Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium • Hacker News Board

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#591

Post by WorldMaker » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 5:02 PM UTC

dontreact wrote: post #496

FireBeyond wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... until Google decides to dial that down to zero for "experience", or Hulu / Netflix makes you disable/whitelist/whatever to access their site.

But as mentioned above, isn't doing so against Google's own self interest? It seems like the project is explicitly stating their goal isn't to allow for websites to do this, and they are implementing it in a manner consistent with that. One thing about your comment above: Hulu can't start implementing attestation until Google turns the knob to 0 because they can't start randomly dropping 5% of Chrome users. So in you…

I think Hulu is a great example.

Hulu has DRM issues in Firefox and their DRM just fails with unknown errors on about ~15% of content they host (anecdotally, of course, I have no specific data). There's no way for me to tell if a specific episode of a show will fail or not, some succeed, others don't. I at least find no pattern for this. From this perspective, they are essentially randomly breaking 100% of Firefox users some seemingly random percentage of the time.

They have "good" business reasons to require this DRM and whatever this random broken user percentage is, I'm sure it meets their bottom-line criteria as a business.

"95%" uptime for Chrome users is only "one-9", but it's still got that one 9. That's an acceptable SLA to many businesses. A business might easily decide attestation is worth that "uptime risk" because it sells more ads or makes the DRM vendors happier (and thus the content owners are happier) or any other number of "good" business reasons.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#592

Post by rolph » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #386

mozball wrote: post #26

If this isn't the straw that breaks the camel's back, there is never going to be one. Google needs to be broken up. They own the browser market. They own the web (through Adwords). They own Search. They own mobile. They own most of the video sharing market with 2.5 billion monthly annual users. They own a good chunk of email with 1.2 billion monthly annual users. They have amassed an incomprehensible amount of power…

What would it mean for Chrome to be spun-off into a separate business? How would it survive?

ideally, it wouldnt survive.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#593

Post by dang » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

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…

> constantly and relentlessly shame and even harass all those involved in helping create it

Not on HN, please. I realize that you're trying to protect something you care about (and that maybe we all care about) but this leads to ugly mob behavior that we don't want and won't allow here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#594

Post by amelius » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #331

kristiandupont wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And if they are broken up, now you’re in 5 companies’ databases, win? Yes, win. I'd rather be in a number of smaller businesses database than in the one last company's.

Isn’t that the opposite of privacy?

The opposite of privacy in this context is 1 or more companies having your data. Note the 1.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#595

Post by dang » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

danlindley wrote: post #328

The web is not dying, it is being killed. And the people that are killing it have names and addresses. Shame on Rayan Kanso Shame on Peter Pakkenberg Shame on Dmitry Gozman Shame on Richard Coles Shame on Kinuko Yasuda Shame on Rupert Ben Wiser: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity Google needs to be broken up.

No personal attacks, please. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

You can make your substantive points without that, as most other users in this thread have been doing.

You may not owe web-destroying $MegaCorp better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#596

Post by replete » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

oxygen_crisis wrote: post #286

bee_rider wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear Firefox is mismanaged all the time, but it seems to be a perfectly fine browser for the most part. I hear all about sites that won’t render in comments on this website, but they must all be internal tools or something because I never encounter them.

I'm surprised not to see more love for Librewolf here on HN. It's just the latest Firefox release, recompiled without all the Mozilla telemetry, and with all the settings flipped to more secure/private defaults so all the tracking features are opt-in instead of opt-out.

It's behind by some weeks on major, contributing new features is difficult because most dev effort seems to be on integrating upstream. It is a great easy path for the less technical to 'more privacy', but pretty much if you are a developer just harden it yourself IMO.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#597

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 5:10 PM UTC

MildRant wrote: post #215

tolmasky wrote: post #197

Mozilla should call for Google's removal from the W3C over this implementation of Web Environment Integrity. "But Chrome has 65% market share, what good is the W3C without them?” If Google can take unilateral action to fundamentally change the basic principles of the web, then the W3C is already useless. This will give Google a clear choice: if they want to maintain the idea that the W3C matters, they should withdraw…

There is no chance Mozilla does anything that actually matters here. They may do some virtue signaling and put out a statement about how they support the open web but nothing more.

[deleted]

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#598

Post by TheCoelacanth » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 5:10 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #370

qjx wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yoav Weiss has a blog post from 6 days ago on his website. https://blog.yoav.ws/ for a personal blog it has quite a lot of PR speak

> When thinking about a new proposal, it's often safe to assume that Occam's razor is applicable and the reason it is being proposed is that the team proposing it is trying to tackle the use cases the proposal handles. Ockham's Razor doesn't apply in an adversarial situation.

It is also for when you are comparing two explanations that do an equally good job of explaining empirical data.

"Google is an advertising company and does whatever leads to more profitable advertisements" does a much better job of explaining Google's actions than "Google just wants to build the best possible browser", so it should be preferred even though it is a more complicated explanation.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#599

Post by TheCoelacanth » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

Pannoniae wrote: post #225

This proposal is just so throughly user-hostile that it's impossible to criticise it based on technical grounds. It's not a bad proposal, it's a dangerous, evil and malicious one, so criticising it in details is futile. The whole thing in itself is evil, and it needs to be thrown out. Quietly protesting won't work this time, the goal is to kick up a huge fuss which gets the attention of governments, regulatory bodies…

> The whole thing in itself is evil, and it needs to be thrown out.

Not only the proposal, but Google itself. Google desperately needs to be broken up.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#600

Post by userbinator » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

nvm0n1 wrote: post #574

kalleboo wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's double-think, it's just a lack of consequential thinking. I believe the writers of the spec when they say that they just want to be able to see which ad views are real or not. They even lay out some (far too weak) ideas to keep the system from being mandatory and abusable. But they don't realize just how quickly things will go out of hand once the rest of the organization realizes what they have cr…

[flagged]

I see damage control has started to appear...

The frog boils very slowly.

This from an industry that broke a zillion scripts as part of renaming git master to git main on the basis that the first name is somehow hateful.

That was the actions of a small group of extremists, and there was widespread opposition to it too.

Spinning the opposition as "hate" seems rather popular these days, and it's not wrong: We hate what Big Tech has done and is continuing to do to our freedoms and it's about time we released all of our rage on our oppressors.