With these changes in place, we’ve seen support for Manifest V3 increase significantly among the extension developer community. Specifically, we are encouraged by our ongoing dialogue with the developers of content blocking extensions, who initially felt Manifest V3 could impact their ability to provide users with the features they’ve come to expect.
Google has made several changes to Manifest V3 specifically to ease concerns among developers of content blocking extensions, and it seems those changes have been positively received. The maximum number of active rulesets has been increased, as well as the number of dynamic rules, which are rules ad blocker developers can change and update without having to update the extension as a whole.
Regardless of these changes, I would still advise everyone to get a Raspberry Pi or whatever and run Pi-Hole – this will block ads for your entire network, and all devices, regardless of browser or operating system.
It’s a trap!
Google are insistent at hammering this through despite widespread protests because they know they know if only they succeed at making adblocking extensions dependent on manifest 3, they’ll have the upper hand in defeating it in the future.
Seriously, this is all designed to handcuff the adblockers for the future.
It’s as if owning the browser (Chrome) gives you complete control over the extensions that plug into it, who knew! And I guess Google’s insistence on advertising Chrome left, right, and center on every Google property until Chrome reached >50% marketshare wasn’t because they were really proud of their browser but to control the client side of the web experience, whoa! Also, making bookmark and history sync on Android dependent on Chrome and not part of Android itself was apparently not an accident.
This is also an example of how it’s possible to be 99% open-source (Chromium) but keep that 1% as a form of lock-in to a certain service (Chrome sync).
And since I doubt the average person will magically become smart enough to download Firefox on their desktop and smartphone, the next question is: How can Google be prevented from EEE-ing web standards, Microsoft IE style?
Thom Holwerda,
Some operating systems & browser combinations bypass conventional DNS requests and instead forward them to a remote service where they cannot be blocked.
https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/pi-hole-works-everywhere-except-android-phones/3428/14?page=5
https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/google-chrome-and-chromium-base-bypass-pi-hole-how-to-fix-this/61047/2
I believe normal DNS behavior can be restored for now (as instructed in the links), but I am concerned about it being blocked in the future. Hypothetically a future android/chrome update could defeat pi-hole (and other DNS methods) forever.
Another problem with DNS based adblocking is granularity. You can block whole domains, but not resources within a domain. Browser extensions (at least prior to manifest 3), allow for more flexibility and innovation than pihole can.
Google’s objective right now is just to normalize the deprecation of power features. Once we’ve accepted this, they’ll have a lot more control over the future of adblocking and we will not be able to go back. Adblocking innovation will be dead since google will control the adblocking mechanism.