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

arstechnica.com

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

#221

Post by acomjean »

Dalewyn wrote: post #213
SoftTalker wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox did not defeat IE6. That was Chrome. Firefox has basically been a fringe browser since Netscape imploded. The original reason Google started the Chrome project was that the stagnation of IE6 was a barrier to implementing the web software they wanted to build. At least that's what they told us.

No, it was Firefox that defeated IE6. Chrome came and defeated Firefox; Firefox's reign was rather shortlived. It seems this particular moment in history has been either forgotten or rewritten, judging from this thread and another one from yesterday.

This is true. As someone who had a work time card I could fill out on Solaris using Firefox. This the new time card website came out that was “ie” only and we had to log onto a virtual NT server do our time card. Ugh. It was a nightmare. Then slowly Firefox came back. It was short lived majority but I still use it. I rather like it.

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

#222

Post by insanitybit »

> Google's plan is that, during a webpage transaction, the web server could require you to pass an "environment attestation" test before you get any data.

Sounds pretty sweet from a corp security perspective. Context Aware Access lets you do attestation at SSO time but baking device integrity further into the system would be helpful.

Unfortunately, this gives a lot of power to webpages. I'm not sure it's worth the tradeoff. This seems like something better handled by an extension, but I'll have to read the spec.

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

#223

Post by gessha »

TylerE wrote: post #152
nl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one I knew really cared much about the U2 album except that it was a bad album and they didn't want it in their collection. From the people I know there no one upset about the power dynamics - everyone who complained would have been 100% happy if Apple had given them an album they liked.

And also, in a bug I'm not sure was entirely on Apple, when plugged into many car stereos iTunes would start playing the first song in your library, so users were annoyed because everythime they'd plug their phone into their car to charge it would start playing a 3rd tier U2 album.

Ba-ba-Barbara, Santa Barbara Ba-ba-Barbara, Santa Barbara…

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

#224

Post by lapcat »

izacus wrote: post #192
ineptech wrote: post #93

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.

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

This is false. Safari supports Manifest V2 and has no plans to deprecate it.

I'd guess that you're confused because Safari lacks support for webRequest BlockingResponse: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

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

#225

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

kelnos wrote: post #63
mabbo wrote: post #32

> Exactly how the rest of the world feels about this is not necessarily relevant, though. Google owns the world's most popular web browser, the world's largest advertising network, the world's biggest search engine, the world's most popular operating system, and some of the world's most popular websites. So really, Google can do whatever it wants. This is the point that company breakups start to make a lot of sense.…

> 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…

"Exactly how the rest of the world feels about this is not necessarily relevant, though."

This quote is from page 2 of the article. It is common for certain HN commenters to remind us that HN is a bubble. True. However, the author of this article is not necessarily in this bubble.

But, honestly, what difference does it make whether HN is a bubble or not. Google is a bubble. The Register, another entity outside the HN bubble, calls Google "The Chocolate Factory".^1 Does it matter that Google is a bubble.

1. Of course it's also common for certain HN commenters to try to broadly dismiss all journalism, on a news aggregator site no less. Maybe there is a pattern here.

Would anyone outside the HN bubble try to discredit the observations about so-called "tech" companies mabe by those inside it. (Besides those with vested interests in so-called "tech" companies.) All evidence I've seen since 2009 points to the contrary.

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

#226

Post by hellotomyrars »

jimbob45 wrote: post #205
mabbo wrote: post #32

> Exactly how the rest of the world feels about this is not necessarily relevant, though. Google owns the world's most popular web browser, the world's largest advertising network, the world's biggest search engine, the world's most popular operating system, and some of the world's most popular websites. So really, Google can do whatever it wants. This is the point that company breakups start to make a lot of sense.…

Google owns the world's most popular web browser, the world's largest advertising network, the world's biggest search engine, the world's most popular operating system, and some of the world's most popular websites. Their hold on these claims are extremely tenuous. No one would be surprised if Firefox, Bing, or iOS resurged and killed Google’s offering, for example.

I’d be a lot surprised if Firefox dethroned chrome or Bing became the dominant search engine.

The only circumstance where I wouldn’t be surprised would involve regulatory action I see as an outside chance.

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

#227

Post by Zak »

crote wrote: post #91
codedokode wrote: post #47

> Google's plan is that, during a webpage transaction, the web server could require you to pass an "environment attestation" test before you get any data. There is no value in this "attestation" for me as a user. I want to be able to do whatever I want with the browser (for example, remove ads or block access to canvas and webgl) and I want sites to be unable to know this. And probably this attestation will provide a…

Ehhh, it depends. In theory one could imagine a scenario like a bank website refusing to be accessed unless the entire OS & browser stack pass attestation - as that would rule out things like keyloggers, malicious browser extensions, and session hijacking. In practice it'll just be used to lock down content and force unskippable ads on users, of course.

> a bank website refusing to be accessed unless the entire OS & browser stack pass attestation

Even that use case leads to bad outcomes. I already have to jump through hoops to get banking apps to run on my rooted phone. Banking websites refusing to run on anything but Chrome on Windows is a likely scenario here, and that's awful.

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

#228

Post by vxNsr »

rpdillon wrote: post #83

I've been thinking about this for a few days but just realized that this is a complete end run around all web scraping in general. All 'adversarial compatibility' from projects like Nitter, Teddit, Invidious, and youtube-dl go out the window. Any archive site (archive.org, archive.ph, etc.) can be blocked by sites requiring attestation. And just like the book industry was terrified of piracy and were 'rescued' by Kin…

the thought of this being used is making me much more strongly consider moving to firefox, there are still things I don't love about it, like many of the extensions I use are still chromium only, but now I really feel like I don't have a choice.

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

#229

Post by dhx »

TylerE wrote: post #154
userbinator wrote: post #131

It's great to see this getting more attention. User-agent discrimination (i.e. "go away if you're not using the latest version of Chrome") needs to become illegal. As long as I'm not overloading your service or similar, what hardware or software I use must not be restricted. The same goes for other deliberate obstacles to accessibility and interoperability --- creating a "standard" that's so complex and churned frequ…

Why shouldn't the owner/operator of a website be able to decide who to sling bits to? How is this, conceptually, any different from sites that used to block IE out of spite?

For the same reasons a shop owner must sell to all customers without discriminating on ethnicity, religion, disability, etc?

Would it be acceptable for a website owner to block users from Detroit (78% African Americans)[1] or block users from El Paso (82% Hispanic)[2] because the website owner claims that fraudulent ad clicking is more prevalent from those cities?

Would it be acceptable to only serve web pages to people without disabilities and without a need for specialist accessibility software because it's not economically viable to consider users with disabilities?

Would the poorest 10% of the population be able to access web pages and services delivered over the Internet with old hardware (all they can afford) and with limited computer literacy and limited ability to raise complaints (that are ignored anyway or responded to by an AI algorithm that doesn't care)?

A website owner is still discriminating when they hide behind technology such as AI algorithms, Web Integrity APIs, etc and pretend that their use of such technology is non-discriminatory.

[1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/detroitcitymich...

[2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/elpasocitytexas...

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