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Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

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Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#61

Post by spystath »

pmlnr wrote: post #32
spystath wrote: post #20

Earlier 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, in the 1.0 days, and still am. But these days are gone, Firefox is not coming back. Back then Firefox was immensely better than IE. As long as the other alternatives are just as good, there is no reason for the mythical "average user" to change over. Why bother if you can do everything in Chrome? We may understand the differences, ideological or technical, but good luck explaining that out there. There's a massive disconnect between user and technology and as a result people will live in the perfectly curated technological bubble that's been served to them.

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#63

Post by pmlnr »

mavrc wrote: post #43
pmlnr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ha…

No, I get it. I can't see a blackout day happening (the one stopped SOPA/PIPA) again either.

But it still happened, against M$, who was the behemoth of the time, so things are never impossible.

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#64

Post by kibwen »

caesil wrote: post #9

Whether you like it or not (and I certainly don't), you've gotta sort of admire the sheer vision of a fifteen-year project to build a browser so good it comes to monopolize the industry, all because you've had the foresight to realize that monopoly will be crucial to securing your position as the adtech hegemon. An underrated masterpiece of evil genius.

And tech people fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

It's completely and utterly irrelevant that Chromium is open source, because the web is a protocol, and having the source for an implementation of the protocol doesn't matter in the least when you don't control the protocol. You can't just fork Chromium and remove a feature, because websites expect the feature, and your browser won't work on them. You can't just fork Chromium and add a feature, because websites don't care about your tiny fork and won't use your feature. You can't fork Chromium, you have to fork the entire web.

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#65

Post by jbk »

quenix wrote: post #59

What's strange to me is that the main author of the spec -- Ben Wiser -- seems to be against closed, wall-garden paradigms as he has written in a blog post "I just spent £700 to have my own app on my iPhone" [1]. In the post, he laments the state of the App Store monopoly on iOS and ponders returning to Android for the app installation freedom. How can he reconciliate these views with this spec, which he is the main…

> How can this view be with this spec, which he is the main author of? Surely Ben sees the parallels?

It can be reconciled with love for money and total lack of moral fiber.

Aka « I don’t give a shit about my actions destroying every one, as long as I go get paid »

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#66

Post by jabbany »

phpnode wrote: post #57

The underhanded way this is being proposed is really something else. It's hosted on a non-google github to provide distance, it's worded in a way that makes it seem like this is something that benefits users, when it's the absolute opposite of that. It subverts the whole concept of a user agent. This is a huge threat to our industry and we cannot allow this to happen.

I agree with everything except the last part...

It's not a "threat to" the industry... It literally _comes from_ the industry... Unless the tech industry is willing to lose one of its biggest sources of revenue, this is exactly what the industry wants...

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#68

Post by wmf »

enumjorge wrote: post #58
wmf wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand why ethics in engineering has to be framed as a political discussion.

You can call it values if you want.

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#69

Post by intelVISA »

dmantis wrote: post #7

The literal attempt to censor web usage of Linux and BSD desktops, other FOSS clients, custom Android ROMs, etc with an open reasoning "to sell you ads". They don't even try to masquerade it.

I mean, to be fair, that's their entire modus operandi.

You don't berate a kitchen for serving food, why would you look at any Google contraption from HTTP/3 to Chrome as anything but a vehicle for selling ads and/or mining data?

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#70

Post by ploum »

mavrc wrote: post #43
pmlnr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ha…

Yes. The solution is very simple: uninstall Chrome and Chromium.

We are the people with the most influence on the tech. We are prescriptors. We are legion.

– Yes but Chrome is a tad faster and I have my bookmarks and my favorites extension and blablablabla…

— Then you are the root cause of the problem. If you are not ready to sacrifice an ounce of comfort to save the web, then you are the one killing the web.

Simple: install Firefox. Now.

(oh, and, by the way, also removes google analytics and all google trackers from the websites under your control. That’s surprizingly easy to do and a huge blow in Google monopoly. There are plenty of alternatives)

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