EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

[Posted December 13, 2021 by corbet]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns against Manifest V3, a set of changes coming to a Chrome browser near you.

Manifest V3, or Mv3 for short, is outright harmful to privacy efforts. It will restrict the capabilities of web extensions—especially those that are designed to monitor, modify, and compute alongside the conversation your browser has with the websites you visit. Under the new specifications, extensions like these– like some privacy-protective tracker blockers– will have greatly reduced capabilities.

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EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 13, 2021 17:06 UTC (Mon) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (4 responses)

That's all well and good, but the people who actually care have successfully been pushing back on this for three years[1] without the EFF's help. I'm not sure what the EFF thinks it's bringing to the table, but sounding the slacktivism klaxon at the last minute is not helpful.

[1]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 13, 2021 17:28 UTC (Mon) by jafd (subscriber, #129642) [Link]

I am of an opinion that the more klaxons, the better.

Also, this is not the first their article on the matter: previously, previously.

Looks like they make reminders whenever this is close to landing (again).

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 14, 2021 8:44 UTC (Tue) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link] (1 responses)

Those people were so "successful", that the code is "close to merging" right now. [sarcasm tag]
The more rattle the better, it is good that EFF joined the initiative.

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 14, 2021 18:38 UTC (Tue) by MatejLach (guest, #84942) [Link]

I have to agree, not sure why the unnecessary dig at the EFF when it's clear whoever else was/is fighting this can use all the help they can get.

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 20, 2021 1:13 UTC (Mon) by dannyobrien (subscriber, #25583) [Link]

Have you talked to uBlockOrigin or the wider group that has been opposing Manifest v3 about EFF's involvement? While you might not be able to tell from public statements along, there was, among all these groups, an incredibly amount of quiet, relatively co-ordinated (but uh forthright) diplomacy with the Chrome team and Google as a whole. I'm not sure of the initial date, but when I was at EFF the technical team had been directly involved in advocating against these changes for many years, not least because the set of browser extensions that it affected included not only ad-blockers like uBlockOrigin, but also EFF's own Privacy Badger. EFF's first public objection to the proposal was in mid-2019, but I know for a fact that it had been going on long before that.

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 14, 2021 2:28 UTC (Tue) by jeffreypmcateer (guest, #140200) [Link] (4 responses)

I personally do not think this will be a problem long-term; there exists a nexus of engineers who can tell real control over hardware from false control, and that turns the control race into a "How quickly can we convince everyone to replace A with B, knowing that we have previously hurt them ~50% of the time" against "How quickly can I convince my 14 friends+family to follow my own advice, which they have previously seen yields friendlier experiences online"?

Honestly news like this just bolsters my view that web browsers are dying and their theta decay is much faster (~20-30 years) than business has previously assumed. We will soon see an age where people either move from "google/url the thing" => "type a mediocrum of code for the thing" or they eschew modern technology's tip entirely, realizing that 10 year old phones can give them video+voice+text with fewer interruptions than today's tech. I hope the former wins, but either way the current business methodology loses.

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 14, 2021 8:29 UTC (Tue) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (1 responses)

If engineers were able to convince anyone of anything, they'd be running for elections… which is a rare thing.

Secondly, even if true, most engineers have no idea about this.

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 15, 2021 17:52 UTC (Wed) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

Right.

I'm currently reading a biography on one Paul Baran. In early 1960's he conceived the internet - packet switching, redundancy and all - but couldn't convince AT&T to support building it, even though he got the military and the RAND corporation (after the failure was assured, he deliberately sabotaged the project so that it wouldn't become a cautionary tale keeping future projects from succeeding). Then, until 1965, he predicted that the network like this, once built, would become the privacy and security disaster it is now. But he couldn't convince anyone to build the safeguards (like end to end encryption) in. (Designers of ARPANET were definitely aware of him and his ideas - he was even a consultant on the project.)

So, yup.

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 14, 2021 21:14 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

> We will soon see an age where people either move from "google/url the thing" => "type a mediocrum of code for the thing"

You seriously expect everyone in the world to a) become a software developer b) decide that actually writing code is easier than googling something non-programming-related? Sorry, but in any world since about the 16th century it's been impossible for anyone to be an expert on everything, and nowadays almost everyone is an expert in only a tiny sliver of all things. Programming included.

*All* fields are fields of narrow expertise. You can't fix that unless you can multiply the human lifespan (and human learning capacity etc) by a factor of about fifty.

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 15, 2021 18:37 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

*All* fields are fields of narrow expertise. You can't fix that unless you can multiply the human lifespan (and human learning capacity etc) by a factor of about fifty.

I doubt that would help, either, since some people would choose to deepen their understanding of a single area rather than broaden their understanding to all areas. You'd just multiply the existing problem rather than solving it.

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 14, 2021 8:52 UTC (Tue) by ldearquer (guest, #137451) [Link] (3 responses)

Maybe it is time to implement uBlock as a BPF extension to the kernel :)

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 14, 2021 18:44 UTC (Tue) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link]

Thumbs up to that!

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 15, 2021 17:17 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (1 responses)

Why do you think Google push for DNS over HTTPS ?
Because it is easy to set up a resolver that resolve advertisers domains
to 0.0.0.0. Just add a line in /etc/hosts.

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 15, 2021 21:59 UTC (Wed) by ldearquer (guest, #137451) [Link]

That's what I used to do, but I found it better to use the browser plugin for cases where adblocker detectors came up.

However IIRC all I did was to add some extra lists to uBlock, so I am not sure if it was anything too special anyway

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 14, 2021 19:31 UTC (Tue) by rgb (guest, #57129) [Link] (3 responses)

The article says that Firefox will adopt mv3 as well. So this means it's not only chrome and we're out of luck?

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 14, 2021 19:53 UTC (Tue) by atnot (guest, #124910) [Link] (2 responses)

Firefox will adopt it for compatibility of course, but that does not mean it will shut down the old APIs or impose the same limitations.

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 14, 2021 20:22 UTC (Tue) by Vipketsh (guest, #134480) [Link] (1 responses)

Firefox has a tendency to drop features based on "data". I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years the majority of extensions use the new API and then Firefox says "looks like only a minority of things use the other API so we'll remove it".

EFF: Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening

Posted Dec 14, 2021 20:40 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Given that uBlock Origin alone has over 5 million users, I think this has a much higher bar for them to claim "no one uses this API".