If this thread is indicative of the sort of browser discourse in <current year> it's no wonder Google won.<p>Nerds used to know how to computer, is what i'm saying.
Welp, the biggest reason that I use Edge just got thrown out, time to switch to Firefox.
Vivaldi for the win.
Why do browser vendors have such a control over browsers? Can anyone make a dll injection and bring back manifest v2 ?
Running Unbound on my gateway with a curated adblock list. Easy setup, network-wide ad blocking on every device / browser.
DNS based adblockers have strictly worse adblocking capabilities than manifest v3 adblockers. I mean, sure they have their uses (eg. blocking ads/telemetry in apps or whatever), but bringing them up in this context doesn't really make sense.
Some ads (e.g. I know YT ads used to be this way, haven't looked recently) can't be blocked at the network level because they are served from the same domain/servers as the content.
Droped Chromium browsers and been using Safari with Wipr2, so far the best experience
Advertising companies shouldn’t be in the browser business. It’s a really bad conflict of interest. Chromium is a mistake.<p>Firefox is pretty great. But IMO they have some poor ux defaults that make it unappealing to random people who simply want a browser.
There is no “browser business,” because people are - with rare exceptions - unwilling to pay for a web browser. Even Firefox is ad-supported indirectly via its default search contract with google.
Chromium being open source is not a mistake. Letting google be the sole driver and not forking it has been. People who want control over their browsers have options. It's a fight because most people don't care about these things.
Right. For example, Firefox Mobile doesn't support hitting ctrl+T to open a new tab, completely breaking flow for anyone on a tablet with a keyboard or their phone docked to a monitor.
I use MV3 AdGuard and it blocks ads for me. I don't get the fuss about MV2 deprecation.. sure, MV3 is limited compared to firefox, but it's not like MV2 was that much better, no version ever supported rewriting request response.<p>MV3 DNR redirect is notably lame though, instead of replacing the response it generates a real redirect which breaks for example replacing the service worker response. But could MV2 webRequestBlocking replace the response? Well of course not.
I honestly don't know how people do without ad blockers. Even with being ok with ads, they are so overwhelming that I could not use internet without blocking them
I don’t use adblockers. If a site has too many ads to be usable, I don’t visit it.
So no youtube?
YouTube premium is one of the best subs you can buy if you watch a lot of YouTube. Plus you get Music.
YouTube is tolerable with ads. If I found it intolerable, I would pay. Or not visit.
Humans are just so damn different in their tolerance to wasting time. I can't take feeling like I wasted 10 seconds of my time on an ad even when watching an video for recreation.
If an ad isn't blocked, I fast forward through it. If I can't fast forward, I mute it. If I can't mute it, I'll mute my computer and change tabs for the duration. If it's a page in a magazine, I flip it quickly. If it's a billboard I'll avert my gaze. If it's in an airplane I take out my headphones and cover the screen.<p>I find being advertised to so annoying there's no way in hell I will spend my limited time on this planet willingly consuming an ad.
'Rainbow Dome Musick', by Steve Hillagr..glorious soothing music, then 30 mins in, a Barilla pasta advert.
Sorry, youtube - I tried.
Most laypeople I know haven't seen an ad blocker in action ever.
I use noscript instead of an ad blocker. I find it blocks the intrusive ads. I do not mind what I view as normal ads (ie: text or link), but these video and popup ads drive me crazy. I find noscript blocks the "bad" ads.
I install Firefox and uBlock on friends/family devices as often as I can.
In case your assumption here is that TFA is about Edge disabling adblockers: it's not. It's just removing ManifestV2 support. ManifestV3 is still supported. Despite what one might assume, MV3 does not seem to measurably diminish the effectiveness of adblockers; if anything, it improves it. (Source: <a href="https://petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0027.php" rel="nofollow">https://petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0027.php</a>)
The only reason anyone knows about the switch between manifest 2 and 3 is that the only meaningful difference is the crippled ad blocking ability. Nobody knows any other difference unless they are an extension developers or worked on making the Internet a worse place.
Isn't the main issue that for MV3 you can't have a dynamic blocklist ? And so you have to update it with an extension update ?
There is a dynamic API too that allows extensions to modify the blocklist at runtime.<p>I’ve been using UBlock Origin Lite on my iPhone for a while, and that works great, keeping itself updated from EasyList and allowing for custom rules.<p>In some ways it’s better, in some ways it’s worse. Sometimes you have to flip it into “complete mode” (and give it full access to modify the current site) to get good blocking.
>In some ways it’s better, in some ways it’s worse. Sometimes you have to flip it into “complete mode” (and give it full access to modify the current site) to get good blocking.<p>I don't how this is supposed to be a demerit given that the v2 version had full access to every site you visit. Safari just made that more explicit.
Basically every chromium based browser.
Brave as well?
I believe their adblock is built in to the browser and not an extension, so it can be more effective than the limited extensions.<p>Brave has its own downsides too, but at least the browser seems pretty effective at blocking ads and tracking junk.
Brave said they’ll keep some select MV2 extensions, though that remains to be seen. Especially if it causes too much maintenance headache with upstream chromium. Also it seems that Brave now distributes these select MV2 extensions. So I’m not sure if they have forked them, or if they just repackage upstream.
Brave's adblock isn't as powerful as ublock.
In what sense? As a normie-tier user of Brave’s internal and blocker, it’s worked great. I never became a power-user of uBlock.
Not saying this is it, but I never managed to block YouTube shorts with brave adblocker (in mobile), where I can do it with ublock. If you can do it, please explain, I promise I will try asap (I really dislike ff mobile UI).
+1, works well enough
It doesn't have to be so long as it still supports the above.
I guess it still will be the best browser to download Firefox
It's ending manifest V2, not just adblockers.<p>uBlock Origin lite is V3 and is still supported
Inferior alternative
I've used uBlock Origin Lite and have had no issues with blocking ads. The only downside I've seen is that I can't do "Block Elements" to hide non-ad annoying parts of sites.
Serious question: which sites have you encountered where ublock lite doesn't do the job? Even tricky sites (eg. youtube) are defeated with scriptlets, not by intercepting network responses.