Google ramps up its campaign against ad blockers on Chrome.
  • Google is transitioning Chrome’s extension support from the Manifest V2 framework to the V3.
  • This means users won’t be able to use uBlock Origin to block ads on Google Chrome.
  • However, there’s a new iteration of the app — uBlock Origin Lite, which is Manifest V3 compliant but doesn’t boast the original version’s comprehensive ad-blocking features.
  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    332·
    5 months ago

    I have said this in other threads about this issue in response to all the “use Firefox” comments.

    Thousands upon thousands of school children are currently using Chromebooks they get from their schools. Now they will be forced to look at ads.

    • CafecitoHippo@lemm.eeEnglish
      14·
      5 months ago

      Now they will be forced to look at ads.

      I’m pretty sure they would’ve been seeing ads anyways. I doubt that school IT administrators had uBlock Origins as an extension that was being installed and I really doubt they didn’t have the chromebooks locked down so students could install whatever extensions they wanted.

      • madcaesar@lemmy.world
        10·
        5 months ago

        Good, smart IT would have installed ublock and locked that shit down. Saves bandwidth and protects the kids.

        But you’re probably right, most IT departments are useless.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        3·
        5 months ago

        The IT department at my daughter’s school allowed me to install the uBlock Origin extension last year. Granted, some extensions (and websites for that matter, no PornHub) were blocked, but not that one.

        • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
          3·
          5 months ago

          I’m willing to bet you’re the exception and not the rule. I can confirm from my own experience that we couldn’t even alter the system settings of the individual device.

          • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            I would personally push adblockers in a professional environment. They eliminate a lot of unwanted threat vectors.

            There is a very rare occasion where it breaks things just one ticket later and a little education and it’s good.

          • atocci@lemmy.world
            1·
            5 months ago

            Altering system settings wasn’t possible when I was in school, but browser settings weren’t so locked down. Extensions were freely available to install on the school computers.

            • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
              1·
              5 months ago

              That wasn’t the case for us, we couldn’t download anything that didn’t come pre-installed. If the teachers wanted to use a website that was blocked by the cartoonishly restrictive web filter they had to wait upwards of a week because all of the IT was done by one guy who was also a teacher.

              • atocci@lemmy.world
                2·
                5 months ago

                Our IT team was pretty cool I think.

                I had a technology class when I was there that only had 6 students in this little computer lab in the back of the cafeteria. There were way more computers than than students though, so the few of us that were there started unplugging monitors from the unused computers next to us and giving our computers multiple monitors. We couldn’t rearrange the monitors since they were physically attached to the tables, and they couldn’t be reordered in Windows since system settings were locked, so we just had to remember that to get to the left monitor we’d actually have to move the mouse to the right for example.

                Not even a week later, someone from IT showed up to check on things. We thought that would be it for our multi-monitor setups and they’d make us put them back, but not a beat was missed between them noticing what we had done, realizing that the monitors were in the wrong order, and offering to fix it for us in the settings.

                • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
                  2·
                  5 months ago

                  Yeah our IT guy was cool and always tried to be helpful, it’s just that he was given the job of a whole team on top of being a full time teacher, while also constantly facing criticism from the school board for being unable to keep up. You could tell he was only there for the students, because his bosses treated him like shit.

                  Except he was also a big time trump supporter and ended up losing his job after (from what I heard) bringing a gun on a school trip.

                  So nobody’s perfect I guess.

    • atocci@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 months ago

      I was done with school before giving out computers to students was the norm, but my brother’s school district seems to be issuing Surface Laptops instead of Chromebooks. With Firefox preinstalled.