Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update

Even if bigs exists to work around what Google is doing, that isn’t the right way forward. If people don’t agree with Google move, the only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome (and all Chromium browsers). Hit them where it hurts and take away their monopoly over the future direction of the web.

A lot of people seem to believe that switching to a de-Googled Chromium-based browser isn't good enough. I think that's a psyop promoted by Google themselves. Firefox is different enough from Chrome that it's a big jump for people who are used to Chrome. Brave, custom Chromium builds, Vivaldi, etc. are all very similar to Google Chrome, they just don't have Google spy features.

The argument that "Google still controls Chromium so it's not good enough" is exactly the kind of FUD I'd expect to back up this kind of psyop, too.

I once made a comment along these lines (de-Googled Chromium-based browser isn't good enough, as it supports the browser monoculture and inevitably makes Chrome as a browser better) and got a reply from from Brendan Eichner himself.

His point was that there isn't enough time to again develop Firefox (or ladybird) as a competitive browser capable of breaking the Chrome "monopoly". I don't know if I really agree.

Evidently, Google feels like the time is right to make these kinds of aggressive moves, limiting the effectiveness of ad blockers.

The internet without ad blockers is a hot steaming mess. Limiting the effectiveness of ad blockers makes people associate your browser (Chrome in this case) with this hot steaming mess. It is difficult to dissociate the Chrome software from the websites rendered in Chrome by a technical lay person. So Chrome will be viewed as a hot steaming mess.

I guess we will soon see if people will stay on Chrome or accept the small initial pain and take the leap to a different browser with proper support for ad blockers. In any case the time is now for a aggressive marketing campaign on the side of mozilla etc.

I am in no way affiliated with Google. So if you still think this is a PsyOp, please consider Hanlon's Razor:

> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Although, please also consider that Hanlon's Razor itself was coined by a Robert J. Hanlon, who suspiciously shares a name with a CIA operative also from Pennsylvania. It is not unimaginable that Hanlon's Razor it in itself a PsyOp. ;)

Though his brave is a relatively small company, they have enough resources to have developed, and continue maintaining their own low-level ad blocker, which IME has been just as effective as uBO, but is supposedly more efficient (since it's written in the R-word language and compiled into native code integrating deeply inside the browser):

I can't imagine what hoops Google would have to jump through to block third parties from integrating their own ad blockers. You don't need MV2 for that AFAIK.

https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust