Matisyahu's Blog

Just been following the discussion regarding the migration from MV2 to MV3 – at times the discussion has become rather heated as people accuse Google of deliberately crippling the extension framework to undermine content blockers. The problem is that the number of people who use content blockers are very few in number so I doubt that Google would upend the whole extension market which would disrupt so many users, both enterprise and regular end users, just simply to go after an incredibly small numnber of end users utilising content blockers.

As for me, I have YouTube Premium so I don’t use a content blocker on YouTube but I do use it for particularly obnoxious websites. I understand that websites need to use advertisements to keep the lights on but when the ads become distracting to the point I cannot use the website when I only have one option particularly if I deem the information important and that they’re the only source for that information. If anything, if one were to really make a critique one has to wonder whether the the compromise Apple made to the advertising industry regarding the anti-tracking position they’ve decided to drag their feet and fail to fully implement the declarativeNetRequest API or enhance the native content blocking API that they introduced almost a decade ago only for it to die on the vine.

On a much happier tone I received an email from AdGuard who got back to me regarding the issue I was having with the recent built where the number in the icon (which says how many things were blocked) were not displaying that correct information – that websites would load and on those websites I had allowed ads for the ads still loaded but the icon was saying content was being blocked. They’ve advised me that the next release of AdGuard for Chrome will include a fix that will address that issue.

I have to admit, I was one of those who was sceptical about whether the quality of content blockers wouldn’t suffer with the move to MV3 but it appears that AdGuard are doing a pretty good job proving me wrong (in a good way). The one thing to keep in mind is that the WECG are still looking at developing the declarativeNetRequest further – adding new functionality but like anything that involves a committee it is difficult to get everyone on board as each member have their own interests and they don’t always align with other members interests.

Adguard 5.0.161 has been released – with each release it is getting better at ad blocking with each release.