How about posting what we’re losing for those out of the loop. That Reddit link is pretty useless.
Google is removing that dynamic blocking ability and providing you with a way to supply a static list of blocked urls instead. No ability to use code to implement a dynamic list.
It's somewhat similar to taking a virus scanner and only allowing it to identify a virus by the filename being in a static, pre-generated list.
Also, Google says they are doing this for privacy reasons. Which is funny, because OnBeforeRequest() isn't going away, just the ability to block a request inside of it. You can still see every request, inject javascript with content scripts, exfiltrate data, and so on. You just can't preemptively stop a url/resource from being loaded using code...only a static list of urls. You can guess the type of extensions that depend on that functionality.
I pointed this out in a thread yesterday too, but the whole point is that you will no longer need to grant "see all my requests" permissions to ad blockers. In fact, due to the removal of the old blocking API, if an ad blocker asks for such permissions it's highly suspicious.
I'd give the privacy angle more credence if they were really locking down everything. They aren't, because extensions would then be of very limited use.
It seems reasonable to require a static list for privacy reasons. But not supporting pattern matching rules would seem to be an explicit attempt to stop ad blockers.
It's rich to cite privacy reasons for not allowing the blocking of ad sites whose goal is to spy on you.
Because if the extension knows what URLs you're accessing, and can send that data somewhere, that's a major privacy concern.
So this makes sense and seems good for privacy. But if it breaks uBlock Origin significantly, that seems like a very bad thing.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/decla...
I don't personally believe that solves anything. Domain names are cheap. If I don't want my ad to be blocked, I can just rotate through lots of them.
Google has responded to some pressure by upping the max number of rules and allowing some amount of dynamically defined rules.
The Chrome devs claim that this is to enhance user security, but I have my doubts about that.
Well, then it means they don't need to monitor their extension store for extensions doing bad things, I suppose it's part of the story.
Extensions will no longer be able to neutralize all current and future evasion techniques the advertising and tracking industry implements. Ad blocking and tracking protection extensions will be forced to degrade technologically by about 5 years, and then stagnate.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/intro/mv3-m...