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Posted by DemiGuru 17 hours ago

Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin(www.pcworld.com)
1127 points | 416 commentspage 4
malomalsky 2 hours ago|
God bless Firefox!
vovavili 17 hours ago||
Thank God for the Brave browser. For those disliking their built-in adblocker, there is a Manifest v2 opt-out specifically for uBlock if you need it.
culi 6 hours ago||
It's on a time limit. Chromium deprecated MV2 but still keeps the webRequest API in the codebase. Google could at any time decide to strip it entirely. Or it could just stop working due to lack of maintenance as Chromium grows.

Brave is relying on a fork that takes advantage of the fact that the webRequest API is still technically there

AstralSerenity 14 hours ago|||
Peter Theil was an angel investor in Brave. That alone is all the reason privacy-minded users need to avoid it.
TiredOfLife 5 hours ago|||
As someone who lives in a country bordering russia, I will certainly switch to Brave now.
fragmede 13 hours ago|||
Because Peter Thiel gave them some money, there's some secret backdoor code that's sending all your information to Palantir?
rwz 13 hours ago|||
It's quite likely that Brave itself collects data on your usage and shares at least some of it with Palantir.

This isn't such an outrageous assumption to make here.

EbNar 8 hours ago|||
There's no need to make assumptions. The source code is out there. Please, show us the relevant commits which do what you said.
tredre3 9 hours ago||||
Telemetry can be disabled in Brave. Any kind of history/bookmark syncing is opt-in.

You're just spreading FUD unless you have evidence that Brave funnels usage data in secret.

shooly 12 hours ago|||
Firefox also collects and sells data to no one really knows who.

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/

rwz 11 hours ago||
I mean sure, but there's a bit of a difference between "sells data to no one really knows who" and "sells data to no one really knows who AND PALANTIR" which the original commenter seem to be flagging as a problem.
inigyou 11 hours ago|||
"no one really knows who" is probably also Palantir or someone who resells to Palantir.
shooly 10 hours ago|||
Well Thiel investing in Brave once at the beginning doesn't necessarily mean that Palantir is getting any data now (even though it's presented as if it was a fact in other comments here). It's probable, but really it's just speculation, just like anyone can speculate about who's getting data from Firefox.

But at least with Brave, the initial funding information was made public, so there's already more information available to users in comparison with Mozilla. Mozilla just said: "there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners" - that could mean literally anyone.

downrightmike 13 hours ago|||
That is their MO
jollyllama 16 hours ago|||
It's good but I find they EOL devices/OS's earlier than Firefox.
matheusmoreira 14 hours ago|||
It's certainly better than stock Chrome but Firefox becoming relevant again is still the ideal option.
culi 5 hours ago||
I think it's necessary for the future of the web. Ever since Opera gave up on Presto and Edge gave up on Trident, we've seen a massive and sudden consolidation towards Chromium. It's sad how quickly we forgot the lessons we learned from the days of IE's dominance
matheusmoreira 5 hours ago||
Sad indeed. What trully pisses me off though is the fact Mozilla has like hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank, possibly a billion dollars, and yet they continue to neglect Firefox.
ipsum2 12 hours ago|||
Brave is great. Works across windows/mac/ios/android/linux.
odidiejdiwjd 14 hours ago|||
Isn’t Brave just another Chromium variant?

Chromium is detestable. In whatever form it takes.

armadyl 14 hours ago||
What’s detestable is Firefox’s lack of security and Mozilla’s priorities surrounding it compared to Chromium

https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1unhtxu/initial...

iLoveOncall 6 hours ago||
Brave is malware, I don't understand how anyone on HN can use it, baffles me every time.

They've literally been caught MITMing web pages for their own financial gains.

TiredOfLife 5 hours ago|||
In that case Firefox is also out. They have been caught auto installing random hidden extensions with full read/write access to all websites and blocking uBlock Origin from working on, for example, the Firefox extension site.
iLoveOncall 3 hours ago||
> have been caught auto installing random hidden extensions with full read/write access to all websites

Lol, they chose to ship parts of their browser as extensions, it's definitely now "random extensions".

> and blocking uBlock Origin from working on, for example, the Firefox extension site

Any other example? Bypassing an extension on their own website has absolutely no link to the browser itself being a malware, this is ridiculous.

I don't even use Firefox and I think Mozilla is a shit organization misusing its funds to pursue bad ventures lately, but even I think your claims are bullshit.

culi 6 hours ago|||
[dead]
deweywsu 13 hours ago||
It is possible to write your own extension and still use it in Chrome as long as it's not bundled. It would be a huge pain to get the source for uBlock origin and implement it locally yourself, but it might be worth the pain to block ads.
rwz 13 hours ago|
The original uBO relies on Manifest V2, the API Chrome no longer supports. It's impossible to run full UBO (not Lite MV3 version) on current versions on Chrome.
rasz 8 hours ago||
>It's impossible to run full UBO (not Lite MV3 version) on current versions on Chrome.

Current version of Chrome seems to be 152.0.7977.39 released August 14, 2026.

August 14, 2026 Chromium 152.0.7977.38 based vivaldis napshot https://vivaldi.com/blog/desktop/address-field-calculator-an... has this in patch notes:

"[Extensions] Re-enable and extend Manifest V2 extension support for the time being (VB-130324)"

josefritzishere 14 hours ago||
Ads are so invasive and prevalent now that you need an ad blocker just to use the internet.
hdgvhicv 14 hours ago||
Yet 90% of people don’t use a browser capable of running ubo
tensor 14 hours ago||
Because all those other browsers can still block ads. I use ubo lite for safari and it's largely fine.
fsflover 14 hours ago||
It will be "largely fine" until the ad networks start using the methods not blocked by the Lite version. You may not even notice that they start tracking you efficiently. See https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b... for some examples of things Ublock Lite can't do.

Related discussion:

uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari (apps.apple.com)

1156 points by Jiahang on Aug 5, 2025 | 451 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825

Casteil 13 hours ago||
Now? Sure seems like it's been that way for well over a decade.
marssaxman 7 hours ago||
Firefox is now the only major browser, because it supports uBlock Origin.
ytoast 13 hours ago||
Are there any Chromium-based mod/plugin loaders out there? I mean something that uses the same DLL/SO hijacking or injection tricks game hackers use to build mod loaders, to expose a hooking layer for plugins.
kazinator 4 hours ago||
Obligatory:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/137fwhc/the_i...

self_awareness 3 hours ago||
Lots of browsers have built-in adblockers that use the same lists as uBlock Origin. Why it's important to support the extension? We have adblocking anyway.

But also, be Mozilla: decimate your own plugin ecosystem, kill half of plugins, force to rewrite the other 50%. But a few years later support this 1 extension, and people will remember that you're a good guy.

When they've adoped Chrome plugins, they've effectively gave up their shares of relevance to Chrome and now they're paying for it.

defrost 2 hours ago|
It's not the uBlock Origin extension that needs saving for "better" adblocking, it's the capabilities of the now discontinued by Google / Chrome extension supporting framework known as Manifest V2.

The 'newer' Manifest V3 replaced the V2 webRequest API with a more limited declarativeNetRequest API.

The original allowed the intercept and blocking of network requests in real-time as generated, the replacement allows a limited subset of filter blocking after requests have been sent and returned.

ie: V2 allowed for less network traffic and greater amount of filtering, V3 provides slower page completes and limited filtering.

ChrisArchitect 17 hours ago|
Related:

Microsoft Edge is about to lock out older ad blockers, just like Chrome did

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49220392

Insanity 14 hours ago|
Edge is just chromium under the hood. So not a surprise there, should be easy lift for them.
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