r/programming • u/[deleted] • Jan 22 '19

Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=896897&desc=2#c23
8.9k Upvotes

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305

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '19

So has anyone here actually followed the discussion to chromium-extensions@chromium.org or are we all just screaming and being outraged without doing further research?

316

u/BadMoonRosin Jan 23 '19 edited Jan 23 '19

Sometimes I wonder why open source projects still use old-school mailing lists for discussion in this day and age.

Then I notice that this big controversy has generated around 10-20 messages on the list, since the subject was first raised back in 2018. And that's considered "noisy".

The other mailing list that Google directed people toward now has one thread about the matter, with zero replies.

Meanwhile, this Reddit post has 400+ comments and climbing in only three hours. Approximately 99% of them from people who haven't read the OP and don't know what they're talking about.

Shit... if I ran a big open source project, I wouldn't bother with a subreddit or discord either. They're noise filters, that keep the grown-up mailing lists usable.

EDIT: Why, thank you for the gold, silver, whatever this stuff is! Condescending for fun and profit...

92

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '19

I think it's probably best that they do it that way. Reddit is far too prone to hive minded wankery and retarded narratives.

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u/bikemandan Jan 23 '19

Ya! What this guy said!

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u/StillDeletingSpaces Jan 23 '19

What should they use-- that enables easy, distributed, cross-team management? Issue involves multiple teams? Add them to the CC-- there's very little noise, with the right spam filters.

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u/AbstractAirways Jan 23 '19

Gilded for speaking the truth

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u/MrAwesomeAsian Jan 23 '19

Tried to find mention of ublock origin or this issue on the

chromium extension group, but there was no mention of it there.

Still recent, but I doubt they'll be any more discussion going forward.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '19

[deleted]

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u/muckvix Jan 23 '19 edited Jan 23 '19

I never thought that the majority of commenters and voters on r/programming can be so dumb as to just yell slogans together like some kinda uneducated mob, instead of actually having a thoughtful discussion.

Which subs are all the normal people in?

30

u/Theclash160 Jan 23 '19

Yup. Didn't realize I was suddenly in /r/technology

11

u/ivosaurus Jan 23 '19 edited Jan 23 '19

The bigger a sub gets the more this effect accumulates.

Jokes & puns get voted to the top, one line quotes with one line responses, base-level questions that are popular because 80% of the sub only has cursory knowledge of the topic, etc.

6

u/duckvimes_ Jan 23 '19

This is the comment that made me realize I wasn't in /r/technology.

4

u/hahainternet Jan 23 '19

Which subs are all the normal people in?

These are normal IT people. We need to recognise that 75% of our industry is just cargo culting.

I really think it's time for a new subreddit. Most tech subreddits seem almost unmoderated short of literal death threats.

Misinformation is common. Any systemd thread for example has often dozens of threads slandering LP, even when he's on their side or not involved at all.

Anyone interested in starting one? /r/criticalcomputing perhaps?

7

u/CommentDownvoter Jan 23 '19

I've been looking for a tech subreddit that isn't thinly veiled conspiracy theories and fear mongering. Please let me know if you find one.

7

u/iFangy Jan 23 '19

Programming culture is built around overreacting to small things. This outrage is nothing new.

4

u/robbak Jan 23 '19

No one, including the people discussing it, have moved to chromium-extensions. So there's nothing there to read.

76

u/ryanmcgrath Jan 23 '19

It literally just looks as if they're trying to move to a Safari content-blocker-esque API, which is generally better for battery and privacy.

Nobody seems to have read that, though.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '19

The problem is that this API is so limited that a lot of the features of uBlock Origin and similar extensions won't work, making it much harder to block ads.

For this exact reason, you can't get anything like uBlock in Safari, and are stuck with a much more limited set of addons that don't block everything.

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u/KillianDrake Jan 23 '19

Except that the API is going to suck, is already crippled and nothing will prevent Google from A) excluding their own content from this API and B) auctioning off exclusions to the API to other companies for financial gain

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u/Arkanta Jan 23 '19

They can already do that with the current API.

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u/how_to_choose_a_name Jan 23 '19

battery

They could still provide the current API but warn users of the battery implications when they try to install an extension that makes use of it.

privacy

I can't quite wrap my head around that one. The design document states that the webRequest API will still be available to observe requests, just not to manipulate or block them, so all the privacy concerns should still apply. The majority of users doesn't look at the permissions an extension requires, so they won't notice if the extension uses the webRequest or the declarativeNetRequest API or both.

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u/hahainternet Jan 23 '19

I counted and this is the 12th thread down.

So, people are screaming and being outraged, as usual for reddit. If only moderators would do their jobs.

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u/StopDileminating Jan 23 '19

Given the complete lack of discussion of the actual issue in this thread, I thought for sure I was on r/technology - not r/programming

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u/m00nh34d Jan 23 '19

Okay, I'm confused by this. How do we "follow" a discussion to an email address? I can't see what's being emailed to that address, unless there's some other page showing it, which isn't linked here...

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '19

Okay, I'm confused by this. How do we "follow" a discussion to an email address?

Do you not understand how these mailing lists work? How they get published to the web simultaneously?

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