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Security. The Chrome security team(and other Google security teams like Project Zero) is top notch. Mozilla can't really compete in this field, unfortunately, Google can afford to and does invest more into browser security.



But if (! - I am not sure on that, yet) v3 is preventing ad-blockers from working the attack surface is that much larger using Chrome.


v3 is no preventing adblockers, it changes the way they'll have to be implemented(they'll be less powerful than before).


Reducing functionality is preventing adblocking, which is overwhelmingly the primary action of adblockers.

Thus it is fair to state they are preventing adblockers.


>Thus it is fair to state they are preventing adblockers

No it's not fair to say that. The same way it's not fair to say Apple is preventing adblocking in Safari even if the current state of adblocking there RIGHT NOW is exactly how manifest v3 Chrome will be(using declarativeNetRequest)


But, they are, right? They aren't preventing ALL ad blockers, but they aren't even merely preventing theoretical ad blockers: they are blocking concrete ad blockers that people have built and would actively use.

If there is a checkpoint at an event which seems to be turning away cars it doesn't matter if other cars are also getting through: the way we use the relevant phrasing allows us to say that "they are turning away cars" as that is a bit ambiguous as to why or how many.


We're entered the backwards compatibity discussion teritory, not sure what to think about it to be honest.


But you do not need to discuss that. Rather suppose ad-blockers are working less effectively under v3, leading to additional ads being shown. That would increase the attack surface.

If ad-blockers really will be less effective under v3 remains to be seen. But do you think it is an unreasonable perspective, given the technical limitation?


Given that the reasons behind Google breaking backward compatibility are obviously primarily because they want to weaken ad blocking, I think it's perfectly reasonable to talk about this.


This is all semantics. Ad blockers on Safari are less effective than what you can get on Chrome/Firefox right now. Google is trying to make adblockers on Chrome less effective as well.


Are they? I use 1Blocker with Safari on all my devices, and don’t remember the last time I saw an ad.

Not saying this to defend MV3. The ad blocking situation for Safari isn’t dire, though.


There's no difference here. Adblockers need to continually update their blocklists; if a hard limit is put on blocklist length, then the adblocker's job is being prevented.


to ensure that you are mainly compromised by google and not by their competitors :-).




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