• 3 hours

    a default-disabled prototype

    No wonder it didn’t show up in normal/enduser release notes.

    This article suggests you have to disabled Enhanced Tracking Protection to test it. Does it replace that entire system with an equivalent system?

    I’ll wait until it’s stable and productive.

  • 5 hours

    Cool.

    Still sticking with uBlock and SponsorBlock (skips all the “this video was sponsored by” segments on YouTube).

    • 3 hours

      Add DeArrow in there as well (anti-clickbait)

    • SponsorBlock

      I believe uBlock manages to remove all ads on yt by tickling the subscription of some list bundled in its installation already

      • 2 hours

        SponsorBlock skips past the video segments which contain sponsored advertisement. There’s no overlap with what uBlock does.

    • SponsorBlock is not cool. This is the main revenue source of creators.

      Adblock on the other hand in a cancer in youtube and has to go.

      • 1 hour

        Sponsors don’t see if you skipped their ad segment.

  • 4 hours

    Why did they not just set ublock as a default installed plugin?

    • Because the performance of brave lib is a little better since it doesn’t go through the plugin API

  • 4 hours

    That’s cool, take the good part of Brave, leave behind the villainous CEO and dodgy crypto scams

    • 1 hour

      I don’t think you can separate a product from their CEO

  • 3 hours

    How incredible i think I’ll start using Firefox again as it’s becoming better i just wish they would create their own email service already.

      • 5 hours

        Yeah we have to second this, unlock is way better in our experience

          • 5 hours

            Yeah lol

            It’s gonna slip eventually so we stopped giving a shit on not using plural pronouns

              • 4 hours

                LMAO touché!

                It’s actually related to a fursona (character) we use to help project emotions and self. Though because of DID there are so many different variants and versions it’s hard to keep up even though we all collectively made the character. Hell some of them aren’t even a dog but a human and others- non living (?) <idk personally, I only added the glasses hehe. -pj>

  • 16 hours

    Of course they just had to make it somewhat contreversial by adopting braves adblock engine; brave’s ceo or whatever funds anti gay lobbyists.

    • Bruh everything is funded by some sort of criminal. Jeffery Epstein could have donated to the Mozilla foundation for all we know. You literally cannot tell.

      • 1 hour

        That’s a very convenient position that absolves you from any responsibility to do anything. Convenient, but I don’t think correct.

      • 5 hours

        People won’t pay for anything, and are then surprised by who actually pays for stuff.

        These developers need to eat too.

  • 15 hours

    Huh, right after Waterfox started to implement it themselves. Must have spooked Mozilla. I don’t see how using Brave’s adblock engine is all that different from uBlock Origin though since they both just enforce DNS lists, right? Could be wrong, I know nothing about how adblocking works on the backend, lol

    • DNS blocking, like with a Pihole, famously does not remove Youtube ads. So no, the mechanism is totally different.

    • 10 hours

      Firefox actually started developing it first, and Waterfox caught on and decided to piggyback off of it in a relatively small announcement at the bottom of a retrospective. The Waterfox announcement just got reported on first.

    • DNS lists?
      Fuck no brother (or sister or non-binary sibling)

      Anyway. You can go as far as modifying the HTML page by overriding CSS rules.
      Overrode the font on a page I am using at work because the vendor is apparantly not using their own product and the font is fucking tiny in some places.
      You can override elements, dynamically remove with a selector wildcard, DNS blocks or subscribe to blocklists that can do all of it.

      • Just for clarification, but do you mean you can automate that stuff? Because FF already has debug tools built in that lets you edit the HTML or CSS of the page however you want, but it’s only for the current session. I’d occasionally use that before realizing I could just use reader mode for sites that did client side html5 bs for access control. Just go in and delete nodes using the picker tool. Until the annoying thing is gone.

        I’ve never really played around with ublock’s capabilities, though did know that it must have been more sophisticated than just dns lists to stay in the arms race vs youtube (as well as why google was pushing “security features” that would kill it).

        • U could also use tools like greasemonkey to change the website more permanently

        • Just for clarification, but do you mean you can automate that stuff?

          Yes.

          uBlock at its core is really just a scripting system for replacing CSS content using certain rules.

          The most common usage is to remove content you don’t like, but really it can manipulate things in a zillion different ways, many of the more advanced features are only available to the user and not larger block lists for security reasons.

  • 22 hours

    A built-in ad blocker is easily the least problematic announcement coming out of Mozilla in the last year.

  • 23 hours

    I said it for Waterfox and I’m gonna say it again for Firefox: this is good. At worst, it’s just fine (Mozilla just uses it internally to replace or supplement its old and incomplete Tracker Blocking system, which never gets the same scrutiny).

    The biggest difference between Firefox and Waterfox in implementation is the WaterFox developers noticed this FF change early, and committed to providing full-fledged ad blocking out of the box, which is great news for users.

    A few more reasons this is good:

    1. Rust is faster than JavaScript
    2. Native functionality is faster than an extension
    3. Actual ad blocking is something Firefox users have been begging Mozilla to do
    • At worst, it’s just fine (Mozilla just uses it internally to replace or supplement its old and incomplete Tracker Blocking system, which never gets the same scrutiny).

      I think you’re right but I’m sure they can fuck it up a lot worse than that if they really want to. AI ad detection? Sponsored blocking? New RCE pathways?

      I think its much more likely than not a step forward, and I welcome the change, but recent Mozilla decisions have me watching closely.

      • 12 hours

        My faith in Mozilla has dimmed a whole lot over the past few years, but if they feel like making Firefox worse, I don’t think they need to do it this way. More code does mean more vulnerabilities, but that hasn’t stopped them from adding a half dozen other features that could have been extensions. This one could actually be beneficial, as it would cut down on the performance requirements for users, especially mobile ones.

    • 19 hours

      Using technology from a known crypto scamming developer is not good.

      • 18 hours

        Using entirely unrelated ad blocking technology is bad for what reason?

        You can feel free to moralize, but be consistent: Mozilla bought an NFT company to integrate their code into Firefox, and that’s not the only skeleton in their closet.

        • 2 hours

          I mean what’s wrong with buying a company to access it proprietary code. NFTs were a dumb grift, but if the specific software product they offered was sound what’s the issue?

        • Oh they have a whole cemetery of a city in the basement.

          Still doeant excuse it IMO.

          • 12 hours

            Does it need an excuse? It’s a good change. If you have a reason to dislike it, please provide one.

    • Rust is faster than JavaScript

      isn’t ublock’s filtering compiled to webassembly?

      Actual ad blocking is something Firefox users have been begging Mozilla to do

      seems a bit dangerous though to risk for a browser with so small market share

      • especially using a brave adblocker, which i noticed doesnt block most ads, and likely whitelists some of them.

      • 17 hours

        Rust is faster than JavaScript

        isn’t ublock’s filtering compiled to webassembly?

        The slow thing usually is the DOM manipulation anyways.

      • 18 hours

        isn’t ublock’s filtering compiled to webassembly?

        From my unprofessional glance ar their repository, it uses a little, but not much. Take a look at their code; all or most of the filtering is done in JavaScript, the webassembly appears to be just one two modules. (It’s in the “wasm” folder near the top of the list).

        (Edit: I was looking at outdated code; the newer version uses more, but IMO pales in comparison to the JavaScript filtering logic)

        seems a bit dangerous though to risk for a browser with so small market share

        Waterfox has a much smaller market share and much smaller budget, and was able to clear this with search partners just by promising not to block ads on them by default.

        • Waterfox has a much smaller market share and much smaller budget, and was able to clear this with search partners just by promising not to block ads on them by default.

          my point is not actually about search providers, but more generally websites intentionally breaking support for gecko based browsers. waterfox itself is too little, most developers don’t even know about it I think. but firefox is the flagship/reference gecko browser, with more of a measurable number of users. if they implement a good ad blocker in the base browser, that could discourage advertising related sites from serving/supporting this browser.

          brave is different in that it uses chromium, which the sites just happen to support already because of chrome. but firefox support is often not a priority even today

      • 16 hours

        seems a bit dangerous though to risk for a browser with so small market share

        They should have built it in years ago, but called it “web security filtering” or something and included only a basic security blocklist, but left it easy to add other lists.

        • still it wasn’t blocking ads, and even I as a poweruser was not aware that I could add externally maintained ad blocklists

  • 20 hours

    Quietly

    The developer made this change from a personal laptop at their local public library.

    Shhhhhh.

    • 14 hours

      Despite this trope, public libraries usually don’t have a guideline or enforcement on noise levels.

      But the developer was definitely using silent tactile switches.

      • 7 hours

        Maybe not in Canada but every library in Asia has

  • It would be really nice too if they implemented Brave’s fingerprint randomization, which is obviously not perfect and I’m never going to expect Tor like anonymity, but is far better than most other browsers. Where Mullvad and Tor try to make everyone look the same, Brave randomizes nearly every important fingerprint.

    And I know Firefox does this pretty well already, but from the research I did, Brave’s fingerprint vector randomization is another level.