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Tech giants are hijacking the internet

dw.com

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Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#101

Post by winternett »

josho wrote: post #64
nologic01 wrote: post #23

Well DW could do something about it by at least adding the fediverse on their abominable "follow us on X, Y, Z". DW does not even have an RSS feed for chris sake. The press is complicit in the hijacking of the internet. They made a Faustian pact. Now they are crying foul.

I think you are misreading the situation. It’s not enough to have open standards if the big guys just consume that data into their closed platforms. The author argues they are too powerful. We had open standards and big tech embraced and then locked it into their platforms. We need regulations at this point.

The universe let it all happen. By using cloud services, analytics, and free email services to allow monoliths to be able to run surveillance on basically every original idea launched since the early 2000s, users let and enabled this to happen. Not only did people open their information and identities deeply to companies like google, they also funded them vastly by caving in once free services became paid services.

On the back end, there is I'm sure a complex and covert dashboard project and monitoring systems to detect ideas and trends that fuel/drive decisions in Google's deeply anti-competitive behavior. There's even a solid chance that legislators are tapped via enterprise Gmail services the government now heartily uses (for example), and Google knows everything that is coming through the pipeline. Everyone was warned by scholars long ago about exactly this scenario, but we keep re-inventing the Titanic and the Hindenburg on hubris and ignorance, it never fails. It's far too late to regulate this away. Google needs to be broken up and diversified into new and totally individually distinct and independent companies for future accountability and segregation of info to be upheld.

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#102

Post by webdoodle »

nologic01 wrote: post #23

Well DW could do something about it by at least adding the fediverse on their abominable "follow us on X, Y, Z". DW does not even have an RSS feed for chris sake. The press is complicit in the hijacking of the internet. They made a Faustian pact. Now they are crying foul.

> They made a Faustian pact. Now they are crying foul.

Only because they got caught with leaks like the Twitter Files. Now their trustworthiness is at an all time low, and they need to make someone else look like the bad guy. Insert spiderman pointing at spiderman meme here...

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#103

Post by happytiger »

anononaut wrote: post #91
happytiger wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So mainstream press finally starts covering the egregious behavior of big tech companies and the response is to attack them as complicit co-conspirators? Might sound smart but perhaps not the wisest of criticism. Let’s encourage dissent so we can preserve democracies.

Is this satire?

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#104

Post by diarrhea »

doublerabbit wrote: post #92
labcomputer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because it is unsafe. Without HTTPS, an attacker can inject arbitrary malicious javascript into the page. The only context in which plain HTTP is ok on today's internet is when you a loading a page from your own server on the same LAN, behind a firewall, when you are reasonably sure that nobody else is in you network.

> That's because it is unsafe. Without HTTPS, an attacker can inject arbitrary malicious javascript into the page. No they can't. If they can inject malicious content then you should fix the exploits on your platform. HTTPS isn't going to save you. If exploitable under HTTP hey can do the same under HTTPS. So, How is a static webpage of "hello world" unsafe? hello world sigh Replace hello world with whatever informat…

Next to what the sibling comment already said: no MitM needed. ISPs can act as MitM as well. That can range from annoying to nefarious. See for example: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/70970/my-isp-is...

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#105

Post by Shish2k »

EGreg wrote: post #18

You could rely on government to try to rein them in — good luck. Didn’t work with Ma Bell, the pieces still charged $3 a minute. Or you could contribute to open protocols, and do to the tech giants what: The Web did to AOL, MSN, etc. VoIP did to AT&T, Sprint, etc. Wikipedia did to Britannica OpenStreetMap will do to Google Maps etc. Open, permissionless networks beat closed, proprietary ones once they are good enough…

> Open, permissionless networks beat closed, proprietary ones once they are good enough.

Generally yes, but not necessarily - look at what happened when we (the nerds who write free software) collectively decided that IRC was “good enough” :(

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#106

Post by extraduder_ire »

labcomputer wrote: post #80
doublerabbit wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your missing the point. In that browsers insist that you now -must- have HTTPS. And that if you wish to serve an static HTTP website over HTTP you can not without a glaring "This site is unsafe" thrown in your face.

That's because it is unsafe. Without HTTPS, an attacker can inject arbitrary malicious javascript into the page. The only context in which plain HTTP is ok on today's internet is when you a loading a page from your own server on the same LAN, behind a firewall, when you are reasonably sure that nobody else is in you network.

I don't think http is going away in the short term, anyway. Too many captive portals exist that aren't going to get upgraded to https any time soon.

I'd appreciate if self-signed certs of some kinds weren't so alerty though. Though, that might inspire false confidence.

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#107

Post by doublerabbit »

precommunicator wrote: post #93
doublerabbit wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's because it is unsafe. Without HTTPS, an attacker can inject arbitrary malicious javascript into the page. No they can't. If they can inject malicious content then you should fix the exploits on your platform. HTTPS isn't going to save you. If exploitable under HTTP hey can do the same under HTTPS. So, How is a static webpage of "hello world" unsafe? hello world sigh Replace hello world with whatever informat…

Now try connecting to public wifi with that. Doing a MiTM and replacing anything with anything else is super easy. Just put a router with some Linux distro acting as extender (or mobile connection AP) with the same name and you can change traffic on any non-HTTPS website. Or not even a public wifi. Someone can put a device somewhere between your home and ISP and MiTM attack you the same way as above. Oh, and I will j…

Yes, however the website is still inherently secure outside of those scenarios.

If you were visit that page on an network that is not MiTM the website is still secure. There is no requirement for SSL.

The scenarios you listed can even make HTTPS insecure.

The users laptop is infected with a virus, their antivirus software has been exploited with a bogus root cert.

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#108

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

nologic01 wrote: post #43
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of internet forum reply is so commmon there is a name for it and even a Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism The "whatabout" type replies would seem to require that the only websites that can report on the ills of the internet are ones that have no ads, no tracking, no telemetry, no data collection, and so on. Everything must be perfect. That's a bit silly. Shooting the messenger. Argu…

This type of internet forum reply is so commmon there is a name for it and even a Wikipedia page [1]. "A straw man fallacy (sometimes written as strawman) is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction" I did not ask that they don't have ads, not track their readers, and so on. I asked why there is no link whatso…

Even if that weren't the case, pointing out that someone is whinging about a situation they put themselves in is not whataboutism.

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#109

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

robertlagrant wrote: post #98
josephcsible wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WEI is a way to cryptographically prove to a remote website that you're really browsing it with an unmodified build of Chrome. Google hasn't said out loud yet that it's going to be used to block other browsers, but what else is there to use it for?

I don't think that's what it does. Where did you read that?

that's what it does, it's called attestation.

It's being used to be able to tell bots from humans. A human will be required to run a browser with proper attestation that they're a human. It can be used for good (prevent bots from accessing the site) and bad (prevent humans from using anything but chrome).

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#110

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

Shish2k wrote: post #105
EGreg wrote: post #18

You could rely on government to try to rein them in — good luck. Didn’t work with Ma Bell, the pieces still charged $3 a minute. Or you could contribute to open protocols, and do to the tech giants what: The Web did to AOL, MSN, etc. VoIP did to AT&T, Sprint, etc. Wikipedia did to Britannica OpenStreetMap will do to Google Maps etc. Open, permissionless networks beat closed, proprietary ones once they are good enough…

> Open, permissionless networks beat closed, proprietary ones once they are good enough. Generally yes, but not necessarily - look at what happened when we (the nerds who write free software) collectively decided that IRC was “good enough” :(

The first time I ever saw IRC being used was by a non-technical person in a computer lab.
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