are they seriously still going ahead with this shit? Web Integrity API is the worst idea in existence
If the web integrity API goes live and I can’t use some sites because of it, it will be very nice to have a very clear filter on what websites are complete garbage for using it. Vivat librewolf + VPN!
any websites that implement that API will never see me visit them ever again
Probably Netflix, YouTube, and streaming apps first. I’d say banks, but banks are slow. Games won’t take long. If there’s not enough blowback it’ll spread to every website that uses captchas today.
I feel like if a bank is going to use it, there needs to be a clear financial reason to. Because if someone can’t access their account, they might lose their shit and leave for the first bank whose website works.
This is the reason that banks can’t even roll out MFA beyond a text message. Everybody uses a bank, less people use Netflix. The customer support headache if only 0.1% of people have to call in defeats any cost savings, and they already are ready to write off a lot of losses due to crime etc
Korean banks already require some pretty weird stuff. It’s not common in the US at all, thankfully, but I can see them adopting it…
This is the kick in the butt I needed to de-google my life. I’ve already gotten halfway there, just need to make the full switch to proton mail, and then see what I can disconnect from my android phone.
I would hate to switch to Apple, but I may consider it if they are gonna pull this nonsense.
Try a Pixel + Custom ROM?
Ahh so I’m about to stop visiting some sites I see. Thanks google for the internet break.
Not that I don’t fully agree actually, but just want to point out that… Not using the web is an outcome they absolutely want. That way only the “right people” are using the Internet so there can be the maximum amount of advertising and money made from each iota of bandwidth they have pried from their hands.
You aren’t monetizable? Well they don’t want you wasting resources if you won’t increase their paycheck. It’s just the Internet once again being early in resource hording.
they are already implementing it in chome
f i r e f o x
we should have been using it for decades now.
but then simply switching browsers won’t really do in the long run, next step is hopefully banding together to eat the rich…
we should have been using it for decades now.
Some of us have
I used to use Firefox before Chrome, and it was working great. Then at some point Firefox just started sucking and so I ended up switching to Chrome.
Around the same time I stopped using hotmail in favor of gmail as well
Now, probably almost 20 years later I’m back at Firefox
I haven’t escaped gmail yet though
Gang gang
I used chrome for a long time. It’s just the browser I downloaded when I was a kid, and realized there were options other than Internet Explorer. I used it for years, just because I couldn’t be arsed to switch.
It was this Web API shit that made me finally bite the bullet and switch. Honestly, after some tinkering and researching plugins I barely notice the change. Should’ve switched years ago.
I started using Firefox after Opera changed to being Chromium-based about 10 years ago. (RIP) Fortunately Firefox is a lot better than it used to be so it’s not so bad.
Oddly enough I got a lot of unprompted flack from my colleagues about using non-Chrome browsers. It boggles my mind how much people are really attached to Chrome.
why is this even a comic
It is part of serie “Day 622 of poorly drawn stuff until YouTube brings back the dislike count or a better video platform appears”, they are mostly about internet things.
Oh poor devil is gonna be drawing daily comics for the rest of his life
comics are an incredible storyboarding-esque medium that you can use to draw and talk about anything. it doesn’t even need to be limited to a 4-panel gag. I love comics
Enshitification of the entire internet to force more ads
Thanks, capitalists :)
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From my understanding, it allows a website to check if you’re running a Chromium browser, and block your access to the site or to features of the site if you aren’t
Bing for enterprise is already blocking browsers that aren’t Edge. Clicking “Edge” from the list of browser identities in Firefox seems to go around the block.
Soon, we’ll get to “Best viewed with Chrome”, “Best viewed on 1920x1080”, “Google Chrome NOW!” even though other browsers could load the webpages just fine.
Oh, wait.
On what grounds? I know why google wants this, but why would the average website do this?
I can already picture Google down-ranking search results for any website that doesn’t implement it because obviously “if they aren’t using the integrity API we can’t guarantee they’re safe for our users”
Which… would just de-value Google Search, no?
This is the process Cory Doctorow termed “enshittification.” Services start out by prioritizing functionality for the users, even running at a loss to do so. This is one reason why new companies have a massive burn rate compared to their income.
The second step is they stop prioritizing users and start prioritizing “partners.” Those could be news sources, sellers, whatever. User functionality is compromised to optimize the “partner” experience.
Finally, they start to fuck over partners too, in order to shovel as much money as possible into the company’s accounts. Facebook did it with news sites - especially video. Twitter is doing a speed run on this. Google is accused of being well on its way with search, and I have no idea about their other services.
So, yes, Google may fuck up search just like Facebook fucked up their feed and Twitter is fucking up absolutely everything.
Google may fuck up search
They’ve already fucked it up. I’ve moved on to ddg, which is something I thought I would ever do five years ago. If the ddg integration with bing goes south, then I’ll start looking into things like kagi.
To people who know what’s going on sure, but for most users, if its not on the first page of Google it doesn’t exist.
The ‘average’ website wouldn’t but many of the social giants are desperately looking for a way to limit bot use. So Google gives them what they want and simultaneously gets to be the most reliable advertiser, ensuring impressions are viewed by not just a human but the right human.
How does this limit bot use? Is there something anti bot about chromium? Or does the api do more beyond checking for chromium compatible browsers
Because websites will check if you have a Web Integrity token being sent along by the browser and if it cannot find one registrations and login will be closed to your instance.
Edit: And to clarify, you will not get that token unless you verify your identity within the associated google account. Hence why only Chromium browsers will support this. But it isn’t about the browser. It’s about the token.
But that token is just provided by the browser, isnt it? Can bots not run within an instance of a chromium browser? I dont get how this stops a bot account.
Yeah sorry I just clarified. Read my comment higher up in the thread for more details. The token is generated upon verification of user identity.
This goes with other changes they did to chromium. Google claims it is to prevent bots, but it really is a crackdown on ads blocking and any other “tampering” with their websites.
If you care about keeping web free, you should stop using chrome and its derivatives and switch to Firefox. They are believing that Firefox user base is low and websites can simply exclude FF and force it to implement it as well.
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Don’t sites already do this?
browsers can currently report to be anything. which is why Google is trying to stop it.
It’s not about whether it’s a chromium browser or not. It’s about whether a browser is “trusted” and installed from a “trusted” source, like the windows store… Basically gatekeeping. Still, Firefox and any browser could still be approved.
This would be an insane damage to the Linux community since there are many different ways to install programms(including browsers).
Absolutely! I would wager a guess that something like this would require support on a package manager level, meaning that the biggest like Ubuntu or what not could have access to a functioning “trusted” browser. But good luck on a niche distro, or if you want to compile it yourself, or if you want to use certain extensions or…
What’s more trusted than source code?
According to Google - probably source code that can’t block ads and that is known to not block trackers… basically.
Or the API can die a quick death, like so many other Google products.
It’s not just chromium in and of itself. It’s that it would be a browser that’s unmodifiable by the user, so no unapproved extensions, no ad blockers, etc.
It’s a way for google to tell its ad buyers that “hey, we can 100% guarantee the end user is seeing your ads if they’re using this browser”. And then all of the corporate websites cater only to that browser, or give a different user experience for all other browsers.
Personally, I find this problematic for several reasons:
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I wouldn’t be in control of my browser and how it executes arbitrary code on my machine
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The system creates second class citizens on the internet
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It cedes control of the open internet to corporations, like google
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Privacy; I don’t give a shit what google says about pseudonymous and group identities, researchers have found problems after problems after problems…
You know, I can’t wait for the EU to tear Googles ass open until an elephant can walk through it. DMA my beloved
Imagine being forced to read ads when looking at a newspaper.
imagine defending advertisements and the largest corps in the world…
Also the attestations have to be signed by the underlying OS, so probably this would not work on Linux either.
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sometimes i wonder if its better to just let the internet die
Reject modernity, embrace tradition. Let’s go back to the old internet powered by people who knew how to connect their computer to the web and their custom webpages
That reminds me, I should get around to making my own website on neocities.
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Nope, neocities: https://neocities.org/
You say that now, but what are you gonna do without porn? Rent dvds?
people will start having sex again 🥲
Make internet to be just porn, that is the solution.
Stock up on hard drives and download all the content.
Alternatively, AI advances so far you can create basically anything with an appropriate prompt.
Well to be fair, if google wanted to kill Firefox they could just stop paying Mozilla for using their search engine as the default. That’s basically the only thing that’s keeping them afloat.
They don’t want to “kill Firefox” though. They want people to use Google products in all forms - using Google through Firefox is better than scattering users to other browsers without a Google default. By forcing users to Chromium they don’t just kill Firefox, they direct users TO ever more Google products in the process.
It’s all just a big plan to dominate the market, and it’s scary to think about.
Hey can the antitrust people looking at Google do something about this? Thanks.
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firefox has foxkeh why would you use anything else
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/come-get-your-fill-of-foxkeh-cuteness
Can’t lie, although not a solution to the bad part of WEI, pi-hole is looking really really nice…
