That's what Sciter does - https://sciter.com/ - it just gives you a lightweight HTML / CSS / Javascript "webview" engine for layout and rendering. Like you pointed out, that should be enough. But corporates want a "webview" that is an OS so that they can do everything with Javascript on it (hence why embedded Chrome with NodeJS is so popular).
The onus should be on the job provider to care for their employees too. They have a responsibility to ensure their employees are not physically harmed while they work. And to help or compensate their workers for any work injury. Right? Why not use the same criteria for psychological harm too? They should be provided psychological counselling. And note that this is not a new industry.
Call me cynical, but from the comments online, I think this research is being used for propaganda marketing to push for MV3 adoption - to assuage the lay users that all the hue and cry is for nothing and they shouldn't abandon Chrome, and to provide an excuse for other browsers holding out to embrace MV3 completely. (Don't be surprised if Firefox suddenly changes its mind and decides to fully embrace MV3 and drop MV2).
Here is the actual research - Privacy vs. Profit: The Impact of Google's Manifest Version 3 (MV3) Update on Ad Blocker Effectiveness - https://arxiv.org/html/2503.01000v2
> This study comes with several limitations ... this study faces limitations related to the dynamic behavior of websites and extensions ... Second, consistent with previous research, the automated browser-based experiment does not replicate all aspects of user interactions, such as visiting sub-pages of a website’s homepage, which introduce different trackers than the website’s homepage ... Third, the study explores ad blocker effectiveness using a European IP address and default ad blocker settings on a select sample of websites, focusing on display ads. As a result, the web’s long tail is under-represented. Consequently, we cannot rule out that MV3’s 30,000-rule limit could disproportionately affect less popular websites that rely on rarely used rule ... Because EU traffic often involves GDPR-driven website changes that reduce third-party activity irrespective of consent, baseline ad and tracker counts are lower ... Fourth, our study cannot exclude that any future changes to the Chrome extension ecosystem might hinder ad blocker effectiveness, as feared by some ad blocker providers ...
Note that the intent of this study was to determine if MV3 ad-blockers are as effective as MV2 based ad-blockers. Nobody has said that MV3 cannot be used to block ads or trackers. What they have always criticised is that it makes it harder to do so than MV2, and the difficulty of implementing dynamic filtering with it gives the advertisers an upper hand over adblockers.
When the ad-block extension developers tell you that MV3 cripples their extension and makes it harder to block ads and trackers in your browser, who are you going to believe - the experts at blocking ads and trackers or a corporate who makes its money from data harvesting and online advertising and has a real incentive to cripple ad-blocking on browsers?
> What they have always criticised is that it makes it harder to do so than MV2, and the difficulty of implementing dynamic filtering with it gives the advertisers an upper hand over adblockers.
it's more than this
the filter list is now bundled in extension, which has to be approved by Google
so they're now the gatekeepers of the filter list updates
so to stop youtube adblockers, all they have to do is:
- design a countermeasure
- deploy it
- don't approve updates until the next countermeasure is ready
> Don't be surprised if Firefox suddenly changes its mind and decides to fully embrace MV3 and drop MV2
Firefox could also deploy MV3 with the new restrictions removed of course.
But Firefox is a bit of an unknown now that they're cuddling up to the ad industry and coming up with their privacy preserving attribution stuff. This is a problem for me because privacy isn't the only issue with ads. I don't believe in a win-win for the ad sponsored web.
The only reason the US and Europe are targeting TikTok is because they don't own the platform. Facebook and WhatsApp (owned by Meta) are responsible for so much hate politics and social unrest around the world (Facebook and Genocide: How Facebook contributed to genocide in Myanmar and why it will not be held accountable - https://systemicjustice.org/article/facebook-and-genocide-ho... ). Amazon, Google and Microsoft helped the Israelis conduct the genocide in Gaza with their AI tools (UN Calls Out Google and Amazon for Abetting Gaza Genocide - https://progressive.international/wire/2025-08-26-un-calls-o... ). But all that's OK.
The US government would have to demonstrate improving people's lives to get votes if they couldn't campaign entirely on hate politics. Obviously they prefer the hate politics and ragebait attention algorithms. That way they can funnel billions of dollars to themselves and their buddies instead of wasting it on services supporting US citizens.
Yeah, I don't like the reason either. They should've just banned TikTok day 1 as reciprocity with China banning our sites. Instead it was allowed until it started promoting wrongthink.
The US government banned tiktok because it was the only major platform that didn't censor information and footage of the Gaza genocide, but I don't think the same reason applies to Europe.
If true, the Americans have only themselves to blame - the START treaty between the US and Russia have expired because the Americans refused to renew it as Trump considers it a "badly negotiated deal". (Trump says new nuclear treaty needed to replace New START - https://www.dw.com/en/trump-says-new-nuclear-treaty-needed-t... ). Note that Putin has offered to extend the term of the treaty (probably because he really doesn't want to get into a new nuclear arms race with west, given the condition of Russian economy today). Trump meanwhile wants to include China too in the treaty, which, as the linked Newsweek article highlights, they are absolutely not interested in. (Possibly because they see it more as an intelligence gathering mission to find out the status of Chinese nuclear weapons, and they don't trust the west to adhere to its terms).
DoD believes there is no chance (0%) China would agree to any nuclear treaties until they've hit parity with US/Russia in raw warhead count. And btw, DoD's unclassified assertions about their warhead count is based on old assumptions of their fissile material production and plutonium/tritium availability. In terms of ICBMs, they have production facilities that can make about 90 Peacekeeper-class missiles a year.
In other words, this is less about what China wants and more about where this puts the future nuclear posture of the US.
In 2024, the Competition Commission of India had imposed Rs. 213 Crore penalty on Meta, for sharing WhatsApp users' data with its parent company to monetise it through advertisements.
> As Solicitor General Tushar Mehta criticised the “exploitative" policy for sharing user data for commercial purposes, Chief Justice Surya Kant responded: “If you can’t follow our Constitution, then leave India. We won’t allow the privacy of any citizen to be compromised. You can’t play with privacy… we will not allow you to share a single digit of our data". Solicitor General Mehta and counsel for the Competition Commission of India (CCI) said that user data was being commercially exploited, even if encrypted, and that the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act must be considered to protect metadata and ensure user consent, India Today reported.
> As the tech giants claimed informed consent, the SC said that millions of users, including street vendors and rural citizens, cannot understand complex privacy policies ... The court also emphasised that behavioural and commercial exploitation of user data, including targeted advertising based on chat trends, violates users’ rights. The bench took note of instances where users received targeted ads for medicines shortly after private chats with doctors, raising questions about the extent of data monetisation.
They can't afford to, or they would have. With ads in the browser, telemetry that doesn't really switch off, etc. etc. their brand value has really fallen.
I don’t think they’re worried about “my business.”
Open source is notorious for being implemented in $$$ COTS and commerce and then contributing $0 in money and then even less in contribs bug fixes or sharing in house tweaks,isn’t this what Wordpress has been melting down over for a year or two now?
And I’m sure many more projects are pissed off or resenting their chains but not making an ugly scene about it.
Something has to give here.
I don’t have a dog in this fight other than to say that what mattermost went with here “is a choice” , and I have “a choice” whether to accept these terms.
I’m interested in watching how it plays out though. They cast their die. Problems have solutions. We could all get into whether this solution is viable or not — doesn’t matter this is what they went with and they made it clear they’re not taking user input on it. I’m not even a user so I expect them to care even less about my thoughts.
Im supportive of anyone trying to find an equitable balance but maybe that’s a situation where they could roll their own license with these clauses and exclusions.
Its not like Microsoft or iTunes user agreements aren’t complete bullshit, yet people click okay and use all that.
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