<story><title>AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3</title><url>https://adguard.com/en/blog/adguard-mv3.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ameshkov</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ll now need to rely on Chrome team for implementing what we need. But they do it painfully slow or not do at all.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Anyways, a working content blocker on MV3 is possible. I even think a casual user won&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bugs.webkit.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bugs.webkit.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; (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&amp;#x27;t be a priority for Chrome.</text></item><item><author>gorhill</author><text>One of the stated goal of MV3 by Google[1] was to avoid extensions with broad permissions:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; our new declarativeNetRequest API is designed to be a privacy-preserving method for extensions to block network requests without needing access to sensitive data&lt;p&gt;This MV3-based AdGuard extension still requires a broad permission to &amp;quot;read or modify host data&amp;quot; on all sites[2]:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    &amp;quot;host_permissions&amp;quot;: [
      &amp;quot;&amp;lt;all_urls&amp;gt;&amp;quot;
    ],
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
So what you have now is the same required permission to &amp;quot;read or modify host data&amp;quot; as with MV2, but with a network filtering engine capabilities gated by Google (an advertising company).&lt;p&gt;We can&amp;#x27;t innovate anymore the filtering capabilities of our content blocker engines as we have been constantly doing over the years.&lt;p&gt;For a recent example, there has been discussions lately with filter list maintainers of whether uBO should support AdGuard&amp;#x27;s proposed capability of being able to support pattern-matching for `domain=` filtering option[3] (uBO supports AdGuard lists).&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t be shoehorned in the declarativeNetRequest API.&lt;p&gt;* * *&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.chromium.org&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;manifest-v3-now-available-on-m88-beta.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.chromium.org&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;manifest-v3-now-available-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&amp;#x2F;en-US&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;Mozilla&amp;#x2F;Add-ons&amp;#x2F;WebExtensions&amp;#x2F;manifest.json&amp;#x2F;host_permissions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&amp;#x2F;en-US&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;Mozilla&amp;#x2F;Add-ons&amp;#x2F;Web...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;AdguardTeam&amp;#x2F;CoreLibs&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;1550&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;AdguardTeam&amp;#x2F;CoreLibs&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;1550&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;* * *&lt;p&gt;Edit: removed stray `[` character.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cycomanic</author><text>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?&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s are so close in performance, that I don&amp;#x27;t think anyone can consistently pick which browser their on).</text></comment>
<story><title>AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3</title><url>https://adguard.com/en/blog/adguard-mv3.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ameshkov</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ll now need to rely on Chrome team for implementing what we need. But they do it painfully slow or not do at all.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Anyways, a working content blocker on MV3 is possible. I even think a casual user won&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bugs.webkit.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bugs.webkit.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; (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&amp;#x27;t be a priority for Chrome.</text></item><item><author>gorhill</author><text>One of the stated goal of MV3 by Google[1] was to avoid extensions with broad permissions:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; our new declarativeNetRequest API is designed to be a privacy-preserving method for extensions to block network requests without needing access to sensitive data&lt;p&gt;This MV3-based AdGuard extension still requires a broad permission to &amp;quot;read or modify host data&amp;quot; on all sites[2]:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    &amp;quot;host_permissions&amp;quot;: [
      &amp;quot;&amp;lt;all_urls&amp;gt;&amp;quot;
    ],
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
So what you have now is the same required permission to &amp;quot;read or modify host data&amp;quot; as with MV2, but with a network filtering engine capabilities gated by Google (an advertising company).&lt;p&gt;We can&amp;#x27;t innovate anymore the filtering capabilities of our content blocker engines as we have been constantly doing over the years.&lt;p&gt;For a recent example, there has been discussions lately with filter list maintainers of whether uBO should support AdGuard&amp;#x27;s proposed capability of being able to support pattern-matching for `domain=` filtering option[3] (uBO supports AdGuard lists).&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t be shoehorned in the declarativeNetRequest API.&lt;p&gt;* * *&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.chromium.org&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;manifest-v3-now-available-on-m88-beta.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.chromium.org&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;manifest-v3-now-available-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&amp;#x2F;en-US&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;Mozilla&amp;#x2F;Add-ons&amp;#x2F;WebExtensions&amp;#x2F;manifest.json&amp;#x2F;host_permissions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&amp;#x2F;en-US&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;Mozilla&amp;#x2F;Add-ons&amp;#x2F;Web...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;AdguardTeam&amp;#x2F;CoreLibs&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;1550&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;AdguardTeam&amp;#x2F;CoreLibs&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;1550&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;* * *&lt;p&gt;Edit: removed stray `[` character.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>avhception</author><text>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&amp;#x27;ve been telling everyone who would listen about how Google leverages Chrom(e&amp;#x2F;ium) against user interests and have deployed Firefox to every friend &amp;amp; family user whose machines I support.</text></comment>