Hacker News Reader

Comment by the8472 | Hacker News Reader

Pornhub Bypasses Chrome Ad Blockers with WebSockets.

Firefox request filter APIs do cover websockets for example.

This should be made more clear. It seems that Chrome is generally behind in that regard, e.g. for a long time it wasn't even possible at all for an addon to block requests.

Chrome is a browser offered for free by what's essentially an advertising company. How could we expect it to be on the cutting edge of the fight against advertising?

They only tolerate ad-blocking plugins as long as it's necessary to retain power users. For instance, they aren't tolerated on Android.

They aren't tolerated on Android because they are pre-installed on Android and therefore in a position of power. As the Android market-share grows, though, the chances of an anti-trust suit in that arena increase.

Exactly, I'm not surprised at all. ;)

Firefox on Android has ad-blockers.

This is why I use Firefox on Android, actually.

How well integrated is it into the rest of Android? Can I have the Google search bar open results in ff by default?

Yeah.

Android is not like iOS or Windows for mobile. Default apps are handled much like on Windows, even down to the home screen.

If you install a new browser, for example, then it will give you the option to change the default the next time that you try to open any web link. Same goes for most anything. If you install a new app launcher (home screen) the next time you press the home button it will prompt you for which app launcher you want to use (since they're just normal apps).

Anything that opens "web pages" automatically uses the current app for opening web pages which can be FF. If you install FF it will prompt you and you can tap FF and then tap "always" to skip the prompts.

Many things like Facebook and Google search will initially use their own internal browsers for speed, unless you configure them not to. Even in an internal browser, you can generally reopen the page in FF.

Chromium[1] is sort of free, Iron[2] is free, iridium[3] is free, epic is free[4], chrome is not. Google Chrome is a google (alphabet?) product, hence based on the business model of providing service or software for gratis but tracking[5] users and usage, building profiles and so on to sell ads.

In the end these ads are paid for by sales, which means chrome is not free, you're not giving money directly but paying with your privacy and personal profiling then indirectly paying with money to buy advertised products which pays for ads which pays for chrome.

[1]: https://www.chromium.org/ [2]: https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php [3]: https://iridiumbrowser.de/ [4]: https://www.epicbrowser.com/ [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#User_tracking

That's one thing that's very nice about Firefox - they do support the extension ecosystem quite thoroughly.

Except they're actively working toward dismantling their extension ecosystem and replacing it with one that is basically Chrome extensions.

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-dev... https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions

Have you ever tried to develop a old-school-style Firefox extension?

I made an extension in both browsers three years ago. It took me a week to make the Firefox extension and one day to make the Chrome extension. Chrome extensions are basically websites.

I also think Chrome's permissions based system is superior from a user-security standpoint.

They're not really dismantling it, so much as trying to push it towards standardization. Some (most?) addons will get left behind, but they'll still accept patches for anything that the actively-maintained ones need.

uBlock Origin provides a websocket companion[1][2] plugin for blocking websocket requests in Chrome.

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBO-WebSocket

[2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-webs...

That doesn't use the request filtering APIs, it adds a blocking shim around the objects in each context. It's a workaround.

Just went to make sure I still had websockets disabled in FF but it turns out they removed the option. I shouldn't have to install a plugin to disable something like that.

Just like you shouldn't need a plugin to disable <div> or <strong>.

Web developers inability to see the difference between a formatting directive and a two way network connection is why websockets aren't going to be well supported in the corporate world.

You can use this to get your ads served in Firefox through uBlock Origin or Adblock.

http://pastebin.com/TWGL1W1A

Enjoy!

No it doesn't. (or it could but is not used by uBlock currently).

Source: Hum. Personal experience.

The content filter APIs most definitely support it[0][1]. uMatrix puts websocket requests in the "other" category on FF.

uBlock is less powerful than umatrix in some areas, so that might be an issue with the addon, not the browser.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XPCOM/... [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/AP...

uBlock Origin sees, reports, and can block websocket connection attempts on Firefox. The onus is on the parent comment to make the case with something more substantial than "No it doesn't". Maybe he is just referring to the plain "uBlock", which is no longer maintained.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com