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Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

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191–200 of 484 posts

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#191
post #114

The Chrome team have used "the Open Web" as a euphemism for what is to all intents and purposes Google's great ad supported walled garden. That so few people see this for what it is is amazing, and then they get all surprised when Google act to preserve it and close the capability gap with native platforms.

When Microsoft did this with IE, they did it with proprietary and undocumented APIs. The fact that this is an open spec, discussed in an open forum, using well established and standard technologies is what ensures it can never be positioned against users in any meaningful way. To me it looks like SGX for the web. Maybe it will introduce some neat and weird capabilities, but at the end of the day, it will be trivial t…

Can you explain how you'd bypass it?

Let's say example.com decides to require attestation from the {MS, Apple, Google} providers, and that they attest to only Chrome without extensions. You can't forge the attestation because cryptography. You can't fail to provide it (because they'll just refuse to send the bits). You can't use a "malicious" attestor because example.com won't trust it.

What's the trivial bypass I'm missing? How does a freely accessible standard impact the ability to bypass things in any way?

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#192
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Google can do something that every one of it's users hates I don't think this is remotely the case. Quite a few tech-savvy people I know (some of them software developers) use Chrome and mostly don't care about whatever Google does with it. I mention "manifest v3" and get a blank stare. I talk about advertising and ad blockers, and most people don't care, with some of them not even using ad blockers. We really…

I don't buy this. I'm sure most iphone users don't care when you ask them about privacy or manifest v3 as an abstract concept, but remember what happened when Apple tried to push a U2 album to them? They lost their collective shit. They may not write blog posts about privacy or donate to the EFF, but they have deeply personal relationships with "their" phone and they absolutely hate being reminded that it isn't reall…

iPhone users are using Manifest V3 _every single day_ in their Safari. There was never another option for them.

Yet, noone cares, even on HN.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#193

The proposal author (who locked the issue[0] on Github) also commented on HN and has, so far, remained silent here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36825097 [0] https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/...

As far as I am concerned the reputation of this Ben Wiser guy is so far down the toilet that there’s practically nothing he can do or say to recover it.

Like the old joke goes “you screw a goat once…”

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? Who is forcing the free web to use this mechanism, since it is the server that requests the confirmation. Why can't it just... not?

All the websites demanding that I disable my adblocker say that they definitely will.

That doesn't seem like the free web though.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#196
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Google can do something that every one of it's users hates I don't think this is remotely the case. Quite a few tech-savvy people I know (some of them software developers) use Chrome and mostly don't care about whatever Google does with it. I mention "manifest v3" and get a blank stare. I talk about advertising and ad blockers, and most people don't care, with some of them not even using ad blockers. We really…

I don't buy this. I'm sure most iphone users don't care when you ask them about privacy or manifest v3 as an abstract concept, but remember what happened when Apple tried to push a U2 album to them? They lost their collective shit. They may not write blog posts about privacy or donate to the EFF, but they have deeply personal relationships with "their" phone and they absolutely hate being reminded that it isn't reall…

[flagged]

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#197
post #59

Remember they already added DRM to browsers once. There was a big outcry at the time, and they still went ahead and implemented it. Now even Firefox supports Widevine. If they believe that it's in their best interest, I'm not really sure what we can do against this...

Who benefits from browsers not supporting EME?

The choices were EME, Flash, or no premium VOD on the web.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#198
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy this. I'm sure most iphone users don't care when you ask them about privacy or manifest v3 as an abstract concept, but remember what happened when Apple tried to push a U2 album to them? They lost their collective shit. They may not write blog posts about privacy or donate to the EFF, but they have deeply personal relationships with "their" phone and they absolutely hate being reminded that it isn't reall…

iPhone users are using Manifest V3 _every single day_ in their Safari. There was never another option for them. Yet, noone cares, even on HN.

I care, and I've basically stopped using my iphone for anything because the web is an abysmal experience full of ads even with the maximum amount of ad blocking possible on iOS. I hate the iPhone and the only reason I haven't switched back to android is that it seems to manage to, somehow, still be even worse. We are well and truly on the other side of the enshitification event horizon on mobile, and it looks like Google is doing it's best to make sure the web keeps up on the desktop too.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#199
post #81
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Google can do something that every one of it's users hates I don't think this is remotely the case. Quite a few tech-savvy people I know (some of them software developers) use Chrome and mostly don't care about whatever Google does with it. I mention "manifest v3" and get a blank stare. I talk about advertising and ad blockers, and most people don't care, with some of them not even using ad blockers. We really…

I'm a tech-savvy person and I consider Manifest v3 an improvement (improves security + performance), and Firefox implements it as well as things like declarativeNetRequest[1]. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

Can you expand on the security improvements of v3? This is the first I've heard this.

As for performance... That sounds dubious. Declarative blocking surely will be faster than v2, but what is being blocked by v2, I would imagine, is generally way slower than the difference between v2 and v3. At the end of the day, I don't see the performance of my browser negatively impacted by uBlock Origin, I see it saving CPU, bandwidth, memory, privacy, etc.

I'd be willing to bet that whatever isn't blocked by v3 is sifnificantly slower than whatever supposed slowness there is with v2 (in general).

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#200
The people involved in this concept/idea/proposal should be shamed into retirement. They should never work in the tech sector again. They should be afraid to use their names before first knowing their audience (an agricultural audience would likely be OK).
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