As an FYI, I just received a pop up in Chrome telling me that it turned off UBlock Origin, because it’s no longer supported. I went into “Manage Extension,” had to stop it from wanting to delete it, then a couple more “are you sure” messages to turn it back on.
I know a lot of people use this for Wowhead and Fandom and the like, so I wanted to give a heads up that Chrome is making things difficult with Ublock right now. I don’t know if it’s because Chrome updated and Ublock didn’t yet… or if Chrome is just trying to stop people from blocking ads. Just wanted to let y’all know.
I can’t stand Firefox. It’s somehow more of a resource hog on my computer than Chrome. And I can’t customize it the way I’d like, nor have all of my Google stuff set up the same way that I like with Chrome.
To each their own. I was a Firefox user for ages, but switched about five years ago after Firefox did an update and turned into a dumpster fire for me.
It is because Chrome is developed by a company that derives the majority of its income by selling advertising. Including on sites like Wowhead and Fandom. Look up Manifest v3.
If you want to continue blocking ads long term, you will need to switch to a browser like Firefox, Brave, or Vivaldi.
I just use Brave which has adblock built in. And for other things and functions, its virtually the same look as Chrome because Brave is also using the open source Chromium engine.
Yeah, Google’s been waging a war against adblockers for some time now; I’ve been aware of it myself for some time since I watch a fair bit of YouTube and there’s been plenty of talk about it over there (as well as impacts to the viewing experience due to their aggressive changes).
I’ve been waiting for something like a year now for Chrome to finally start trying to block uBlock, but at the same time I still have to wonder if uBlock can’t just be updated to support this new standard Google’s pushing.
the harder google tries killing adblocking, the more ways people will create to bypass restrictions. I wouldn’t be surprised if an app used the windows host file to block ads at some point.
It is my go to for Youtube, I can listen to or watch stuff on my other monitor while I play WoW and I’ve never had a single ad or Google/Youtube stuff intrusively tell me to disable it or I can’t view stuff.
Google even almost got me to start paying for YT premium when the adblocker I was using at the time stopped working, but I was hesitant and eventually they started putting ads in premium anyway so I feel like my hesitation literally paid off there.
works fine on firefox.
the real reason is because google is greedy and doesnt want you blocking their awful ads.
any browser using chromium is going to have this issue.
low key plug for firefox the superior browser.
You can already do this but it would be easier to manage using something like pi-hole. Some routers like Eero (owned by Amazon) also included this for a fee. I guess it depends on whether you want to invest time or money.
Folks are going to hate what I’m going to say (but hey, folks already hate me for stuff so eh, what’s new) but I’m going to recommend against this for two reasons:
The internet relies on ads and people are … both too much and too little scared of the data that is being sold and the ads that we see as a direct result. If you want a good breakdown of this, I can’t actually recommend anything because this is stuff I understand having studied it and seen first hand what happens when you make a conscious decision of your digital footprint.
The alternative to freedom of information… is the subscription of information. Ya’ know the whole information bubbles and closed off groups that refuse to accept information on Facebook and spread endless conspiracy theories? Imagine the internet consisting of that … instead of ads.
It is appropriate to limit the amount of ads that we have online yes. But that’s mostly to make sites that otherwise run too many ads which then crash and no longer work, it is to fix those issues. Not to actually stop ads, just limit the amount of ads that we see. So… yeah, I know what I’m saying is unpopular and that folks already scream “shill” both WAY too much just in general and especially on these forums and usually falsely.
But this is a question of do you want the internet to be free, or do you want even more subscription based systems preventing people from accessing things? People are already tired of both subscriptions and ads, but at this point folks are gonna have to pick which one they are the most tired of and install adblockers accordingly (and I’m telling people to install adblockers by the way, just not stuff that block everything universally but just the most egregious stuff).
