One of the stated goal of MV3 by Google[1] was to avoid extensions with broad permissions:
> our new declarativeNetRequest API is designed to be a privacy-preserving method for extensions to block network requests without needing access to sensitive data
This MV3-based AdGuard extension still requires a broad permission to "read or modify host data" on all sites[2]:
"host_permissions": [
"<all_urls>"
],
So what you have now is the same required permission to "read or modify host data" as with MV2, but with a network filtering engine capabilities gated by Google (an advertising company).
We can't innovate anymore the filtering capabilities of our content blocker engines as we have been constantly doing over the years.
For a recent example, there has been discussions lately with filter list maintainers of whether uBO should support AdGuard's proposed capability of being able to support pattern-matching for `domain=` filtering option[3] (uBO supports AdGuard lists).
That sort of proposition is not possible to entertain with MV3 since only Google get to decide how the filtering engine will evolve, if at all. All content blocking issues will have to be resolved with the Google-controlled filtering engine, and left unaddressed if the solution can't be shoehorned in the declarativeNetRequest API.
For context, gorhill is the veteran author of original uBlock, and current uBlock Origin. He knows what he's talking about as author, maintainer and one of the community leader/voice of probably the single best and only conflict-of-interest-free ad-blocker currently in existence.
His past post[0] was reposted and generated quite a discussion on HN [1].
For further details on why uBO is conflict free, this is the README.md on github repo[2] says:
---
Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought.
uBlock Origin is the only browser extension I use on Firefox, Even after loosing trust on browser extensions in general after witnessing a recommended Firefox add-on indulge in malicious activity[1] and reading numerous stories of how browser extension publishers with large number of users are routinely approached to integrate malware.
The reason why I cannot do away with uBlock Origin is because its not just an Ad-blocker as its philosophy states, I need it to make websites usable by blocking elements like auto pop-up news video player, Blocking side bars to resize the websites to preferred width (When playing videos), Disable tracking and often just to load the websites faster.
To those familiar with the HTML DOM I recommend uMatrix from the same author as uBlock origin. It makes a good companion to uBlock Origin and provides much finer control.
Isn't it pretty much redundant? You just have to enable advanced mode in ublock origin extension settings. The interface is arguably slightly harder to figure out though, but the functionality is there once you've enabled it.
Some of that uMatrix coverage is a hell of a lot harder/more awkward in uBO.
Basically every uMatrix user always also ran uBO too, for the more DOM/'content blocking' aspects (primarly 'cosmetic filtering' as it calls it iirc).
uMatrix lets me block all third-party, allow only first-party scripts/XHR/iframes by default, and then in two clicks (including opening the extension's popover menu) allow some specific host's scripts or whatever, while still blocking its cookies/frames/XHR/media/et al.
uMatrix is more advanced than uBO 'advanced mode', and just as easy to use; i.e. easier to use than 'dynamic filtering' or whatever people suggest that's buried in the full-page settings and not something I'm going to be doing 'on the fly' while visiting a site.
I still use uMatrix (and uBO!) and remain thankful for it - I just hope it lasts, not obsoleted by browser API changes or whatever. (nuTensor was forked to take on that burden, but itself now archived. Apparently - I read in another HN topic on this recently - because uMatrix actually did receive some maintenance update.)
Also uMatrix makes it a lot easier to figure out what you need to allow through - uBO just gives you the hostname, but with uMatrix you know in the popover menu whether it's a XHR, script not loaded, etc.
Yes, it's not actively developed anymore because of the large overlap in functionality with uBlock Origin as well as the maintainance burden.
However it's not equivalent, because in uMatrix you have even more fine-grained control which content a certain domain in a certain context can load (i.e. scripts, images, css and xhr requests).
Its functionality is equivalent, its ease of use isn't (at least in my opinion)
with uBlock origins UI you can block by content type and then whitelist the domains which are still allowed and that feels less granular then the uMatrix configuration dialog.
But if you check the generated dynamic rules in the settings you'll see that it supports the same granular controls as uMatrix
GP is correct afaik: the request categories for dynamic rules in ublock are image, 3p, inline-script, 1p-script, 3p-script, 3p-frame. The 3p vs 1p vs inline is kinda weird in itself since it's contextual and not relating to the content-type of the request, and we are missing css and xhr. Thing is, i realized i most of my dynamic rules are by domain anyway. Maybe if i find a real use case i'll try to look into the code and make this a bit more versatile.
> I need it to make websites usable by blocking elements like auto pop-up news video player, Blocking side bars to resize the websites to preferred width (When playing videos),...
Exactly. I use uBlock to "detoxify" websites and rid them of such nonsense elements.
Not everything is about money. Sometimes its principles, sometimes its about giving back to the world, sometimes its the fun of it, or just raw boredom.
I do not claim to know what motivates gorhill, but so far none of his motivations in building uBO seem to be against my own motivation to use it, so it is fine.
> Not everything is about money. Sometimes its principles, sometimes its about giving back to the world, sometimes its the fun of it, or just raw boredom.
No, he has to be able to support himself somehow. Food costs money. Plenty of people have great motives, few have the means to execute on them.
> Plenty of people have great motives, few have the means to execute on them.
Sure. Not plenty, but still a lot of people have the means, and few of them choose to execute. Larse Ingebrigsten was a CTO of startup that got acquired and now maintains GNU Emacs. Bram Moolenaar has had consistent job since forever (not sure what % of paid time is dedicated to Vim maintenance). Richard Stallman quit and made his first money selling Emacs tapes. Some open source devs rely on consulting work. Some (Like Drew DeVault) have actual sustainable business model that are not donations (and still give away their services when it makes sense). I do not know of gorhill, but my first guess would be that he has a stable job that pays well enough and doesn't encroach on his private life and hobbies, which I believe uBO is one of.
Oh, and to add to it, it becomes incredibly easier if you find likeminded people to join in. Linus Torvalds is able to take weeks off because GKH is more than capable to handle the work in his absence. Andreas Kling has Linus Groh as co-maintainer to review PRs even considering ginormous scope of SerenityOS. As with everything, more capable minds share the load.
On top of that, uBlock Origin is still just an engine. A large bulk of work (as admitted on uBO README.md) is done in the lists like fanboy's. They are also largely contributor driven (and sometimes donations).
I don't know why you're telling me any of this, half of which I already know. I asked how he supports it specifically. Not if and not how other people do. uBlock Origin does not solicit donations, it's in the README.md.
> Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought.
All true, and we (content blockers devs) were saying this all for years, since MV3 was first announced. MV3 brings very little (if any) privacy and security enhancements, this is for the future MV4 when extensions will be dumbed down to sets of declarative rules.
We'll now need to rely on Chrome team for implementing what we need. But they do it painfully slow or not do at all.
Also, where will we get the new ideas if every browser follows that path? Take Safari for example, every little improvement that we requested [1] was inspired by what we already did in other browsers long ago.
Anyways, a working content blocker on MV3 is possible. I even think a casual user won't feel much difference. But there is a big difference under the hood and to feel the consequences we have to wait a few years.
[1]: https://bugs.webkit.org/ (search for those reported by @adguard.com). Just a very small part of what we requested was implemented, content blocking is not a priority I guess, and it won't be a priority for Chrome.
How about simply not supporting chrome. I believe some responsibility for this lies with us developers. It was developers who made extensions for chrome. We as technologists recommended chrome to our friends and families. Without us chrome would likely not be in the position it is today and google could not dictate the terms like they do. Maybe it is time that extension authors abandon ship, and we recommend alternative browsers?
To those who argue that chrome is faster and therefore you prefer using it. You should ask yourself, what is more important to you, to see a website a few ms faster or preventing Google to to dictate how the Internet of the future works (apart from the fact that in my experience browser's are so close in performance, that I don't think anyone can consistently pick which browser their on).
Not recommending Chrome is the way to go. There was a time where developers only tested against IE, built features on top of IE, and there didn't seem any way to defeat the garbage associated with IE.
But people recommended Firefox anyway for most browsing since it was a better experience on the open web. Eventually it up ended the dominance by giving a better browsing experience except when forced to use IE through bad code, which eventually forced more developers to improve the experience outside of IE.
I personally never stopped using Firefox for Chrome, since there was always some extension that just didn't work quite as well on Firefox for the longest time. I've always found it worked it well.
A popular opinion of a vocal contingent of users on this site always say that Chrome is so fast, without any benchmarks other than their personal feelings for the most part. If Google is going to be openly hostile to extensions like UBlock working as intended I really wonder if they would feel Chrome is much faster if the developers of such extensions stopped looking for work arounds in an actively hostile environment and simply let them experience the garbage that is the current state of the web. They've already shown their hand as being a terrible steward of the web by blocking extensions like AdNauseum that try to destroy all the tracking and privacy violations they've created.
I personally believe all the people who don't have their jobs tied to creating ad garbage would do another exodus. Although I'm sure a vocal minority would create noise on sites like this since their jobs are tied to making the world a worse place.
This. While I appreciate the work AdBlock does, supporting MV3 is ludicrous. If no ad block extension supported it, it would be dead on arrival - with Chrome too (if Google tried to force it). Just let it be, fire up your Firefox and browse freely.
> While I appreciate the work AdBlock does, supporting MV3 is ludicrous. If no ad block extension supported it, it would be dead on arrival
Only to people like us. The amount of tech-savvy people I see not using an ad blocker is surprising. As a user of an ad blocker, I definitely feel like I’m in a small minority in the real world.
My experience is different - almost everyone I know uses an ad blocker. Some of them have installed them for themselves, others have helpful friends. But I rarely see someone scrolling a webpage with the ads on it.
This sort of boycotting will only work when widely supported by both developers and users and this is not the case. Despite all the public outcry and news outlets telling that the end is near, it didn't affect the Chrome's share.
> Without us chrome would likely not be in the position it is today and google could not dictate the terms like they do.
I kind of disagree with this. Google Chrome's current popularity stands on two things:
1. It is a great browser and it does its job very well.
2. Google in the first years was very active with its distribution. And this is not only about the link on their homepage. I remember how 10 years ago every piece of software you were trying to install was bringing Chrome alongside.
Engineers recommending Chrome to their friends and relatives shouldn't be discounted, but I tend to think that it's less important that the two other points above.
If suddenly there was no ad blocking available on Chrome cold turkey we would see nearly all users who are accustomed to an ad free experience go looking for a new browser. Coordinate this with a marketing blitz from Firefox and essentially you can take nearly all the Chrome ad block users and turn them into Firefox users. And from there it's word of mouth even from the non-techies.
Good ad blocking is an essential part of a browser. Even Google who is actively slow boiling the frog knows they can't just hard cut it off because the users will jump ship immediately.
Why should we let Google get away with this? I feel the right move is to proactively take steps that make Chrome very obviously noncompetitive. By not providing ad blocking at all or at least making it a much inferior experience. It needs to be obvious to the users, not just to tech folks.
Consider checking for the Chrome user agent on your personal website. When you detect it, either:
1. Display a screen that encourages to use a browser that respects their privacy, such as Firefox.
2. Show a popup explaining that "for an ad-free experience, try Firefox + uBlock" and add a bunch of fake (or real) ads to a special Chrome-exclusive piece of the site.
If enough of us do this with personal websites, more and more people will stop using Chrome and start using Firefox. You don't even have to cut Chrome users off from the content -- just annoy them a little, and suggest Firefox.
After all, if Google refuses to fix bugs introduced by Google developers who don't test software in browsers other than Chrome (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1069227), the least that the rest of us can do is fight back in some small way.
>If enough of us do this with personal websites, more and more people will stop using Chrome and start using Firefox. You don't even have to cut Chrome users off from the content -- just annoy them a little, and suggest Firefox.
It's a nice idea, but your personal website doesn't matter. Most people go to a Google website at least a few times a day, and they already tell you to switch to Chrome for the best experience. And almost all of the top non-Google websites also have a vested interest in less adblockers, so none are going to riot over this.
Devs of adblockers should all, suddenly, stop supporting Chrome. Make it a specific date (Jan. 1st 2023?) and make it known.
The web is unusable without strong, efficient adblocking. All power users would stop using Chrome in an instant. Even if they are a minority, the move would become visible on usage charts.
If the serious ad-blockers would stop supporting chrome, then all the shady freemium/quasi-malware stuff would be more than happy to be the only option. Most people don't "really" choose their browser, they just use what someone (or themselves years ago) installed for them. The main reason for chrome's shares is google's search&android domination and how hard they pushed it.
What is the market share of Chrome users who use ad blocking though? I don't know if its large enough to make a dent in the overall market share. And even then not sure everyone who has one installed would jump. I have it in my mom's browser but if it stopped working tomorrow she wouldn't know enough to make any changes.
It won't tip the balance but it is a significant percentage of active users. I want to say greater than 15 percent but I can't remember where I saw that.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter what percentage of all users, just what percentage of techie word-of-mouth types use ad blockers. And that is a very significant percentage.
Maybe your mom can't change it herself but come Thanksgiving she's going to complain about it to you and you are going to fix it so she has an ad free experience again.
I agree. And a very small percentage of Chrome users turned Firefox users could still mean a significant increase in Firefox usage, which in an ideal world would allow Mozilla a much needed breather from their metrics-driven efforts to stop bleeding users.
Unfortunately, we have a negative case study for this belief, one that proves the impact would be minimal: Android. Chrome on Android doesn't support any adblockers, while Firefox does, with perfectly simple installation. Still, Firefox Android is only a tiny sliver of the pie.
If suddenly there was no ad blocking available on Chrome cold turkey we would see nearly all users who are accustomed to an ad free experience go looking for a new browser
so.... Utopic best case scenario, 30% of the users? and that's if 100% of People using AdBlocking across the entire Planet were to make a move.
and those are the users that don't provide any Revenue back to the Owner, anyways.
the average user is using official Chrome, with very few Plugins, maybe like Reddit Enhancement, extra Twitch Emotes, Et Cetera.
Yes, Firefox is no longer second tier. This is a relatively recent development, and anyone who avoided it for performance reasons should try it again. It's fast, and doesn't have any rendering issues.
One problem is of course, that Google managed to convince many fanboys, that it is a highly progressive modern and technologically superb company, that spits out revolutionary tech every month and only the developers of highest skill could work there, so all that comes out of Google must be naturally superior to any competition.
If Google says, that they value speed of their browser as the main attribute, that mindset if adopted by the fanboys. If Google says you don't need more powerful ad blocking, then that idea is adopted by the fanboys. Google says it, so it cannot be wrong. Anyone saying something different is just being jealous, that they are not as good a developer to work at Google. Google! Oh please! Tell us what to think!
This kind of thinking also proliferates into non-developer communities and people, who look at it from the financial success side of things. Google, one of the biggest tech companies evaaar! Surely they must be doing something right! This developer friend, what do they know, compared to the knowledge of Google employees?! Better listen to Google.
Google has managed to twist the minds of many, who are too open for authority arguments and developers are no exception to that.
As long as we still in some way think, that Google has our wellbeing at heart, I think things will not change. However, I support not supporting Chormium-based browsers any longer. People only learn the hard way, which is, when they have to fight through jungle of ads to use even the simplest websites. Some learn not even then.
I've been switching my family over to Firefox with UBlock Origin. I made the switch when these original changes were announced, and it's been a great experience. I run into maybe one website a month where I have trouble.
> to those who argue that chrome is faster and therefore you prefer using it
Those comparisons never take into account the runtime costs of ads. Yay, code runs 10% faster. It runs 3x as much code and has to wait on a dozen ad servers, but yay!
> Without us chrome would likely not be in the position it is today
No doubt it would. Google essentially advertised Chrome at the very top of the search results page. No amount of personal boycotting is ever going to win against that.
I use Chrome because it's faster, safer, more stable. I don't believe V3 in any way is a serious issue for the internet in any meaningful sense either.
Did you read the entry on HN recently, where it is discussed, that Chromium-based browsers allow websites to set your clipboard content, without user action being involved at all? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32614037)
Just one example of how it is not safer, that I thought I should mention, on the background of such a blanket statement as "Chrome is safer" : )
It doesn't really matter though. What matters is uBlock Origin and whatever gorhill says. Either uBlock Origin works at its full potential or the browser vendor is deliberately crippling ad blocking.
I just wanted to say that you (content blocker devs) have been heard, maybe not by the majority of browser users but at least people like me are championing Firefox over webkit-based browsers precisely because to do otherwise would be to loose control of the web to FAANG, especially Google.
I've been telling everyone who would listen about how Google leverages Chrom(e/ium) against user interests and have deployed Firefox to every friend & family user whose machines I support.
I also recommend people I know to use Firefox, but a lot of people either don't understand the problem or just don't care.
A lot of people even conflate Google Chrome, Google Search and other Google services (understandable, as Chrome's home page is a big Google logo with a search box), so they think that they cannot use Google anymore if they install Firefox.
The stats [1] speak for themselves: only 3.3% of users use Firefox. Even Edge has more users.
One thing to be cautious of when trying to count browser stats is that the recent releases of Firefox are pretty aggressive about blocking tracking scripts, such as those used by a site like statcounter.com uses to count up browser usage <https://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology>
I don't know how to solve that problem, since those two outcomes are at odds with one another, but wanted to raise awareness
I think the stats are showing that we really need debundling of the browser from the OS. I'd wadger that those stats pretty closely align with the percentage of android and IOS users, or in other words the stats are completely dominated by mobile browsers, where hardly anyone changes browsers.
I can't understand why we have not seen strong regulatory/antitrust action on this front considering the precedent with MS.
I dread the debundling. The day Google can tell iOS users to "just download Chrome" is the same day all non-Chrome browsers will stop working on Google properties. Well, they'll let Chromium browsers (which also support their ad-blcoking-blocking) work too, for antitrust reasons.
That's funny because my phone is weaker than my laptop, and has a smaller screen to show useful information Firefox and uBlock get installed faster to remove the slowdowns and popups.
It's harder to get people to switch browsers nowadays. When Chrome first came out as a breath of fresh air (IE was IE, Firefox was better but a bit "heavy", Opera was... Opera), normal users would just nod and agree if you recommended a switch, and even as a power user, I only had to migrate a handful of extensions and behaviors over. At this point, browsers (particularly Chrome and Safari on their respective platforms) have ingrained themselves into their users daily routine. Things like bookmarks and some habits transfer pretty quickly, but casual users won't care enough about this (until they're impacted more).
I wonder why not create a ad-free/privacy fork of Chromium. Especially on Mobile, I'd use that for sure. Existing ones have huge strings attached. Mozilla is basically FUBAR at this point.
This exists, it's called Ungoogled Chromium. Removing whatever misfeatures Google adds to Chrome is fairly straightforward.
The real danger to having a single codebase for the whole web is spec validation. Most web standards rely on two independent implementations. For newer technologies we could technically count WebKit and Blink as separate, but Gecko was providing an entirely separate codebase that isn't a fork of anything.
Remember how WebSQL was basically put out to pasture because it was just SQLite, warts and all, shoved inside the web sandbox? That's the sort of problem we'd rather avoid. Single-implementation standards tend to pick up bugs and misbehaviors from their implementation, since everyone winds up depending on implementation bugs rather than getting them fixed to match spec.
IIUC, the only problem with Mv3 is that they disabled the WebRequest API. A fork of Chromium that solves this problem will just have to re-enable the WebRequest API, which seems doable.
Regarding MV4: the WebExtensions working group has started to mention the term at some of their recent meetings, although details are scarce it seems MV4 will still retain JS code execution [1] [2].
No plans were announced so these are purely my speculations but to me it seems logical.
The only piece of reliable information is this: I once asked Google engineer whether they plan to support declarative cosmetic rules (that's what we do ourselves in MV3 and that's why the extension still requires wide permissions) and the answer was that they definitely do plan to do that in the future.
> No plans were announced so these are purely my speculations but to me it seems logical.
And then people use and rely on information like this to further ignite their cognitive biases. Seems more like promoting misinformation than anything.
To be fair, this thread exists because OP made the claim as if it wasn't speculation and someone took them up on it which only then made OP clarify that they were speculating.
Supporting that makes sense to simplify the use case so that people don't have to write JavaScript for simple changes, but that doesn't imply they'll replace the JavaScript API with a purely declarative API there.
The difference between that and the traffic modification API is the threat model. The third party were to compromise uBlock Origin's servers, they would have a frightening amount of power over millions of machines because uBlock Origin essentially self-modifies; it downloads new rules for what should be blocked. So that breaks the security guarantees Chrome wants to provide; they can't say that the lock icon on a website means anything if a Chrome extension is allowed to arbitrarily modify traffic back and forth as a man in the middle on the last mile and Chrome web store maintainers haven't looked at the source code it's running.
I don't think there's a similar security threat for cosmetic changes.
It feels like this was always going to be how this played out. Google being the world's largest ad company has a vested interest in ensuring ads are still displayed to users and once a sizeable enough amount of the Chrome userbase started adblocking it directly threatened their revenue growth.
The only option here it seems is to switch browsers.
But these changes don't ensure that ads are displayed to users. This won't impact Google's ad revenue at all. At most it will negatively impact their revenue because the less powerful API will let the sketchier advertisers try to bypass the filters.
If you care about running uBlock Origin on macOS, happy to report that Orion browser by Kagi (WebKit based) supports it and will keep supporting Manifest v2.
I hope filtering proxies like Proxomitron become popular again. They'll work on all browsers, and as long as locked-down corporate environments with their own needs for filtering content and the requirement to go through a proxy exist, it's not something they can easily kill off (despite trying their hardest to do so with all the "security" propaganda.)
Stop being at the whims of the Google-controlled browser monopoly --- by filtering content before it gets there.
Man, I used Privoxy back in the day and it was amazing. Now, however, you need to set up custom certs so that you can MITM yourself, plus those things can only look at the initial HTML without running any JS. I don't know how less effective that would make filtering, but it can't help.
I'd love to be proven wrong though! Right now I run DNS-based filtering because, no, it's not perfect, but I really like having network-wide blocking.
Still, that you will need to MITM yourself is rather inefficient; it would be better for the proxy setting to include a "non-tunneling" option that you can set, instead.
Not being able to look at scripts is another issue, although at least for some purposes you may be able to inject scripts which change the JavaScript objects in order to disable or change some features.
To be fair, general ad blocker will always require broad permissions, no matter what API it uses. There's no sense in ad blocker that works only on N sites.
Presumably that permission does not mean the same thing in v3. That is, the site can still read/modify data but, of course, only through the specific declarative APIs that delegate the work to the browser.
MV3 splits permissions into host permissions and classical permissions (tabs, storage, etc). Putting <all_urls> in your host permission list means that whatever the extension does, it can do it on all possible urls you may visit in the browser. In this sense, it's no different than in MV2.
What's different is the classical permissions. Previously you could use the webRequest permission to execute custom JS functions in response to network activity. In MV3 you must now write a declarative rule instead using the declarativeNetRequest permission. By moving from an imperitive model to a declarative one, Google now has exacting control over what ad blockers can and can't do.
Gorhill's argument is that the stated reasons for MV3 do not align with the implementation. The example he gives is that Google claims the new API is more private. However you still need <all_urls> so the extension is as un-private as its MV2 equivalent. The only difference is that now Google controls what blocking you're allowed to declare and how much of it you're allowed to do.
There's a similar community discovery where MV3 implementation is provably counter to Google's claims of performance enhancement - MV3 extensions need to rehydrate state every 5 minutes as Chrome shuts down their service worker and for highly active extensions such as ad blockers this is actually less performant than the MV2 implementation with a long-lived background.
Not completely full of shit. Declarative rules are a good idea in the general case. Random browser extensions really should not have unrestricted access to the network requests. This is how we get malware.
It's just that uBlock Origin is so important and trusted that these limitations should not apply to it. I'd even say ad blockers should be a built in browser feature but the conflicts of interest prevent that.
Now that ad blockers have to be built out of declarative syntax that Google controls, the browser maintainers basically _are_ responsible for implementing the ad blockers. And would you look at that they're pushing back on community contributions and dragging their feet because yes, there is a conflict of interest.
They left alone other imperative-but-dangerous aspects of extensions, such as the ability for any extension to watch what you type into password or credit card fields on any website. Actually that sort of extension is even easier to write in MV3 and Google will still need JS-reviewing wizards to give a guarantee an extension isn't snooping your passwords.
I don't think there's a consistent position from Google if the claim is they want to improve security via declarative syntax. I think Google is full of shit.
I agree with you. I just think this declarative API could have been a good move were it not for the conflict of interest. Makes me wish gorhill made his owh browser instead of browser extensions.
> Not completely full of shit. Declarative rules are a good idea in the general case.
The heavily depends and I would disagree here. Yes, JS execution is unpopular, but it enables you to make your app behave like you want to. Otherwise it behaves like Google wants to. Google is no scammer at least, but the end result is suboptimal.
Only if you've already accepted that a loss in functionality is acceptable.
If you could implement a declarative language as powerful as an imperative one you could solve the halting problem.
So the switch from imperative to declarative is not free to make and Google has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. They just so happen to lose money every second that baby is alive. On the one hand, the decision to implement this specific declarative language is a malicious exertion of market force. On the other hand it's a stunning display of implementation incompetence. The language can't even reimplement the most popular existing extensions.
Has Google said that they would reject CLs to the declarativeNetRequest API if filter list maintainers propose a new feature? Have any filter list maintainers tried to propose those CLs? Obviously it would require a new set of skills and talent to maintain the C++ code that now powers Chromium's ad-blocking capabilities, but Chromium is still an open project with guidelines for contribution, no?
> our new declarativeNetRequest API is designed to be a privacy-preserving method for extensions to block network requests without needing access to sensitive data
This MV3-based AdGuard extension still requires a broad permission to "read or modify host data" on all sites[2]:
So what you have now is the same required permission to "read or modify host data" as with MV2, but with a network filtering engine capabilities gated by Google (an advertising company).We can't innovate anymore the filtering capabilities of our content blocker engines as we have been constantly doing over the years.
For a recent example, there has been discussions lately with filter list maintainers of whether uBO should support AdGuard's proposed capability of being able to support pattern-matching for `domain=` filtering option[3] (uBO supports AdGuard lists).
That sort of proposition is not possible to entertain with MV3 since only Google get to decide how the filtering engine will evolve, if at all. All content blocking issues will have to be resolved with the Google-controlled filtering engine, and left unaddressed if the solution can't be shoehorned in the declarativeNetRequest API.
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[1] https://blog.chromium.org/2020/12/manifest-v3-now-available-...
[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
[3] https://github.com/AdguardTeam/CoreLibs/issues/1550
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Edit: removed stray `[` character.