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Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

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Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#181

Post by MetaMalone »

larata_media wrote: post #40
c0l0 wrote: post #5

I feel like I have to repeat this, since so much is at stake here, where it is about the preservation of the web as we know it today, at the peril of having it turned into yet another walled garden: The only way around the dystopia this will lead to is to constantly and relentlessly shame and even harass all those involved in helping create it. The scolding in the issue tracker of that wretched "project" shall flow l…

I agree with your overall ideal of free access to information but I disagree that harassment is a necessary or even effective option to push against this. I think the harassment puts us in a category of ineffective, bitter malcontents and that’s not what we are. We are capable of going to elsewhere to free and open access to information, and we would be better off spending our energy on positively influencing others…

We must believe in ourselves. We are too quick to be cynical about the future of the web - too quick to forget our ingenuity in the face of adversity.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#182

Post by kevmo »

hartator wrote: post #163
doliveira wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, financial and social pressure is basically the only weapons we have against corporations when regulations don't exist. And honestly, financial pressure doesn't work at this scale or in this case.

> when regulations don't exist It’s very likely governments will make this mandatory if they have the chance to regulate over this.

[flagged]

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#183

Post by jmvoodoo »

andersa wrote: post #136
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #96

It looks like they do not care if they have consensus or approval for WEI, they are implementing it regardless. Wherever you live, you should contact your government representatives and regulators and put a spotlight on this issue for what it is--monopoly abuse of power. Grassroots efforts are great and it is good to let your friends, family, and associates know what they are doing and why it is wrong. However, gover…

Why do you think they don't have consensus or approval from all the people that matter? This is far too big for that. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Cloudflare, etc, are all working together on this. Governments will like it for "security", and 99% of users won't care.

That looks an awful lot like a cartel.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#184

Post by Dalewyn »

j1elo wrote: post #123
pluc wrote: post #44

This is a crisis of our own making. You don't want Google taking decisions for the web at large? Then don't let them own 85% of the browser market share. When that's the case they don't need W3C or anything to implement whatever they want, they effectively control the client-side internet.

It's proven that mass marketing works. Tell me how a minority of informed and caring users can avoid on their own that a single large scale bad actor pours millions over millions of dollars to convince the uninformed masses about whatever they want. It even happens in actual elections when some factions use misinformation campaigns to alter the average voter's perception! So not an easy task to solve without help.

>Tell me how a minority of informed and caring users can avoid on their own that a single large scale bad actor pours millions over millions of dollars to convince the uninformed masses about whatever they want.

Firefox.

No, not Firefox of today; I'm talking about Firefox 20 years ago that defeated IE6 by sheer force of nerds alone.

Of course, the landscape is vastly different now and Firefox today is about the most not-nerd thing next to Chrome. If there's a a browser here to save us anywhere, I'm not seeing it.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#185

Post by kristiandupont »

wsgeorge wrote: post #118
bee_rider wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear Firefox is mismanaged all the time, but it seems to be a perfectly fine browser for the most part. I hear all about sites that won’t render in comments on this website, but they must all be internal tools or something because I never encounter them.

Some Google services I regularly depend on (like YouTube and Google Meet) don't work as well on Firefox as they do on Chrome, in ways that actually matter. Besides that I think most websites work fine.

What's wrong with Youtube? I haven't noticed anything.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#186

Post by encody »

It's small, but here's a real actionable item that you can do to help:

Put a gentle "Use Firefox" (or any other non-Chromium-based browser) message on your website. It doesn't have to be in-your-face, just something small.

I've taken my own advice and added it to my own website: https://geeklaunch.io/

(It only appears on Chromium-based browsers.)

We can slowly turn the tide, little by little.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#188

Post by mo_42 »

I think this is a somewhat natural consequence of Google being a powerful corporation.

And, I don’t think we (somewhat loosely defined group of people who like free software and information and have a user-friendly computing environment) can and should work against this. Probably, we should give the corporate web some sandbox where they can play their games, while we develop alternatives.

For example, Gemini is becoming more popular. People are talking about search engines that exclude the corporate web and favor personal websites. IPFS or just switching to FF again.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#189

Post by troupo »

px43 wrote: post #92
troupo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "incentive" for Google is "80% of our revenue comes from ads". Google's open source projects are open in name only.

> Google's open source projects are open in name only. The link at the top of the page is pointing to the GitHub repo, where you can see literally over a million contributions from thousands of people working at hundreds of companies: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commits/main I've worked on both Chrome and Android (Chromium and AOSP) professionally, and never worked at Google.

Well, true :)

What I should've written is that: yes, they are open source, but there's no way to influence the direction they are going. These projects are 100% Google-run, and very few (if any) decisions are public.

For most projects there's also a significant proprietary part in the actual final product

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#190

Post by pimterry »

londons_explore wrote: post #55

One of the proposals for WEI is to make it probabilistically fail. Ie. on a given device, for 10% of websites, WEI pretends to be unsupported. That means websites can't deny service where WEI is unsupported. Yet it still allows statistical analysis across bulk user accounts. If WEI was implemented like this, I would support it as being good for the web ecosystem.

That's currently just an idea in the 'Open questions' section of the spec, but there is already pushback against it from others closely involved in the spec & discussion around this (https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/...) and notably the attestation feature Google already shipped on Android for native apps in the same situation does _not_ do this.
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