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Tech giants are hijacking the internet

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Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#131

Post by squigz »

john_the_writer wrote: post #125
winternett wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. O…

There is just no alternative. If you want to self host a site your ISP won't let you. If you want to self host email, none of your messages will get through. 15 years ago I could host a site at home. Today, it can't be done. Want to regulate something... Make ISP's allow for self hosting. My 5 year old android phone has the power to host a small personal site, but my ISP won't let it happen.

What sort of place do you live that you can't host a site on your home network?

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#132

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

robertlagrant wrote: post #126
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

How does that relate to this statement: > WEI is a way to cryptographically prove to a remote website that you're really browsing it with an unmodified build of Chrome What you're saying (and what I read) appears much more general than that. It could be used to block anything but official builds of Chrome, but that doesn't mean that's what it's for.

That's essentially what I said.

It's like a knife, it has lots of uses, one of them is to kill people.

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#133

Post by josephcsible »

robertlagrant wrote: post #127
josephcsible wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://vivaldi.com/blog/googles-new-dangerous-web-environme... says: > It would provide websites with an API telling them whether the browser and the platform it is running on that is currently in use is trusted by an authoritative third party (called an attester). And https://www.xda-developers.com/google-web-environment-integr... says: > The proposal threatens the free and open internet in a number of ways, but on…

I understand what it could be used for - DNS and PKI as centralised structures could also be used to block things. Parler was kicked off all cloud platforms for political reasons. But that doesn't mean that its sole purpose is to verify that you're using an official Chrome build.

DNS and PKI have a lot of other purposes, though. What other purposes for WEI can you think of?

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#134

Post by mym1990 »

wayfinder wrote: post #120
mym1990 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely people who will and still do pay for these things, Apple News+ or whatever is an example of news...also WSJ, NYT, Economist subscriptions...Instagram verified checkmarks. The question is how do these companies capture both the paying and non paying users...and that is through advertising. If you pay any attention, the amount of ads you watch is your payment to these companies for "free" services.

I am one of those people but this is a far cry from the days where you had to use a newspaper vending machine or walk into a video rental store. Free wasn’t really even an option. Anyway my point is that the problem is not the lack of open standards. The problem is that we discovered how to do “free” and a lot of people prefer this way whether they want to think about it or not.

I think we got bait and switched. Initially a lot of the services used network effects to reach a peak mass and got dependency lock in(think using FB or Google as login options as an example), and then monetized through "ads or subscription", which inherently made the experience absolute crap.

I can get behind ads in moderation or subscriptions that aren't mired in dark patterns, but I feel like 30% of my time consuming anything on social media is spent on watching ads, so I just go do something else now.

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#135

Post by Yizahi »

robertlagrant wrote: post #128
Yizahi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can fork Google Chrome, yet none has done this so far. Not counting pretty GUI or some integrated extensions as a fork really. Google Chromium is genius marketing idea, hats off to the people who invented it, they convinced even programmers that there is some mythical "independent" Chromium project and anyone can fork it. Well, theoretically it is possible, but practically - not so much. The strategy is so suc…

Given Edge, Brave, Opera, Silk, Arc, Vivaldi, etc[0], are all built on Chromium, are you sure? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Active

They are built on Chrome. Chromium is a shim, a pseudo-independent Chrome copy with some small changes, to pretend that there is no Chrome monopoly.

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#136

Post by robertlagrant »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #132
robertlagrant wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that relate to this statement: > WEI is a way to cryptographically prove to a remote website that you're really browsing it with an unmodified build of Chrome What you're saying (and what I read) appears much more general than that. It could be used to block anything but official builds of Chrome, but that doesn't mean that's what it's for.

That's essentially what I said. It's like a knife, it has lots of uses, one of them is to kill people.

The thread makes this clear. I'm arguing that "You can only use chrome to view this site." is not the only use. You seem to be agreeing, but adversarially.

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#137

Post by robertlagrant »

Yizahi wrote: post #135
robertlagrant wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given Edge, Brave, Opera, Silk, Arc, Vivaldi, etc[0], are all built on Chromium, are you sure? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Active

They are built on Chrome. Chromium is a shim, a pseudo-independent Chrome copy with some small changes, to pretend that there is no Chrome monopoly.

Can you cite how you know this?

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#138

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

robertlagrant wrote: post #136
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's essentially what I said. It's like a knife, it has lots of uses, one of them is to kill people.

The thread makes this clear. I'm arguing that "You can only use chrome to view this site." is not the only use. You seem to be agreeing, but adversarially.

well I guess fuck me for attempting to explain, no good deed goes unpunished.

adversarial indeed.

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#139

Post by phendrenad2 »

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.

> That's because it is unsafe

Safety and freedom are natural enemies.

Re: Tech giants are hijacking the internet

#140

Post by actionfromafar »

arran-nz wrote: post #32
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 recently joined, here's their verified account: https://mastodon.social/@dw_innovation

How common is it for companies to run their own Mastodon server?
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