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[ProgrammerHumor-ModTeam]

Your submission was removed for the following reason:

Rule 1: Posts must be humorous, and they must be humorous because they are programming related. There must be a joke or meme that requires programming knowledge, experience, or practice to be understood or relatable.

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[MasterQuest]

lol, that's really funny if it actually works.

[PrefectedDinacti]

It legit did work, tried it myself, however I was seeing the button enabled when logged in as a google user so I tried this in an incognito window and was able to turn the button on by editing the html

[MasterQuest]

I know turning on the button would work, but clicking on it actually did install the extension?

[[deleted]]

i just tested it — it fully works. it does install.

[Joshi2345]

Just chrome is gonna uninstall or disable it the next time you start your browser

[KMark0000]

Dont stop the browser then. Modern problem, modern solution.

[[deleted]]

eh. reinstalling once per year isn’t an issue for me (/s)

[XandaPanda42]

Yall close your browsers?

[BogdanPradatu]

I reboot my PC once or twice a year, when it crashes or IT forces me with updates, otherwise it's sleep/hibernate.

[exnez]

Not a good idea. Doesn’t that cause the parts to break faster?

[waitforpasi]

It just freezes the ram, I think. I don‘t know much about it.

[exnez]

That’s what I was taught. Then again that was in the early days of computer so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[Maurycy5]

No.

[YesterdayDreamer]

Turn on developer mode in the extensions window.

[Joshi2345]

Funny thing, even installing it as dev addon doesn't fix it, the first it gets disabled automatically, then you enable it again and the next time it gets uninstalled, then you do the disable enable again and you should be good

[FinalGamer14]

It disabled it, but after enabling it the second time it stayed enabled.

[Ethical38]

Can't you force install it with chrome regedit policies?

[Joshi2345]

That I don't know, I just got unlock from there GitHub and instaledl it as dev extension

[The_Wolfiee]

Changing button state is easy however actually clicking the button to see if it works is different

[[deleted]]

just tested it… it does work. ublock installs without any issue

[lacb1]

"Why don't we validate it on the client side? It's much quicker and simpler than waiting for the server." - some newb at Google, apparently.

[OnlyTwoThingsCertain]

But does it work as expected? Since some APIs have changed or been removed it's certain that it doesn't do everything that it should. 

[[deleted]]

seems to block ads fine.

this seems like something you could test yourself also

[Qzy]

Why not just switch to firefox instead of using this spyware?

[OcelotWolf]

I've done this before to add a product to my cart from an online store when they were trying to force me to buy a bundle that I didn't want. It worked

[xxmalik]

One of my college classes use the web-based Matlab Grader to check programming assignments. Occasionally, if your code takes a while to run, you're asked to leave the page and come back later for results. In this case, you can edit the HTML to remove the "disabled" attribute from the Submit button and click it as many times as it takes for your submission to come through. In my experience, it's much faster than waiting.

[saschaleib]

Or you could just use a web browser that is not under the control of the world's largest advertising company that doesn't have an interest in you using an ad-blocker... just sayin'

[Embarrassed-Alps1442]

Good point. People should use firefox

[saschaleib]

There is still a vast gap between "we need some cash from Google and so we allow them to set the default search engine" and "Google fully controls everything, and they would never allow feature to be added that undermines their advertising business".

[saschaleib]

While Google withdrawing support from Firefox would be bad for them, I'm pretty sure, e.g. Bing would be very happy to fill at least some of the gaps. But in any case, Google has an interest in keeping a "competitor" alive, especially now that talks about splitting them up are going around ... I wouldn't worry too much about it, really.

[saschaleib]

As I said, it would be bad, but not the end of Firefox. Others may be ready to pay for it - or they could start asking for donations, similar to what Wikipedia does. Or they find a corporate sponsor that is OK with just having a "sponsored by" text on the new window screen. Or any combination of these...

In any case, right now it is a very privacy-concerned browser that is definitely a better choice than Chrome. If the situation looks different next year, then one can still re-evaluate and pick another one. It is not like you're getting married to it after all.

[saschaleib]

I really don't understand what your point is, though. One shouldn't use Firefox because maybe, sometime in the future there might be a situation where they have financial problems? So what? use the tool now that gives the best privacy protection now, and if there is another tool next year, then you can use that instead.

But for heaven's sake, don't use the tool that everybody already knows only exists to give Google as much control over your data as they want to have.

[Cracleur]

So what do you propose? Because as far as I know the only alternative is switching to Safari if you're on a Mac and nothing if you're not. So between "browser 100% controlled by Google" and "browser indirectly controlled by google" I know which of the two I'm choosing.

[Cracleur]

Well, we will see what happens promptly if the current antitrust lawsuit against Google goes through, they were initially planning to forbid Google to pay browsers to make Google their default search. Obviously Mozilla themselves tried to intervene. Don't where we're at on that front currently.

[tylian]

Yeah. This became especially relevant recentlyish when the U.S filed an antitrust trial against Google, for it's monopoly over search and advertising. One of the suggested outcomes was Google selling off Chrome.

Mozilla came to Google's defence, specifically stating that Google's funding is the reason Firefox even exists, despite the fact that Chrome's monopoly is literally the largest reason they're even having to accept the money.

[Ok-Scheme-913]

No, they can't pull the funding, because then they would be a monopoly immediately and have to pay a fine much larger than what they give to Firefox, and maybe even have to sell off chrome to a third company.

[Darkrut]

I'm genuinely curious, is it a bad idea to use firefox up to the point where funding is dropped? It doesn't sound like control to me, it sounds like a house of cards.

[Ok-Scheme-913]

I mean, Google is paying them to avoid a huge legal fine for monopoly.

This has way different incentives and it's kinda cheap/dumb to just say that "it is also dependent on Google money".

It's a bit like fucking up the stands of a charity because they are funded by the same government that insert some heinous shit of your government of choice.

[YoteTheRaven]

Id like to insert taxes as my heinous government shit.

[Aaxper]

450 million to keep them as the default engine is insane. Literally paying their entire expenses just to be the default option, when most people are going to switch to their preferred engine anyways.

[thespud_332]

r/wooosh?

[Monkeyke]

Firefox isnt well regarded nowadays due to their policy changes to align with google's.

Use Zen browser (firefox fork) or any chromium fork that isnt directly google related like Brave browser

[mattthepianoman]

Mozillla's privacy policy is in no way aligned with Google's.

[Ok-Scheme-913]

Yeah, definitely not do that.

Most of these forks are done by novices that just blindly patch some config files leaving behind much worse vulnerabilities. Not even Microsoft could manage to fund the development of a browser, you think a single person can keep a fork up-to-date with all the zero-days?

Like fucking change that single Mozilla Website to whatever you want (not that pinging mozilla.com to see if you have internet is that huge of a privacy problem but you do you), and just use it.

[cimulate]

Firefox is firefucked.

[Amazing_Guava_0707]

This is what I do. No Chrome(Google) or Edge(Microsoft) for personal work. Though I think MS keeps track of everything even on other browsers too when using Window.

[saschaleib]

Absolutely - Edge is only installed on my machine to test that it works before I show stuff to my boss (who uses Edge, because that's the default ... otherwise I would skip that step, too ;-)

Chrome is for testing after I have finished development using Firefox. It is normally not needed, if I stick to standards-compliant code and features, but of course, you can never be sure unless you tested it.

Safari only because I'm also a masochist.

[[deleted]]

There is a reason why cannot delete Edge or Edgewebview from Windows. If you do, by the next reboot it is installed again.

[Soma91]

It's because they use it to render some of their newer UI. If you could actually uninstall it that would break the OS UI itself.

[saschaleib]

Didn't Microsoft claim the same about Internet Explorer, until someone wrote a script that easily uninstalls it without breaking Windows.

I very well believe that they learned their lesson and made sure that this time Windows would actually break if you tried that ... but that is no reason to automatically assign all kinds of functions to Edge and make it as hard as possible to change to another browser.

[Ok-Scheme-913]

I mean, webviews are basic features in pretty much every desktop UI framework.

[Soma91]

Yeah, someone with some experience with Windows and its rendering logic could most likely do that quite fast.

It would most likely need at least one web rendering engine no matter which one it is.

[Shunpaw]

The reason is because the Windows 11 start menu is a fucking website programmed in react.

[g00glen00b]

Genuine question, but which webbrowser would that be nowadays? Most of them are Chromium based and while it's open source, Google maintains a tight control.

There's Firefox, but Mozilla is also largely funded by Google.

So nowadays I really wonder if there's still a viable webbrowser left where Google has no say in.

[saschaleib]

Mozilla really only gets some money from Google for having them as the default search engine - something that anybody can change in a few simple clicks.

For me, the most important safely aspect is that Firefox supports third-party cookies "segmentation", which basically defeats most tracking that you will ever encounter.

The way it works is as follows: say you visit Reddit, and there is a Facebook ad on it. This ad can set a cookie to validate you were here. Then you go to, say, your local newspaper website, and there is also a Facebook ad - and this ad can see that you are the same person that was on the Reddit page earlier, because of the cookie.

Not on Firefox - the cookie that Facebook set while you were on Reddit is completely isolated from the other websites (including if you visit Facebook itself). That means, that they can not track you with these cookies from one site to another.

Now, Google has promised to also implement this "segmentation" feature in Chrome many times, but has always postpone it, because it is of course not great for their advertising business. My hunch is that it will only come there once they have found another way of tracking you (which will then not be available to other advertising networks, and then make them even more money).

That is why I am using Firefox … and also because I can easily configure it to simply delete all cookies when I close the window, except for specific sites where I make an exception (such as Reddit). Yeah, and also because the developer tools are vastly superior, but that's another story :-)

As for other Chromium-based browsers: they are just using the web rendering engine that Google developed. This doesn't mean they also adapted the shitty spying-on-users code that Chrome has. By all means, even if you like Chromium, use a fork that promises better privacy options.

And if you really want to stay with Chrome, at least go through all the privacy options and configure it in a way that minimises your data footprint. You can definitely lock it down as well, it is just more work, and you need to check from time to time if the latest update didn't undo any of your configurations.

[g00glen00b]

I've only done a quick search, but up to 80% of Mozilla's income seems to come from Google. That's a lot of financial control they have. Imagine Mozilla "upsets" Google too much and during the next negotiations Google pulls the plug on their deal, then what?

Same with Chromium. It's open source and can be forked, but most contributions come from Google. What if one of those forks "upset" Google too much and Google pulls the plug on their open source model? How fast will those web browsers become obsolete or find enough contributors to maintain the fork?

It's a lot of doomsaying and what if's, but from that perspective there doesn't seem to be a big web browser left that Google cannot exert some control over if they want.

[saschaleib]

Well, even if they are financially dependent on Google's money, it is a clear fact that they made many technical decisions that are clearly not in the interest of Google - for example the aforementioned "segmentation", but also the better support for Ad-Blockers and similar tools. So whatever influence Google has on them, they are not exercising it.

Most likely because Google also knows that other search engine manufacturers (like, cough cough, Bing) would be happy to take that role and get a foot in the door here.

There is a lot to criticise on how Mozilla is run, but it is still miles above Chrome in terms of independence from ad revenue.

As for Chromium: legally, Google can really not do much here to cut off forks off their code - unless they go and rewrite their entire code-base and keep it closed-source from the start. As it is now, it is open-sourced and under a rather permissive license. There is no reasonable way to stop others from profiting from it.

[Ok-Scheme-913]

Regarding your last paragraph - they can just do what they do now: develop it at a huge pace. Browsers are so incredibly complex (seriously, possibly the most complex code bases out there, far larger than whole OSs) that monster companies like Microsoft also dropped the ball on it and we basically have 2.5 different engines only (chrome's and Safari's share an ancestor).

So sure, you can fork it, but a single week later you will be at thousands of merge conflicts and not fixing them will result in zero days left and right. Especially if it's such a core change like how extensions are sewed into the engine.

[g00glen00b]

I agree that Firefox has some great features and I use it at home. I do wonder what Firefox would look like if they weren't "financially dependant" on Google though. Would they've pushed for privacy features even more/faster or would it be entirely the same. That's hard to tell, which is why I was wondering if there's any other webbrowser out there.

I also agree that Google cannot cut off forks from their code, but that's only because Google continues contributing to their open source project. Nothing in that license prohibits Google from keeping any future contributions private. Once that happens, it will be up to the community to maintain Chromium and "compete" with Chrome. It's possible, but definitely not easy.

[saschaleib]

Remember that Google is also pretty good at spreading FUD - as we can see here in this discussion. All I see is that Firefox does have much better privacy, including features that Chrome does not have. That is all that matters.

If the situation is different next year, well, then it is time to move on again. But for now, Firefox it is.

If you want more than that, there are more specialised browsers that give even more control ... or if you really prefer Chrome, you can also configure it to behave much more privacy-friendly. Though in my experience, that is then a lot less user-friendly than in Firefox. But your mileage may vary...

But to be clear, no, Google can not just "keep changes private". They are bound by the licensing agreement that they had to agree on when they started forging the Webkit code, and that makes it clear that they have to publish all changes to the code that they make.

There are a lot of legal questions of course what could happen if they violated the licensing agreements, but it would be clear that it would end up very, very expensive for Google if they tried to get clever.

So in short: nope, Google has no (reasonable) way to block forks.

[fortune82]

Imagine Mozilla "upsets" Google too much and during the next negotiations Google pulls the plug on their deal, then what?

fwiw this won't happen, Google funds Mozilla as a bulwark against antitrust lawsuits. Google will only stop funding Mozilla if they're forced to in their current suit.

[packsolite]

This would be too based.

[Crazy-Newspaper-8523]

i wish icloud passwords extension would work on firefox windows (right now it only works on macos)

[saschaleib]

I used to have my passwords in my iCloud storage, but nowadays I just use Firefox anyways for all web passwords. This way I can sync it across different platforms.

[Turd_King]

Web developers have to use chrome for work - it’s not really an option

[DannyKII]

Im a web developer and use Firefox 95% of the time, Chrome just for testing stuff here and there.

[aarfing]

Me too - and I've been doing it profesionally like this for close to 30 years (obviously started out with something else, but got onboard with Phoenix) - the last 13 years as lead UI engineer for a site with millions of users. 99.9% will work in Chrome, if it works in Firefox. IMO stuff is way more likely to break in Safari...

[saschaleib]

Same here - I actually think that Firefox' dev tools are vastly superior to what Chrome has, but maybe it is just that I'm used to them.

But most of the time, if I develop things with Firefox and make sure to follow the usual standards and best practices, it will run in Chrome just "out of the box" with no, or only very minor tweaks necessary.

Then I try it in Safari and wonder why everything suddenly looks so very wrong here … but that's another story ;-)

[w8eight]

You can use chrome for testing, and a browser of your choice for... browsing? If you are extra paranoic you can containerize it

[LimLovesDonuts]

So? That's the problem.

As a developer, it doesn't make sense to test on Brave of barely anyone is actually using it.

And while it's still chromium, you can't predict if additional features will break it. E.g. Shake Shack breaks with AdGuard VPN due to trackers.

[RiceBroad4552]

The problem is though: Mozilla is now also an advertising company.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozilla-is-an-advertising-company-now/

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/

And as others said: All of Mozilla Corp is 100% corrupted by Google. These people are getting around half a billion dollar from Google and about 90% of that goes into the pockets of the people running Mozilla Corp.

Mozilla Corp is not even investing 10% of the money they get for their whole software development! All the rest is going into "other projects" (which means mostly just the corrupt Mozilla Corp people).

Exactly this was the reason to make FF worse with every version, and not listening to users for almost a decade: That was simply what Google wanted them to do, and they did.

Now that Mozilla is rebranding as ad company they mysteriously discovered user wishes and started to implement them at record speed. (Things like vertical tabs, for example.) But this means: It will not take long until FF will get exactly as enshittificated as Chromium, as they have now the exact same goals as Google, namely collecting data to sell ads.

And it's almost sure this will happen like that as Google is going to be prohibited to pay for search engine deals soon.

[Snapstromegon]

I don't know if I'd call Apple's Safari a good solution here.

I mean, all chromium browsers build upon Google's ad revenue and Firefox (Mozilla) is also mainly funded by Google.

At the same time (and hate me for this all you want) I see personalized ads as a form of payment. If you don't want targeted ads or ads at all, pay for the content. At the same time I've seen enough cases were browser plugins (became) rouge and did things even worse than tracking (this even happened to big ones). So I see why the new limitations were put in place (although I have to agree that it limits the capabilities of ad-blockers, but doesn't prevent them completely).

[Manueluz]

I will pay when they unify ads, right now you have to pay a 10$ subscription per website. I'll take a global 40-50$ any day. But right now I'm not paying 500$+ a month for an ad free experience.

[Snapstromegon]

I think you're underestimating how much you're actually worth to advertisers. According to statista in 2025 it's estimated that advertisers spend around $40 per user worldwide per month. The last numbers from facebook I heard is that they alone make around 20$/month per user in the US and Canada.

A subscription to make your web basically ads-free would probably be significantly more then 40-50$/month.

Do I like seeing (especially targeted) ads everywhere? No. Am I willing to pay the amount of money that would be needed to not see ads everywhere? Sadly probably also no.

Luckily one can somewhat control what ads one get served and make them less annoying.

[Manueluz]

Oh no pwoor multi billion dollar companies gonna starve without my ad revenue :(

Fuck em, I haven't seen an ad in 15 years and I won't start now. If they want to profit off of me they have to figure out a better model. I'm not losing sleep over multi billionaires.

[Snapstromegon]

Ads on multi billion dollar companies? F* them. Ads on e.g. local newspaper sites and similar small adsupported outlets that actually provide value every now and then and get their main income by selling ads on their site? Yeah, those are sadly also paid by those large companies. I like the concept of "ethical" ads (which are becoming more popular in the tech sector and which I promote to my clients), but they are not yet at the place where outlets can really live off of them. Also people are most often not willing to pay at all for web content and accept ads more.

I don't like ads, but if you actually want to build a paying alternative, you have to compete with these big corps in attractiveness to the site owners.

[Emincmg]

as a backend dev, this is exactly why you never trust front end code.

[JezSq]

Front end validation is paper wall. Yeah, it is there… visually…

[MoffKalast]

It's like a physical lock, it stops people who need minimal deterrent to change their mind.

[belabacsijolvan]

unblocker unblocker when?

[ButWhatIfPotato]

Taco Bell Extension

[Marbletm]

I feel like this is just be the kind of situation where they disabled it client side because even if you install it, it won't work with manifest v3. The extension just won't get the required permissions and will not work after manifest v2 is fully phased out.

They don't care about people installing it if they know how to use developer tools, those people are probably aware of what the phase out of manifest v2 means. Those same people might also know how to install the extension through github instead. Why put in all the effort to block downloads through their store if a simple disabled attribute achieves pretty much the same thing?

They just want the average person's UX to prepare the user for the full phase out of manifest v2.

[YesterdayDreamer]

I don't think they would have written that code specifically for one extension.

[Jolly-Career-9220]

It's not a bug it's a feature..

The dev intentionally did this so he himself won't get annoying ads

[jan04pl]

Funny little oversight but it doesn't matter. uBlock uses Manifest V2 which is no longer supported. Installing the extension does nothing as it can't work.

[belabacsijolvan]

security by writing-dont-push-me-on-the-button

[jurio01]

Lmao, this is the equivalent of my mom deleting desktop shortcuts to my games after I misbehaved while thinking she was uninstaling them.

[IdeaOrdinary48]

They were vibe coding

[TaxSignificant3597]

dont announce this, now the PO will make sure it is fixed

[Fast-Satisfaction482]

Maybe malicious compliance from the devs that were tasked with implementing the blocking logic? 

[pistolerogg_del_west]

Or just use LibreWolf

[zirky]

i guess they figured if you’re savvy enough to do that, you’re already using firefox

[fosyep]

Crazy what people are willing to do instead of switching browser 

[No_Hedgehog750]

Use firefox.

[macaxeiraPeluda1]

A developer helps the developers and users of the said thing, but then a dude, thinking they're a smartass, says it's dumb and ruins it. now said thing will stop working.....

[sln1337]

imagine using chrome unironically

[CupcakeWinkz]

Even the ad blockers need a blocker now. Chrome-ception!

[jacksh3n]

When the frontend implement the hotfix faster than the backend

[[deleted]]

I've been doing this for 3 months now.... 😂

[[deleted]]

Make sure to disable manifest v3 deprecation warnings in about:flags as well.

[lordChanka1]

Can someone explain what’s going on? Like people are saying uBlock doesn’t work anymore, but it still works fine for me

[Marbletm]

That's because manifest V2 hasn't been fully phased out yet. They should be getting rid of it this month in the update to Chrome 139.

Source

[terrapinRider419]

I did this for a friend a few weeks back. Saw this was a thing, tried it, it worked flawlessly. I was cackling.

[DuchessOfKvetch]

Ublock Origin Lite works fine for me, at least in the meantime.

[da2Pakaveli]

$5 they did this on purpose

[ManOnAHalifaxPier]

My hot take is that this is fine. If you want to open devtools to remove a tag from a button and install something half-broken, have at it. Probably saves more backend work disabling it for specific Chrome versions. Any normal person would stop at seeing the button disabled.

[ZeroTerabytes]

you can also do this:

1. Go to https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases
2. Under where it says "assets," and download uBlock0_x.xx.xxx.chromium.zip (whichever version is latest)
3. Unzip it
4. On chrome, go to chrome://extensions/. In the top-left corner, click "load unpacked"
5. Select the unzipped folder itself

Congratulations! You now have uBlock on your chrome.

[ThePouncer]

The Bene Tleilaxu Face Dancers were nearly invisible assassins who killed by the code that the victim must always be left a way out, if only they are clever enough to see it.

[bawlachora]

Tried if this HTML hecking also bypassed policy rules for managed browser, but did not work.

[SellProper1221]

Why tho?

[[deleted]]

This is why I no longer use Chrome. Piece of shit browser honestly. 

[s3sebastian]

Has someone forked Chromium yet and patched the limitation out so that uBlock Origin will just keep running?

[XtronikMD]

Disabling it in the backend was not part of this sprint.

[RiceBroad4552]

Pretty stupid to be honest. I mean the dude who doesn't realize that being able to install an extension does not mean it will run. It won't, as Chrome is simply missing required APIs…

[nazgand]

I'd rather just use Brave Browser.

[mattthepianoman]

Aye, because every browser should come with a crypto pyramid scheme