Ad blockers

There has been a lot of noise being made lately about Google Chrome and how it's switching to something called "Manifest V3" for any add-ons. I won't bore you with the gory details, but it seems that this is going to cause problems for extensions that can block unwanted content - ie adverts. A lot of the well-known ad blockers will no longer work.

Is that really a big deal?

Well - in a word, yes.

Take a look at the following screenshots captured on my phone. One was using the Chrome browser (without an ad blocker), the other was using Firefox for Android (which has uBlock Origin installed):

Pretty dramatic, right? The first site is unusable. You've got one paragraph of content visible, the rest is covered by adverts, fly-outs, and inline rubbish. The second site just gives you what you want to read.

It gets worse. Developers have now come up with an even more intrusive way of throwing adverts in your face, the so-called 'interstitial advert'. Essentially this traps any clicks or taps on any links - including those to within the same site - and displays a full screen advert before allowing you to proceed. Fortunately uBlock Origin eliminates those as well.

Of course Google (who are the main driver behind Chrome) have a vested interest in selling advertising. My advice? Switch to another browser. I'd recommend Firefox, whatever platform you're using. And make an ad blocker one of the first things you install.