Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other extensions in Edge

Orion cannot support uBlock Origin completely either. I know that Orion allows the extension to be installed (I have done it too), but it only has partial support.

Quoting from a reply in a discussion on the Orion Feedback site from a few months ago (November 2024):

> " uBO is not supported on iOS due to Apple limitations."

[1]: https://orionfeedback.org/d/9145-ublock-origin-not-existent-...

Whose idea was it to take over the whole screen and play sound when you start Arc for the first time? It also showed a signup screen.

I removed it right away. I just want a browser, not whatever that was.

If it's chromium based, they will need to remove manifest v2 at some point to stay close to the upstream version.

> Users should never had the power to block what we did in the first place.

-- Some prominent ad company which happens to run a search engine as a side business and build a web browser to make ad-targeting better for their customers.

I think power users are the type of users who can be bothered to install a browser that supports the features that they want (and doesn't implement the misfeatures that they don't want) ;)

Full context, from the link you provided: ""Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love."

I don't think that's an unreasonable stance, and they're still explicitly saying "We are as close to not selling data as it is legally possible to be". This is reiterated in the linked Privacy FAQ on their official site: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/

I also thought Brave is the browser with the annoying token. But I still haven't seen anything about BAT but happily using brave for a while now.

There's also Zen, which is Firefox based.

By altcoins do you mean BAT? What’s the issue with it?

No you don't, it's opt in.

Better profile support is coming soon, already in Nightly.

> Does anyone here know why the pay-to-browse model never really took off?

Friction. The vast majority of people are not going to go through the effort of setting up a digital wallet to browse, when the existing system allows them to do it for free.

Some people would for sure, but then you also need websites and creators to agree to participate in the scheme (or don't, and just unethically redirect ad revenue to yourself, like Brave used to).

If I had to guess, I think the big reason that never took off is that no one can agree on the standard and everyone wants money on the edges, and won't agree with each other.

So, instead, we get companies like the New York Times thinking they're worth, what, $20/mo, per person, all by themselves?

I imagine it's because people are worth far more to advertisers than they themselves are willing to pay to browse. That and once you've given something away for free, for so long, it's very hard to then charge for it.

Only a small percentage of people are willing to pay for internet services. It is psychology and competition between the sites who offer services for free vs requiring payment. Paying for a service is a barrier to entry, while getting it for free and selling your data instead is not perceived as such. That is why all the big sites never would've taken off if they had paywalls.

I know. Because for every paid service you have one that is "free".

What new features? I've been using it for years and it's been very steady, I've switched off their wallet and that's it.

How long will Firefox take to fall? Until Google tells the lawyer who runs Mozilla that they'll stop sponsoring her if she doesn't fall in line?

I never see ads with default Brave. I was under the impression that uBlock was obviated by Brave.

Brave does not need ublock origin, and brave adblock is independent of manifest v2/3.

They implement compatible features in the browser itself.

Goodbye web-components. A W3C spec that mandates the use of JS to keep browser vendors happy. Once upon a time, there was HTML imports which didn't need this, but the ad-boys killed that spec.

> Third option is disable JS.

You mean you’d like to use a web browser as a document viewer instead of an operating system? This ship has sailed a decade ago, at least.

This is not practical for common folks. I wouldn't be able to get into ebanking, buy anything in eshops, probably most stuff I use daily would be at least half-broken. Imagine this for my elderly parents, just endless desperation and frustration, I am happy if they manage to use internet as it is and not fall for some scam or hack.

Heck, stuff sometimes breaks without me even trying to disable anything, like airbnb login via facebook popup stopped working suddenly few months ago (biggest internet mistake I ever done many years ago, as a host I am locked to specific well-rated account and airbnb support told me they can't migrate my account to another form of auth).

Edit: just saw its 'per site' - that would work for me, but not for my parents who live far. But damn I don't want to do this active fight of cat and mouse with whole internet. Firefox/ublock origin user here, on both desktop and phone for many years. Internet looks utterly horrible when I open it somewhere without those, hell youtube with all those ads is absolutely ridiculous shit service. Apple devices I've seen aren't that good either, shame that would be a great selling point for me.

Disable JS in 2025 does NOT work. Petty much every site only works properly with JS, with some exceptions.

JS is a core part of the modern web experience. 10 years go MAYBE Noscript would work, I never bothered, you end up having to whitelist a bunch of sites anyway even 10 years ago.

But at this point, why not switch to Firefox?

Yes, it's fine.

> Can't say i have big problems using Edge in combination with a pihole

I use NextDNS on both my phone and laptop. Much easier setup, and much more portable (e.g. it'll work on cafe wifi).

DNS-level blocking doesn't work very well. It only blocks requests to 3rd party domains; however, publishers can just turn to 1st party solutions, and many do just that.

E.g., DNS-level blocking will not block the sponsored links in Google's Search or the ads on YouTube. And while my NextDNS has blocked ads on my Samsung TV, it was unable to block ads on the new Max streaming service (former HBO).

I guess it depends on why we're ad-blocking. If it's for privacy, I guess it's fine, but 1st party requests can and do share your data with first parties, with just one more level of indirection.

I, for one, block ads because ads can be dangerous for my family and even for myself. I don't want ads because I don't want behavior modification, or malware. I also don't want my son to watch ads for services that should be illegal, such as gambling services. And don't get me wrong, I'm one of those people that actually pays for subscriptions to avoid ads, I'm against freeloading as well.

So, DNS-level blocking is just not enough, unless you're happy that you're at least blocking some ads on the scum of the Internet, but then I'm personally not interested in those websites anyway.

Until the Manifest V2 code is ripped out.

The current situation looks more like a deprecation brownout than a chance at continued support.

It’s not UBO, but it does work well. Safari is my default browser except for Google sites and development.

As an avid AOL user, that is the worst version of the internet. I remember keywords and thinking that was the internet. Whatever some large corporation had paid AOL so they could build a shitty little Visual Basic type app that controlled everything you looked at. There were no ads because the entire experience besides the chat rooms and IM was an ad. It was a lot of people's first email accounts but spam blocking was so bad back then I count that as advertising.

I remember being blown away by discovering people would randomly make private chats and trying to guess at what the chat name would be for things I was interested in as a kid. Then I remember having my mind blown that AOL had a built in browser where someone had built a website, not a keyword, that actually had my niche interest that no one in real life did. Then I discovered you could download a much better version of that experience called a browser.

Your idea is just Facebook where you can't link out and is fully corporate controlled. Which I guess is actually Twitter.

I think you long for the Internet where people had hobbies and interest because they enjoyed them, not because they thought they could make money by talking about them.

20 years ago, but with gigabit Ethernet speeds and 5g WiFi. Oh, and modern dev tools in the browser. I’d hate to go back to only Firebug.

> I wish something like AOL would come back around

https://www.thelaughline.com/the-diary-of-an-aol-user/

How many tabs do you have open? I am often surprised at such statements, because my browser have basically never been slow the last 20 years. Like, never. Sometimes they crash / hang. But then I view on screen sharing colleagues who have like 200+ tabs open, and then I'm like "ah, this must be it". Not discarding your case but maybe try to have better digital hygiene?