Well, without live heuristics. Chrome ad blocking is basically now limited to a dumb, limited list of URI patterns. Better than nothing, but much less capable than before.
And without privacy invasion implications. Apple introduced content blocking 4 versions ago implemented nearly the same way. No one would accuse Apple of trying to help Google make more money.
Every application has privacy implications, and it isn't difficult to manage this one. Having a giant warning around installing extensions with this level of access would be a good way to protect people while also allowing them to make their own decisions.
Because warning people has historically worked well with PCs not to mention Android.
See Also Vista UAC.
It’s kind of amazing for people to say that they care about their privacy and then they install extensions that can record their entire browsing history and install VPN software on their phones that intercept all of their internet communications.
There's a mountain of difference between "can" and "will", and it's called "trust".
For decades, people have been using software on their PCs which can essentially delete all their data or worse, yet what are the chances of that actually happening? Of course malware would exist, but at the same time, the unrestricted nature lead to a seamless exchange of data and creativity unhindered by any bureaucratic permission-maze.
A world of "perfect" security in which malware and cybercrime cannot exist is basically a dystopian police state.
And we have found better ways on a newer platforms not to implicitly trust apps with unfettered access to user data and surprisingly enough, no one has started rounding up people en masse for looking at cat videos....
... That's how computers work, yes. If you have a way to make a VPN that doesn't see its own traffic, I'm all ears. In the meantime, I trust a VPN more than my ISP.
In my personal case, yes I have because I'm running it myself on a VPS. In general, though, the commercial providers that I would use have stood up to court orders / warrants, so I reckon they're fine.
Unfortunately, I don't have a fast enough uplink to comment on speed concerns.
You don't see any hazard to showing a giant warning to people when they install something that almost everyone should use? If people see a big warning when they install a legitimate ad blocker, people will start ignoring the warnings.
The 30,000 rule limit is a pretty big deal breaker for me, but what sort of live heuristics are you referring to here? Aren't e.g. uBlock Origin's filters entirely rule based (not unlike most other ad blocker extensions)?
"We are planning to raise these values but we won't have updated numbers until we can run performance tests to find a good upper bound that will work across all supported devices."
Content can still be blocked with extensions, but it will be more difficult to handle large block lists.
See this comment from the author of uBlock Origin and uMatrix.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...