Vivaldi says its ad blocker will continue working even after changes in Manifest V3
Vivaldi has outlined the future of its ad blocker, and how it could work when Manifest V3 is enforced. Google says that the changes it brings will protect users from loading remotely-hosted code.
Browser makers like Mozilla, Brave and Vivaldi are concerned about the controversial declarativeNetRequest API, which threatens the future of content blockers on Chrome and Chromium-based browsers, and poses a risk to the privacy and security of users. Mozilla will continue to support Manifest V2 in Firefox, as will Vivaldi.
The Manifest V3 Conundrum
An article published on Vivaldi's blog points out that Manifest V2 is not being deprecated completely, only the ability to block requests from webRequest is. V2 will be available for enterprise users until June 2023. The developer says that the underlying code for webRequest will remain intact until that time, and since declarativeNetRequest is built on top of it, Vivaldi's native ad blocker written in C++, should be able to use the Chromium API and on paper, continue to function when Manifest V3 becomes the norm.
If Vivaldi continues to support Manifest V2, existing add-ons including ad blockers will remain unaffected, won't they? The developer says this largely depends on how Manifest V3 develops, and also on which the APIs that the extensions use. The browser maker plans to remove whatever restrictions Google adds, but does admit it could be a difficult ride. In the event that Vivaldi is forced to drop support for Manifest V2, users may have no choice, but to rely on the browser's built-in ad-blocker.
AdGuard recently released a Manifest V3 compatible content blocker, but the extension hasn't had an impressive start. Raymond Hill, the developer of uBlock Origin, released an add-on called uBlock Lite (formerly uBO Minus), it seems promising, but it's not as good as the original version. The extensions are crippled by the changes in Manifest V3, access to the APIs, and artificial limitations. It might take a while for these extensions to evolve.
Limitations in Vivaldi's ad blocker
I like Vivaldi and use it regularly (explained below), it is not my intention to portray it as a bad browser, but I can't shy away from its limitations. I use Vivaldi (and Safari on my Mac) to watch football on Sonyliv.com, because the site's video player doesn't work in Firefox, even though the latter has absolutely no issues with videos on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Disney+ Hotstar, etc.
There is an issue with accessing the site through Vivaldi, Sony Liv detects the native ad blocker, and prevents me from accessing the website without disabling the feature. This is not a huge deal for me, as I can subscribe to the AdGuard annoyances filter to bypass the restriction. You can find the AdGuard filters here, and uBlock Origin filters on this page.
But, I can't say the same for other websites that detect ad blockers, they may not be supported by filter lists, you would need to report them to the maintainers, and wait for the site to be added to the list. Or you could block the anti ad blockers by adding custom rules. This isn't easy, as Vivaldi doesn't have a custom block rule editor, you will have to create a text file with your rules in it, and import it like a filter. These steps might make it an uphill task for the average user. The easier and more effective fix is to install a proper content blocker like uBlock Origin.
Ad banners and video ads aren't the only annoyances on the internet, many websites have custom sidebars, video players, chat boxes, persistent banners that appear while you scroll pages, pop-ups and overlays that prevent you from clicking without subscribing or entering your email address, etc. uBlock Origin's element zapper and element picker are useful for blocking these, Vivaldi's ad blocker lacks such cosmetic filtering aka element blocking. Advanced features like Javascript blocking, web logger, are not available in the browser's built-in blocker.
There is another problem that could affect Chrome extensions. At the beginning of 2022, Google stopped accepting Manifest V2 extensions on the Chrome Web Store, and announced that it will remove all Manifest V2 add-ons from the store in 2023. This will result in the removal of content blockers such as uBlock Origin, so users may not be able to install or update the extension from the Web Store.
Vivaldi's users rely on the web store for installing extensions, so this will affect them directly. If Vivaldi continues to support Manifest V2 in 2023, it will need to provide users with an alternative way to install V2 extensions. The only solution, besides sideloading the browser plugin (needs to be updated manually), would be to introduce a Vivaldi Store to host extensions, something which the developers say could not be an easy task, and would require some effort and willingness from add-on maintainers. The same will apply to Brave Browser, though one could argue that its built-in content blocker is better.
Personally, I feel that uBlock Origin cannot be replaced. Vivaldi's ad blocker is good, but there is plenty of room for improvement. It really needs an element blocker for cosmetic filtering, and a custom rule editor among other things, otherwise it risks losing on users who may want to migrate away from Chrome next year.
Would you use Vivaldi's ad blocker instead of uBlock Origin?
In their blogpost they admit they built the adblocker to use Manifestv2 WebRequestAPI.
They are not going to get affected as an Extension will, but they will suffer, that’s why they are sweating now to see what is really going to break and they are complaining they have to do work to make the adblocker decent.
Compare it to Brave if you want, it was rebuilt in 2019 because of the manifest announcement and they built it not to depend on WebRequest API, just be part of the core, which was the smart thing to do, that’s why they could build the DNS uncloaking feature that only Brave can support.
So Brave will not get affected at all by Manifestv3 at all.
That’s what Vivaldi should have done, but no, they didn’t, they didn’t improve the adblocker and it is pretty basic, yeah, it an do basic Network Filtering and Cosmetics Filtering and $rewrite but that’s it. Nothing more advanced, nothing great.
They promise they will improve it and be like uBlock and talk nice things that they didn’t even try in 2 years. Of course they seem unhappy about having to improve the adblocker and the changes they need to make in order to keep the adblocker decent, because again, as you can see they are still tied to the APIs, they are not truly independent native like Brave did with their RUST implementation.
That shows what type of people are working in Vivaldi, they don’t have vision for the future, which I guess Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy did, both ex-Mozilla guys.
Also we have to remember that even Ryan (Fanboynz) is working with Brave, the one who pretty much works with Easylist.
People hate comparison and will say “oh look a Brave fanboy” nah, I was using Vivaldi and Brave, but decided to stay with Brave since I finally saw Brave moving with Brave’s adblocker. Vivaldi has nice features but they are slower because of the UI not being native, and their adblocker sucks, and they are not going to support MV2, they are too small of a team to really pull it.
So at least Brave has more future plan with a nice Adblocker, closer to uBlock than any other native solution, and they are advancing in the UI/UX aspect of the browser.
Compare Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi adblockers, the futures, more than simple ||example^$script example##.class that any adblocker from years ago could do, even DevTools, and try the advanced features to avoid adblocking detection or avoid terrible ads and elements in websites, or avoid clipboard being able to be written by any page issue from weeks ago… something advanced please.
You will find out, Vivaldi and Opera are really bad.
People will still be able to use MV3 extensions which will be better than the native solutions, but native should be good, better and faster. Vivaldi adblocker doesn’t even replace uBlock, if you run uBlock, uBlock will do the whole job blocknig stuff, that shows you Vivaldi is not even implemented in a way that takes precedence to Extension API.
I mean, it is a simple but apparently advanced topic for so many, but yeah, Vivaldi is not going to be 100% fine after MV2 is removed from chromium but it will not be too bad either, but the adblocker is too simple, Adguard or uBlock MV3 will be better solution in the end.
I’ve been trying Ublock Origin Lite. It is truly a light weight. And no, it’s not better than Vivaldi’s built-in ad blocker. It has these filters: Ads, Trackers, Miners, And More;Block Outsider Intrusion Into LAN; Dan Pollock’s Hosts File;, and Steven Black’s Hosts File plus 34 regional language filter lists. No personal filters, no cosmetic filters, though it did allow for 20,204 rules, converted from 229,048 network filters.
Yes, it works, but not very well, yet…
@Coriy
yeah you are comparing and an outdated experimental extension to an adblocker that was released in 2019, at least if you want to sound cool, test Adguard MV3 which is more complete since gorhill started development late unlike Adguard that started July 2021.
And talking about real stuff, not your imaginary tests, uBlock lite supports scriptlet-injection filters which Vivaldi doesn’t, they support Procedual Cosmetics, vivaldi doesn’t.
Seriously have you even tested, especially last uBlock lite? which was released 2 days ago? do you even know the difference that uBlock lite in a month have done compared to Vivaldi?
Adguard supports personal filters and cosmetics and all, so it is not a MV3 issue, it is just gorhill starting late development. so please, don’t compare uBlock lite which is experimental unless you sideload the ‘latest’ builds at least.
Pi-hole….enough said.
A DNS solution works for _All_ browsers/apps on the system.
Toss in an Element hiding plugin per browser.
Bonus: Any device/phone connecting to your hotspot will also be covered.
Footnote: This site and its users are not techies or nerds.
If the solution is not what the cool kids are doing these days it will fall on deaf ears.
Your comment doesn’t make sense, yeah pi-hole and dns adblocker is okay, but you can’t compare what you can block by blocking individual elements in a webpage than what you do in a DNS level one. You can only block domains, scripts or anything that is necessary to block most dangerous ads like Google and twitch and etc etc….
Yeah pi-hole works until you need to block individual elements and inject JS and do cosmetics and all that.
basically its just gonna be a trimmed down Blocker like Google Chromes ublock Lite, i believe Gorhill hasnt made one for Firefox yet
I currently use the Vivaldi browser, as it is so much more to my liking than Firefox.
However, if Vivaldi no longer can run uBlock Origin (or for that matter privacy add-ons like Privacy Badger, Ghostery, Decentraleyes, et al), then I will instantly switch to a Firefox-based browser.
Edge? I would very much like to be able to uninstall that crapware from my computer.
Sometimes I wish Presto Engine will be revived or someone from Vivaldi Group who knows its innerworking try to make it.
The problem with Vivaldi is that the browser is just an attempt by the founder to create something that he personally loves.
He loses lots of money with this project, but is a multi-millionaire, so doesn’t care.
If he finds some users along the way, who support his vision, he is fine with it. The browser stagnates at 2.4 million users, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things for a browser that has been around for such a long time.
The culture in the company seems to be awesome – a perfect work environment for the employees. From that perspective, it’s a great project, and it’s awesome that something like this can exist.
Even Waterfox has more active users than Vivaldi.
As awesome as their niche project is, the browser itsel is nothing more than an experiment, and most things aren’t really thought through.
They don’t side with their users, because they depend on ad money, so they can’t block ads and tracking rigorously. The entire browser is a compromise, because they say they are there for the users, but don’t get the money from their users.
@Iron Heart
Thanks Iron Heart.
I do use uBlock Origin just for ad blocking and not for domain / script blocking.
I like the level of granularity uMatrix provides. I don’t have to block an entire domain (like with uBlock Origin). I can have images and css work on a domain but block scripts at the same time. Unless there is a way to do that with uBlock which I’m not aware of…
I also like that you can spoof referer header without having to install yet another extension.
As for NoScript, I guess my original question applies as well.. Will it work when manifest v3 rolls out? Tried googling some information but can’t find a definitive answer.
I’ll have to try it and see how it compared to uMatrix (just for script blocking at least). I honestly haven’t used NoScript in at least 10 years.
@Alex
I have been a bit more successful quickly researching info about NoScript on MV3, the author of the extension is not amused:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions/c/veJy9uAwS00/m/lz3XsiGeGgAJ
Unrelated to NoScript, the developer has already been in touch with Manifest V3 anyway:
https://github.com/hackademix/nscl
You can also chime in here in order to directly converse with the developer:
https://github.com/hackademix/noscript/issues/258
Note that it never says anywhere “NoScript” can’t work (categorically), so I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
You mentioned the referrer header; perhaps it is a good idea to use a browser that has a “sane” referrer header policy in the first place (just as an example, here is Brave’s: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove)#modified-features-and-functionality ), in Firefox you can permanently modify this in about:config without the need for an extension too. However, if you constantly modify your referrer header, you need an extension (I personally see no reason to once a sane policy is in place).
@Iron Heart
Hopefully the reply box works this time.
Thanks for the links. I gave it a read. I guess we just have to wait and see how this whole things develops.
I’m using Vivaldi at the moment and doing some checks, I does have a “sane” referrer header policy so it only shows the domain you’re coming from and not the exact URL (Would still like a blank referrer though).
As for Brave. I like it. I use it as a 2nd browser. The only reason it’s not my main browser is because of 2 things which may seem “minor”:
1. Can’t add more than 12 top sites to the “top sites” page. I know there’s there little 2 dots on the bottom but it really isn’t very practical for me.
2. No native mouse gesture support.
I know there are extensions to provide this functionality but I’m honestly a bit paranoid when it comes to extensions and them going rogue. I basically just use uBlock, uMatrix and BitWarden at the moment.
Firefox…
Used it for 15 years or more… Then they went political and that’s all there is to it.
Still on my quest to find that “perfect” browser haha.
Oops, hit the wrong reply button.
Comparing native adblockers is not easy but not complicated.
But for example, Google announced manifestv3 for example, Brave decided to make the adblocker better, in Rust, they also created their own DNS API (Google never did) so Brave can do CNAME uncloaking unlike other Chromium browsers, yes, Brave is the only one which can do that.
Brave’s adblocker will not get affected at all by the manifestv3 changes, while Vivaldi adblocker will in a way, not as an Extension, but it will, reading the blog and the comments is clearly they never really cared to bring a great adblocking experience to the browser. It is so basic that even the uBlock lite (I guess gorhill decided to drop the drama and change the name), with all the latest changes is more powerful now.
People can say whatever they want about Brave, but their adblocker now supports all features in custom filters/lists, few months ago they didn’t, but recently (after using Vivaldi for a while), I noticed that Brave now supports all features in the custom filters, which means, you can make powerful filters like you can in uBlock, it still doesn’t support everything but it is getting closer.
Vivaldi seems like they did a really crappy job about Vivaldi adblocker and now they are suffering from it, I mean, people can say it is fine for the most part, and yeah, it supports the basic adblocker functions that work in most websites.
But for example, last time someone complained about some adblocking detection in a site, the solution was easy, enable EasyList RU (people don’t understand Easylist will cover mostly English sites) because for some reason Brave’s adblocker didn’t do site#@#.adBanner filter which EasyList RU contains so that’s why it worked. But I could fix the issue in many ways with @@||site^$ghide and even I could use something like this site##+js(aopr, document.getElementById, vDRIJsNa6y) which looks cooler and it is exactly what the script tries to do when detecting the adblocker.
You can’t do that with Vivaldi, of course, most people will be fine on most websites but to avoid adblocker detection, to change many things in a website… you really need these advanced features which Vivaldi doesn’t offer and never really worked to bring in many years.
In another website I easily use (now that Brave supports advanced stuff in custom filters) (nano-stb, , *, 0.02) (nostif, stp) (set-constant/set), because this website has a 30 seconds little adblock to wait, and then after a while I get the “click here to keep watching” “go to the main site so you don’t get this message” stuff.
With those scriptlet-based filters (as uBlock calls them) I can avoid all that.
Especially since Brave has a flag that can be enabled to apply cosmetics to child frames, which means, even if they are in an iframe, they will be applied.
I say this so people understand the difference. Vivaldi is too basic to be used 100% while Brave is not perfect but it is closer to reach to the point where uBlock can be disabled most of the time.
Vivaldi should have worked on the adblocker better from beginning, they released it after Manifestv3 was released.
Adguard and uBlock will still be needed for all Chromium browsers but Brave. I only use uBlock for the few missing features and to make sure Brave is blocking everything it should block (Brave team has whitelisted many things I disagree with like Startpage adsense, so I use uBlock to know about it), also because of the logger and the Element Picker, not to pick items but to test cosmetic filters (Brave’s one is too basic and useless).
Vivaldi even has a list by default to allow Partners crap, they are Search Engine partners which means even Bing (which they had by default for me) would be allowed it completely. It can be disabled but that shows their priorities.
Vivaldi adblocker is really not great because if you run uBlock today, uBlock will do its job faster than Vivaldi adblocker, unlike Brave where Brave does the job and uBlock stays mostly at 0 blocked items.
of course, Vivaldi still affects some things so unless you disabled it the adblocker would get detected, but uBlock takes precedence over Vivaldi’s own native adblocker, which shows, why they are still getting affected by the manifestv3 changes. Sometimes I thought I had vivaldi adblocker disabled when I was testing it but no, it was just uBlock doing the work better and faster than the native adblocker.
Just that shows you how Vivaldi’s adblocker is just not great. I tested Adguard mv3 and the same, everything was just doing the work and not the native adblocker.
If I cared, I would really test Edge Android ABP vs Vivaldi adblocker and I bet even Edge is better.
I stopped using Vivaldi precisely because of I saw Brave adblocking now becoming great with all the features in the custom filters.
When I switched to Vivaldi was around when the whole “Websites may write to the clipboard in Chrome without user permission” I came up with webplatform.news##+js(aopw, navigator.clipboard) and posted it on Reddit, which Brave now uses in their list so you know I am not the dumbest person around when it comes to adblockers, but they took my idea to deal with it, (although the one I shared on Reddit was with both acis, but I mentioned using aopw as well) but I posted in Brave’s subreddit because someone asked and it was working on uBlock and not Brave, and it wasn’t working for whatever reason, so I kept using Vivaldi.
When Adguard MV3 was released and I wanted to test, Adguard MV3 vs uBlock vs Vivaldi vs Brave adblockers, and I saw that Brave now worked fine with the scriptlet-based filters, so that’s why I switched back to Brave, because to me the adblocker is more important than nice features from Vivaldi.
So, I don’t know when the change happened, but now Brave is good and all advanced features are not only for the internal lists.
That’s what people have to understand, especially the ones who think Adguard or even uBlock lite is not great, they are right now, even in their experimental state better than Vivaldi, which is sad, but I honestly don’t care because it is not like I see Vivaldi with good eyes or anything, but it sucks now they promise to work on the adblocker and make it better and bring advanced features, when it seems it will get still affected by MV3, again, not like an extension would be but apparently even in their basic state, something might break.
Will uMatrix stop working as well?
uMatrix development has stopped. If you liked uMatrix, there’s a fork for Pale Moon browser called eMatrix that has active development. Works just like I recall uMatrix working.
@Alex
Honestly, we don’t know. Contrary to what the Firefox advertisement above my comment says, uMatrix is not a rule-based extensions (other than comparatively few custom rules you create yourself), so in theory it could still work. The upper rule limit should not apply to it. I say “in theory” because uMatrix is abandonware: https://www.ghacks.net/2020/09/20/umatrix-development-has-ended/
So there will be no Manifest V3 update even if it worked. Extension APIs and browsers in general are a moving target, and since uMatrix is no longer being developed at all, it is only a question of time until it breaks in Firefox as well.
Why don’t you use uBlock Origin or NoScript?
Don’t think so. It will continue to work in Firefox. Manifest V3 will land in Firefox too so extension developers don’t have to work separately for Firefox and Chrome but Manifest V2 will continue working fine in Firefox.
I hope some browser company is watching these developments and produces a true alternative to Chrome. Google is worse than Microsoft with IE at this point. They’re dictating how the web is built and accessed. Firefox is a poor alternative. Most web apps run slow on the browser and compatibility leaves a lot to ask (though that just might be lazy web developers just targeting Chromium).
This is a huge problem for every company that’s been borrowing browser code from chromium. Including Mozilla.
How is Mozilla borrowing browser code from Chromium?
Do you really think they are going to keep supporting Manifestv2? they pretty much said they won’t.
And their Adblocker might break some stuff because of Manifestv3, but since it is not an extension, then it will not be as limited as an Extension might be.
I remember when they talked 3 years ago how they will not support manifestv3, now they just say other thing because they know they can’t defeat it.
The thing people have to understand is Vivaldi ablocker is pretty basic, which makes it bad, same as Opera’s adblocker.
It only supports basic Network filtering, you know ||site^ and some modifiers, the basic ones 3p, script, image etc etc.
They support the basic of the basic of Cosmetic filtering, that means, nothing special besides site## and any native CSS selector the browser offers. The only ‘advanced’ thing they seem to support is $rewrite, so they have an advantage compared with Opera.
But you can’t use scriptlets or other resources or anything that is used in today’s adblocking world to stop things and modify a website to improve it for many things.
So their Adblocker is pretty bad, that’s why people would be better just using Adguard MV3 or uBlock hen Manifestv3 finally hits. (uBlock if you read github has finally added procedural cosmetics and support for more scriptlets)
They could have worked on the adblocker for years and they didn’t, I mean, the adblocker feature has been there since 2019? and no real progress with it? especially since Manifestv3 was announced?
They are even talking about “well we can make our own store”… yeah, why didn’t they do that 3 years ago when Manifestv3 was announced? It’s like they live in this skewed reality like if Manifestv3 was announced yesterday.
This company is ridiculous, they love to complain, but they don’t do much to improve anything, they bring dumb features like mail and rss, instead of improving the adblocker? and now they complain about having to improve the adblocker?
I mean, I will wait until Vivaldi adblocker supports anything here https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Resources-Library and maybe I will change my mind about this company.
Even making a whole article about this stupid blog post is a waste of time, because they pretty much say it might break but they don’t know and complain about having to work on the feature to make it better, something they barely did in 3 years.
There is not even real documentation to know exactly what features they support, you can only test and find out, so ‘make it better’ will be adding support for the minimal stuff because it is so limited anything would make it better.
“Sony Liv detects the native ad blocker, and prevents me from accessing the website without disabling the feature”
I would tell Sony Liv to off at this point.
“You can find the AdGuard filters here, and uBlock Origin filters on this page.”
The links are same.
Never mind what may or may not happen with a relatively low market penetration browser, the question is, why is Google so keen on making ad-haters even angrier than they have them now.
Hey Ashwin I also watch live matches on SonyLiv and it loads fine even with uBO. Try it with a clean profile.
They appear to be unsure about what will happen to ad blocking in their browser in the future.
I like Vivaldi, but yeah the Ad blocking and Tracker blocking is limited and tends to break sites when you open several at a time by opening a bookmark folder in new tabs.
It’s a shame all these alternative browsers chose to be based on chromium.
@Anon
> I like Vivaldi, but yeah the Ad blocking and Tracker blocking is limited
Yes, it is not as good as e.g. Brave’s internal adblocker. However, it is also much newer than Brave’s implementation and it’s clearly not the main focus of Vivaldi’s team.
> It’s a shame all these alternative browsers chose to be based on chromium.
There are clear web compatibility, performance, and security reasons for being based on Chromium. A half-assed internal adblocker, which is what you allege, is also not the fault of the Chromium base code. Brave is an easy example to the contrary.
@ Iron Heart
>Yes, it is not as good as e.g. Brave’s internal adblocker. However, it is also much newer than Brave’s implementation and it’s clearly not the main focus of Vivaldi’s team.
Adblocking and privacy isn’t the main focus of Brave’s team either. They are more about replacing google ads with their ads and/or their crypto business.
>There are clear web compatibility, performance, and security reasons for being based on Chromium. A half-assed internal adblocker, which is what you allege, is also not the fault of the Chromium base code. Brave is an easy example to the contrary.
That’s not what I was alleging. I am saying that if they were based on Firefox then the Manifest V3 thing wouldn’t matter much for extensions and the web compatibility thing would likely not be monopolized by Google.
@Anon
> Adblocking and privacy isn’t the main focus of Brave’s team either.
Ah yes, that’s why it is the only browser that blocks ads by default and introduces new tracking prevention techniques on a regular basis. Sure, sure…
> They are more about replacing google ads with their ads and/or their crypto business.
This is a stupid argument, you see. Brave pioneers a privacy-respecting ad delivery technique via local algorithm, which is fully opt-in and allows the user to earn a share of the money, and I am supposed to declare this a bad business model??? Like, do you have a better one? I have no problem with how they make money, it gives users, publishers and advertisers a real alternative to Google’s approach and is never forced on the user, which is fine by me.
The above business model also allows Brave Software to make their browser as private and anti-ads as possible, their own ads don’t rely on user-hostile online tracking techniques.
If you consider leeching Google’s ad money and praying every year for a renewal of the search deal a better business model, just say it out loud. This seems much more dumb and unsustainable to me overall.
> I am saying that if they were based on Firefox then the Manifest V3 thing wouldn’t matter much for extensions
Do you know the future already? What do you know about what Mozilla will do (LOL), they have so far only made some promises. They’ve also promised that WebExtensions would be as powerful as XUL add-ons eventually and look where we are today, it never happened – that’s also what made me switch to Brave back then by the way.
Between Google’s ad money keeping them alive and Mozilla partnering with Facebook for “acceptable ads” etc. I mean, I believe it when I see it. Too early to talk about it IMHO other than it being a possibility.
>Ah yes, that’s why it is the only browser that blocks ads by default and introduces new tracking prevention techniques on a regular basis. Sure, sure…
It is not the only browser to block ads by default, and the “new tracking prevention” techniques that they’ve supposedly introduced go through their servers, so you’re still potentially getting tracked, just by them. The bounce tracking is just a new variation of what other ad and tracker blockers use anyways and with those Ad and Tracker blockers you don’t have to worry about the data going through a companies servers.
>This is a stupid argument, you see. Brave pioneers a privacy-respecting ad delivery technique via local algorithm, which is fully opt-in and allows the user to earn a share of the money, and I am supposed to declare this a bad business model???
I would say replacing the ads that a creator puts on their pages with your own so your company can make money and force the creator to create an account to make money from your company modifying his page is a pretty criminal act actually. Potentially racketeering or extortion especially since the browser does this automatically when it’s users decide to use the Bat crap, the creator does not get a say.
@Anon
> the “new tracking prevention” techniques that they’ve supposedly introduced go through their servers
I don’t know where you get your info from, this is definitely false. As the comment of @Seris correctly points out, none of Brave’s anti-tracking features rely on their servers.
> criminal act
You should be very careful with this type of allegation, especially when it’s clear that you have no clue what you are talking about. Brave relates to websites like any other adblocker would, e.g. uBlock Origin or AdBlock Plus, meaning it is blocking ads. This means the website loses income, but then again it also loses said income when you use any other adblocker.
The Brave Rewards program offers content creators an alternative model to what Google or similar ad companies are doing. Users opting into Brave Rewards does not mean that these content creators receive money automatically – users donate at their discretion, they also can’t donate to anyone who is not a registered content creator. So in order to even receive donations, the content creator would already haven taken the initiative beforehand and registered himself or herself – otherwise no donation is possible at all. If you don’t register yourself as a content creator, then Brave relates to them like any other adblocker would. This seems fair to me, they are not forcing the hand of anyone.
@Anon
Please stop posting nonsense… Brave adblocker is closer than uBlock than you probably has tested it, only because you don’t think Brave team whatever, doesn’t mean the adblocker doesn’t show the contrary of what you are saying.
You need to stop your “they go through their servers” what are you even talking about?
You don’t even know if Brave tracks or not, you are just pretending “it can potentially” well, better stop using the internet because it is all bout connecting to random servers everywhere in the world, if you are going to be paranoid about it, then you have real problems dude.
But what “tracking prevention” are you even talking about lol…. literally nothing Brave has released go through their servers, unless it is about proxying Google connections through their servers, I really don’t know what you are talking about.
CNAME uncloaking which is exclusive to Brave, doesn’t go through servers, Ephemeral Storage, doesn’t go through any servers, Adblocker lists don’t really go through their servers either because they are downloaded from github, De-AMP-ed pages also don’t go through their servers because they only make sure the ‘real’ site gets loaded, Debouncing also doesn’t go through nothing, it is a normal txt filter list, it is developed and inspired with a bunch of extensions in mind like ClearURLs, it is just like a removeparam queryprune modifier in Adguard and uBlock.
so… I really don’t know what you are even talking about “it goes through their servers”, you are probably making crap up expecting people to see your post and believe your misinformation.
What a disingenuous person, moving the goal post to “well, they eventually can track you so going through their servers is bad”
When you don’t have any proof about your claims.
Your ultimate goal is to start talking about something unrelated to the topic Adblockers and tracking protection and go to the “but Brave rewards”. Apparently you don’t even understand that Brave rewards is OPT-IN, you don’t need to use it to use Brave.
But anyway, Brave is not the only one “paying” for you to use their services, even Microsoft give you Bing rewards, and google and other browsers even charge you monthly, how many deals do you think Brave has in place especially when they have Brave Search default for so many people?
I am sure they wish to get almost half billion dollars like Firefox gets, but they don’t, they have to find a way to make money so they don’t depend on others (like Vivaldi, enabling partners list by default for everyone)
But Brave ad business is opt-in, they are not forcing anyone to do anything unless they want to.
So your whole “they are replacing” yeah because people wanted so… what’s your problem about it?
You don’t want, don’t enable Brave rewards, problem solved.
You arguments are pretty mediocre, and you are making so many crap up, it is just kind of hilarious because I know you don’t have any proof to back up your claims or a way to save your life unless you throw the “but Rewards”. I don’t use Rewards for example, so what does it affect me? how is your argument valid? well, it isn’t. The moment people decided to opt-in in the Brave rewards, it is their choice and only theirs. So you trying to make an argument about it it is just what people do when they have nothing else to backup their claims.
Thanks @Ashwin for the article!