whatever else wasn&#x27;t really a thing before that extension.

It&#x27;s funny. Over 20 years ago, I got people to switch to Firefox because of the AdBlock extension.In case people don&#x27;t know, Firefox was the first major browser to even have extensions.

And now you&#x27;ll no longer be able to wake people up and show them the real world.

Unfortunately, new generations seem to be completely fine with this. People in general, they&#x27;re just so completely captured by the dark patterns that I get the impression they cannot even imagine a world without them.I install uBlock Origin on every browser I come across. Everybody notices. The internet just feels better, somehow. People can&#x27;t quite explain what changed, but they know.

I wonder if new generations will just get better and better at visually blocking off ads when they read. So many layouts are so common that I read a lot of sites and have absolutely no idea what ads they&#x27;re running because 30-odd years of browsing rendered HTML pages has trained my brain to block off and not process certain areas of the page.I&#x27;m not an advertising apologist, just pointing out that I can remember what ads were on a freemium TV station I watched two nights ago and what ads were on a radio station I listened to this afternoon but I can&#x27;t remember a single web ad since...I don&#x27;t know when. This might be because the TV ads have audio and visual, and with radio my alternative at the moment was looking out the window of my car, but web ads just seem very easy to mentally filter.

New generations don&#x27;t &#x27;browse&#x27; web anymore. They &#x27;consume&#x27; YouTube, Instagram, Android TV and other walled gardens. These generation don&#x27;t even know they could change contents being displayed on their device to their wish. For them it&#x27;s just whatever the app shows. They don&#x27;t understand Web, extensions, DNS etc. I don&#x27;t have hope for new generations. We&#x27;re are the old men now yelling at AI and App Stores.

Firefox, after 20 years, once again has an advantage over the other browsers.Let&#x27;s hope for new generations to get tired of so many ads to finally ditch chrome.

Because all those other browsers can still block ads. I use ubo lite for safari and it&#x27;s largely fine.

Yet 90% of people don’t use a browser capable of running ubo

Now? Sure seems like it&#x27;s been that way for well over a decade.

Ads are so invasive and prevalent now that you need an ad blocker just to use the internet.

Automated checks are done for every extension on every update. But their recommend extensions they feature on the Extension store, they do other extensive checks for each update.

That&#x27;s pretty cool. Thanks for pointing that out. I don&#x27;t see where it says &#x27;on every update&#x27; unless you&#x27;re referring to the automated checks?I&#x27;ve always wished extensions had more granular permissions though (a la phones, but more so). I think automated ai security checks sound promising soon.

See, this is the kind of thing that makes Firefox cool.  They have not only just as good of developer console tools as Chrome, they have forward thinking, truly user-oriented policies.  They have had trouble in the recent past at securing funding, but something tells me their user philosophy might save them when all the others turn completely to corporate greed as their main operating mechanism (if they already haven&#x27;t).

Websites already can barely be assed to care about supporting Firefox users, doing adblocking by default is a great way to get websites to start putting up banners that say &quot;our website does not work with your browser, please switch to Chrome&quot; en-masse.And Mozilla did develop anti-fingerprinting tech, but they can&#x27;t enable it by default because it breaks lots of websites and when a website doesn&#x27;t work they&#x27;re not going to appreciate Mozilla for protecting them, they&#x27;re going to be pissed that it doesn&#x27;t work.

That&#x27;s like suggesting that someone using LLMs to assist coding, could save themselves the trouble by writing the code by hand.Yes, Firefox could do everything, but then it&#x27;d turn back into Mozilla. The whole point of the extensions framework is to allow modular extensibility. And it&#x27;s much easier to vet for malware than to code afresh and maintain.What stuns me is that most people still use browsers that cannot block ads, seem genuinely annoyed by ads, but don&#x27;t want to even try switching to a browser that will easily block those ads. It&#x27;s amazing how much crap people are willing to wade through when the alternative is trying something new.

If Firefox baked in ad blocking, they would have to then deal with the financial incentive to make it worse. Sponsored ads, &#x27;good&#x27; ads, government announcements, election propaganda... there is a slippery slope they are better off not getting on. A trusted 3rd party from the wider community seems a better option in many ways. The alternative is starting a web browser with a manifesto welded on that essentially states &#x27;death to all advertising&#x27;, and until that can be crowd funded I can&#x27;t see that happening in today&#x27;s world.What I am surprised about is that none of the browsers or forks have created a specialist plugin API for adblocking and maybe other filtering. Provide what is needed and only that (keeping the surface tiny), and then evolve the general purpose API in the way they need. I don&#x27;t think we need V2 of the API any more, except for keeping this one absolutely critical plugin working, do we?

Admiral and several other of the more obnoxious ad networks already claim that Firefox is an ad blocker simply because of its out-of-the-box blocking support for third-party cookies and those ad networks nag you to use another browser. If Firefox added actual ad blocking out of the box I can&#x27;t imagine the havoc that would cause and how many more websites would claim that they don&#x27;t work at all in Firefox.

&gt;since Google basically owns themGoogle has been trying to kill them since they moved the Chrome team into the same building as the now defunct SF office.(Apparently they offered people a lot of money? There are some words I could use to describe people who do things they think are unethical for cash I&#x27;ll leave unsaid.)

After watching them butcher their own side tabs implementation, I don&#x27;t know if we really want that, unless they&#x27;re actually hiring the uBO team directly.

People believe ublock because it&#x27;s reputable and not affiliated with browsers IMO.

In one of the monthly update videos Andreas mentioned that although they are working on a basic built-in adblocker for Ladybird, long-term they want extension support and the adblocking functionality to be in an extension.

Firefox started shipping adblock-rust in March (Brave&#x27;s built in adblocker). It&#x27;s not properly wired up in the UI yet but you can enable it and add filter lists in about:config.

&gt; Firefox is also the only browser that vets uBlock&#x27;s code on every update to make sure the developer hasn&#x27;t inserted spyware or malware into the extension.They could save themselves the trouble if Firefox simply baked in its own ad-blocking, but since Google basically owns them, we all know that will never happen.Ladybird browser is going to be awesome.

I seem to remember TamperMonkey being on there but not ViolentMonkey, which I didn&#x27;t agree with. However, I see neither of them on there. Both are available but not recommended. I wonder what is going on with that.

Thanks. Just installed Consent-O-Matic. I avoided it earlier because I assumed it consented, but by default it does not consent.

Interesting they&#x27;d recommend Decentraleyes: its default configuration disabled all HTTP link prefetching, which hurts performance in a way not apparent from the extension description.

Complete, authoritative list of Firefox extensions officially recommended by Mozilla.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;addons.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;search&#x2F;?promoted=recommended&amp;type=extension" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;addons.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;search&#x2F;?promoted=re...</a>Some quite informative discussion on Firefox subreddit when I discovered and posted the above list there a few months ago.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1pyvx2v&#x2F;complete_authoritative_list_of_firefox_extensions&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1pyvx2v&#x2F;complete_a...</a>The Recommended Extensions program description: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;kb&#x2F;recommended-extensions-program" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;kb&#x2F;recommended-extensions-...</a>

Still works for me. The occasional 403 has always been an issue

Also for youtube download plug-ins. yt-dpl does not work for youtube anymore.

You mean Bypass Paywalls Clean? It&#x27;s illegal and it&#x27;s not even on the Firefox extension store. You have to download it from some Russian Github alternative and manually install it.I will say however, it works remarkably well. I haven&#x27;t seen a paywall in years!

Rather than introducing additional attack surface and privacy risks with yet another extension you can just use archive.is&#x2F;archive.ph instead of Bypass Paywalls Clean.Or, just pay for journalism since it’s not free to do.

I recommend two more:1. pass paywalls clean.2. Social Fixer

I think that would limit its capabilities so much that it would be much easier for ad platforms to find ways to circumvent it.

You can only get a very limited uBlock Origin facsimile, not the real thing. A lot of browsers have a uBlock Lite. It&#x27;s missing a lot of useful features IMO.

Absolutely not. This is exactly why people have a problem with Chromium, which now has some of the same restrictions on extensions as Safari (Manifest V3).- uBlock Origin works best on Firefox: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gorhill&#x2F;uBlock&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gorhill&#x2F;uBlock&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;uBlock-Origin-works-b...</a>- uBlock Origin Lite FAQ: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;uBlockOrigin&#x2F;uBOL-home&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Frequently-asked-questions-(FAQ)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;uBlockOrigin&#x2F;uBOL-home&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Frequently-as...</a>

One of my biggest annoyances about my iPad is how much less effective the content blockers on Safari are than on real Firefox and ublock origin that I have on my Android phone and had on my previous windows tablet. Also iOS “Firefox” can’t run any adblockers, whether ublock origin or iOS content blockers so I have to use Safari and put up without consent-o-matic or tab syncFor example, ublock origin is able to patch out anti-adblock scripts that Safari content blockers cannot. Try tvtropes for an example. Works fine with firefox and ublock origin, displays a “allow ads of subscribe” instead of the content on safari.

With that approach how am I going to block ads on long-tail-site.example.com and lots-of-ads.new-domain.com? I&#x27;ll let uBO read my traffic. Firefox is reading my traffic anyway.

So you want to make it super easy to bypass the block by randomising identifiers every so often, and then the blocker will have to go through the full update process?Maybe this works for some extensions but an ad blocker has to be maximally dynamic to work.

I’m a huge fan of Mozilla and Firefox specifically, but I don’t think that the way classical adblock extensions are made is the right way. Instead, it should be done as Apple&#x2F;Safari do it [1]: the browser provides an API to hook&#x2F;set a block list of identifiers that should be blocked, it could be resource hostnames, html signatures, need to think how to improve the API, but this way it’s completely safe, extension has zero access to the actual page content. Apple does the same for caller id apps. Afaik, Android has this API too, but the last time I checked, all relevant extensions were just “give me your whole phone control or web page access”, so Google clearly doesn’t enforce itYes, it kinda gives more control to the platform, but so far, iOS extensions that use this API worked surprisingly well for mePlease, correct me if I am wrong and uBclock can already work in this restricted modeAnd the last thing, if people really want to give someone a full page content access, they surely should be able to do that, so kudos to Mozilla[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;safariservices&#x2F;creating-a-content-blocker" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;safariservices&#x2F;cre...</a>

I kept Firefox on one system for testing and had some non-popular extensions installed there. I rarely opened it and when I did it would spew me with a message that one of the extensions got malicious code installed

Good for them! Glad they have the resources to do so. The free Brave Origin on Linux also has good native ad-blocking in my experience.

Firefox is also the only browser that vets uBlock&#x27;s code on every update to make sure the developer hasn&#x27;t inserted spyware or malware into the extension.They don&#x27;t do it for every extension, but they do so for a wide selection of popular options.&gt; Recommended extensions differ from other extensions that are regularly reviewed by Firefox staff in that they are curated extensions that meet the highest standards of security, functionality and user experience. After receiving Recommended status, safety standards are maintained through automated checks, monitoring, and periodic technical reviews<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;kb&#x2F;recommended-extensions-program" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;kb&#x2F;recommended-extensions-...</a>

You can also run Ad Nauseum if you want to

For all possible MV2 extensions this is unsustainable for a small company. Supporting just uBO used by tens of millions of people? pretty doable as it only relies on few hooks into C functions that arent going anywhere.

Unless upstream introduces breaking changes I don&#x27;t see why not. Google was killing this functionality for policy reasons, not because changes to the renderer required it or something. And LLM analysis is going to make maintaining forks easier going forward.

I wouldn&#x27;t be sure this is a long term solution. Maintaining a this into perpetuity would probably take a lot of resources that Vivaldi team might not have.

Vivaldi 8.1 still supports it (Chromium 150) as loaded unpacked extension.Edit: and latest August 14, 2026 Chromium 152.0.7977.38 based Snapshot <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vivaldi.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;desktop&#x2F;address-field-calculator-and-vpn-fix-vivaldi-browser-snapshot-4133-3&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vivaldi.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;desktop&#x2F;address-field-calculator-an...</a> has this in patch notes:&quot;[Extensions] Re-enable and extend Manifest V2 extension support for the time being (VB-130324)&quot;

Yes, but if you write your own extension maybe you want to read and modify the data. For example, patch fingerprinting script so that it gets the wrong result.Furthermore, malicious extension can read the data from the DOM, from forms (for example, password or credit card fields), and in some cases, from JS variables. They can insert fake information into the page. So preventing extensions from reading network data still leaves a lot of options for a malicious extension.

Of course it&#x27;s tempting to reply &quot;don&#x27;t install random extensions&quot;. But a bigger point here is that browsers have grown so massively complex that it&#x27;s almost impossible to build one, so we don&#x27;t have an ecosystem where you can choose your browser for safety and I can choose mine for freedom. Of course, Google has had a big incentive and hand in making it this way.

&gt; I want my browser to prevent random extensions...Why are you installing random extensions?

The Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer let users search Google directly from any webpage, block pop-up ads, autofill web forms, and highlight search terms. It also displayed PageRank metrics, translated foreign languages, checked spelling, and managed web bookmarks.

&gt; I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data.To be honest, to me it sounds like you don&#x27;t want browser extensions then.To me, directly messing with web page data and browser behaviour is the whole point of a browser extension - what else is a browser extension for?

Nothing stops people from using a fork with manifest v2 support restored. In fact &quot;VibeChrome&quot; would probably be a successful product.

&gt;Hate to be the one to defend Google here, but the reasons weren&#x27;t that unreasonable.Sounds like some kind of Stockholm syndrome. Years ago, it was standard practice for software to be designed so that users could grant permissions to access invasive methods or functions.Google relies on users&#x27; personal data (ads), which is why they introduced a unique ID to their Chrome browser (to track).

&gt; I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page dataThis is so funny to me. Coming from a Netscape Navigator world, when extensions first came out, they were supposed to allow the user to add functionality to websites.Why would someone install &quot;random extensions&quot; that they dont trust. And also, what would extensions do if not read and write data to websites? .Sign of the times I guess.

Don&#x27;t defend them then. Do you believe the same should be true of your operating system? If not, then it shouldn&#x27;t be true of the browser either.

... the greatest danger to
us is masterless men; lacking a coercive power to tie their hands, they would
destroy society. How else but by binding to lord and master can they be held to the laws? So thought men during feudal times.In fact, it is possible for people to be held to good conduct without being bound into a single hierarchy, and it should be possible for software to be held to good conduct without giving such power to single monopolists. But it&#x27;s not in Google&#x27;s interests to build such mechanisms, any more than it was in the interests of the feudal overlords to look for alternatives to their rule.

&gt; I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data. The declarative API idea is pretty good.Agreed. And you would think most paranoid HN types would too.&gt; It&#x27;s just that uBlock Origin is so insanely useful, important and trustedMaybe I&#x27;m foggy on the history. But isn&#x27;t this like Fork #4 or #5 of some previous AdBlock extension?Seems like the only business model for this type of extension is &quot;selling out&quot; for certain ads. And then the cycle repeats and forum posters tell you to install qBlock Omega or whatever. Maybe Mozilla doesn&#x27;t want to get in the middle of this?

Of course the reasons weren&#x27;t unreasonable, that&#x27;s what made them great excuses for specifically blocking ublock origin.

&quot;Random&quot; is a funny thing to call an extension that you have deliberately installed.I also don&#x27;t want &quot;random&quot; programs accessing my home folder. That would be terrible! Who knows what programs that could be! I do however want the very specific programs that I have intentionally installed to be able to access my home folder easily. Same for extensions.The goal here isn&#x27;t really to protect me from extensions. Extensions don&#x27;t do anything on their own, they just sit there and wait for me to install them. So the goal is apparently to protect me from me (installing an extension), which really is to say protect their business (ads) from me (blocking them).

&gt; I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data. The declarative API idea is pretty good.I was under the impression that manifest v3 still allowed extensions to read anything, just not modify. Is that not the case? (Random link because this is hard to search for: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38303446">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38303446</a> )

&gt; Hate to be the one to defend Google here, but the reasons weren&#x27;t that unreasonable. I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data. The declarative API idea is pretty good.Don&#x27;t kid yourself, even with mv3 if you install a rogue extension it&#x27;s going to have access to a lot more data than you would be comfortable sharing to.

Then don&#x27;t install them. I want my extensions in my browser on my computer to do whatever I allow them to do and not what&#x27;s allowed by Google.

No worries. Reading the rest of your comments shows, that your defense is paper thin .

The amount of replies this has gotten regarding the use of “random” is a fine example of the state of discussion on the internet and in general, and how HN is in no way immune.Clearly “random” was used as a means of saying “any”, to describe extensions the author hasn’t thought of. That will be obvious to anyone arguing in good faith and steel manning the argument.

This sounds like another one in those class of arguments that are essentially &quot;We can&#x27;t let users accidentally harm themselves on the devices they own.&quot; While I appreciate ergonomics and sensible defaults, ultimately I don&#x27;t need you, Google or anyone else telling me I can&#x27;t do something with my device because it&#x27;s too dangerous to me. I mean I have a huge F U for anyone who tells me that quite frankly, just as I would if they said it about my car or my kitchen knife. I cleared the age of consent decades ago, I will use what I bought and I will accept responsibility for all of the outcomes. These little poindexter dictator nerds of IT who think they get to control everything about what I own can F right off. I applaud and will participate in any class action lawsuit against them and hope for the maximum penalties to be inflicted upon them.

Mozilla relies 85% of income from Google for making default search engine Google.They probably have strong implicit pressure not to.

&gt;it should be literally built into the browserOrion does this. It&#x27;s still a little too rough around the edges to recommend as a daily driver though.

&gt; I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data.I don&#x27;t want that! I want to be able to install any extension whatsoever (as we still can, more or less, install programs). And if I&#x27;m clueless enough to install &quot;random&quot; extensions that&#x27;ll harm me, then shame on me! How often has it happened for the whole existence of Manifest V2 anyway?Maybe we could have tolerated a well-hidden, well-protected &quot;advanced&quot; flag to open that possibility. But removing Manifest V2 altogether is unforgivable.Also, security is a very very very weak argument, as many ads are much more dangerous and toxic than any popular extension will ever be.

I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page dataI also want my browser to prevent random third-party javascript from doing the same. And I care more about that one, because as a user I don&#x27;t have control over said third-party javascript while I do have control over the extensions I&#x27;m using. The browser is supposed to be a user agent, not act as an extension of the website owner.

If you look at all the threat vectors of a browser from a user perspective, a rogue extension is well at the lower end.If you look at the threat vectors for the revenue of a company like Google, extensions that aren&#x27;t limited by the browser are pretty much number one.This should tell you everything you need about the matter.

&gt; I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data.Fine, then don&#x27;t install them?It&#x27;s like saying you want your TV to stop random people from watching it, but the obvious solution to that problem is to not invite random people into your living room.

&gt; Honestly, it should be literally built into the browser instead of being a mere extensionAaaand that&#x27;s why I&#x27;m using Vivaldi over here (which has a built-in adblocker).

Your browser does prevent random extensions from reading web page data - it prevents all of the ones you don&#x27;t install!More seriously: if you don&#x27;t want X to do Y, the solution is to not give X the permission Y. The platform overlord removing the premission Y completely is a terrible solution.

&gt; Then they had to make up some reasons to justify thatHate to be the one to defend Google here, but the reasons weren&#x27;t that unreasonable. I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data. The declarative API idea is pretty good.It&#x27;s just that uBlock Origin is so insanely useful, important and trusted, it should get full access to the entire browser regardless. Honestly, it should be literally built into the browser instead of being a mere extension. Only the conflicts of interest inherent in an ad company maintaining an ad blocker prevent that.

That sounds more like an issue with the update policies.

Why haven&#x27;t they been prosecuted? And why hasn&#x27;t this &quot;cindyllm&quot; bot account been deleted yet? Clearly a shadowban didn&#x27;t send the message.

But why blame the extensions instead of the auto-update feature? Wouldn&#x27;t it be more effective to build external code review practices around the extension eco-system? For example, if you want to publish or update an extension, you first have to review someone&#x27;s elses or something along those lines.

Lungs are one of the most effective ways of distributing disease. You&#x27;d be shocked at how many people get sick and die because LUNGS! We should immediately do away with lungs!

Browser extensions were also one of the biggest ways to distribute malware. The situation was genuinely horrific. Malware distributors would offer popular extension devs millions of dollars to buy the extension, then silently insert malware which gets auto deployed to millions of people.

You have full control of whether or not their button is in your toolbar.If they are hidden for you, it&#x27;s because you, the user, hid them or enabled the overflow extension menu.

Firefox extensions are already so incredibly locked down. It used to be they could edit any part of the UI anywhere. Now they each get a button at the end of the URL bar if they&#x27;re lucky, otherwise it&#x27;s some obscure hamburger menu item.

There’s also ad blockers for iOS safari, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t support ublock. There’s nothing in manifest v2 that’s required for ad blocking.

The crux of the difference is the webRequest API which is only available in Manifest v2. This allows uBlock to strip all tracking data from the requests themselves. So while Chrome w uBlock Lite is hiding almost all the same ads from you, it&#x27;s not protecting you from trackingThe Lite version also relies solely on filter lists that require you to update the extension itself while the MV2 version can do so dynamically. Additionally, it lacks CNAME Uncloaking which I imagine will become much more commonplace soon enough which will make it impossible to block those ads.

&gt; uBlock Origin Lite still seems to block almost all ads<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49305464">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49305464</a>

&gt; Google ... had to ... destroy the APIs so that they&#x27;re useless.I see this repeated over and over and yet uBlock Origin Lite still seems to block almost all ads. I&#x27;m not saying I wouldn&#x27;t prefer the non-lite version. But, given I basically still don&#x27;t see ads it&#x27;s kind of hard to argue Google destroyed the APIs so that they&#x27;re useless

&gt; The issue is that adblocking doesn&#x27;t work with itExcept this is objectively not true…uBlock Origin Lite is nearly as good as uBO and blocks nearly everything except for mostly Twitch ads.Manifest v3 is a big security upgrade and effectively closes off the permanent RCE pathway that v2 allowed.

There are good solid reasons why Manifest v3 is preferable for most extensions.The issue is that adblocking doesn&#x27;t work with it, so an addition, or workaround should be made, but when Google has the amount of influence they have, that didn&#x27;t happen.The upshut is that people hate ads and like free stuff, so there is now a good selling point for Firefox. Hell some of us switched to Firefox because it blocked popup ads and had tabs, back in the day.

&gt; extensions were supposed to be a way to let you do the things the browser didn&#x27;t want you to do.If that would have been the case, extensions wouldn’t exist.Extension are a way to make the browser do what the browser manufacturer didn’t think or care about.

What&#x27;s funny is that extensions were supposed to be a way to let you do the things the browser didn&#x27;t want you to do. Guess that was a bit too much freedom for Google to accept, so they had to make a store with a gate, and destroy the APIs so that they&#x27;re useless. Then they had to make up some reasons to justify that and ram it through the pipeline despite everyone&#x27;s objections, and the frog got boiled.Now we&#x27;re back to needing an actual extension system that does what extensions were supposed to do in the first place.

But does it also block tracking? (Hint: No, it doesn&#x27;t)

? I use Chrome and uBlock Origin lite. There are no ads on google search

Manifest 3 is why I finally shut down Sitetruth and Ad Limiter. Removing ads from Google Search is now possible only in Firefox.

Then why haven&#x27;t I see any difference in ad blocking with uBlock Origin Lite on Edge?

Like I&#x27;ve said in earlier posts: tracking cannot be solved through technological means. It has to be solved through legislation.The only thing you get is an arms race which Big Tech will always win because they have infinite budgets to keep the music playing.

Wow, I thought I was pretty savvy about the differences between Manifest versions; however, I had no clue about the CNAME part. Any idea what specifically became unsupported in v3 that caused this?

Yes, huge difference- MV2 version has sophisticated scripts to not only block ads but prevent tracking. With the lite version you might not be seeing most ads but you are certainly being tracked more- MV3 version might &quot;hide&quot; ads but the MV2 version is blocking requests from every being made. All those stats you hear about improved battery and reduced bandwidth usage with an adblocker are only true for the MV2 version- CNAME uncloaking is only done with MV2 version. That means when advertisers on sites cloak their CNAME, you won&#x27;t be able to block them- filters lists on Lite can only be updated when you install an update. In MV2 version it updates the lists dynamically. Advertisers change their domains all the time

Does it really make a huge difference to keep supporting Manifest Version 2?I&#x27;ve installed uBlock Origin Lite in my Edge browser and I don&#x27;t see any ads there either.

Oh yes they are. Occassionally when I am on a device which doesn&#x27;t have an ad-blocker. I witness it and I am always left feeling shocked at how many ads Youtube can have. We really don&#x27;t know the plight of so so many Youtube users. I feel sympathy for them and want to hug them and install an ad-blocker for them.I actually used to install Revanced for all the relatives who ever complained about Youtube and some who didn&#x27;t even ask! I just feel like Ad blocker is such a useful thing that I can do to people that I care about who don&#x27;t know deeply about it.I must say that it is one of the top entries of lists of most useful&#x2F;time-saving things I have done in actually saving anybody&#x27;s actual time.I express gratitude towards the universe for Ublock Origin. Words can&#x27;t comprehend how much I love it.

I got a Android tablet...I can&#x27;t recommend it. YT has gotten pretty toxic with the dark patterns. There are the usual interstitial ads, but after you skip and go full screen there&#x27;s another ad widget in the lower left of the video. You have carefully navigate a popup menu to dismiss it without triggering an ad popup. If you pause or double-tap to -10s the video it restores down and shows an ad on the right side.The Edge browser for has the best ad-free experience I&#x27;ve found so far on Android. It supports Widevine (DRM videos) and performance is good enough for most videos. I do get an occasional stutter with higher res videos. Firefox supports Widevine, but it didn&#x27;t last week? Or I just didn&#x27;t get the popup to &quot;Enable DRM&quot; for some reason. Edge claims to have blocked 15k YT ads in the last week with the built-in AdBlock Plus. It works with uBlock Origin as well (this week anyway).

Nope. I made the one-time payment for Brave Origin.

But you see crypto ads in the browser&#x27;s own settings.

I just use Brave. I haven&#x27;t seen a YouTube ad in years.

I mean did you try with Chrome and Ublock Original Lite? Because I have and there&#x27;s literally no difference at all.

Seriously.The web is completely unusable without UBO+FF. Any time I have to use a clean browser, I feel assaulted and dirty, plus wonder what malware just got injected into my machine.If it were to go away, I would probably accelerate retiring to an analog, offline life.

You either don&#x27;t use the f-word at all, or just write the whole word, uncensored. It&#x27;s not that hard: fuck Chrome.

&gt;It&#x27;s impossible to run full UBO (not Lite MV3 version) on current versions on Chrome.Current version of Chrome seems to be 152.0.7977.39 released August 14, 2026.August 14, 2026 Chromium 152.0.7977.38 based vivaldis napshot <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vivaldi.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;desktop&#x2F;address-field-calculator-and-vpn-fix-vivaldi-browser-snapshot-4133-3&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vivaldi.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;desktop&#x2F;address-field-calculator-an...</a> has this in patch notes:&quot;[Extensions] Re-enable and extend Manifest V2 extension support for the time being (VB-130324)&quot;

The original uBO relies on Manifest V2, the API Chrome no longer supports. It&#x27;s impossible to run full UBO (not Lite MV3 version) on current versions on Chrome.

It is possible to write your own extension and still use it in Chrome as long as it&#x27;s not bundled.  It would be a huge pain to get the source for uBlock origin and implement it locally yourself, but it might be worth the pain to block ads.

That&#x27;s not true, the on&#x2F;off toggle is per-site in uBlock Origin Lite.

I use Firefox with (non-lite) uBlock Origin, and occasionally fire up Chrome (with uBO Lite) for testing. The main issue that I run into is that uBO lite filters can&#x27;t vary per-domain, so in order to rule out an ad-blocking-false-positive on something I&#x27;m developing, I have to turn it off for _all_ sites, not just localhost. (Actual false positives are rare, but needing to check is not so rare.)

In the short time I&#x27;ve used it I haven&#x27;t noticed any appreciable difference.

But you can do this with uBOL? I’m not sure what you mean. I have multiple rules to hide elements on various sites. With HN I hide elements and can give it a custom CSS dark mode through uBOL. Works on both desktop and iOS.

I have not really had any issues with ads using uBlock Origin Lite. It&#x27;s like the complainers live in an alternate reality or just listened to some influencer and never actually checked.I do miss the rules that let me remove stuff based like CSS like selectors. The strange thing is, even though uBlock Origin Lite doesn&#x27;t support that feature it&#x27;s still totally possible to make an extension that does that. Maybe the specific thing uBlock Origin was doing is not possible but making an extension that follows rules and hides&#x2F;deletes elements with different rules per site is still fully possible under manifest v3

I’ve found uBlock Origin Lite (and every other non-uBlock Origin blocker) to struggle with websites using Ad-Shield. (i.e. the entire website breaks.)

Haven&#x27;t noticed any issue, the main limitation is the lack of mobile support on Chrome, but that has always been the case.I&#x27;m so grateful for Firefox on Android

My experience using uBlock Origin Lite on iOS is that some particularly intrusive ads will figure out a way to load, like local news sites from the US, and many sites will be fully broken (missing entire content portions, content doesn’t scroll, entire page can’t be interacted with). These issues simply don’t occur on uBlock Origin but only exist as an artifact of aggressively blocking elements without applying fixes to unbreak sites.

Same here. although these days i prefer the mix uBlock Stripped + 3P-Matrix-lite.[uBlock Stripped]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Kees1958&#x2F;uBol-stripped" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Kees1958&#x2F;uBol-stripped</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chromewebstore.google.com&#x2F;detail&#x2F;ublock-stripped-%E2%80%94-dynamic&#x2F;femdnbckdgobaelpmbbajpidneljkjaa?pli=1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chromewebstore.google.com&#x2F;detail&#x2F;ublock-stripped-%E2...</a>[3P-Matrix-lite]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Kees1958&#x2F;3P-Matrix-lite" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Kees1958&#x2F;3P-Matrix-lite</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chromewebstore.google.com&#x2F;detail&#x2F;3p-matrix-lite&#x2F;oljiiikeojepiiaoaicpddpgpfiloejj?pli=1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chromewebstore.google.com&#x2F;detail&#x2F;3p-matrix-lite&#x2F;olji...</a>

I honestly haven&#x27;t really noticed a difference in ads after switching to the Lite version. It seems to work well enough.

It seems to block most, if not all, ads but I wonder whether it blocks tracking as well as uBO.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49308184">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49308184</a>

For those who use uBlock Origin Lite, have you noticed any issues&#x2F;deficiencies in what ads are blocked? I haven&#x27;t.

Sammme. Remember all the hullaballo about the AwesomeBar in Firefox 3?<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ed.agadak.net&#x2F;2008&#x2F;03&#x2F;beyond-awesome" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ed.agadak.net&#x2F;2008&#x2F;03&#x2F;beyond-awesome</a>Truly amazing stuff, in 2008.

Been using Firefox as my main browser since version 1.5.The last few years I&#x27;ve noticed that some things have stopped working as smoothly though - mainly just little CSS glitches and things because people don&#x27;t test in Firefox :(

20 years and counting. :)Thanks for every day that this browser works.Sometimes I had to test something in Chrome - and it’s painful experience.But it really depends on personal view - I have tried to convert my friends and they don’t feel it.

I’ve never felt so old as I did reading this comment

I have been using Firefox for 20 years and the regrets kept accumulating till I switched to Chrome 3 years ago.

I&#x27;ve been using Firefox for over 6 years now and I&#x27;ve never regretted it.

Brave surely is a major browser with 100+M MAU, not too distant from Firefox with 150+M MAU.

Technically Firefox isn&#x27;t a major browser either.

Firefox is less popular than some of the browsers you listed as not major, so it isn&#x27;t major either

Well, Edge probably counts. I agree about the others.

The title says &quot;major browser&quot;, which none of those are.

RIP corporate users that can&#x27;t install their own browsers but can install extensions

Ahh so this will be what moves me off of Edge.  Microsoft has almost entirely pushed me out of their ecosystem at this point.

Edge will lose it within the next few months: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.windows.com&#x2F;msedgedev&#x2F;2026&#x2F;08&#x2F;07&#x2F;moving-the-microsoft-edge-extensions-ecosystem-forward-with-manifest-version-3&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.windows.com&#x2F;msedgedev&#x2F;2026&#x2F;08&#x2F;07&#x2F;moving-the-mi...</a>

Agree on the last part, let’s see for how long.. but for now it’s simply not true.

Edge is dropping support. Helium is not a major browser.Brave is the only one that might be considered a valid point. However, because of Chromium dropping support they&#x27;ve had to implement a custom bypass to support Manifest v2 and they are also hosting a version of uBlock Origin for Chromium on their own servers.It&#x27;s really questionable how long this state of affairs can go on for. Brave has said they will support it &quot;as long as they are able&quot; but Google could easily just remove the `webRequest` API from Chromium or the engineering burden to keep it alive might just get to be too muchUnfortunately, I think it has an expiration date on any Chromium-based browser.

Latest Vivaldi on Linux (8.1.4087.66, Chromium 150). uBlock Origin works.

I use Vivaldi and I recently installed an update that disabled my v2 extensions. Had to downgrade and disable update checking.

....until then when big money starts knocking.

Opera also claims they are committed to support manifest V2 forever.

Wtf, simply not true:Brave: chrome:&#x2F;&#x2F;flags&#x2F;#brave-extensions-manifest-v2 &gt; brave:&#x2F;&#x2F;settings&#x2F;extensions&#x2F;v2 &gt; Enable uBlock Origin (Brave-hosted, even better).Helium comes with uBlock Origin pre-installed.Edge even still has it <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;microsoftedge.microsoft.com&#x2F;addons&#x2F;detail&#x2F;ublock-origin&#x2F;odfafepnkmbhccpbejgmiehpchacaeak" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;microsoftedge.microsoft.com&#x2F;addons&#x2F;detail&#x2F;ublock-ori...</a>And I&#x27;m sure others ...I personally only use&#x2F;test Brave, Brave Origin, Helium and Firefox.

I&#x27;m not sure why you&#x27;re being downvoted; you&#x27;re right. Firefox the browser is an amazingly capable tool but I wish it was shepherded by an org that prioritized its users&#x27; interests (privacy, performance, etc.) instead of ramming AI, crypto or cute marketing campaigns that NOBODY wants into its flagship offering.

We all just either memory-holed it or convinced ourselves that it wasn&#x27;t what it was. Easy to think you just misunderstood what they said, even though they were very explicit about it.

They rewrote the terms almost immediately after the backlash. They also claimed the original terms were written in response to the overly broad legal definitions of &quot;data sales&quot; under laws like the CCPA. Which tbh sounds reasonable

Do people not remember Firefox changing their terms of service last year and allowing them to sell your data to third parties? I don&#x27;t get it did people forget?I switched over to LibreWolf and other browsers like that then and never looked back.

uBO + Steven Black hosts list + firefox. Peace, for now at least.

Are there any Chromium-based mod&#x2F;plugin loaders out there? I mean something that uses the same DLL&#x2F;SO hijacking or injection tricks game hackers use to build mod loaders, to expose a hooking layer for plugins.

The other browser they pay for isn’t the first alternative I’d run to…

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49305464">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49305464</a>

uBlock lite works pretty well for me with Chrome

Guess it was a bad idea for everyone to switch to a browser made by one of the world’s biggest advertising companies.

Yes. Opera (original, not what is called Opera now) introduced tabs first. I believe in the 5.0 version with presto engine.

Yes, well, kind of. Opera had Multiple Document Interface (MDI) which was actually (back then) far more flexible than tabs. But yes, Opera was first with MDI, and also I suppose the first web browser for the smartphone.

I&#x27;m fairly sure Opera introduced it first.

Yeah, I remember.I also remember it automatically blocking popup ads. That was a huge deal.

No, because Opera and SimulBrowse had it years before Firefox even existed

Remember when Firefox was the first browser to have &quot;tabbed browsing&quot;?Obviously UBO isn&#x27;t a first party feature - but if only Firefox could generate as much traction about ad blocking as they did with tabs.

If you don&#x27;t care about DRM content, bookmark syncing etc, sure, use a bare minimum chromium fork with the patch.But that&#x27;s not what most users, including uBlock origin users, want.

What&#x27;s preventing anyone to just spend some tokens and bring it back and fork Chrome? I think ungoogled Chromium still supports it, right?

I agree. The death of Edge&#x27;s Trident and Opera&#x27;s Presto has been really scary for the web. I know it&#x27;s really far off but I truly hope Ladybird, Servo, and Flow succeed in building mature and competitive web engines

And we must protect it at all costs.I love Firefox.We need more browsers like Firefox - more open source, more open to standards that improve the web, that can improve our browsing experience.

Great but as soon as Google decides to completely strip the `webRequest` API from the codebase, it&#x27;s game over. Now that it&#x27;s deprecated it&#x27;s only a matter of time. This also means Brave, the last Chromium-based browser to support it, will also be unable to support it

Haven’t tried it but apparently there is an unofficial port of the full version of uBlock Origin to work on manifest v3, the largest challenge being that, on manifest v3, the webRequestBlocking permission is only available to enterprise sideloaded extensions: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;r58Playz&#x2F;uBlock-mv3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;r58Playz&#x2F;uBlock-mv3</a>

The benefit of open source here is there are forked versions of it you can download.

I&#x27;ve never seen an ad for Mozilla VPN, nor any other Mozilla product, in Firefox.However I have seen billions of ads on google.com and YouTube.com, and search placement, and fraud.But whatever. How&#x27;s google pay? Pretty good?

Too bad Firefox isn&#x27;t a major browser.And it shouldn&#x27;t be. It&#x27;s now full of ads for Mozilla VPN and stuff. We need the engine, but not the browser.

Open your browser’s dev tools while loading a website and there’s usually a continuous stream of HTTP and JS errors and warnings. That websites actually work surprises me sometimes, but that’s the pragmatic beauty of the web.

Yes, in the same way constant software malfunctions and errors are normal and tolerated.

adblock works well with regular youtube ads (not the one inside the actual content).

&gt; every pageThat&#x27;s a bit hyperbolic. The areas of the internet I frequent do not have egregious ads (for example, this page). Areas where I really would like good ad-blocking (youtube) are often not covered by these ad blockers. Thankfully Youtube Premium isn&#x27;t too expensive and solves that issue.Maybe it&#x27;s better these days but I always found browser extensions (including uBlock) had a pretty big performance hit, so I&#x27;ve always shied away from them (with the exception of a password manager).

I often forget how browsing the web looks for most people. Can&#x27;t understand why they put up with it, or do they just think that it&#x27;s part and parcel of the internet to have every page look like a slot machine from hell?

Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin