this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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This is clearly about all the youtube advertisement changes lately. (though maybe with a dolllop of not being happy about their other ads being blocked either) I've not seen a single one on FF with Ublock, no slowdown, no nothing. He was (as I understand it) making changes as needed to stay ahead of or abreast of them. (I already wasn't using their browser long before this.)
He beat them. They didn't crush him with their technical prowess and all their genius engineers, they didn't find a way to legally challenge him (I'm sure they had their lawyers working on it), they didn't find a way to outmaneuver him, the only thing they could do is ban his extension from being used on their browser. Because they literally could not force their shit down our throats as long as we were using it.
So I guess, maybe not a beat for beat fit for the parable, but he's very much the little guy, and they very much are the gigantic IT megacorp, so I think it was a glorious victory.
I'd call it a pyrrhic victory at best. It's like if Ukraine got Russia to use their nukes on them and there was no response from the rest of the world. Sure, you got them to use their strongest weapon, but you still got nuked and they'll continue as usual.
I do see your point, but OTOH Chrome ain't the only browser. Ublock getting kicked off Chrome is just going to be one more factor that will tip some people away from it. I don't strongly disagree, but I see it as a net positive. Maybe that does undo my shower thought a little, but hey, it was literally a shower thought. 🙂
It almost is, though. That's why it's important to support FF/Gecko
But it's not a nuke. The addon still lives and thrives, on browsers not controlled by google, and Firefox is not like a complicated browser that the average user couldn't drive.
I think the nuke would be if
a) google would find a way to effectively break all sites where uBO is detected, and uBO couldn't defend against it, or not in time while there's mass breakage
b) uBO and such would be legally outlawed in a large country or more
Manifest V3 was well on its way to being implemented before the aggressive youtube advertisement push. It was well known (to people who cared) it would kill uBlock back in 2019.
Here's an article:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/google-begins-testing-extension-manifest-v3-in-chrome-canary/
Discussion on the uBlock subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/dunod2/google_begins_testing_extension_manifest_v3_which/
You're kind of assuming people will stop using Chrome as a consequence, but i just don't think that's the case.
David didn't slay Goliath, Goliath just walked away and took command of David's army, leaving David to play with his rocks.
Fair enough :)
Thanks for your perspective and time in the response
Any time! :)