Not a lawyer but this seems ripe for antitrust action. Microsoft got sued back in the 2000's for simply bundling IE with their operating system. The behavior of Google (and quite frankly Microsoft with Edge) seems way way worse than whatever MS was doing when they got sued.
Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
61–70 of 876 posts
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'll need an "approved" browser and potentially "approved" hardware to access the web. Since Cloudflare is on this too, most of the web will be locked for anyone who doesn't use mainstream hardware.
But why do they care so much about this? Is it only for DRM on media playback?
The stated reason is to stop bots from being counted as ad views and make sure that all ad views are done by actual humans. This is likely even honest reasoning from the people developing it.
The same technology could easily be applied to simply blocking anyone who isn't verified (in the name of stopping spam, DDoS, bank security, you name it), meaning anyone not using an approved install of Windows/macOS/Android/iOS is shut out from the internet.
In the long term, in the name of "banking security", they're likely to add a mode that also lets you ensure your pages aren't tampered with by extensions, and there go all the ad blockers.
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing will happen. People have been making the same complaints about every new crypto standard for decades, and yet here we are. TPMs are a thing, EME has been around for over a decade now, DRM on the web is as pervasive as it's ever going to get, and yet no one's user experience is any worse than it was before these technologies existed.
Yes, and I am still unable to play 4K Netflix on a PC that has been able to play 4K videos for about 7 years now. It's permanently blocked to prevent piracy, or something, mumble, mumble...
There are several ways to play 4k Netflix videos on any platform you want, because nothing they are doing actually prevents piracy.
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#64Can somebody explain what are the practical implications of this?
From a very top level view, this gives Google, and other websites, the ability to block requests from devices/browsers they don't approve. This implements device level verification of the code running your browser. If the device identifies as something Google, or other implementing websites, don't approve, you'll get an error similar to how you see 404 errors for missing/wrong links.
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Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'll need an "approved" browser and potentially "approved" hardware to access the web. Since Cloudflare is on this too, most of the web will be locked for anyone who doesn't use mainstream hardware.
Cloudflare want to be the internets backbone. And they've honestly succeeded. Now it's almost impossible to access websites in an automated way -- the CTO posted you can just email him ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34639212 ) and he'll sort it. Because that scales. edit: Mispoke about the CTO, said he would approve you, I was wrong. Apologies. Their DNS is "privacy focused", but they provide "aggregated resu…
Also remember, Cloudflare is de-facto the moderator of the internet.
Whatever you may think of Kiwifarms, we all saw how that narrative unfolded from a technical perspective.
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#66Has anyone come across a good nontechnical summary that could be shared more broadly?
Edit: the Register article linked elsewhere looks as good as it gets for now https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/25/google_web_environmen...
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#67[deleted]
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/... the best place to shame?
Attempting to open an issue yields this message: "An owner of this repository has limited the ability to comment to users that have contributed to this repository in the past."
You can still report it as malware (which it actually is)
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#69I'm sick of these guys trying to break the web. From now on it's personal. We need to make sure that Google gets very hurt, and ideally they are wiped out from our industry.
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#70Apple would be in the position to fight this.