Re:Explanation of the state of uBlock Origin and other block...
by tptacek on Friday September 20, 2019 @09:22PM
(#21032861)
The actual right fix here is for Google to give a blanket exemption to uBO and to nothing else. That's what security people want them to do. Because the underappreciated problem here is that while uBO is fine, ad blockers in general are security tire fires.
Re:Explanation of the state of uBlock Origin and other block...
by loeg on Friday September 20, 2019 @10:52PM
(#21033191)
Totally agree that's the right engineering fix! I just don't see it happening for dollar and cent reasons:
> The moral dilemma here seems to be that Google is unwilling to privilege a good-citizen adblocker like uBO over other extensions; they're an ad company and any explicit step towards promoting an adblocker probably is hard to explain at shareholder meetings
As someone who isn't a corpsec/IT practitioner, though, breaking uBO is literally the most important impact of Chrome's Manifest v3 for me.
I wouldn't mind if Google incorporated uBO as a first-party component in Chromium while applying the restricted policy to all other extensions! Most purported adblockers are crap, if not malware. Pick the best one and restrict the rest.
Unfortunately, I doubt an advertising company is going to incorporate uBO in the browser they provide for free.
I totally buy that breaking uBO isn't Google's goal for Manifest v3! It just happens as a beneficial side effect.