- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
- programming@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
- programming@programming.dev
I’m happy to see this being noticed more and more. Google wants to destroy the open web, so it’s a lot at stake.
Google basically says “Trust us”. What a joke.
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Yes exactly. This is what worries me the most since I also run only Linux, and I can’t imagine even being interested in computers anymore if Linux is not allowed on the web. That would be horrific.
It’s 100% critically dangerous and must be stopped.
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They’ve needed to be broken up for over a decade now, but that’d require the government to actually enforce antitrust/monopoly laws
The FTC is apparently going after Amazon, so I’d be curious to see how that goes
Yup. It’s the first FTC in a long time that’s even tried to do their job. Really hoping they have success.
What really disturbs me is how the recent tech shenanigans have been a long time coming; seems the internet we have come to know for the last 15 years only existed thanks to the ridiculous interest rates post 2008.
I’d be interested to hear more of your theory on this:
the internet we have come to know for the last 15 years only existed thanks to the ridiculous interest rates post 2008.
I think this article from the Verge explains it pretty well.
tl;dr:
- The Fed kept interest rates low from 2008 to 2021. Low interest rates made it easier to borrow money and meant that debt-backed investments like bonds had a low return, so investors favored stocks for a better yield on their investment.
- This meant tech companies could borrow a ton of money at low interest rates and raise a ton of money from investors through stock sales, allowing them to build services that weren’t profitable in order to grow as rapidly as possible. This basically defined the internet as we know it today - big companies offering free/cheap services with minimal restrictions. Companies could afford to charge low fees and look the other way on things like ad blockers.
- However, now that interest rates are going up, borrowing is much more expensive and investors are less motivated to buy stock, so all that easy money has dried up. Companies are having to raise revenue by increasing prices, adding more ads, blocking ad blockers, etc.
Online services cost a lot of money. People don’t realize how much because VCs and corpos w/ deep pockets have been subsidizing most major services for a long time. Now that the free money period is more-or-less over, these services need to start paying the bills with their users - commence enshittification
Well it’s not that they “need to pay bills” they make plenty money to pay bills with the revenue they already earn. The issue is that capitalism demands not just profits, but continually increasing profits each quarter.
“All Google associated platforms hereby block all ios devices.”
I am not a fan of apple. But this would piss a lot of people off but is well within their ability and rights to do. And unfortunately they have enough of a monopoly with the internet (Google, youtube, and all the other sites served through their dns) that they can essentially break the internet for people they block. They would get 90% of those ios users to switch to Android.
The flow of information through the internet is one of the greatest advancements of man kind and we have to trust a massive cooperation not to destroy it.
You underestimate the willingness of iOS users to tolerate a sub-par experience in exchange for their fancy walled garden ecosystem.
Just the os alone is restrictive as hell, and they don’t care.
Could they do it? Maybe. But it would be profoundly stupid of them to try.
Your high-horse opinion of Apple users aside, you are right that OP is greatly overestimating people’s commitment to google’s services over their iPhones.
I mean he’s kinda right. I’ve seen starving, rabid dogs go at road kill with less intensity than an apple user at a “new” apple invention.
I am an apple user, but I was on android up until last year. It’s more an observation based on conversations I’ve had before and after switching than anything.
I think you underestimate how much of the internet depends on Google to operate.
Apple already has attestation in safari, so why would any major companies exclude them when they offer it also?
Google would be really stupid to try to exclude apple os, because apple has safari. They would lose their iOS users, iOS users wouldn’t become android users.
The fact that they have that much of a monopoly is exactly why it isn’t legal, but those laws are basically never enforced
I am not a fan of apple. But this would piss a lot of people off but is well within their ability and rights to do.
That’s a goddamn lie. They absolutely DO NOT have the “right” to engage in behavior that blatantly anti-competitive!
Nah, this is the dumpster fire needed to get people motivated about actually enforcing anti trust laws. People are apathetic well beyond when stuff affects them. It takes some serious harm to people for them to do anything.
Funny how services that used to work transparently, no longer do.
VPN? Works with some sites, not others. Same with email. Can just see the big G wading into that and the waters being royally roiled.
Boycott companies that act like this.
Legislate against and use anti-trust law to destroy companies that act like this. Boycotts, while not a bad idea, aren’t even close to sufficient.
I guess if such things were to concretise, alternative ways would rise. Slowly and far less efficient than the Google engine, but I guess there is always a solution. Maybe a network of relay, like VPN but for accesing Google domains ? I know it would be far from perfect…
If you are not using Firefox now is a good time to start.
Just switched yesterday, was way easier than I thought it would be. I’m converted on all my devices, all my stuff has been synced from Chrome in a few clicks. Just do it people.
If you haven’t already, check out Firefox Sync.
You can sync your stuff across Firefox instances (PC, mobile, different PC profiles etc.) You can choose to sync logins, open tabs, bookmarks, add-ons etc.
Each place you use Firefox can choose to sync different stuff, so for example you can sync logins everywhere but only sync open tabs on the PC.
In case you replace the phone or your PC HDD crashes etc. all you have to do is login back to Firefox Sync and you get all that stuff back.
I love Firefox so much. Specially the built in sync. I can browse something on my phone and open it on my computer later and continue where I left off.
I have too use Edge at work. Is Edge also implementing this shit?
Im so sorry u should use it…
There is no defense of the move. It’s bad for the internet. Pure and simple!
“But it’ll make us lots of money…”
Well… in that case…
this reads like a script of a Pitch meeting.
and is it going to be hard for people to accept this WEI?
No, it’s gonna be super easy, barely an inconvenience .
Oh, really?
yea, you see, majority of people don’t give a fuck and have no idea what it is about.
Oh wow, wow wow wow
It won’t block browsers that spoof their identity? Yeah, sure.
Trust me, I’m Google.
Hey kid, I’m a computer. Stop all the downloading.
Help computer.
G I Joooee.
Who wants a body massage?
You’re not cooking…
Pork chop sammiches!
The fraud-fighting project has fired up quite a controversy
fraud-fighting? Even Google’s initial pitch was explicitly describing it as a way to sell more ads.
I wish they’d have grown a pair and outright said “we’re forbidding ad blockers in Chrome, come at us”. I bet there’d be less controversy. This WEI thing just makes them look like sniveling weasels.
Fuck Google 2023
There’s an ongoing protest against this on GitHub, symbolically modifying the code that would implement this in Chromium. See this lemmy post by the person who had this idea, and this GitHub commit. Feel free to “Review changes” –> “Approve”. Around 300 people have joined so far.
I don’t think filling Google repositories with complaints and well-intentioned, but garbage issues/pull requests. At best they’ll just delete them occasionally and at worst work less in the open, changing permissions on repositories, doing discussions more in internal tools.
What you can do is support alternative browsers, get other people to use them too and notify news as well as your local politicians about such problems. Maybe join organizations on protecting privacy or computer clubs (in Germany, support e.g. Netzpolitik.org and CCC).
Maybe acknowledge what the in-principle good things about WEI would be and support alternative means of achieving them. This proposal uses good things like less reliance on captchas and tracking, a simple to use API to enable a huge potential for abuse and power grab. Alternatives might be a privacy pass, as mentioned by WebKit https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/234
Google: Do
noALL evil.Just like Trickle Down, “Don’t be evil” has aged well and deserves to be repackaged. /s
It offers web publishers a way to integrate their websites or apps with a code that checks with a trusted party (such as Google)
Imma stop you right there…
I came to say the same.
“checks with a trusted party (such as Google)”
Google is not a trusted party.
I stopped trusting google when they decided to remove the “Do not be evil” clause
guess money and having a (near to) monopoly changes any company
I suppose they didn’t change that much, they’re just more bold about it now.
So, how the hell is this supposed to prevent bots? Unless Google are planning to completely lock the browser down to prevent user scripting and all extensions then surely you can still automate the browser?
explain like i’m a developer why wei is bad? ad blocking can already be detected
Only browsers blessed by a single company can view the entire web. Not exactly a feature of the free and open web.
What people are rightfully scared of is that:
- Big websites will only accept attestations from big companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft
- Google, Apple, and Microsoft will refuse to attest your browser if you have an adblocker installed, or if you are using a browser or operating system they don’t approve, or if you made modifications to your browser or your operating system etc.
While adblocking can be detected, you can block anti-adblock scripts, it’s sort of a weapons race. Depending on how deep an attestation goes, it might be extremely difficult to fight. Attestations might also be used to block more than just adblockers, for example using Firefox, or rooting/jailbreaking your phone, or installing an alternative OS might make your phone ineligible for attestations and thus locked out of a lot of the internet.
This is much much more than just ad blocking. The mechanism is so generic that it can be used to lock out users for whatever reason. If the “arrester” doesn’t provide the requested proof then you’re just shit outa luck. We should not hand such a power to anyone, let alone big for-profit companies.
Basically the website will just not render if the browser does not have a proper credential, or if the ad’s are blocked. He’ll they could also block Linux OS clients from accessing these same websites.
Would WEI stop Adblock by DNS? Like pihole or similar ?
Basically it’s a way for a “third party” that’s chosen by the web server to verify the environment where the front end code is running meets its standards. Those standards would be up to the third party. So I’d imagine if an assessor said “hey, we can verify ads load properly” or even “we verify this extension isn’t running” then many sites would possibly choose those assessors. It also is blatantly deceitful because of all the issues it suggests it can fix, it doesn’t actually fix any of them. And many of them aren’t even that big of a problem.
From my very basic understanding of it yes. It in effect checks what’s loaded against what was served and if there’s a discrepancy it does its thing.
Note. If I have misunderstood please someone correct me.
Yes and no. They can freely enforce a specific DNS server and reject any browser with a custom one as “tampered with”. Just like they can freely enforce any part of your system being like they want it to be “or else”.
All of that can be easily checked via JavaScript, but now if you world use extensions to disable those checks you would not pass the attestation.
So yeah, essentially you no longer have control over your computer, and need to bend over and accept everything the site owner wishes to do.
bend over and accept everything the site owner wishes to do.
Including a malicious site owner’s wishes.
No, but that only works if the ads are being served by known ad hosts, so you should expect that adtech will get hip to that and proxy their traffic through the same hosts as the content.
That being said, it’s pretty easy to check if a user has network blackholing going on in clientside JavaScript, you just do a test request to a popular ad network and see if it resolves, no special browser support needed.
No that should still work. The server will send a page to your browser, and when the browser renders it, it will request the ad. And your pihole will block the request.
Unless WEI somehow changes how page rendering works but I don’t think so.
Not really. The environment could easily include resolution of an ad server. If a site uses two ad servers and neither resolves, the attestor could decide to fail the environment. The problem is the attestation is left open for the attestor to create. It could check web browser, extensions, operating system, etc. I fail to see how this is at all privacy protecting to begin with.
That’s absolutely horrible.
Stop WEI.
Does blocking ads by DNS still work? Current ads are AFAIK more sophisticated
Yes, it works well. There are some ads, like those built in to apps and pages for self-promotion (Microsoft having an ad for office on their own website, for example), that cant be blocked without disabling the service itself because the ad dns is the same as the content dns, but otherwise it works well.
Well passed time to do some monopoly busting.
Monopoly busting. Ecosystem lock-in. Right to repair. Software patent reform. Privacy and AI regulation.
What do lawmakers even do these days anyway?
Screw the proletariat, mostly
