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.
If it goes anything like Microsoft’s antitrust trial, they’ll drag it out until they get a complicit administration to settle with.
It’s crazy to think that a little over two decades ago, Microsoft was almost broken up for selling an operating system and a web browser. How monopolistic!
I want to live in the timeline whete Microsoft was borken up
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.
I’m just a layman, but it has been nagging my brain how all these big tech companies seem to be turning shitty all at once. I’ve seen others propose similar explanations, but the basic idea is that the historically low rates got them addicted to “free” capital. Now the faucet has been slammed shut and they have to make up for the shortfall.
Also, it’s not just big tech at fault. The massive worldwide inflation we’ve experienced happened for the same reason - shortsighted greed.
It’s definitely the high interest rates. All of tech has been built on venture capitalist money with “grow at all costs” as the primary strategy. With sustained higher interest rates, VC money is much harder to get. The focus has gone from “grow at all costs” to “become profitable at all costs.” It’s jarring, and it’s happening everywhere at the same time.
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“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.
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!
Ok they the power and apparently the legal power*
Ad of right now ues and until ftc grow a spine
The fact that they have that much of a monopoly is exactly why it isn’t legal, but those laws are basically never enforced
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 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 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 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.
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.
Yeah I’ve been annoyed with how many sites are using protections that blanket block VPNs.
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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.
This is why projects like tor are important
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…
WEI can potentially be used to impose restrictions on unlawful activities on the internet, such as downloading YouTube videos and other content, ad blocking, web scraping, etc.
Not one of those things is illegal.
Some are against a site’s TOS and some are outright fine.
This is the most disturbing “boring dystopia” thing yet.
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Yeah that’s bullsh*t by the author of the article.
Well ai scrapping is against copyright.
Scraping itself is not illegal. It’s not until an AI generates a copyrighted IP that it becomes an issue.
It’s like if I were trying to start an art business. You come to me and ask me to draw a princess. I’ve never seen a princess before, so I go online and look up images of princesses to get an idea what to draw. I go back to the studio and draw you a picture of Snow White.
Me looking up princess images is fine. It’s only when I sell a Disney® IP without their permission that it becomes illegal. And, even then, it’s a civil matter, not criminal.
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.
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.
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I’ve been using Firefox mobile for a few years now too, and the one thing I’ll point out is that the addon store is a lot more limited than on PC – unless you’re using Firefox nightly or beta, which lets you use any. But for the average user that only needs ublock or noscript, etc. it’s a perfect choice:)
Tampermonkey expands the functionality you can use to take control, I use the twitter control panel to transform the mobile experience of X. No need for the app with all the forced Elmo bollocks.
It’s kind of silly. I use nightly with custom add-ons and most of the add-ons work without issue. The UI might not be the best for the phone but they’re functional. I’m not sure why the mobile add-ons are so restricted, even enabling them in nightly is bizarre. You need to go in and tap on the FF icon in the version info page or something like that…
I recently switched and all’s good so far. Correct me if I’m wrong, wei would also be able to block certain browsers, including Firefox, right? I wish just switching browsers would be enough to avoid Wei though :/
If google gets their way websites will be able to block OS’s and browsers. But if enough people switch to Firefox they won’t be able to push this change as easily. Google Chrome has about an 80% marketshare in the browser market and most of the alternatives are forks of Chromium which google controls. If this doesn’t change Google will be able to do anything they want.
I have too use Edge at work. Is Edge also implementing this shit?
Im so sorry u should use it…
Firefox in the meanwhile but long term we need to move away from the unfathomably bloated web
protocolstandard/browsers.Web protocol? Which one?
I wouldn’t consider http or dns bloated, for instance. And tcp/ip isn’t web-specific enough for me to think that’s what you mean by “the web protocol”.
Are you just trying to say you don’t like websites in a way that sounds techy?
I’m referring to the totality of what is required to make a complete and secure web browser from scratch.
That’s a rant about the complexity of modern browser engines, not the protocols. The web worked just fine before CSS and JS. The protocols aren’t the problem. Lynx is still being maintained if you want the web without the bloat of features like js and inline images.
I believe the rant demonstrates there cannot be more competition for browsers and therefore justifies the idea that browsers will stagnate and come to an end. I think the solution will be to move away from one application doing many things to using separate software dedicated to narrow purposes.
Ah yes, I do the same in my kitchen. One machine that does one job and then sits around unused for the rest of the year.
No, obviously that is not the way. I don’t want to deal with 20 separate programs to do the job Firefox does.
When you want to use the scanner but can’t because the printer is broken.
What’s the “web protocol”? Are you talking about HTTP?
Seems from their response to me asking the same thing, they mean browser engines, not anything to do with any of the protocols involved.
I wish I’d said “web standards” instead.
You mean HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc?
Including those but also all specifications defined by the W3C. I would post other examples here but I’m out of my depth.
Ok well, the modern web technology ecosystem is incredibly featureful and flexible, it allows a huge array of options for building rich interactive applications, all delivered to your browser on-demand in a few seconds.
Sure some of the technologies involved aren’t perfect (and I challenge you to find any system that feature-rich that doesn’t have a few dark corners), but there really no alternative option that comes close in terms of flexibility and maturity.
Adding features endlessly, heedless of danger of the inate security issue from the complexity, makes for an uncompetative and ultimatly unsustainable ecosystem.
The alternative I believe in is to use seperare apps for each segmented feature (the dedicated video player plays the video, the browser merely fetches it).
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They used to have a motto like “Do no evil”, which was kinda sus to begin with (they were a search engine in a time when many didn’t even consider the evil possibilities of the internet). But if you start out with a motto like that, it’s even more sus if you suddenly drop it, which they did.
They didn’t “drop it”. It’s still there. Scroll all the way to the bottom.
They simply removed it from higher profile places and don’t mention it until the very end. Sort of a jab at the old policy.
Ah, so it is. Still hard to tell if it’s genuine or PR.
Usually when a company loudly proclaims that “we have this quality” they’re compensating for not in fact having it.
You get the same in people: “I’m so smart”, “I’m so beautiful”, “I’m so confident” and so on are usually said to others by people who don’t actually believe they have such (otherwise self-evident) qualities.
In that logic “Do no Evil” was a red flag.
Google does not have a trusted position.
From the point of web infrastructure and standards, they certainly do.
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.
From their point of view, blocking ads probably equals fraud.
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!
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 think there’s some non-symbolic effort going on in ungoogled-chromium.
Here?: https://ungoogled-software.github.io/about/
Looks like a good project, I didn’t know about its existence.
Yeah :) This is the issue: https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/issues/2432
That PR doesn’t appear to make any sense. It modifies an include rule, so at best it would make Android Webview fail to compile.
Yes, the purpose isn’t sabotaging.
Ootl… What is the purpose?
Raise awareness…
From this github comment:
If you oppose this, don’t just comment and complain, contact your antitrust authority today:
- UK:
Dear madam/sir
I dont trust googel. take me seriously.
yours, Willer
Dense US citizen here. Eli5 how I should explain “just trust us not to abuse collection of all your data or else get locked out of the world wide web” applies to antitrust laws for the FTC?
I’m genuinely wanting to submit an email complaint/report. I understand that WEI protects nothing, but risks your data with all the sites you visit, all in an effort just to block possibly unprofitable users – but I’m not sure how to tie in and word the Breaks Antitrust Laws part.
Thank for your time to post these links.
Nothing dense in this, I don’t quite know what to write either. In my opinion what you wrote in your comment is just perfect, you’re a citizen simply expressing an honest concern, without lying – not all people are tech-savvy. It also makes it clear that it’s a letter from a real person.
But that’s only my point of view, and maybe I haven’t thought enough steps ahead. Let’s see what other people suggest and why.
Another dense citizen here. I ould say that you put it quite eloquently in your comment.
But direct the question towards them.
“Would googles new changes on their ad and user policy be affected by FTC data protection laws and GDPR or would they be in compliance”
Or something among those lines.
Fuck Google 2023
It’s time to use web integrity against them, by blocking access to your site if they “pass” integrity checks, and telling them to use a freedom respecting browser instead.
This is actually already implemented, see here.
Redoing several sites I have ,this will be included
Absolutely. And build web sites where all browsers and operating systems are welcome.
Not that I find idea bad but doesn’t this statement contradict the one you’re commenting?
Yes you are right actually. :P
Can’t get that past a programmer can I… :)
Lmao this would be hilarious
I would support this
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.
Google: Do
noALL evil.I’m glad the reaction all around seems to be “That’s sus as fuck”
Me too, there is hope!
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?
Unless Google are planning to completely lock the browser down to prevent user scripting and all extensions
Ding ding ding!
It doesn’t actually prevent anything because you can just use a different browser.
Just like Trickle Down, “Don’t be evil” has aged well and deserves to be repackaged. /s
The motto not the evil
