I think you overestimate the role adblockers play for regular users. Most people not affiliated with IT in any way I've met actually don't use an adblocker or have forgotten that they in fact do and would not notice the change to Manifest v3.
Also, most people care much more about "it simply works", and that is Chrome. Firefox is neither preinstalled nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly). There's already a lot of popups like "this site works best in Chrome".
It's actually ridiculous to surf the web without an adblocker.
Let's say you have a brand new computer, and want to download nVidia drivers. Fire up your brand new computer, search for "nvidia drivers" using Bing.... and the first results are all ads for extremely scummy adware. (It's also hilarious when you search for "chrome download" when Edge begs you not to, and including when you click through, but that's a story for another time :)).
> It's actually ridiculous to surf the web without an adblocker.
Obviously for this audience. But two of my buddies didn't even know such things existed and were truly grateful when I introduced uBO/Privacy Badger to them.
Yeah, I went to use my Mom's phone and I was appalled with all the ads and notifications. We can disable notifications, block intrusive ads or at least figure out which app is sending them to uninstall it, but for regular users the whole thing is an awful experience. I don't refrain from calling it "evil" anymore, because that's what it is. No wonder we're collectively going insane.
> nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly). There's already a lot of popups like "this site works best in Chrome".
User-agent sniffing[1] and it is a webdev smell. I acknowledge that this is true, but I admit being bummed that we didn't win the war to use web standards.
I helped my mom try out a smartphone for the first time this weekend, and she won't really use the web much on it except maybe weather. So I go to weather.com or something to show her how she can get to it.
I got a full screen cookie consent popup, a location permission popup, and ads were everywhere on the screen. Must have been 50% of screen space for the top part of the page. It's absurd!
Also, most people care much more about "it simply works", and that is Chrome. Firefox is neither preinstalled nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly). There's already a lot of popups like "this site works best in Chrome".