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I seem to remember TamperMonkey being on there but not ViolentMonkey, which I didn't agree with. However, I see neither of them on there. Both are available but not recommended. I wonder what is going on with that.

Automated checks are done for every extension on every update. But their recommend extensions they feature on the Extension store, they do other extensive checks for each update.

what permissions do you suggest?

Websites already can barely be assed to care about supporting Firefox users, doing adblocking by default is a great way to get websites to start putting up banners that say "our website does not work with your browser, please switch to Chrome" en-masse.

And Mozilla did develop anti-fingerprinting tech, but they can't enable it by default because it breaks lots of websites and when a website doesn't work they're not going to appreciate Mozilla for protecting them, they're going to be pissed that it doesn't work.

Admiral and several other of the more obnoxious ad networks already claim that Firefox is an ad blocker simply because of its out-of-the-box blocking support for third-party cookies and those ad networks nag you to use another browser. If Firefox added actual ad blocking out of the box I can't imagine the havoc that would cause and how many more websites would claim that they don't work at all in Firefox.

That's like suggesting that someone using LLMs to assist coding, could save themselves the trouble by writing the code by hand.

Yes, Firefox could do everything, but then it'd turn back into Mozilla. The whole point of the extensions framework is to allow modular extensibility. And it's much easier to vet for malware than to code afresh and maintain.

What stuns me is that most people still use browsers that cannot block ads, seem genuinely annoyed by ads, but don't want to even try switching to a browser that will easily block those ads. It's amazing how much crap people are willing to wade through when the alternative is trying something new.

>since Google basically owns them

Google has been trying to kill them since they moved the Chrome team into the same building as the now defunct SF office.

(Apparently they offered people a lot of money? There are some words I could use to describe people who do things they think are unethical for cash I'll leave unsaid.)

People believe ublock because it's reputable and not affiliated with browsers IMO.

If Firefox baked in ad blocking, they would have to then deal with the financial incentive to make it worse. Sponsored ads, 'good' ads, government announcements, election propaganda... there is a slippery slope they are better off not getting on. A trusted 3rd party from the wider community seems a better option in many ways. The alternative is starting a web browser with a manifesto welded on that essentially states 'death to all advertising', and until that can be crowd funded I can't see that happening in today's world.

What I am surprised about is that none of the browsers or forks have created a specialist plugin API for adblocking and maybe other filtering. Provide what is needed and only that (keeping the surface tiny), and then evolve the general purpose API in the way they need. I don't think we need V2 of the API any more, except for keeping this one absolutely critical plugin working, do we?

In one of the monthly update videos Andreas mentioned that although they are working on a basic built-in adblocker for Ladybird, long-term they want extension support and the adblocking functionality to be in an extension.

See, this is the kind of thing that makes Firefox cool. They have not only just as good of developer console tools as Chrome, they have forward thinking, truly user-oriented policies. They have had trouble in the recent past at securing funding, but something tells me their user philosophy might save them when all the others turn completely to corporate greed as their main operating mechanism (if they already haven't).

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After watching them butcher their own side tabs implementation, I don't know if we really want that, unless they're actually hiring the uBO team directly.

Still works for me. The occasional 403 has always been an issue

Rather than introducing additional attack surface and privacy risks with yet another extension you can just use archive.is/archive.ph instead of Bypass Paywalls Clean.

Or, just pay for journalism since it’s not free to do.

You mean Bypass Paywalls Clean? It's illegal and it's not even on the Firefox extension store. You have to download it from some Russian Github alternative and manually install it.

I will say however, it works remarkably well. I haven't seen a paywall in years!

I don't like telemetry being defaulted to opt-in but relax. It's anonymized and it's far and away the least intrusive of the major browsers

Yes, but if you write your own extension maybe you want to read and modify the data. For example, patch fingerprinting script so that it gets the wrong result.

Furthermore, malicious extension can read the data from the DOM, from forms (for example, password or credit card fields), and in some cases, from JS variables. They can insert fake information into the page. So preventing extensions from reading network data still leaves a lot of options for a malicious extension.

> I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data.

To be honest, to me it sounds like you don't want browser extensions then.

To me, directly messing with web page data and browser behaviour is the whole point of a browser extension - what else is a browser extension for?

> Hate to be the one to defend Google here, but the reasons weren't that unreasonable. I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data. The declarative API idea is pretty good.

Don't kid yourself, even with mv3 if you install a rogue extension it's going to have access to a lot more data than you would be comfortable sharing to.

>Hate to be the one to defend Google here, but the reasons weren't that unreasonable.

Sounds like some kind of Stockholm syndrome. Years ago, it was standard practice for software to be designed so that users could grant permissions to access invasive methods or functions.

Google relies on users' personal data (ads), which is why they introduced a unique ID to their Chrome browser (to track).

> I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data. The declarative API idea is pretty good.

Agreed. And you would think most paranoid HN types would too.

> It's just that uBlock Origin is so insanely useful, important and trusted

Maybe I'm foggy on the history. But isn't this like Fork #4 or #5 of some previous AdBlock extension?

Seems like the only business model for this type of extension is "selling out" for certain ads. And then the cycle repeats and forum posters tell you to install qBlock Omega or whatever. Maybe Mozilla doesn't want to get in the middle of this?

Of course it's tempting to reply "don't install random extensions". But a bigger point here is that browsers have grown so massively complex that it's almost impossible to build one, so we don't have an ecosystem where you can choose your browser for safety and I can choose mine for freedom. Of course, Google has had a big incentive and hand in making it this way.

No worries. Reading the rest of your comments shows, that your defense is paper thin .

> I want my browser to prevent random extensions...

Why are you installing random extensions?

> I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data. The declarative API idea is pretty good.

I was under the impression that manifest v3 still allowed extensions to read anything, just not modify. Is that not the case? (Random link because this is hard to search for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38303446 )

Then don't install them. I want my extensions in my browser on my computer to do whatever I allow them to do and not what's allowed by Google.

> I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data

This is so funny to me. Coming from a Netscape Navigator world, when extensions first came out, they were supposed to allow the user to add functionality to websites.

Why would someone install "random extensions" that they dont trust. And also, what would extensions do if not read and write data to websites? .

Sign of the times I guess.

"Random" is a funny thing to call an extension that you have deliberately installed.

I also don't want "random" programs accessing my home folder. That would be terrible! Who knows what programs that could be! I do however want the very specific programs that I have intentionally installed to be able to access my home folder easily. Same for extensions.

The goal here isn't really to protect me from extensions. Extensions don't do anything on their own, they just sit there and wait for me to install them. So the goal is apparently to protect me from me (installing an extension), which really is to say protect their business (ads) from me (blocking them).

... the greatest danger to us is masterless men; lacking a coercive power to tie their hands, they would destroy society. How else but by binding to lord and master can they be held to the laws? So thought men during feudal times.

In fact, it is possible for people to be held to good conduct without being bound into a single hierarchy, and it should be possible for software to be held to good conduct without giving such power to single monopolists. But it's not in Google's interests to build such mechanisms, any more than it was in the interests of the feudal overlords to look for alternatives to their rule.

Of course the reasons weren't unreasonable, that's what made them great excuses for specifically blocking ublock origin.

Don't defend them then. Do you believe the same should be true of your operating system? If not, then it shouldn't be true of the browser either.

Nothing stops people from using a fork with manifest v2 support restored. In fact "VibeChrome" would probably be a successful product.

The Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer let users search Google directly from any webpage, block pop-up ads, autofill web forms, and highlight search terms. It also displayed PageRank metrics, translated foreign languages, checked spelling, and managed web bookmarks.

The crux of the difference is the webRequest API which is only available in Manifest v2. This allows uBlock to strip all tracking data from the requests themselves. So while Chrome w uBlock Lite is hiding almost all the same ads from you, it's not protecting you from tracking

The Lite version also relies solely on filter lists that require you to update the extension itself while the MV2 version can do so dynamically. Additionally, it lacks CNAME Uncloaking which I imagine will become much more commonplace soon enough which will make it impossible to block those ads.

> uBlock Origin Lite still seems to block almost all ads

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49305464

There’s also ad blockers for iOS safari, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t support ublock. There’s nothing in manifest v2 that’s required for ad blocking.

That sounds more like an issue with the update policies.

Why haven't they been prosecuted? And why hasn't this "cindyllm" bot account been deleted yet? Clearly a shadowban didn't send the message.

You have full control of whether or not their button is in your toolbar.

If they are hidden for you, it's because you, the user, hid them or enabled the overflow extension menu.

> The issue is that adblocking doesn't work with it

Except this is objectively not true…

uBlock Origin Lite is nearly as good as uBO and blocks nearly everything except for mostly Twitch ads.

Manifest v3 is a big security upgrade and effectively closes off the permanent RCE pathway that v2 allowed.

Open your browser’s dev tools while loading a website and there’s usually a continuous stream of HTTP and JS errors and warnings. That websites actually work surprises me sometimes, but that’s the pragmatic beauty of the web.

Try visiting YouTube.

> Thankfully Youtube Premium isn't too expensive and solves that issue.

True, but some of us refuse to give that company money on principle. The minute I can't watch YouTube without ads is the minute I stop watching YouTube. (The creators I follow make way more money off me on Patreon than Google would ever pay them, anyway.)

> I always found browser extensions (including uBlock) had a pretty big performance hit

I always found that not using uBO was a pretty big performance hit. :)

uBlock causes a huge performance improvement for most regular people's computers.

adblock works well with regular youtube ads (not the one inside the actual content).

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Agree on the last part, let’s see for how long.. but for now it’s simply not true.

RIP corporate users that can't install their own browsers but can install extensions

Ahh so this will be what moves me off of Edge. Microsoft has almost entirely pushed me out of their ecosystem at this point.

Brave surely is a major browser with 100+M MAU, not too distant from Firefox with 150+M MAU.

Firefox is less popular than some of the browsers you listed as not major, so it isn't major either

Technically Firefox isn't a major browser either.

Well, Edge probably counts. I agree about the others.

That's not true, the on/off toggle is per-site in uBlock Origin Lite.

But you can do this with uBOL? I’m not sure what you mean. I have multiple rules to hide elements on various sites. With HN I hide elements and can give it a custom CSS dark mode through uBOL. Works on both desktop and iOS.

And Dillo is the equivalent of a shepherds hut in the back garden.

I mean did you try with Chrome and Ublock Original Lite? Because I have and there's literally no difference at all.

Free Chrome. /s

Sammme. Remember all the hullaballo about the AwesomeBar in Firefox 3?

https://ed.agadak.net/2008/03/beyond-awesome

Truly amazing stuff, in 2008.

Care to share?

Yes, well, kind of. Opera had Multiple Document Interface (MDI) which was actually (back then) far more flexible than tabs. But yes, Opera was first with MDI, and also I suppose the first web browser for the smartphone.

Yes. Opera (original, not what is called Opera now) introduced tabs first. I believe in the 5.0 version with presto engine.

Then why haven't I see any difference in ad blocking with uBlock Origin Lite on Edge?

Nope. I made the one-time payment for Brave Origin.

I got a Android tablet...I can't recommend it. YT has gotten pretty toxic with the dark patterns. There are the usual interstitial ads, but after you skip and go full screen there's another ad widget in the lower left of the video. You have carefully navigate a popup menu to dismiss it without triggering an ad popup. If you pause or double-tap to -10s the video it restores down and shows an ad on the right side.

The Edge browser for has the best ad-free experience I've found so far on Android. It supports Widevine (DRM videos) and performance is good enough for most videos. I do get an occasional stutter with higher res videos. Firefox supports Widevine, but it didn't last week? Or I just didn't get the popup to "Enable DRM" for some reason. Edge claims to have blocked 15k YT ads in the last week with the built-in AdBlock Plus. It works with uBlock Origin as well (this week anyway).

Oh yes they are. Occassionally when I am on a device which doesn't have an ad-blocker. I witness it and I am always left feeling shocked at how many ads Youtube can have. We really don't know the plight of so so many Youtube users. I feel sympathy for them and want to hug them and install an ad-blocker for them.

I actually used to install Revanced for all the relatives who ever complained about Youtube and some who didn't even ask! I just feel like Ad blocker is such a useful thing that I can do to people that I care about who don't know deeply about it.

I must say that it is one of the top entries of lists of most useful/time-saving things I have done in actually saving anybody's actual time.

I express gratitude towards the universe for Ublock Origin. Words can't comprehend how much I love it.

AFAIK they are using the built-in support which Google still maintains even if they don't expose it.

My point is that when MV3 was announced there was an assumption that maintaining a Chromium fork to continue supporting MV2 would be too much work and too expensive. But now with LLMs that's no longer a safe assumption. The non-Chrome chromium based browsers can fork chromium and add back MV2. No need for any expiration date.

As someone who lives in a country bordering russia, I will certainly switch to Brave now.

Because Peter Thiel gave them some money, there's some secret backdoor code that's sending all your information to Palantir?

I think it's necessary for the future of the web. Ever since Opera gave up on Presto and Edge gave up on Trident, we've seen a massive and sudden consolidation towards Chromium. It's sad how quickly we forgot the lessons we learned from the days of IE's dominance

What’s detestable is Firefox’s lack of security and Mozilla’s priorities surrounding it compared to Chromium

https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1unhtxu/initial...

In that case Firefox is also out. They have been caught auto installing random hidden extensions with full read/write access to all websites and blocking uBlock Origin from working on, for example, the Firefox extension site.

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The big difference is that it's still updated.

Chrome became popular in the time where firefox was already more popular than IE.

>It's impossible to run full UBO (not Lite MV3 version) on current versions on Chrome.

Current version of Chrome seems to be 152.0.7977.39 released August 14, 2026.

August 14, 2026 Chromium 152.0.7977.38 based vivaldis napshot https://vivaldi.com/blog/desktop/address-field-calculator-an... has this in patch notes:

"[Extensions] Re-enable and extend Manifest V2 extension support for the time being (VB-130324)"

Because all those other browsers can still block ads. I use ubo lite for safari and it's largely fine.

Unless upstream introduces breaking changes I don't see why not. Google was killing this functionality for policy reasons, not because changes to the renderer required it or something. And LLM analysis is going to make maintaining forks easier going forward.

For all possible MV2 extensions this is unsustainable for a small company. Supporting just uBO used by tens of millions of people? pretty doable as it only relies on few hooks into C functions that arent going anywhere.

And now you'll no longer be able to wake people up and show them the real world.

There is only XUL!

Also, Firebug showed what was possible with developer tools. Inspecting elements or network requests or whatever else wasn't really a thing before that extension.

Exactly. The difference between the two is not qualitatively different for 99% of users.

What do you think doesn’t work on Firefox? Aside from Google products purposely crippled, everything works just fine in my experience. It’s fast and stable. If there’s a bunch of AI stuff in it, I’ve not seen it. Of course I believe it exists, I just don’t ever read popups anyways. To be fair, I probably use 5% of the browser’s capability (I imagine many are like me). I browse websites and I have UBO installed.

"It kinda works" is factually incorrect.

I have used Firefox exclusively every day on macOS for the past year, several hours a day, and have not one single time had to open another browser. None of the customers of my B2B saas use Firefox. Not once have I needed to test in their browsers except quick smoke testing to prove to myself that the rendering and details are identical. All my other browsing is indistinguishable from before when I used Chrome, and from on mobile where I (tragically) am forced by Apple's monopoly to use Safari.

Do you have evidence to support your false claim?

What doesn’t work? It’s my daily driver and it renders every website I visit.

I daily Zen (Firefox under the hood) and the only thing that I consistently need to open other browsers for is direct USB support (mouse/keyboard drivers in the browser). Other than that, I don't remember when was the last time something wasn't working in Firefox.

How is 2% major though? (I wish FF was more used!)

Can't they just modify the browser itself with an injection into the executable

surely there is a way around that

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