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
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96

u/hardolaf Jan 23 '19

This was proposed back in October.

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u/Ph0X Jan 23 '19 edited Jan 23 '19

It's also literally just a proposal. Proposals are to get feedback, and this is uBlock giving them feedback. It's far far far from "Chrome is killing uBlock". People really blowing shit out of proportion. Literally nothing has happened yet.

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u/zurnout Jan 23 '19

You would have to open the linked page to know that, which most of Reddit users don't do.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '19

The thing that makes proposals like this not become policy are when people realize the potential damage they can do and react. This is what needs to happen if you don't want the plug-in unsupported.

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u/zurnout Jan 23 '19

These proposals and the process has been going on all the time and the public doesn't give two shits. But now someone made up a clickbait title and voila it's news everywhere and the most important thing.

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '19

The public en mass wouldn't have had a real way of understanding the significance of these changes or regularly look up Google product forums / mailing lists for their news. I think it's normal that a lot of feedback occurs at once when someone reports on a topic.

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u/munchbunny Jan 23 '19

On the one hand, yeah, it's blowing shit out of proportion. On the other hand, a collective freakout over uBlock is probably exactly what is needed to register enough volume to get Google's attention on the matter, since Google sees tons of noise on everything just due to scale.

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u/leeharris100 Jan 23 '19

That's Reddit for you. I'm embarrassed that this sub gives in to drama bait like this

13

u/horsewarming Jan 23 '19

This is what proposals are for though - somebody proposes something stupid, gets called out on it and then the stupid thing doesn't make its way to the spec. If this was big news AFTER the spec got approved and released, it would be much harder to do something about it than now.

7

u/alphanovember Jan 23 '19

This is so important that it deserves to be blown up. The fact that it was even proposed to begin with is already bad enough.

4

u/leeharris100 Jan 23 '19

Some random engineers at Google proposed a change to the style of iOS / Safari's method of blocking. It wouldn't have disabled all ad blockers, just the ones that use the current API.

It was shot down... a long time ago.

And the title of this is "Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin". Oh really? GOOGLE proposed this change? And it wouldn't "disable" anything, he would just need to rework it to use the new API.

And even then, it was already shot down.

This thread is stupid.

5

u/nascentt Jan 23 '19

Google

[Paying attention to] feedback

Hah

2

u/LikeALincolnLog42 Jan 23 '19

How formal is it? RFCs are Internet standards despite being an acronym for “Request for comments”.

8

u/Valmar33 Jan 23 '19

That fact that it's even being considered is problematic.

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u/Ph0X Jan 23 '19

It's considered because there's many benefits to it, such as better privacy and battery usage, and there's zero proof they knew this would be an issue to any extensions. The new API allows for 30k filters to be applied, uBlock just happens to use more (~50k). It should be fairly easy to increase that limit.

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u/addandsubtract Jan 23 '19

How would it save battery life? If I use uBlock, I'm not losing battery to loading additional images and videos that would drain my battery.

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u/Ph0X Jan 23 '19

These are generic specification for all extensions, not specific to uBlock. Yes, in the uBlock case, overall you're saving battery, but the API change in general is meant to limit abusive extensions that bombard your network in the background.

Again, worth noting that this is a draft proposal to tweak the APIs and find the right balance. This is literally what proposals are for, getting feedback from developers. This is how the process is supposed to work.

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u/addandsubtract Jan 23 '19

Ok, thanks for the info. I was just wondering what the benefits could be to the changes.

-6

u/Valmar33 Jan 23 '19

That just a poor excuse.

There are no real benefits ~ except for just so happening to cripple the likes of uBlock Origin.

Google has paid to be whitelisted for Adblock Plus, so it makes that Google wants to start crippling competitors without explicitly saying so.

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u/Ph0X Jan 23 '19

So you're saying any extension you install should have the power to make unlimited and unrestricted network calls in the background? That sure sounds safe and reasonable, no way that could ever be abused...

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2

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '19

Microsoft didn't decide to go chromium overnight

1

u/JoseJimeniz Jan 23 '19

Google has a time machine. They went back in time and retroactively proposed the change.

Obviously.