Story in The Register.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/0..._block_change/

Well this is pretty bad. I'm unsure of what to do, I absolutely hate ads and ad-blockers are one of the things that make the web usable. I never quite got my hosts file to work as I wanted either.

Seeing as mid/heavyweight browsers are a two-horse race [Firefox and Chromium-based], this would only leave Firefox and its derivatives [e.g. Waterfox].

Not even Otter or Falkon would be safe.

Online ads should be banned altogether, after all, they are 'stealing' the bandwidth which we pay for!!!

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Thank you Lysander666 for sharing that article (at leet time on top of that!)
If Google proceeds to its questionable changes, derivatives like Vivaldi will be impacted because according to https://vivaldi.com/fr/blog/vivaldi-...t-from-chrome/ Vivaldi uses the Chromium engine, right?
However, since Chromium is open-source, maybe there should be someone or some community at some point to develop a version still based on webRequest rather than the new declarativeNetRequest...?

On one hand, I don't like things like this I'm an idealistic nerd. On the other, I can see it being a benefit to businesses, non-nerds, and my parents, who have a harder time keeping their secrets safe.

I do not use an ad-blocker, though I do use NoScript and a hosts file (I've been using that hosts file since my Win95 days), and I block third-party cookies.

I visit many newspaper websites, and I'm quite happy to allow some ads, as legit news reportage is in sore trouble and needs all the help it gets. My local rag, for one, is a shadow of its former self.

Nevertheless, if this story is true and, knowing El Reg, I suspect it is, it distresses me because Google's action is obnoxious and predatory, but it does not surprise me. Google is first and foremost an advertising company. To some extent, every "service" Google offers is an effort to either expose you to more ads or to learn more about you so as to serve you with more precisely-targeted ads.

I won't go so far as to say that every one of Google's motives is ulterior, but far too many of them are.

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I don't think that's quite right though it's close: Google is a data collection and analytics firm. Their mission statement is:

Consider their use of the word "organise". As Marketwatch reported back in 2005, Google's ultimate goal is knowledge ["the Web, desktop, location, wallet, soon our brain"]. Their main interest is to program the brains of future generations so that they can control the human population. Which may sound like something out of a Ray Bradbury novel until you actually watch their promotional video. So by 'organising' data they are re-arranging it and controlling it or 'ruling' it.

If you own people's private data, eventually you own their identity and you own them. This is why Facebook introduced the timeline years ago, to create a virtual version of each user so that each user felt compelled to use the site. If they quit, it would be like committing virtual suicide. Social networking forms hire 'addiction engineers' to this end.

Google generate revenue from advertising and have somewhere in the region of 15 exabytes of storage capacity or more, yes, but their core objective is data harvesting and analysing with a goal to widespread control.

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You know Lysander666, I had a very interesting conversion just yesterday with someone, and that I never expected to have...

It really not only struck parallels with me, but also it's more or less what I've been thinking all along when I really think about it. It was about Facebook (and therefore Google is most certainly very related to this), Twitter, mainstream news, etc. And what they said to put it in a nutshell was something to the effect of; people don't generally have the ability (I'm not talking about absolutely everyone BTW) to think outside of the box, and moreover the ability to think for themselves.

They gave an example which I think really illustrates my point here; they know someone on Twitter, Facebook (whichever "social media" site it was) and in real life their not really that happy, but on "social media" they are posting pictures of themselves sitting on a beach somewhere, saying something to the effect of "how good's this", so they are in effect "driven" by control... someone else's control that is. So basically if we think of a "tech example" like; "oh, I've just gotta have that iPhone coming out", why? Because it's the latest iPhone!! But in reality, it's really only going to have a slightly better this or that, so in other words; they don't really need it, but we live in a consumer driven world, where it's all about consume! consume! consume! This leaves no ability to think for yourself, Google and alike have already decided that YOU NEED IT! And people just "go with the flow", without question. That's the bigger picture, society is being "driven" by the likes of Google, Facebook, etc. So you're really onto something there, I really wish I could disagree, but I can't when we think about it that way. And this IS happening and most people are blind to it, and just "go with the flow".

And you can't talk to them either, because they are already blind to what's actually happening - think the Matrix movies - it's happening now, just without Zoin.

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Malicious extensions are a valid concern, but I couldn't use a webbrowser on today's 'hostile' internet without the features of uBlock origin to keep me safe. It's not just about ads, there's far more to content blocking than that.

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https://www.zdnet.com/article/google...d-ad-blockers/ (noticed by OP himself/herself in another thread: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post5963255)

Good update and crosslink. By the way I'm biologically male, and I identify as one too.

^ Ok, got it, I'll do my best not to forget that

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Me too!

I have always been sceptical about Chromium and the many browsers building on it.
Yes, it's forkable open source, but it's still very much google's baby, with everything that entails & implies.
People tend to think that just because it's open source, it's automatically Good. It's not.
Told you so...

well, i will go so far as to say exactly that!

Thanks, I couldn't have said it better myself.

After what happened in last January/February, nobody here is talking about https://9to5google.com/2019/05/29/ch...e-manifest-v3/?
It looks bad...

As soon as people realise just how bad the web is without ad-blockers they'll soon switch to an alternative where uBlock et al still work. If google don't want their browser to be used, that's their business.

2 members found this post helpful.