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Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

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Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#561

Post by bilekas »

devsda wrote: post #397

There are many arguments against this but not many brought the implications for search engines. If websites implement this, it will effectively make building a web search engine impossible for new entrants. The current players can whitelist/attest their own clients while categorizing every other scraping clients as bots. If not for other reasons, I can't see how Google a search company can be allowed to push somethin…

> The current players can whitelist/attest their own clients while categorizing every other scraping clients as bots.

I hadn't really considered this. In a roundabout way, is there a process for this to be rejected on grounds of "fair use" limitations?

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#562

Post by tzs »

tenpies wrote: post #65
thejosh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare want to be the internets backbone. And they've honestly succeeded. Now it's almost impossible to access websites in an automated way -- the CTO posted you can just email him ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34639212 ) and he'll sort it. Because that scales. edit: Mispoke about the CTO, said he would approve you, I was wrong. Apologies. Their DNS is "privacy focused", but they provide "aggregated resu…

Also remember, Cloudflare is de-facto the moderator of the internet. Whatever you may think of Kiwifarms, we all saw how that narrative unfolded from a technical perspective.

Kiwifarms did not have to use Cloudflare.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#563

Post by Arch-TK »

I predict that hardware attestation will in 10-30 years become a requirement to maintain an internet connection.

Given Microsoft's push to make their OS support hardware attestation as well as Google's push for technologies which use hardware attestation in broader and broader scopes (Android and iOS has supported this for apps for a long time), the technology to make this possible is increasingly becoming widespread.

Hardware which supports hardware attestation is expensive and some people who can't afford it would therefore be excluded. But I don't think this matters.

If Google forces you to see all their ads then they can sell the ad space for more money. This can make it increasingly profitable to sell devices at an ever increasing loss. Likewise for Microsoft.

As a side note, this will make it incredibly difficult for anyone to compete in the hardware space. Why would someone spend even £500 on a phone or computer from a non adtech company when the adtech company can sell the same device for £100 or £50 or maybe even give it away for free?

By making hardware attestation more mainstream, it will become increasingly difficult to argue that enabling it for things would cut off customers.

I think it's easy to argue in favor of requiring hardware attestation for internet connections from the point of view of a government or an ISP. After all, if your customers can only use a limited set of hardware which is known and tested for security, it decreases the chance of security problems. For a police state like the UK it also seems even easier to justify too.

Even if things don't go that far, in a few years you will become a second class citizen for refusing to allow this on your devices. I can easily imagine banks requiring WEI for their online banking portals (they already do it for all their apps). Likewise I can also imagine my water, gas and electricity companies, or really any company which handles payments, considering this technology.

The worst part is, I don't think most people will care as long as it keeps working seamlessly on their devices. Likewise I don't think governments or the EU will do anything about it. I am not even sure what I can do about it.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#564

Post by teddyh »

magic_hamster wrote: post #394
c0l0 wrote: post #5

I feel like I have to repeat this, since so much is at stake here, where it is about the preservation of the web as we know it today, at the peril of having it turned into yet another walled garden: The only way around the dystopia this will lead to is to constantly and relentlessly shame and even harass all those involved in helping create it. The scolding in the issue tracker of that wretched "project" shall flow l…

I don't like Google's grasp on so many vital parts of the web but somehow, it seems like google is actually in trouble. AI is going to completely change search if it hasn't already, and google is not even close to compete in this space. Video has some massive competition from the likes of TikTok. Anyway, YouTube isn't the only option on the market. Gmail is still popular but since google has been pressuring users to…

To paraphrase John Maynard Keynes: Google can stay irrational a lot longer than you or I can retain our freedoms. And when the precedents have been set, a new normal has been established, and when/if Google does finally fail, the next actor will step in and keep those freedoms from us all.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#565

Post by saurik »

BizarroLand wrote: post #528
gkbrk wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost none of that money goes to the development of Firefox though.

That which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without analysis.

The same thing can be said about the opposite stance you are taking. The question is: do we already know things, and how easy are the things we don't already know to look up?

Regardless, I have Googled this for you: please return the favor by helping others learn to use search engines in the future before leaving comments insinuating that they are lying.

The tldr (as you'll probably insist on that also) is that Firefox finds Mozilla, not the other way around, as the latter is a non-profit while the former is a FOR-profit, so Mozilla actually can't directly fund Firefox.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ow9k0y/is_there_a_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24200395

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#566

Post by retrac »

justcool393 wrote: post #456
devsda wrote: post #397

There are many arguments against this but not many brought the implications for search engines. If websites implement this, it will effectively make building a web search engine impossible for new entrants. The current players can whitelist/attest their own clients while categorizing every other scraping clients as bots. If not for other reasons, I can't see how Google a search company can be allowed to push somethin…

> If not for other reasons, I can't see how Google a search company can be allowed to push something that can kill competition using its market dominance in other areas like browsers. Because antitrust has been dead for a while. Chrome is a tool to drive people to Google and Google ads and nothing more. I will say, I did appreciate Microsoft having a browser engine with IE and Edge, even if the former was notoriously…

Unfortunately it seems that nearly all software platforms with a dominant market share, end up degenerating to serve only one purpose: to shove advertisements and subscriptions onto you.

My mother's new Windows 11 laptop's out-of-the-box configuration had me clicking through half a dozen things attempting to manipulate me or her into spending more money. There are (I can only assume paid-placement) news and adfotainment in the start menu! Repeat pop-up reminders from Lenovo to subscribe to their protection package. Emotionally-manipulative reminders to subscribe to virus protection services. To Microsoft Office. Etc. etc.

It's been the same thing in the mobile market, where the move to "apps" means you are running their software on your device all the time, so they can optimally surveil you, and target the advertisements and behaviourally-modifying nudges. Quite a few messaging services now actively mess with delivery of notifications, spacing them out, delaying them, according to research that shows what maximizes engagement.

I saw the trend 20 years ago and switched to free software around that time -- I liked Linux anyway, but it was partly on principle. Still, the new laptop was eye-opening. The degree of intrusion, the degree to which even desktop computers have turned into user-hostile advertising terminals serving the purposes of their manufacturer, rather than a computer for the user to accomplish their work, is quite shocking.

Everything networked is becoming like that - twisting the user's hardware, turning it into nothing more than a terminal, an extension of the corporation, serving their interests at all times. Even smart TVs now have ads built-in to their menus and such.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#567

Post by mindslight »

javajosh wrote: post #558
mindslight wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read the proposal in depth. But skimming, this stands out: > With the web environment integrity API, websites will be able to request a token that attests key facts about the environment their client code is running in. For example, this API will show that a user is operating a web client on a secure Android device. Tampering with the attestation will be prevented by signing the tokens cryptographically. I…

>there would be literally no point to this specification as it could always be faked. I disagree. There is a point to making something more difficult but not impossible: you alter behavior at statistically significant scale in practice AND you get to point to the alternative as a reason why the change isn't "coercive". In practice, 99% of users won't know to download an altered Chrome - they have a shaky understandin…

Sure, I see where you're coming from, and much corporate software has traditionally worked in this quasi-consensual hostile-default kind of way. But the specific terms used in that passage are highly indicative of this being intended as implementation of remote attestation for the web.

Furthermore, even if the "key facts" it reports don't initially include results of hardware remote attestation, it's entirely foreseeable that over time these will be added.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#568

Post by tantalor »

pzo wrote: post #543

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…

The term for this is "cat and mouse"

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#569

Post by saurik »

shadowgovt wrote: post #502
jjoonathan wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. It does check, though, that the guy CoC-blocking all the github comments would have blog posts like the Professor Umbridge of the W3C.

I think people like to take the easy way out of declaring those with a different mindset "evil." Everyone is the hero of their own story, and honestly there are multiple incompatible-but-internally-consistent models of how technologies can and should work. I think it's more useful to recognize these things than to write off a competing mindset (especially when the competing mindset is in a position of power). Conside…

As they say: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Wanting to fix the world by taking complete control of it is one of the most trivial examples of a plan that should be immediately labeled "evil", as, if nothing else, "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#570

Post by strix_varius »

idlewords wrote: post #252

I'm surprised to see so many people in this thread saying "write a strongly worded letter!" (or something along those lines), and so few saying we need to build a better browser without this crap in it, which has been the traditionally successful answer to attempts to privatize the Web.

Before doing this, Google was careful to make it as difficult as possible to build a replacement for Chrome. Apple struggles to make Safari capable. Mozilla struggles to make Chrome-first websites work in Firefox. Building a new browser is a Herculean task.

Pragmatically, I'm hoping that a Chromium spinoff like Brave (or Edge!? Could MS be the hero we need?) will turn the privacy switches on, WEI off, and get enough market share to make WEI infeasible.

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