Chromium Manifest V3 Explained for Toddlers

Most people still haven’t heard of Manifest V3, so if you are one of those not using Firefox, this is for you.

If you’ve been on YouTube or Reddit August last year, you might’ve seen this screen yourself, or a screenshot of someone else getting it. This of course, I am talking about the infamous YouTube ad blocker blocker popup, discussion exploded on Reddit mostly consisting of people complaining about ads, as well as an angry mob storming r/memes, turning it into a Firefox propaganda centre.

About a month later, different adblockrs eventually found their way of bypassing detection, and they work on YouTube again. So natrually Redditors thought they’ve won another war against big tech, completely ignoring Google’s original plan to kill off adblockers by June this year.

So all extensions, including adblockers follows a specification called the Manifest V2. The Manifest allows extensions to do certain things, say accessing browser tabs or to change browser settings. All while putting some limitations, and prevent extensions from doing crazy stuff like installing a virus to your system. But too much limitation, is what pisses off many extension developers about the upcoming ManifestV3.

In this article written by the EFF, they interviewed developers responsible for popular extensions, where most described ManifestV3 as a downgrade, with some accused it for being purposefully bad. I particularly like this one from the creator of SingleFile, “I consider the migration to Manifest V3 to be a major regression from a functional and technical point of view.”

After an update in June this year, a feature called the WebRequest API will be removed, and the adblockers and tracker blockers that depend on this feature will stop working. Since the business model of Google is to track your online activity and then show you personalised ads, it is not difficult to see why this feature is removed.

Not only are they sacrifising user experience for monetary gain, they are forcing the same update on all Chromium browsers as well. I am hereby devastated to inform you that this is not the first time they have done it, and it will not be the last time they will do it.

But there are also good news, non-Chromium browsers will not be affected by the Manifest V3, and if you are already using one, you will be exempt from any future nonsense Google throws in your way. So if you are considering switching to one, unless Safari is your goto browser, which lacks competent extensions support, you can still get your adblockers, another adblockers, all the adblockers.

So are you going to make the switch before the update? Let me know in the comments down below, anyways I will be seeing you in two weeks, have a good one.

An article for more my ranting needs gmtex.siri.sh/fs/1/School/Y12/…/chromium.html

infeeeee,

Very useful video. I miss that you don’t list the Chromium browsers. A lot of people, the target audience of this video don’t know that edge, opera, vivaldi, brave are all affected some way.

AlexanderESmith,
AlexanderESmith avatar

... vivaldi... affected [in] some way

Yes, but also; https://vivaldi.com/blog/manifest-v3-webrequest-and-ad-blockers/

siriusmart,

yeah but its not the same, sure you could mod your router or use a pihole to get adblocking, but it is not the same convenience as extensions, and by far ublock origin is the best adblocker no arguments raised.

moreover companies can’t really do much when they are completely reliant on chromium, and they can’t do much except pulling PR stunts and try to sound like they are doing something while all they’re doing is to merge commits from upstream chromium once in a while

one example is the “we will continue to support v2” stunt by brave, which is not possible as they have 0 experience maintaining a browser, also vivaldi is absolutely proprietary

pineapplelover, (edited )

I thought Brave wasn’t affected by this

Edit: yeah, Brave mentioned they won’t be impacted by this

community.brave.com/t/…/527963

LWD,

Brave can keep the old APIs but they’ll still be affected, because developers for Chromium-compatible browsers still have to decide whether they want to create or support apps that will only work in a subset of browsers, and figure out how to distribute them outside the Chromium store.

pineapplelover,

True. But I believe brave’s filter list at the very least, will still work.

ReversalHatchery,

Which probably makes use of less tracker blocking techniques than specialized extensions. I mean, uBlock is able to do a lot of things, partly because of its scriptlets that lists can invoke for certain sites.

LWD,

Both uBlock Origin and Brave would be nothing without the maintainers of the filters they use.

Except uBlock’s devs are transparent and supportive of the list maintainers, while Brave (AFAIK) really isn’t.

pineapplelover,

Yeah, this kinda sucks. Well, this is what I get for recommending Brave to people I know. I feared that Firefox would be too great a leap.

Zerush,
@Zerush@lemmy.ml avatar

Also not Vivaldi, gutting out Google since 9 Years.

vivaldi.com/…/manifest-v3-webrequest-and-ad-block…

It’s also open to install any userscript directly, without the need of Tamper- or other monkey, if needed. The only problem for other Chromium are the by Google gutted extensions in the Chrome Store

Etterra,

Brave has it’s own issues. Like their owner being a total POS for example.

siriusmart,

well, it’s a video making decision. most people these days have virtually negative attention span, and they would click off the video given the slightest chance, and listing Chromium browsers would be too much time for too little argument made.

I’ve accepted that I’m not mental outlaw and people wouldn’t be tuning in for a podcast, so the best I could do is the minesweep the video and remove any opportunities, because if I don’t do that, most people won’t get past the first 10 seconds, “getting straight to the point” is one of the things I’ve learnt while doing youtube

siriusmart,

also, infographics are great for these explainers video, because i could jam pack so much more information that is otherwise impossible, and in 1:53 I’ve referenced “all chromium browsers” with all their logo on screen, which is insanely efficient because with this visual style of story telling I could brought up two points at the same time:

  • chromium browsers are affected
  • these browsers on screen are chromium browsers
menemen,

I am on Firefox since I think 2003. Never understood why anyone would use a non-free browser, even if it sometimes works faster. People are weird.

S_H_K,

I am one of those “Opera back in thr day” guys so you know the story. I eventually gotten back to use Mozilla Firefox. Chrome had it’s good days but it’s a pionner of the enshitification.

KpntAutismus,

ex-GX user here. i do not miss chrome.

RubberElectrons,
@RubberElectrons@lemmy.world avatar

Same here, even my newly issued work PC always gets the Firefox treatment. Annoyingly, some sites that I need for work (almost, but not quite, zero) just do not work with Firefox, but do with chrome.

menemen, (edited )

At my work PC they blocked all, but chrome… And I really don’t think Chrome is superior to Firefox at this point of time.

RubberElectrons,
@RubberElectrons@lemmy.world avatar

They sort of tried at my last job… There’s portable, non admin installs of Firefox available. The tricky part was ssl inspection certificates, but even that is easier than it used to be.

asexualchangeling,

mostly same here, with occasionally trying out some chromium based browsers, never understood why Firefox is referred to as an “alternative” by so many people, chrome is the alternative

ReversalHatchery,

Because firefox is used by less than 5% of internet users.

asexualchangeling,

It’s still years newer than firefox

ReversalHatchery,

Sorry but I don’t see why that matters in this question

KpntAutismus,

you and my dad both. he’s been using it forever

Skepticpunk,

Chrome had a bigger ad budget and had a good amount of hype when it was released, since Google was still well-regarded when it was released.

fluckx,

Firefox also had a period where it was slow AF. I switched to chrome at that point which was a lot faster.

I’ve ( happily ) been on Firefox these past few years though. Firefox addons on mobile devices is a blessing too.

I enjoyed vivaldi as well before I went back to Firefox. Too bad it’s chromium based :(.

Aussiemandeus,
@Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone avatar

Would you consider Firefox better then duck duck go ?

Lemongrab,

Here is a breakdown of why it is much better (near to the bottom): divestos.org/pages/browsers
TLDR: Webview browsers are bad for privacy.

sebsch,

Use. Firefox. Now!

Anticorp,

So, Google thinks they own the whole Internet now, and will force ads over every single website. AMP wasn’t enough for them. I used to love Google, but now I pretty much hate them.

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Is amp still around? Those cancerous links drove me back to Firefox after years of using Chrome, they hardly ever worked.

Anticorp,

AFAIK they’re still around. I switched off of Google for searches because of them.

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

I’m still using google search, just deactivated amp. Initially with a Firefox add-on, now I think that’s a native feature.

But Google search results are increasingly bad, what alternative do you recommend? I’ve dabbled with bing and yandex (which is honestly quite good, but… Russian) and would like to have a real alternative.

Anticorp,

I tried a bunch of different services without satisfaction until I finally decided to try Kagi. It’s been 6 months and I’m still satisfied with it.

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

I keep coming across kagi but haven’t used it yet. Think I’ll give it a try finally.

Anticorp,

It costs money, but to me it’s a small price to pay for my sanity. My average search volume is about 700 searches per month. That’s 700 times per month that I was getting frustrated, getting bombarded with ads, and being unable to find what I was looking for. Now I don’t have that problem, so my frustration levels have decreased considerably.

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Yep I’ve just signed up for the free trial and will use it in parallel to google to get a feeling for the difference. Since I’m using google with anti-tracking and adblock, I don’t really get annoyed by the site itself, more like the crappy top-ranking SEO pages. Back in the days, the front page was all I ever needed, now I feel like the good results start on page 2.

Anticorp,

Hopefully it works out for you. FYI, if you’re searching for a question, add a question mark at the end of it and Kagi will put an AI summary answer at the top of the results. In my experience it is very accurate.

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Oh nice, that’s a good tip. Thanks!

toastal,

Brave Search has been alright, tho I’m not entirely sure how their algorithms are working & they index much slower so they probably aren’t doing full aggregation themselves nor does it seem that they are just using Bing like DuckDuckGo. Yandex is great for image search & I use their translation service even if it’s a little weaker just to spread my data across services instead of centralizing. Even if I preferred content written by a human, a lot of general queries it seems I am more prone to reaching for an LLM …even tho it could be a hallucination, a lot of the content written by folks on the highest SEO sites are just as much bullshit.

pirat,

Spend some time finding a few good searxng instances. Also, the language setting affects the results a lot, so make sure to change it based on what you’re searching for. I mostly use “english [en]”, but for local searches I change it to my native language, or to the language of the relevant country.

Outtatime,
@Outtatime@sh.itjust.works avatar

Google has the lions share of the browser installs. If this were not the case, you can bet Google would never dream up this nonsense to begin with.

Anticorp,

That doesn’t give them ownership of the content that people view with the browser.

Outtatime,
@Outtatime@sh.itjust.works avatar

I didn’t say it did. My point was that Google is getting away with it because they rely on ignorance and the lion’s share of browser installs.

Anticorp,

they rely on ignorance

Ain’t that the truth?

merthyr1831,

Already moved to Firefox on my phone. The only browser on mobile that I know of that supports extensions, giving me ad-free youtube and dark mode on websites ever since vanced was shut down.

cordlesslamp,

I have one word for you, my brother:

Revanced.

schema,

I tried revanced for a while. It worked for a little and one day videos were suddenly buffering for 5 minutes at a time after around a minute of playing. I read online that it might have been yt measures against using a client like this (changing account or logging out didnt do anything. Browser played the videos fine)

Firefox with adblocker and the extension to be able to play in the background has been my savior. Works flawlessly.

cordlesslamp,

Every other month, YT update something that break Revanced.

So I just went to the Revanced app to see what’s the newest recommended version of YT to download and patch. Then a quick reinstall and everything is back to normal. Don’t even have to re-login.

PhAzE,

It was, and it was after 30 seconds. You install the updated revanced, and turn on app version spoofing in the settings and no more buffer issue.

schema,

Thank you, that worked. At least for the last few days.

merthyr1831,

My phone uses a split APK which requires root using revanced, but my work profile blocks rooting ;_;

I could just download the APKs manually but a lot more effort than using Firefox ngl

cordlesslamp,

Revanced doesn’t require root. You download the Revanced app from official site then open it and choose YouTube. It’ll tell you what’s the latest recommended version of YT to use. You download that exact version from APKpure. Use Revanced to patch the YT app (I just use default) and install. That’s it. No root.

Also it requires their new Revanced Gapps package to login (it’ll ask and point you to download link if you don’t have it)

rambos,

Whats the difference between using Revanced or NewPipe?

siriusmart,

someone rebooted the project as youtube revanced, someone was even kind enough to build all the apks and post them on github (idk if they are safe, but i use them anyways)

Nickm8,

TLDR: Google’s Manifest V3 will stop many ad blockers from working on Chromium browsers. This is to increase ad revenue. Non-Chromium browsers like Firefox won’t be affected.

jsomae,

Oh they’ll be affected. Swim or sink.

Hamartiogonic,
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

Maybe the only thing FF users will notice is the chrome exodus. That counts as being affected, right?

UltraMagnus0001,

I’m gonna be cocky and sit on my high horse to say I switched back to Firefox many years ago when they got rid of the memory leaks

banazir,
@banazir@lemmy.ml avatar

The last time I remember Firefox having serious memory leaks they called it Firebird. Guess I’ve been lucky. Or in a comfortable ignorant haze.

nix,

It had a leak a few years back. Not a huge one, but it’d add up on devices that had a ton of tabs or were always on.

odelik,

Firefox had some major memory leaks when Chrome first launched (2008). It became noticeable with the more tabs you had and the longer the browser was opened. This was also during the days for consumer systems with 16GB max RAM & 32GB on higher end enthusiast systems.

We also have to remeber that this was 10 years before Google removed their “Don’t be Evil” motto, and there was still a great deal of trust that had been earned by tech professionals.

So when Chrome came in, had a minimalist UI (for the time) and was light weight and memory light without any obvious memory leaks, it was a performance boost for a toooon of users.

Chrome has since become a memory hog and is now being developed and pushed by a company that has become heavily enshittified & evil. Firefox has become lightweight, memory efficient, and is an FOSS product that’s not evil and enshittified making it the right choice in 2024, but is going to be an uphill battle that hopefully more tech professionals move to as Manifest V3 becomes a reality.

gjoel,

Firefox - Accidentally introduces memory leaks. People flee in droves.

Chrome - Intentionally introduces privacy leaks. People go “eh” end keep using it.

Gotta protect that memory!

RippleEffect,

Yeah Firefox definitely had issues but right now I think it’s the best browser available.

odelik,

I switched off of Firefox because of those memory leaks. I remeber when it hit the tech news circles when the community contributer that was frustrated with them went in and fixed two of the biggest culprits.

Then I just didn’t bother til somewhat recently. For the most part, it’s great and does what ilI want/need. Biggest complaint is that some UX overhauls are needed for Mobile FX, especially around tab management.

KpntAutismus,

yeah, on android it’s kind of a pain. but being able to use extensions is insanely good.

cooljacob204,

I already switched to Firefox a while back. The new tracking system bullshit was the last straw. Chrome team is too busy trying to invasively track us rather then actually improving the browser for consumers.

Zuberi,
@Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

wElL aCtUaLlY, i DoN’t EvEn MiNd SpYwArE oR aDs

Anticorp,

Go home Satya, you’re drunk.

Zuberi,
@Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

This is about Google?..

Anticorp, (edited )

Go home Sundar, you’re drunk.

alexdeathway, (edited )
@alexdeathway@programming.dev avatar

Overall awesome video, just invest in good mic also best of luck.

siriusmart,

thanks for the advice, i will do that maybe in the future

siriusmart,

well a bit more on that, since i record my audio an audacity, there are 3 types of noise suppression i could do

  • the first one of course is no noise suppression at all
  • then there is the standard noise suppression
  • and then there is the new RNNoise suppression

RNNoise is the best at removing noise, but it also cuts off all the deeper parts of my voice (i think, because I have no way of knowing how I really sound like), so here its a tradeoff between getting the entirety of my voice, or absolute silence, here i chose my voice

realbadat,

A focused mic and quiet room beats all the noise suppression algorithms you can apply.

BallsandBayonets,

Left for Firefox when they announced this update. I still have to use Chrome when I work in Google drive since basic functions like copy/paste don’t work in non-chrome browsers, but even without this update the minute+ time it takes for chrome to open reminds me I made the right decision.

macattack,

Same. It was definitely an adjustment as a former ChromeOS user. There were some minor issues like getting playback for streaming services and maybe 1-2% of the unique websites I visit not being built properly for Firefox but it’s pretty infrequent and you develop a quick workflow to resolve the issues. I have a backup version of Chromium that I use as an emergency browser.

I use a Firefox fork (Floorp) which gives me PWAs capabilities which was the last hurdle for me.

AtariDump,

Plugins With Attitude?

BearOfaTime,

I keep Cromite (on Android) and Chromium (pc) around for those sites that are so poorly coded I have to use a chrome-engined browser.

It’s really annoying.

At least those 2 browsers are fast (and I keep history turned off because I only use them for crappy websites).

Lemongrab,

Cromite is available on PC (Linux and Windows) and Ungoogled Chromium is chromium without any google (drop in replacement)

hempster,

Will the manifest v3 also bork ungoogled chromium?

Lemongrab,

github.com/ungoogled-software/…/662

p5yk0t1km1r4ge,
@p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world avatar

It’s a good thing I’m a Firefox boy. I’m honestly fucking sick of companies making free money off me at my inconvenience while I get nothing in return.

BeatTakeshi,
@BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world avatar

But but… Aren’t you happy with the illusion of freedom and choice? Wouldn’t you be even happier buying stuff you don’t need? Trust me

p5yk0t1km1r4ge,
@p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world avatar

Fuck no. I know this is sarcasm but still, fuck no.

Asudox,
@Asudox@lemmy.world avatar

Firefox shall rise soon.

CaptObvious,

I never go anywhere near Chrome if I can possibly help it. Manifest v3 nonsense just reaffirms that position.

cabillaud,
@cabillaud@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t care I use Internet Explorer

TenderfootGungi,

Which uses Chrimium as its core with slightly different window dressing on top.

hikaru755,

You’re thinking of Edge, not Internet explorer

cabillaud,
@cabillaud@lemmy.world avatar

Since 2020, apparently…I didn’t know

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