Dear ad blocker users

[ryo]

You might want to consider moving to Pale Moon or Basilisk as your main browser in the near future.
http://digdeeper.club/articles/mozilla.xhtml#mv3

While Goolag decided to implement Manifest V3, of course Cuckzilla being technically yet another department of Goolag decided to implement it too.
And this will affect all browsers based off either Chromium or Furryfox, which in current year is almost every browser.
However, there are 2 more browsers you might want to give a try, which are Pale Moon and Basilisk.
And there's Netsurf and all the terminal browsers like lynx, elinks, and w3m, but none of these have extension support (which are necessary bandaids to the fundamentally broken clearnet), and on top of that the terminal browsers can't view any of the modern soy pretending to be websites, or as they call it, "web apps", which is a fictive term powered by the ghost of Steve Jobs.

So why is Manifest V3 such a big deal you might be asking?
Directly from the horse's mouth:

What is a manifest?

An extension manifest gives the browser information about the extension, such as the most important files and the capabilities the extension might use. The extension platform features change when there's a new manifest version.

One of the changes of Manifest V3 is it has stricter protocols and requirements for what a browser extension can do outside of its own code, which can be a very valid concern considering how some popular extensions are rather dangerous
However, this also has a dark side, because by far the most used extensions people use are ad blockers, because ads are annoying, they distract you, they spy on you, they slow your internet speeds down, they make your hardware (or devices) break quicker which prompts you into buying new hardware quicker (and creating more e-waste along the way), plus modern ad blockers have the ability to block a whole host of other things, like trackers, 3rd party resources, malware, phishing attempts, and in the case of uBlock Origin you can even block elements you don't want to see so you can create a much better browsing experience for yourself.
And since Goolag is an advertisement company, they've been making many attempts in the past of suppress ad blockers, but now that ad blocking has become so mainstream that even your grandma is using an ad blocker, they stopped playing politely, now they really want to make it outright impossible.
They've been working on it for years now, but now that big tech is losing so much money (now that the covAIDS hoax is finally coming to an end in 2 months from now), plus the collapse of SVB bank greatly accelerating their losses (so as a side effect companies will be forced to treat their customers with respect again if they want to make money going forward), I can easily see them accelerating their push to end Manifest V2 support and install Manifest V3 instead.

So if you haven't already, Pale Moon and Basilisk are both great alternative browsers with extension support, plus they are both much lighter on resources.
Even if extensions aren't your concern, it might still be better to get more people off the big 2 (technically 1) browser engines to finally weaken the beast that is Chrome (and Firefox).
Before you say so, no, moving to Brave, Ungoolagged Chromium, Iridium, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, Falcon, or Konqueror (which are all Chrome) or Librewolf, Iceweasel, FireDragon, Icecat, or Waterfox (which are all Furryfox) is not a real solution.
While some on the list are worse, and some are better, Goolag (+ Cuckzilla) are still the ones calling the shots, and unless the browsers they're based on are willing to hard fork and go their own way (which in both cases is very undoable due to the size of the browser engine code bases + the fact that there's a new Javascript framework once every 5 minutes that browsers need to support), it'll be a better idea to just dump the beast completely, and go with the independent guys.

[foundaname]

Great post Ryo. I never heard of Pale Moon and Basilisk. They seem to be connected in the sense that Basilisk is an offshoot from Pale Moon. I am not tech savy to know what makes those 2 different. But I will try them out to see which one I like best. I hope there is an addon like NoScript for them.

[Boadicea]

Thank You for Your Valuable Experience and Research, ryo...
Have DL and Will Educate myself and Do

[ryo]

Great post Ryo. I never heard of Pale Moon and Basilisk. They seem to be connected in the sense that Basilisk is an offshoot from Pale Moon. I am not tech savy to know what makes those 2 different. But I will try them out to see which one I like best. I hope there is an addon like NoScript for them.

There's eMatrix (uMatrix for Pale Moon, but it's still actively maintained unlike uMatrix for Furryfox and Chromium), which does everything NoScript can do + more.
And correct, Basilisk is a fork of Pale Moon, it has a more modern looking UI than Pale Moon, and it used to be developed by the same teams, but nowadays it's developed in isolation from the Pale Moon team.

[philstone]

Icecat is the best browser I've seen since Netscape Navigator in terms of privacy but it's starting to become obsolete as there are websites that will just wont with on it anymore. Mozilla itself is becoming detrimental to privacy with things like webworkers running in the background in ways that cant simply be switched off. Any mozilla forks suffer from the same issues as Mozillas main branch unless specifically addressed.

The internet is no longer the last bastion of free speech and its back to the 90s when the only form of remote communication was television and radio with all the things they never ever say. Its hard to find people taling about anything beyond trivia now that facebook-et-al have monopolised the internet. You sound like some crook suggesting things like anonymity and avoiding corporations like google. To them it sounds like you said "I don't watch TV".

I like the dissenter browser by Gab as it totally fucks up all forms of censorship on any website in one fell swoop but this ability comes at the cost that dissenter is built on brave which is built on chrome which is googleware. You need to run it in a virtual machine just to make sure google doesnt infect your computer with malware in a world where calling google malware sounds like "I don't watch TV".

Some plugins you should have on a browser are:

Cookie editor - so you can delete cookies when websites try to restrict you from seeing content. For example, youtube uses cookies to ensure you dont know that your comments are being blocked. Delete the cookies and you realise that comments which appear while you are logged in dont actually appear to anyone else. Instagram employs similar cookie based fingerprinting. This isn't about what you say online, but what you are allowed to hear. Censorship happening at an individualised level.

Script Blocker - Noscript is probably the most famous example of this. They prevent javascripts from happening by default unless you specifically allow them. In such a mode, a lot of websites will not work until you unblock their ability to run scripts. GNU has a alternative to noscript which makes javascript more compatible with the libreware paradigm.

Third Party Request Blocker - For all the rules and regulations "the government" impose, Searx's TPRB points out how dysfunctional the technical advisors to "the government" are because it blocks things that will go on in the background of a lot of websites which don't even need to employ any cookies at all to spy on you. Take instagram as a topical example. You have no instagram account but it is able to determine your identity when you read any of their content because the instagram website runs a script that is hosted on facebook which is able to pass on your identity to instagram. This is just a benign example but have you ever seen those websites you visit and a "sign up with google" pops down from the top while you begin to read a freshly loaded website. The website appears to know who you are and that happens because the website is running a script requested from a third party - in this case google.

Power Button - Last but not least, this is a special application that will likely be required as a last resort as the internet increasingly becomes a prison far worse than television brainwashing. To use this application, simply press the power button on your PC for 4 seconds and never press the power button again. The side effect is that you will not be able to access the internet again and you will enter a parallel universe filled with human beings wearing chains that look like smartphones. You will be unable to communicate with them due to their ears being clogged by a viral infection called "Imnotlisteningitis".

[ryo]

Icecat is the best browser I've seen since Netscape Navigator in terms of privacy but it's starting to become obsolete as there are websites that will just wont with on it anymore. Mozilla itself is becoming detrimental to privacy with things like webworkers running in the background in ways that cant simply be switched off. Any mozilla forks suffer from the same issues as Mozillas main branch unless specifically addressed.

There's also Hyperbola's IceCat, which is based off recent Furryfox ESR releases.

The internet is no longer the last bastion of free speech and its back to the 90s when the only form of remote communication was television and radio with all the things they never ever say. Its hard to find people taling about anything beyond trivia now that facebook-et-al have monopolised the internet. You sound like some crook suggesting things like anonymity and avoiding corporations like google. To them it sounds like you said "I don't watch TV".

Darknets for the win!

I like the dissenter browser by Gab as it totally fucks up all forms of censorship on any website in one fell swoop but this ability comes at the cost that dissenter is built on brave which is built on chrome which is googleware. You need to run it in a virtual machine just to make sure google doesnt infect your computer with malware in a world where calling google malware sounds like "I don't watch TV".

I generally don't trust Gab with "anti-censorship", because they might not censor political dissent, they do censor a whole bunch of other things that have always led to censorship of political dissent in the first place.

Some plugins you should have on a browser are:

Cookie editor - so you can delete cookies when websites try to restrict you from seeing content. For example, youtube uses cookies to ensure you dont know that your comments are being blocked. Delete the cookies and you realise that comments which appear while you are logged in dont actually appear to anyone else. Instagram employs similar cookie based fingerprinting. This isn't about what you say online, but what you are allowed to hear. Censorship happening at an individualised level.

You can easily do that without extensions.
Or use a privacy condom for both of these, using JewTube or Instantkilograms directly while advocating for privacy and free speech is like eating at McDonald's while lecturing fat people on the streets to eat more healthy foods.

Script Blocker - Noscript is probably the most famous example of this. They prevent javascripts from happening by default unless you specifically allow them. In such a mode, a lot of websites will not work until you unblock their ability to run scripts. GNU has a alternative to noscript which makes javascript more compatible with the libreware paradigm.

As I already stated, eMatrix/uMatrix does that job really well.

Third Party Request Blocker - For all the rules and regulations "the government" impose, Searx's TPRB points out how dysfunctional the technical advisors to "the government" are because it blocks things that will go on in the background of a lot of websites which don't even need to employ any cookies at all to spy on you. Take instagram as a topical example. You have no instagram account but it is able to determine your identity when you read any of their content because the instagram website runs a script that is hosted on facebook which is able to pass on your identity to instagram. This is just a benign example but have you ever seen those websites you visit and a "sign up with google" pops down from the top while you begin to read a freshly loaded website. The website appears to know who you are and that happens because the website is running a script requested from a third party - in this case google.

For this too, eMatrix/uMatrix.
And maybe uBlock Origin for removing elements inserted on the page you don't need to see.

Power Button - Last but not least, this is a special application that will likely be required as a last resort as the internet increasingly becomes a prison far worse than television brainwashing. To use this application, simply press the power button on your PC for 4 seconds and never press the power button again. The side effect is that you will not be able to access the internet again and you will enter a parallel universe filled with human beings wearing chains that look like smartphones. You will be unable to communicate with them due to their ears being clogged by a viral infection called "Imnotlisteningitis".

This is indeed the solution to online spying, but are you even willing to lose access to so much knowledge and/or fun, only to then be spied on offline?
Because what really bothers me is that most people are rightfully so concerned about online spying and are fighting against it, while at the same time they're turning a blind eye towards offline spying, which is much harder to fight against.
For offline spying, think of CCTV cameras that can be found pretty much everywhere, smartphone camera's and microphones held by other people that can be turned on and off remotely by Goolag or Crapple (and in both cases the microphones are always listening too), then you get things like Crapple AirTags, Scamazon Ring camera's and Scamazon Alexa speakers, laptops with Windblows or macOS used by other people around you which both again have a microphone that's always listening, and otherwise there's always drones flying around recording you jerking off in the middle of the woods.

[BananaMulcher]

Seeing this, what options and mitigations are there? This change is not something that can just be stripped away by the likes of user.js scripts. For anyone currently using Firefox, it is possible, for now to remain on the Extended Support Release (ESR) branch, which remains insulated from such changes at least until they trickle down into the next Firefox ESR line.

Manifest V3 also spells big trouble for the mighty uMatrix which, even if workarounds against V3 are found, is no longer actively maintained by the author. This is one of the big issues with relying on addons to fix the horrendous design failures of web browsers. Not only does it tie one to only the browsers which support extensions, but also to the small subset of browsers for which these extensions are built.

This is why we need an independent browser which has native web resource firewalling capabilities built in directly as a core feature and not some afterthought addon. Later in that article, Diggy laments how small independent browsers all suffer from minuscule developer teams. It is such a shame that no initiative has been tried to join these developer resources together to maintain a sane, capable and sovereign browser.

Here is one such hacker, Adrian Cochrane, who advocates for building one's own browser. He has developed the Argonaut Constellation of web browsers and engines, combining tools such as HURL orchestrated into DIY web browser applications. Adrian asserts that the overstandardization of the web has led to our current predicament with huge monolithic browser engines that small teams cannot feasibly fork. Like many, he is averse to dealing with anything javascript in these indie solutions and that HTML+CSS is fine on its own. When asked whether he would be open to the idea of merging works with other small browser projects, he remains open to the prospect but notes that argonaut suite is a proof-of-concept.

[ryo]

Here is one such hacker, Adrian Cochrane, who advocates for building one's own browser. He has developed the Argonaut Constellation of web browsers and engines, combining tools such as HURL orchestrated into DIY web browser applications. Adrian asserts that the overstandardization of the web has led to our current predicament with huge monolithic browser engines that small teams cannot feasibly fork. Like many, he is averse to dealing with anything javascript in these indie solutions and that HTML+CSS is fine on its own. When asked whether he would be open to the idea of merging works with other small browser projects, he remains open to the prospect but notes that argonaut suite is a proof-of-concept.

I was looking into making my own browser and engine before, all I could find is 1 former Cuckzilla staffer making his own engine in Rust, and I don't feel like using Rust anytime soon.
But when it comes to making a web engine that only supports HTML and CSS (and images), it seems easy enough, because all you need is take a document with XML-like tags, and turn it into graphical elements (and this part to me seems the most difficult of them all).

[Liberalis]

It is a really sad state of affairs with the current browser situation and i can't see it getting any better. I wish pale moon had a keepassXC extension.

I have been keeping an eye on otter browser but it is going nowhere by the looks of it and the lack of extensions makes it a no-no anyway.

[ryo]

I wish pale moon had a keepassXC extension.

You could make your own extension for that.
Or otherwise switch to GNU Pass, which is a command line utility rather than a graphical program, so depending on the desktop environment or window manager you can script it to make it function like how a browser extension works, except it would work in all programs regardless of which one you're using.
And I did exactly that using Rofi and rofi-pass.

And actually, just did a search in the AUR, and it seems like there actually is a Rofi script for KeepassXC called rofi-keepassxc, and other 2 being keepmenu and kpmenu.
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages?O=0& ... &submit=Go