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Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

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Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#71

Post by madeofpalk »

jabbany wrote: post #45
eropple wrote: post #18

This 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?") Ste…

I don't understand how the Apple that introduced their Content Blocker APIs would choose to invest into this API to kneecap their own content blockers?

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#72

Post by kibwen »

It's time to break Google up. They're the AT&T and Standard Oil of our generation. Make Ads, YouTube, Search, Cloud, Chrome, etc. all independent companies. Demand that antitrust regulators do their damn jobs for a change.

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#73

Post by jabbany »

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.

I wouldn't necessarily view it as malice from the beginning. It's entirely likely that early Chrome was really trying to solve usability problems in hosting complex applications like GMail. A goal that was attempted throughout history, as seen from the days of ActiveX, Java Web Applets, Flash, etc.

But capitalism does what it does best, and will happily take advantage of (and try to prolong) a natural monopoly situation even if the origins were genuine.

In fact this is why there are regulations around "utilities". They are also an area where a natural monopoly is the optimal, so they shouldn't be treated as a free market.

(Food for thought: Perhaps the Internet infrastructure should be a utility too? Browser makers could be forced to be non-profit, which would mean companies need to divest themselves of the "Internet business" if they want to do "business _over_ the Internet")

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#74

Post by rpastuszak »

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…

Speaking as someone who worked in adtech and managed to spend almost a year getting paid to build an adblocker:

I can tell you that the machine is so big and the responsibilities diluted to such extent that no one really feels like they're making a morally dubious decision, it just sort of happens on its own, magically.

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#75

Post by pmlnr »

ploum wrote: post #70
mavrc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

> There are plenty of alternatives

Yeah, not for long. Go back and read the proposed changes.

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#76

Post by joshuamorton »

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.

The largest subsection of the document is spent discussing how to prevent specifically this situation, and this is called out explicitly as a non-goal.

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#77

Post by Klonoar »

wmf wrote: post #50
sergiomattei wrote: post #24

Proposals 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.

I would take being disappointed over our current situation, which is effectively little to no focus on teaching the ethics at all.

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#78

Post by Aerbil313 »

saurik wrote: post #5

This is pretty much the inevitable end-game of the web, in no small part funded by ad-based business models (as the analog gap pretty much destroys most attempts to use this stuff to do copy protection) and enabled by developers who have insisted we shove as much difficult-to-implement functionality (by which I am talking about CSS complex stuff, not powerful-but-easy-to-code APIs for OS-level access) into the browse…

Yeah this is really the endgame. I think the issue is systemic though, this is more than just ad money. Bots and automatability of the web was always an anomaly and a flaw, as the web was and is always designed for humans. Strict human verification was always a need. One can say we did achieve this with 2FA and such, but what is technology all about? Convenience. If it's more convenient, people will prefer remote assertion every day of the week: https://gabrielsieben.tech/2022/07/29/remote-assertion-is-co...

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#79

Post by wewxjfq »

tentacleuno wrote: post #13
saurik wrote: post #5

This is pretty much the inevitable end-game of the web, in no small part funded by ad-based business models (as the analog gap pretty much destroys most attempts to use this stuff to do copy protection) and enabled by developers who have insisted we shove as much difficult-to-implement functionality (by which I am talking about CSS complex stuff, not powerful-but-easy-to-code APIs for OS-level access) into the browse…

> who is finally putting their foot down and deciding that we are all going to be forced to either used fully-locked down devices The person who wrote the proposal[0] is from Google. All the authors of the proposal are from Google[1]. I've been thinking carefully about this comment, but I really don't know what to say. It's absolutely heartbreaking watching something I really care about die by a thousand cuts; how do…

Vote with your clicks. Google doesn't want me to install an ad-blocker on my phone, so I'm not browsing the ad-infested websites. And for the current integrity checks: If a site wants me to solve a captcha just to view it, I close the tab and never visit the domain again. In fact, I already close the tab when I see Cloudflare checking my browser. Let the corporate web die.

Re: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal

#80

Post by rpastuszak »

jbk wrote: post #65
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 »

I think it's very easy to treat people in such a binary manner. I get it.

What this guy's doing is shameful, but I've seen dozens of otherwise lovely people, working for charities, spending much more time on socially-important and useful work than 90% of the crowd here... and the same people would push barely legal (if not illegal) targeting on masses of people, arguing to push cigarette ads in markets that still allow it. Advertising is cancer and the current model is not sustainable.

What I'm (poorly) trying to say is: be angry, let everyone know that you're angry, make more people angry, but remember that focusing on this guy is a distraction from a bigger systemic issue and it actually helps organisations like Alphabet.

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