This seems like a very believable parody. Particularly given the 'spec.bs' filename which looks like it's just markdown.
Web Environment Integrity API Proposal
41–50 of 460 posts
Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how do we protest this? You do not and you cannot. It was written in stone once Chrome dominated the browser market. What Chrome (Google) wants, Chrome (Google) gets. Despite all the good engineering Google wants to sell ads, that's all there is to it. And the result is this proposal. > The saving grace here might be that Firefox won't implement the proposal. It's irrelevant and we are an irrelevant minority. Unles…
What about Safari? It has significant market share. Seems like our best bet now
Yeah: the company that is all about locking down user devices and relishes in providing a DRM-ridden platform for developers to maintain complete control over their users is totally going to be against implementing this specification :/. I mean... it's possible? but any hope there is fully predicated on their hatred of Google and their distaste for the web.
Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how do we protest this? You do not and you cannot. It was written in stone once Chrome dominated the browser market. What Chrome (Google) wants, Chrome (Google) gets. Despite all the good engineering Google wants to sell ads, that's all there is to it. And the result is this proposal. > The saving grace here might be that Firefox won't implement the proposal. It's irrelevant and we are an irrelevant minority. Unles…
> It's irrelevant and we are an irrelevant minority. Heh. I was there when it was IE6, and people said the same.
I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. In this case, the population scale alone has changed by over an order of magnitude.
Just doing some quick searching - the first numbers that come up when you search for "how many people used the internet in the year 2000" are on the order of 350 million or so. Comparatively, now, in 2023, Reddit alone has some 450 million users. It would seem right now that Tiktok has about three times the number of active users than there were total Internet users 23 years ago.
Additionally, there are literally hundreds of billions of dollars now resting on Chrome remaining the dominant browser.
Short of government intervention (or absolutely monumental fuckup on Google's part somehow), Chrome is here to stay.
Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal
#44This is a level or two below where my knowledge of the browser trails off, so I'll ask generally: how would this interact with things like the WebKit Content Blocker API?
Most likely all extensions and content blockers would be disabled for DRMed sites. Or maybe they'd be enabled but the browser would tell the site you have a blocker enabled and the site would refuse to load.
Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal
#45This is a level or two below where my knowledge of the browser trails off, so I'll ask generally: how would this interact with things like the WebKit Content Blocker API?
Step 1: Sites require a "secure" (read proprietary) browser like "Google Chrome", "Microsoft Edge", "Safari" or refuse to operate.
Step 2: "Secure" browsers change the behavior of their implementation of the Content Blocker API so an industry-accepted "secure" site lile Google Ads can opt-out of being blocked ("You wouldn't want a misconfigured content blocker to accidentally break a verified secure site right?")
Step 3: ??? (Force the users into a take it or leave it choice for whether they want to be part of the internet or not)
Step 4: Profit
Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal
#46This is a level or two below where my knowledge of the browser trails off, so I'll ask generally: how would this interact with things like the WebKit Content Blocker API?
Either Apple will make their devices refuse to sign the attestation if you're using it, or Google will remove Apple from its list of trusted attesters.
Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal
#47I see one more dangerous development imposed by this move: limiting access to web content for rival search engines. I'm sure that Google Robot will pass all "high security standards" and web integrity checks, while others won't be able to do so.
Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal
#48The issues tab is a fun read - never seen a response like this on a web spec.
They seem to have closed down comments on it, I'm seeing > An owner of this repository has limited the ability to comment to users that have contributed to this repository in the past.
Has there ever been a case of someone locking GitHub issues while being in the right?
Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal
#49This is one of those times I hoped politicians were more competent in a technical field like computer science.
I’d have a field day grilling the CEOs of Big Tech companies over stuff like this that only serves to kneecap their current and future competitors.
Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal
#50Proposals like this demonstrate the utter failure of our ethics education in computer science. In a field facing increasingly harder ethical questions every day, it’s important to start empowering our engineers to say “no” to ethically bankrupt things like this.
You might be disappointed. Ethics training can't force people with different political viewpoints to conform to yours; in fact it gives them better tools to explain their views.