Soon the ad blocker for google chrome they will become half useless. It happens when the browser owner and the owner of the largest online advertising platform coincide. In 2023 the set of API manifestwho is responsible for managing the permissions given to the extensions will upgrade to version three.
Of Manifesto v3 extensions will have fewer permissions, with the result that adblockers will be less effective. It’s a long article from The Register, collecting the testimonials from the developers of some of the most widely used ad blockers.
With Manifest v3, the extensions no longer have access to the WebRequest API, which ad blockers used to recognize, intercept, and block ads, among other things.
Technically, Manifest v3 has already been released and will be distributed on January 17, 2022. The novelty is that from January 2023, in just seven months, all extensions who are still exploiting Mv3 they will stop working.
Developers could respond to the novelty by forking the Chromium engine to continue supporting extensions that require Mv2, including ad blockers. Another hypothesis foresees the birth of new browsers based on Firefox. In either case, we would of course be talking about niche solutions, addressed to an audience of geeks or at least people sensitive to this problem. The general public will likely be left out.
The heart of the matter: the new DeclarativeNetRequest API, requiring developers to specify in advance how their extension will work against specifications HTTP requests The possibility of flexible intervention is completely excluded. In other words: every time a tracker behavior changes, developers have to manually update their adblocker, making the fight against invasive ads an unequal discount, if not an already lost battle.
Source: Lega Nerd
