As a website owner, I see both sides of ad blocking: it can make browsing far more usable while reducing publisher revenue. This article focuses on Chrome’s extension changes rather than resolving that tradeoff.
What changed
Manifest V3 restricts remotely hosted executable code and changes request filtering. The key change concerns the blocking form of webRequest, not the disappearance of every webRequest capability. Many filtering tasks move to declarativeNetRequest rules.
A filter list is data, so it is inaccurate to say all ad blockers inherently require remote executable code. Nevertheless, the API changes constrain how a blocker implements some features.
uBlock Origin and Lite
The original uBlock Origin and the Manifest V3-oriented uBlock Origin Lite are different extensions. Lite does not provide an identical replacement for every advanced function. Check the project repository for supported browsers and builds.
Other approaches
DNS filtering can block requests to some advertising domains, but it cannot reliably distinguish ads from content served on the same domain or perform every cosmetic page filter. It complements rather than perfectly replaces a browser blocker.
The original post treated the change as the end of extension ad blocking. That is too strong: the available tools and their capabilities differ. See Chrome’s Manifest V3 explanation for the technical changes.
Adapted from the original Chinese article, published on December 31, 2025.
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