New "Brave Shields" button now much less useful for me

Librewolf, comes preinstalled with Ublock-origin. A pretty solid browser from privacy point of view.

Hardened Firefox

Palemoon?
Orion Browser

From privacy standpoint on chromium side only brave is good.

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The closed issue reports have a couple of posts with suggestions on alternatives. Linking a post with additional information that I posted in another topic and copy/pasting quotes below.

pes10k commented 08/08/22

Also, just to give some context to why the per-script controls were removed from Brave in the first place, we decided to remove the feature for three reasons:

  1. Brave shipped a number of other on-by-default privacy features that reduced the privacy-benefit of the per-script-controls. For example, Brave ships ephemeral, partitioned storage and randomized fingerprint protections by default (among many other features) dramatically reducing how much privacy harm most scripts can cause. Thats not to say that per-script controls aren’t still useful, just that they’re useful in less cases than they were previously.
  2. Chromium internals changed in a way that made maintaining the feature more difficult and costly (at least given the way were were implementing it previously)
  3. We evaluated uMatrix and NoScript and decided they were likely sufficient alternatives for the small number of Brave users who used the per-script controls

However, that being said, we will revisit the feature if we can find an easier way to re-implement given Chromium internals, or if we believe a significant portion of Brave users would use the feature if made available again

diracdeltas commented 08/09/22
umatrix and noscript are reasonable alternatives

if you don’t feel like installing an extension and know what scripts you want to disable or selectively enable, you can write a custom adblock filter in brave://settings/shields/filters. we can help you with the syntax for that if you want to go this route, but umatrix/noscript are much more usable for most people

That explains the so called rationale for removing the per-script controls.

Many people here have been waiting and waiting for more granular Shield controls, because with more technical development and improvements Brave Shields could be more powerful than any browser extension as the Shields are directly integrated into the browser itself.

Brave developers are going directly against what many Brave users have requested and ignoring what we want.

It is painfully obvious Brave is NEVER, EVER going to give us that control and Brave is NOT going live up to its full potential.

The new v2 Shields have a UI which consumes more space and you have to make an extra click to open the Advanced Controls and you are then confronted with the fact the v2 Shields have less functionality.

This is simply NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

It is time to dump Brave and start looking for a new browser.

I’ve been using ungoogled chromium the last couple of days. Once I figured out how to add extensions it’s working nicely with Ublock and Noscript.
Having the choice of what scripts to let loose on my browser makes a big difference as now I see I don’t have to allow everything to view a web page.
Configuring the browser is not much different than Brave and there seems to be constant work being done to the browser to improve it even more.
I tried the Librewolf but I didn’t like the layout of it in regards to the tab, tool bar looks, it looks oversized and there was no way to slim it down from what I could see. Other than that it also does what I want.
Judging by this community forum, Brave is having a lot of trouble in the ad payment section, and I wonder if thats why the shields have been crippled. If the ads are blocked then no one will read them and that messes up Braves crypto economy in some way.
Have the ad companies put pressure on Brave to cripple the shields… Just asking :thinking:

Brave reward ads (BAT ads) having nothing to do with shields. Both are completely different things.

Brave ads are served by notifications and sponsored images on new tab page not on websites like wikipedia. So the questions of brave shields interfering with brave ads is out of question.

Also Ublock origin and possibly noscpripts will be useless by June 2023 when Manifest V3 kicks in on other chromium browsers like Vivaldi, Opera, Ungoogled Chromium.
Also ungoogled chromium on windows does not update mechanism both manual or automatic.

Why? And why the differentiation between uBlock(useless) and NoScripts (possibly useless)? The KISS principle works for me if you do provide some input. :laughing:

Another question, would Manifest v3 make the custom filters “useless” too? Especially in relation to users (like me) who don’t use extensions.

I am trying to determine if I want to learn how to add custom filters to brave://settings/shields/filters. I was thinking I could install uBlock to create the filter, paste it into Create Custom filters, then uninstall uBlock. I really don’t know if this will work or not. I don’t like extensions and do not use them. This would be an exception just to get a useable script (hopefully). Link to my topic about this: Custom Adblock Filters: How To/Instructions?

Any input appreciated! Thanks. :smiley:

I didn’t know about that, ty. The app makers will probably adapt though.
Also not sure if it makes a difference, But I use Linux Mint with Wireguard Vpn, not winblows.
I just wonder why if noscript and other script blockers can work, why can’t Brave make the shields work as before.

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There is no need to make a filter list by yourself word by word. They are already done in hundreds by ‘experts’

Earlier when there was brave://adblock, we were just able to install this fliter lists easily. Update them easily (automatically). Now brave://adblock has been integrated into brave://shields so I will need to look into it again.

Not possible, see my links

Ty chh, I’ll check them out, I am not up to speed on this kind of stuff at all.

@chh_68 Thanks for the links. Will read the articles and see if I can get a clearer picture of why "Ublock origin and possibly noscpripts will be useless by June 2023 ". If I can’t find or don’t understand the information. I’ll ask again. lol

No idea what I am looking at on the FilterLists page. I just want to allow javascript for the main page for the games I play and not all the other scripts. I was able to do this with v1 of Shields but no longer.

Usually if I run across a site with content I cannot access with block scripts enabled (this includes Brave ads I click), I just move on. Lots of other information sources out there. For sites where I have to disable block scripts, usually sites where I have accounts, I use a private window then clear history/cache/cookies/javascript and close the window. I am currently enabling scripts for the game sites but it is really bugging me and I am looking into options. Using an extension permanently is not an option for me and the filterlist site doesn’t look like it is either.

Nice of you throwing it out there, but as a novice with no background, this wouldn’t work for me. I see there are references to software applications but that doesn’t help me because I just don’t know what I am looking at or how to proceed. Step-by-steps, clear easy to use instructions, and/or tools that let me block the scripts I don’t need to play my games without installing an extension permanently is what I am interested in finding.

Thank-you again for the links to the articles! Hopefully reading them will give me answers to my questions and a clearer picture of the issues. Going go read now. :smiley:

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@chh_68 Articles linked explain a lot. I read them and followed a lot of links within the articles. My favorite links which were most useful for me below. :slightly_smiling_face:

I think there is still hope! Hopefully. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Great, now my scrolling and privacy extensions will have to be replaced, too.

I did notice some of the scripts I was blocking with v1 are being picked up, and blocked, with the new version.
I don’t know how comprehensive that is because I just learned the scripts that I needed to unblock, not the ones blocked.

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jputting said: “The removal of the flags which enabled us to use v1 Shields is one step too far by the developers of Brave.”

Big agreement. The ability to use flags to continue Shields V1 was a huge benefit. What the heck?

Not ready to dump Brave, but there are a few huge steps backwards here.

On a related side-note: I make it a bit of a mission to try and educate other professionals in my field about basic cyber-security concerns. They have short attention spans for this. Shield V1 allowed them to see with just 1 to 2 clicks all the unnecessary tracking being blocked. Now people have to actually feel motivated and/or have some technical skills to see what’s happening. Big step backwards for public education.

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Thanks for all of the interesting discussion.
Short answer seems to be - It would be hard and they would rather work on the crypto stuff, the Brave developers do not seem to think that many users care, and similar features can be restored by adding noscipt and/or umatrix.

I tested no-script (which I had previously used) and umatrix:

  • NoScript has a similar interface but everyone should be aware that by default it has a whitelist that should be cleared before usage. This whitelist is weird and worrying to me.
  • UMatrix has more of the behind the scenes stuff, but is very complex and powerful, but it has a very confusing interface. Do not put this on a non-power-user’s system.

Unfortunately these changes take away the only advantages Brave had for me and my organization, so I am moving on to other browsers. It is hard not to feel that I was deliberately deceived; with all of the discussion about re-enabling v1 shields there was no mention that this was the plan!

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Just curious about this part, as it’s been a while since I’ve seen v1; but does this not cover that? Granted, it might be 1 extra click over v1, as I said I don’t recall the UX well enough.

image

(The latter one is clickable and shows you the specific URLs.)

V1 allowed users to see the scripts that were blocked/allowed.
Now we don’t have that functionality.
We no longer see what was trying to load, and have no choice but to accept what brave allows to load whether we want it loaded, or not.
This is the rub.

I don’t really care about the number of clicks, I do care to know what is loading in my browser.

One point about ‘Advanced Controls’ to be always ON like v1 which many users complained, has been solved https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/23188

Release notes:- Release Channel 1.43.88

Edit:- I think everything has been solved. I am able to see scripts blocked in ‘Block scripts’ feature and any trackers and ads blocked if scripts are allowed in the ‘trackers blocked’ feature.
Nice.

Short note here: I cannot see the possibility to only allow some scripts, but I can only allow all scripts or none. Maybe I am not able to find the correct spot for that, hence:
Is this possible (to allow only some scripts) or not?

Furthermore, is any sort of Shields’ settings synced to other devices (e.g., if I allow scripts for page X on my device 1, is this synced to device 2)?

Right now, NO.

But, github issues have been opened for them. It is popular requested feature. We might see it in the future