Google

[RTH10260]

Looks like this has kicked in, AdBlockOne has been disabled

Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future

Posted: November 23, 2023
by Pieter Arntz

Google has announced it will shut down Manifest V2 in June 2024 and move on to Manifest V3, the latest version of its Chrome extension specification that has faced criticism for putting limits on ad blockers. Roughly said, Manifest V2 and V3 are the rules that browser extension developers have to follow if they want their extensions to get accepted into the Google Play Store.

Manifest V2 is the old model. The Chrome Web Store no longer accepts Manifest V2 extensions, but browsers can still use them. For now. Manifest V3 is supported generally in Chrome 88 or later and will be the standard after the transition planned to take place in June 2024.

A popular type of browser extensions are ad blockers. Almost all these ad blockers work with block lists, which are long lists of domains, subdomains, and IP addresses that they filter out of your web traffic. These lists are commonly referred to as rulesets. One part of the transition will “improve” content filtering. And to be fair, Google has made some compromises when it comes to the version as it’s now in the planning, compared to what it originally planned to do.



https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/ ... the-future

[AndyinPA]

Don't think I'd spend much time on a computer without one.

[keith]

Not a big fan of Chrome, but I do use it on mobile.

I have been getting friendlier with Edge lately, but I am getting sick to bloody death of every time I do a search, decide I used lousy search terms, and go back to the top to refine them, it scrolls past the search entry point and puts up a 'Copilot' thing-a-mee. I hate it and I don't want it. Its worse than M$oft's old 'Clippie' thing-a-ma-jig.

When I ask Copilot 'how do I turn off Copilot' it responds "No, I won't do that. FOAD".

I might have to go back to Firefox full time, but I understand that Mozilla is using Chrome rendering engine too. At least so far I haven't had a problem with the Firefox equivalent to CoPilot whatever its called. If Firefox has to block Adblock too, then I might have to resort to something exotic like Brave or Opera - but I don't know anything about their rendering engine.

Edit: ETA: I figured out how to turn off CoPilot. Instructions here: https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/sof ... windows-11

(Theoretically. I haven't actually proved it yet)

[RTH10260]

Google Is Ordered To Identify Who Watched Certain YouTube Videos
A massively overreaching and broad order.

Didi Rankovic
March 26, 2024

US federal law enforcement and courts have gone a step further in the extreme efforts they are making to surveil people’s activities online, including on Google’s vast platforms.

The latest is that the tech giant gets orders to identify all people who happen to be watching certain videos or livestreams on YouTube.

After directly censoring creators and channels, giving geolocation data of its users to the authorities in response to the controversial geofencing warrants, this is a new example of how Google can be used and abused in dragnet-style “investigations.”

Unmasking everyone who watched a particular video is similar to geofencing in that it makes everyone a suspect – and this, a number of experts and rights groups believe, is unconstitutional, i.e., in violation of the 4th Amendment, that protects from unreasonable searches.

Forbes writes that it has had access to several orders that name certain YouTube videos, citing one unsealed case originating in Kentucky and having to do with people viewing content posted by a user who law enforcement suspects of money laundering for selling bitcoin for cash.

Undercover agents had contacted the user, sending links to drone mapping and AR tutorials, to next turn to Google, asking to be told who watched the videos.

The videos had more than 30,000 views, and a court ordered that any user who did, between January 1 and 8, 2003, must be thoroughly unmasked.

The order wanted names, addresses, phone numbers, and account activity of each Google user, and IP addresses of everyone who watched the videos without an account.

“It’s fair to expect that law enforcement won’t have access to that (sensitive personal) information without probable cause,” commented Electronic Privacy Information Center’s John Davisson. “This order turns that assumption on its head.”

When the police asked for the order to be issued, they stated, “There is reason to believe that these records would be relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

Although Google complied with the demand to keep silent about all this until the records were unsealed last week, according to Forbes, they “do not show whether or not Google provided data in the case.”

A separate case in New Hampshire concerned a bomb threat in a public place, and people watching a livestream of the police searching the area. The livestream was possible thanks to a camera on nearby business premises.

Next, the police wanted to know exactly who watched it, including on a YouTube channel belonging to Boston and Maine Live, which has 130,000 subscribers.

Again, no word if Google delivered.



https://reclaimthenet.org/google-is-ord ... ube-videos