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Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

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Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#541

Post by clemiclemen »

rkangel wrote: post #381
lxgr wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Also, if some anecdata can help change a mind: Firefox is a really good browser these days. I use it quite heavily, and it hasn’t disappointed in the last three or so years since I switched from Chrome. About the only use case I still need Chrome for is for sites requiring experimental web APIs not supported by Firefox, such as Web USB or Web Bluetooth. Site compatibility for everything else, including very…

I switched to Firefox for the idealogical reasons above and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a net improvement. The only site I have compatibility issues with on desktop is MS Teams and even then it's only for voice/video calls, everything else works fine. Firefox Android is a slightly less happy place. The password manager doesn't work very well (am moving away from the built-in one) and I can't log in o…

[dead]

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#542

Post by progbits »

luuurker wrote: post #83
lagrange77 wrote: post #70

Apple would be in the position to fight this.

"Apple already shipped attestation on the web, and we barely noticed" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36862494

And somehow this barely registers on HN, there have been over thousand comments on WEI this week, this was mentioned maybe in 5 (few of them mine - yes I'm repeating this point because it is important).

Attestation bad. Chrome is just catching up to what Safari is already doing, with in fairness more open standard.

We need to kill both.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#543

Post by pzo »

Not sure how exactly ad fraud works but why this WEI supposed to even prevent it? There are many tools that allow to control your mouse and keyboard programatically like pyautogui [0].

Will OS check if such python lib is installed or script running in the background? Then those that doing ad fraud will move to programmable board as BLE keyboard/mouse/hid. Even microbit can can be programmed as BLE HID device [1]. Add external camera on unattested device that will stare at attested device screen and you can automate lots of thing. Sure this is more complicated to pull off but will probably eventually happen anyway if this is a lucrative business.

In the end WEI wouldn't prevent ad fraud / fakes but would end up used for restricting other things.

[0] https://github.com/asweigart/pyautogui

[1] https://github.com/bsiever/microbit-pxt-blehid

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#544

Post by insanitybit »

shadowgovt wrote: post #278
insanitybit wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds entirely unhelpful. They can just close the issue tracker + people will obviously just move on. This sounds like the Reddit 'blackout' that did nothing and is already forgotten. What we really need is for the collective browser vendors to refuse to implement this and, if Chrome pushes forward, to bring Google to court over it. Nothing short of legal intervention is going to help here.

What sort of regulation do we imagine a government putting into place to stop this? If anything, governments tend to lean in favor of identification and verification systems because they make corporate commerce run more smoothly.

It's not hard to imagine legislation around a user right to ownership of their device. For example, it could be made illegal for a website to attest that a user is not running specific software.

Legislation around device ownership rights are already present, especially in the EU.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#545

Post by strix_varius »

pluc wrote: post #44

This is a crisis of our own making. You don't want Google taking decisions for the web at large? Then don't let them own 85% of the browser market share. When that's the case they don't need W3C or anything to implement whatever they want, they effectively control the client-side internet.

One of the things that led to Google's current dominance is folks like us (certainly me, at least) pushing folks to replace their default IE installation with Chrome as soon as they set up a new computer.

I hope, pragmatically, something similar might happen with this: say that Brave (my daily driver) disables WEI in their Chromium build, and a new Chromium-derived browser surges in popularity... like judo, using their own power against them.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#546

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

docmars wrote: post #486
tmpz22 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which executive orders, federal appointments, and other executive branch actions, would you attribute to Eric Schmidt?

From this article: "At the same time, Schmidt has been appointed to numerous White House advisory positions, giving him privileged insight into the administration’s policies in technology, science and military defense, as well as unusual access to top policymakers." https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/eric-schmid... A quick Google of "eric schmidt obama" brings up a lot of articles discussing their close…

Very good, but that doesn't answer the question.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#547

Post by teddyh »

PawgerZ wrote: post #432
rkangel wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Firefox for the idealogical reasons above and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a net improvement. The only site I have compatibility issues with on desktop is MS Teams and even then it's only for voice/video calls, everything else works fine. Firefox Android is a slightly less happy place. The password manager doesn't work very well (am moving away from the built-in one) and I can't log in o…

Interesting. Firefox android works great for me, but Firefox windows gets very slow on my machine. I don't use their password manager on either, though, so I can't attest to that.

Is it still slow for you? Have you tested it recently?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35458746>

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#548

Post by insanitybit »

account42 wrote: post #279
insanitybit wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds entirely unhelpful. They can just close the issue tracker + people will obviously just move on. This sounds like the Reddit 'blackout' that did nothing and is already forgotten. What we really need is for the collective browser vendors to refuse to implement this and, if Chrome pushes forward, to bring Google to court over it. Nothing short of legal intervention is going to help here.

Or we could show Chrome users what the future will look like for alternative browsers - by blocking Chrome now.

OK? That has nothing to do with what the parent said, which is that the issue tracker should be flooded.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#549

Post by anonym29 »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #363
anonym29 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech-literate folks really should make a concerted effort to move to our own darknet, something like freenet or I2P, to recreate the internet before the advent of mass adoption of smartphones by the public. Forums, IRC, vent/TS, webrings, XHTML 1.0. No WebGL. No Canvas. No WebAssembly. No damn WEI. Normies can f&$% off and enjoy the data-mined, DRM'd, ad-infested, CCP-propagandized, upload-your-photo-ID-to-post-here,…

While I like this idea, starting from the foot of "CCP-propagandized" based on the tiktok service hosted by Oracle in the US is an amazing way to start off on a Nazi infested foot. Anti-communism and fascism are historically in lock-step. No one is going to use the services if you basically create web4 stormfront.

FWIW, I'm certainly not advocating for any kind of racism, or any kind of philosophies that support the use of force to achieve any political, social, or economic goals, so fascism would be firmly out were I the webmaster.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#550

Post by insanitybit »

zoul wrote: post #259
insanitybit wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds entirely unhelpful. They can just close the issue tracker + people will obviously just move on. This sounds like the Reddit 'blackout' that did nothing and is already forgotten. What we really need is for the collective browser vendors to refuse to implement this and, if Chrome pushes forward, to bring Google to court over it. Nothing short of legal intervention is going to help here.

Similar feature is already in production Safari, alas: https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-att...

That's not really surprising. Limited attestation of device state has been a thing for a long time and it's why Chrome is used at so many companies.
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