Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible
https://stackdiary.com/web-environment-integrity/Open linkView original on opidea.xyz2158
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Life finds a way
Yarr
I hope **chrome **fails terribly. Just like Internet Explorer(IE). Firefox all the way
Anyone still using Google products is a fuckin idiot, IMO
I wholeheartedly agree. I'm a technical person, I run Linux as my primary OS and use FOSS software. But I also have a full time job and 2 small kids, and frankly I just don't have the time or patience to be a full time sysadmin. Proton has come a long way in providing alternatives to Gmail, GCalendar, GDrive, etc., but like you said if you want to replace ALL of Google you practically have to self host a gazillion Nextcloud instances or whatever.
There isn't. Closest there is is NextCloud, but you need to self host it, since it isn't E2EE so using a provider would just put you back in square one. Proton is a close second but its still miles away, they have a lot of products but their devs seem to be spread thin between then.
I kinda agree with you. Before my exams I had lot of time. I used to self host nextcloud, email and invidious etc. But during exam had no time to manage instances or update my packages, one after than another they kept showing error and they went offline.
I stopped my VPS and started using Google Drive(it was already available on my android) to share my notes temporarily with friends, soon I kept using it. I hope protonmail becomes better so I can start using them instead of other products
This is how they do it. They wedge themselves in via convenience with the hopes that we'll stay on their ecosystem eventually.
I hope you'll soon find the time to regain your independence from them. Best of luck.
What I don't like about Proton is that I can't combine Mail Plus and Pass Plus. I don't need a 500 GB Proton Drive or Proton VPN, but I like their Mail and Password Manager. Now I use Mail for free and Password Manager for €12/year. I would like to pay €3.99/month for the Mail offer, but for that I would have to upgrade to the much more extensive Proton Unlimited.
I would pay 7.99 for Proton Unlimited. But I can't pay alnost 200 Euros for it all at once. I'm not a big fan of the huge cost difference between monthly, 12m and 24m subscriptions.
It’s a hard fight between all the time maintaining your own stuff takes and the utter resistance by other users who just won’t learn anything new or use any real security.
Microsoft is arguably worse than Google. They make you pay for the software they use to harvest your data for free.
These businesses should be paying for the data, the raw materials, they collect and use to build their products. You can't assemble a car without paying for the nuts and bolts, but that's what they do.
I'm sorry but this sentiment is so utterly detached from the technical capabilities and general engagement of the average layman that it bears a response.
Tech savvy people have this awful habit of calling anyone not in our specific field an idiot when they don't do things our preferred way, and it's not a good look. Those people aren't the weird ones, we are. And if you're the sort of person who thinks you've elevated yourself above the commoners because you don't use Google's stuff ... yeah, that and 5 bucks will get you a latte. There are oceans of professional expertise you're not privvy to, and unless you really think you're doing better than everyone at everything, a little humility, temperance, and grace for others is warranted.
I have to agree with this.
I’m basically “the idiot”. Decently tech savvy, but non-IT. Very capable of learning what I need to know, but I haven’t really had the time or mental capacity to learn how to do a lot of the things I need to to get away from corporate overlords.
I’m working on it, and have been for a while, but in the meantime I do use several google services, because that’s what I’ve been using for many many years and change is really hard. Especially when you have to initiate the change yourself, and especially when you know if you switch to a stop-gap solution you’ll loose all impetus to actually keep making the change (which I will).
The biggest challenge is learning what is worth it to self-host, what hard/software to use for the configuration I want, what’s compatible with devices I own (windows, Linux, iOS and android), etc. I’ve been running Plex for like 10 years now (windows then Linux), but it’s a very basic setup on a host pc I don’t use for much else. Beyond that, I need to learn almost everything from the bottom up, and that’s a lot to learn -just- to avoid an existing company and their existing products that I’ve been using for years. Unlike my Plex content, I would actually care if I lost my other self-host data, so not something to fuck around half-ass with.
I can’t blame people for not wanting to/knowing how to do it. I like learning this shit (because of the end result, not because I have interest in it, sorry not sorry) and I still don’t actually want to do it.
OK, then let's check my idiocy.
Web-browser? I'm using Firefox since the beginning of this year.
Email? I've an account on ProtonMail for serious stuff, and Gmail for garbage, less serious stuff and spam collector.
Cloud storage? Well, unless anyone can gift me a Raspberry Pi, a hub and an ELI5 Nextcloud manual for dummies, I have to keep using Google Drive.
Videos? That depends. I'm watching videos on Youtube, but I'm uploading my own content on Peertube.
Phone? I need another ELI5 custom rom manual for dummies, and it has to be specific for my device. Otherwise, I'll keep using Android, but with most minimum usage of Google apps.
I think that's all.
Can't fix everything, but Google drive is easily replaced by proton drive. Google notes/keep or any kind of note taking is easily replaced (and improved) by Obsidian, and on android you can install f-droid as an alternative store.
Downside is that these thinks cost money. But everything has a cost, and at least here the cost is clear, and upfront.
I agree, as I reply on my pixel6 pro
So basically every software/front-end web dev? Lol ok.
Pixel phones.
I just wish Firefox would improve their UI and add a few features without needing to rely on extensions (tab groups, vertical tabs, sharing tabs from mobile to desktop, etc.).
Are we seriously sitting here, in the shadow of the open internet's apocalypse, complaining yet again about Firefox's UI?
It's like Superman trying to rescue you from a fire and you complaining about his breath.
There's no UI in the world that will make the internet bareable without functional ad blockers.
Hey, I switched to Firefox because I liked its UI better (after Quantum though)
I switched back from years with Chrome then new Chromium Edge, haven't noticed an issue. But everything I do is Ctrl+W, middle-click, and typing into search fields. If I'm using a browser's UI, it's for the menu or a bookmark folder.
I can't really fathom what a browser UI is used for beside this and the less there is of one on-screen, the better.
I left it because their "new" UI, but that was just thelast straw (after 20 years) Won't go back.
Yes. Because the UI and UX of a tool that you use everyday matters. The average user will hold ease of use over privacy 9 times out of 10. In my case though I wasn’t able to use FF for a while due to the lack of debugger support for a project I was working on. Now it comes down to me having to work on multiple projects at once so tab groups and organization are key. Now don’t get me wrong, once Chrome totally kills adblockers I’ll drop Chromium browsers like a bad habit, but the point still stands though, FF could use some UI improvements.
Id argue on mobile for instance, firefox is easier to use. One of the LARGEST differences between chrome and firefox from a UI standpoint is bottom search/site box over top one, especially for larger phones.
This of course doesnt consider anything related to addons yet.
Or Mr. Incredible being sued for saving a guy commuting suicide..
Well, super bad breath is not your ordinary bad breath. It would possibly melt your lungs faster than the fire. Bacteria that can thrive in superman's body is not to be messed with.
I'm glad to see that even when we're about to get robbed, there'll still be humor about it. Grim, but I like it.
I literally swore off Firefox for half a decade because they removed and broke Panorama with their engine rewrite, so yes.
I can send a tab from my mobile Firefox to my desktop Firefox by default, so that's at least one of those that doesn't need an extension.
Yeah I thought it had that feature already but I wasn’t seeing it. I’ll have to look again.
On mobile: Hit the three line menu button -> "Send link to device"
On desktop: Right click on a tab -> "Send tab to device"
Kind of odd that they're not the same language, actually. For what it's worth I'm on iOS so it might be different for FF on Android.
You can also send either direction via the share menu, so long as you have your Firefox account signed in to them.
Is it possible to use it without syncing all browser tabs? I tried to read about it on their website since I want to know exactly what they collect and how they store it but couldn't find anuthing other than instructions on how to set it up.
I don't know anything about tab syncing, so I don't know. Sorry!
They do have the send tab to device feature. I send tabs to my son, who lives with his mom all the time.
As long as the devices are connected to the overall Mozilla account. Same between my phone Firefox and PC.
I don't have too many tabs that I would group together, but I can see how nice of a feature that would be.
I've used Firefox from the beginning and never trusted Google and Chrome. It has gotten better, but at a slower route.
Firefox already natively supports most of the features you listed.
Which ones? Besides sending a tab from mobile to desktop it doesn’t have tab groups or vertical tabs. Those features rely on extensions and/or custom css.
Hey you have genuine wants and needs from a web browser and I respect that.
I'll say though that this sort of attitude (well Chrome has this little thing I like so I allow them to take control of what was once the independent internet) is what is going to screw us.
I use FF. But I also use Chromium based browsers out of necessity. I understand where you’re coming from but what’s also going to screw us is Mozilla not keeping up with the latest features which is something they’ve struggled with. At the end of the day they have to give people a reason to switch and use FF as their main browser. Simply saying “better privacy features” isn’t enough for the average user.
Any tab group extension recommendations? Having issues finding good ones
IMO there are none. They are all janky. Your best bet, (and what I may start doing), is to make separate folders in your bookmarks bar and add any tabs you want in there as a group. Not ideal but it works.
Mozilla I think gets millions from google. At least they did at one point in a deal to set google as a default engine.
They do. The majority of Mozilla's funding is from Google. That said, they're still our best hope. I'm sure Firefox has constant internal conversations about how to handle their relationship with Google, and they probably have standing offers from many others to switch to a different search engine.
Except when it doesn't. That saying never made sense (far more species have gone extinct than exist today) and it doesn't apply here.
Piracy will continue, obviously, but what we're seeing here is the creation of an internet we can't even fathom yet. This is just where it starts.
Also consider how much more difficult it will be for the average person to participate in piracy. Remember a few months back when Microsoft floated they were basically looking to lock down windows? No unsigned apps, no win32, etc. People will get around that, of course, but fewer people will. Especially if they continue with this trend towards stripping options and de-admin-ing all users unless they pay for an enterprise license.
Then there's the dangerous trend toward encryption being broken by regulation and possibly even VPNs being rendered useless for anyone but businesses. There goes secure torrenting.
The trends don't look good, across the board. We can't just sit here and hope it all works out and the loopholes are found, like it always has before.
I am by no means saying we should passively hope that things will work out. What I am saying is that we have no reason to be defeatist. In the same time that we've seen aggressive pushes for a more locked down internet, we've seen dozens of open source projects to fight back.
It's my right to have my personal computer display what I want it to display. It's my right set my device to reject internet traffic I don't want to receive. It's my right to instruct my machine to download the data I want, and refuse to download the data I don't want. If you make something publicly available online, then the public can consume that or refuse that, in part or in whole, as and when they wish. If a company or a browser wants to try and interfere with that, then they've chosen their fate.
Monzo? Hmm
And then the plan to force everyone to abandon Firefox whether they like it or not.
At that point, the userbase of anything that's not Chrome or not DRM'd to death will be so eroded that virtually everyone else will abandon Firefox support, DRM will get enabled by default. Also, comes the lobbyists to Congress demanding changes to the DMCA to throw users in prison who dare to try to crack the DRM to block ads. "Ad-blocking is stealing!"
Just means I'll have the shittiest Chromebook I can buy used, for access to the sites you just listed, and my Linux laptop for everything else. If their non-financial, non-commerce site won't let me in with my adblocking Linux machine, I just won't go there. There will be lots of site still, run by us, that don't do this shit, and they'll get my traffic.
And I can bet that Google will spy on your home network from that shitty chromebook
Vlans babe!!
They already do that from my Android phone, and I'm sure as hell not going Apple. Linux phones aren't there yet, maybe in a few years, but I'll still need an Android phone for the same reasons I'd need a Chromebok, bank apps will never support Linux phones. And yeah, like everybody said, VLANs. I already have one for untrusted IoT devices, I'll just spin up another for Chromebooks.
Not mine. I have a VLAN for that.
Yeah VLANs seem like a viable option for the average user. ;-)
It's true, but you can say that about almost anything. For example, for the "average" user lemmy is confusing compared to reddit.
Besides, I'm just talking about how I tackle diseases inside my network, not what the average user should do.
Creating an account on lemmy.world is not much more difficult than creating one on reddit. Configurating VLANs is another story.
I have a router that can do it. Then I realized it felt like work to learn it so I stopped.
Google Exec: "But you did buy it, yes?"
Not from them! They don't make a dime when I buy yours.
My thoughts on buying used Nintendo games. Love the IPS hate how Nintendo treats people. I'll gladly buy the new Pokémon game from you for 2 quid less than retail.
Also gotta make sure it doesn't "expire" or be the sucker buying ewaste that's "no longer supported"
This right here is what has always scared me. The internet is getting more and more controlled and locked down as the years go on. The general population will not take up for, Linux, Firefox, etc. Neither will the services we now rely upon like banking etc. So we will be forced.
I think it was always sketch from the beginning that governments and educational institutions used proprietary software. Too much money changing hands. Too many opaque business dealings. Too many cogs who don't care to understand, though they're not unreachable. Louis Rossman, the Mac repair guy from YouTube has done a lot of pro-consumer, pro-freedom videos lately and a few of my non-nerdy friends have really had light bulbs go off for them.
I don't think any of this would stop me from using FF for day to day browsing.
2 - At this point I'd just pirate it. I don't care. If you're going to be hostile to paying customers, I'm going to be a non-paying customer again.
3 - Separate banking app. Not bothered about desktop banking
4 - Fine I'll support local businesses where possible, and use dedicated apps or if necessary Chrome (preferably sandboxed) specifically for shopping where not.
5 - Social media was a mistake anyway, already deleted Twitter, I need very little excuse to get rid of Facebook as well.
Honestly I think this is just the end phase of "Web 2.0" as I remember all this shit being labelled at the time. We managed fine with independent forums etc before and will manage again.
Edit: I love the irony that people are killing off Reddit due to API access but the only way I've been able to post on lemmy.world is via the website. Connect app? Nope!
Pretty much on board with this plan and already moving that direction step by step. Last year I started my deGoogling process again including switching to Firefox and working towards a gApps free phone. This year I mostly left Reddit. When the YouTube adblock stuff started coming up I've been waiting... show me one un-blockable ad, I fucking double dog dare you YouTube.
We're ripe for a video revolution because content creators might be the only people more pissed at YouTube than the users. I kind of disengaged when everyone started having to imply controversial topics or use similar sounding words. That was too far for me and if I can't speak freely, or I have to listen to a bunch of people constantly self-censor, I will freely find my way to the door in search of greener pastures.
Facebook popped this shit up on me the other day that said "Your AdBlocker will prevent you from seeing important updates from your Friends! Disable it now." Important updates from my friends you say? Like the ones where my naive friends like a random super-popular post and get inadvertently subscribed to a page and later that page takes out an ad and my friends name gets put under it like "Billy Bob likes this corporate swill" Never gonna happen. If I can't use it without an ad blocker I'm deleting what I can and moving on. If I'm paying for a product, I'll pay for one that puts the benefit to the user as their first priority.
Thanks for letting me rant on your comment. Here's to hoping the internet somehow gets less shitty. :)
Hi. I finally have the balls to ask, what is DRM? I am kind of a neophyte in all tech matters. But I managed to get out of Reddit because it was full of baits and ridden with apple ads. And so I like this new platform, reminds me of the good old gamefaqs forums days. Hope all this slicker simpler UI from and for users never die…
Digital Rights Management. AKA the stuff that's supposed to prevent unauthorized copying and suchlike, but in practice just means the pirates have a better experience than legit customers.
I'm actually not sure about this one. Money is money. If I'm a vendor, and a bunch of bots want to give me money, I say bring it on. Why would any ecommerce vendor add that layer of friction, which could actually prevent a user from buying something from them? What's in it for the vendor?
Seems to me the more likely anti-consumer hell is a points dystopia leveraged by monopolistic companies. Like apple, microsoft, or disney moving to some sort of loyalty points system where you can only buy their products using a currency and credit system that they control. Like, 'stream this movie using your disney points card'. We're not far off from that really.
To all of mentioned above from the bottom of my heart
I still remember old days, when most coders used to praise google. Their services were amazing and I think one of their old principle was >"Develop good products first, think about monetisation later"
And now it's later.
I wish google was as good at procrastinating as I am.
Their old principle was ‘don’t be evil’. The fact they no longer say that tells you everything
Somewhere, sometime, there was a meeting at Google where they decided that value would be dropped.
Google sucks for sure, but I keep seeing this claim that they've removed "don't be evil" from their code of conduct.
It's still there, it's just no longer the main motto and has been moved from the preface to the conclusion.
You can read it yourself; "don't be evil" is literally in the last sentence verbatim, lol: https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct/
I stand corrected!
When Gmail debuted and it was invited only 😊
That's before they went public
The year is 2023, every single major tech companies are racing each other to become Public Enemy No. 1. And the only Hero we have is the EU, will it be able to save the day?
We warned you about Chrome. We told you bro.
Google and Chrome really need to be broken up. Maybe people should start writing (physical) letters to the FTC asking to review Google's recent actions as monopolistic behavior.
It wouldn't be the first time. But showing the interest is the best way to get the ball rolling that we can do.
Honest curiosity on your answer to this.
Google is the developer of Chromium and the Chrome browser which uses Chromium. Chromium is free and open source (though owned by Google).
I’m not sure how you break up Chrome and Google. That’s literally their product. Who are we giving this to? There are browsers that do not use Chromium (e.g., Firefox and Safari being the big ones).
Companies have gotten broken up before, like AT&T once did many years ago. In this case, a Google breakup would probably separate some of their services into different companies. At the very least Google (the "advertising" company) should be separate from Chrome (the "browser" company), because it creates a conflict of interest and creates monopolistic behavior.
In any case, trying to do something is better than doing nothing and hoping it turns out all right.
I think the poster is making a good point though- In this split, google the advertising company can freely contribute to the open source chromium. You need some model that leads the chromium maintainer to reject changes like this.
I'm sure there's some mechanism in antitrust to prevent the broken up companies from doing things like that. Otherwise, a "primary" company would just contract out the old other pieces and they're basically whole again.
That’s true, I just wonder if open source changes anything, legally. Unless one term of the breakup is “will not contribute to chromium”
Google isnt Google anymore. It's Alphabet. Alphabet includes Google domains, Android, Gmail, YouTube, chrome, Google search, search ads, play store, fuscia, Google maps, authenticator, chat, classroom, assistant, meet, nest, pixel, waze, Gboard, messages, google tv, Google photos and the rest
Each one of these have their own presidents, their own boards, their own teams. They are all directed by Alphabet.
Spin it off on their own and survive like Firefox. Browsers make money putting links in the homepage and adding search engines.
I didn't include details because I still had to research after the comment, but this page details several methods of contact. The antitrust email looks like a good place to start if you don't want to mail anything. But physical mail is harder to ignore, it actually has to get into someone's hands and be dealt with. So I'll try to write up a letter and send that to maybe the regional office nearest Google's HQ.
Have people not been trying that for years already? How do we know if there's a good chance that'll even do anything beyond get tossed in the trash? ~Strawberry
"Google engineers want..."
No. Google executives want this to happen. Google's CEO wants this to happen.
They want to change the internet and remove any little bit of freedom for their own corporate profits.
Fuck "do no evil" Google.
The internet is unusable without adblockers.
I’ve tried internet without adblock and it’s almost unusable.
We waste intelligent minds on this rubbish when we are facing an existential crisis in climate change.
Use Firefox.
Support Firefox.
Using alternative Chromium based browsers is not it.
Alright, today is oficially the day I switch to Firefox
Why's everyone blaming the engineers lol, pretty sure they're just doing what they're told right?
Exactly, headline should be more like "Google executives want Google engineers to make ad-blocking (near) impossible"
Isn't Google famous for giving a large amount of creative freedom to their engineers (and having a lot of dead published products as a result)? Also, Google engineers are not exactly stuck at their job with little hope of finding anything else to survive.
a decade ago.
I believe that policy was reduced or removed many years ago. Around the time when all the cool new projects stopped, and Google scrubbed "don't be evil" from their site and company philosophy.
Just following orders is not the ironclad excuse some of you seem to think it is.
Look dude, I hate advertising as much as anyone. I don't want any TV and most streaming services have wedged in some form of advertising nowadays and I avoid all that.
But equating engineers trying to solve a problem like engineers figuring out how to block ads isn't really equivalent to murder.
People only get held accountable for their actions and choices when the consequences are equivalent to murder? Their bosses hold some of the blame, sure, but they are not blameless and pretending they are just enables shit like this to keep happening.
They're still bad people, but this kind of blame has to run uphill. The devs only have the option of quitting, not necessarily of not doing what they're told.
That being said, I bet there are some Very Good Boys who enthusiastically and proactively suggest some evil shit to the execs.
I mean shit, they aren't launching nukes here
Doing what you're told does not relieve you of responsibility for the results of your actions
The engineers are not blame free, and can do super shady shit too. For example, the issues with the WebHID "broswer" APIs.
Ah yes, because "just following orders" has worked out so well in the past.
That's right, I just godwin'd this bitch.
Because it is still unclear if this is an official project requested by Google or just some engineers working alone until Google adopts the project.
The chances that a swashbuckling crew of rogue engineers organized a secret skunkworks project to implement their heartfelt, idealistic vision of an adblocker free web are… low.
This is exactly something an engineer who works at Google would want to work on, finding new ways to enrich Google is literally their job and there would be great personal benefit from coming up with the best way to implement this DRM crap for profit
True, but it's not zero
Software engineers have ethics classes, I'd imagine this would fall highly under unethical, just under building software for the military which google employees have protested in the past.
We do?
It was required for my degree, I'm sure it is required at more than just my university lol
Sure, its not taught everywhere, it is still something discussed among peers and taught at some institutions. Otherwise, you wouldn't be seeing engineers doing walkouts and protesting companies decisions.
Not my university. Outside of the engineering classes and prequisites for engineering classes, we only had to take rhetoric and a foreign language.
That's disappointing to hear. Talked about ethics throughout my courses and one was half the class. Hopefully more professors and instructions sprinkle it in there at least.
Losing your ad blocker on chrome is "just under" software designed to kill people? Lol really? Oh the oppression
Sure it won't kill people like programming drones, but it is still unethical and would affect ~5 billion people negatively.
Right, but you said "just under". There's a preeetty fuckin wide gap between blocking ad blockers and dropping bombs guy.
I'm not saying concerns aren't valid, I just took your comment to be calling it almost comparable to military software.
"..., it's just under..." means the same thing, but I think you mean "it's just under" as in "although, it's under" rather than "just" being a measurement?
Yeah not intending it as a measurement; this comes to mind in situations like this
This shouldn't be surprising to anyone. And it's a death knell of the internet as we know it. It won't be today or tomorrow, but slowly, over the next few years, expect surface level internet services to be extremely user unfriendly. I expect normies to just accept their fate and pay access fees to literally every website and service they use, while more tech savvy or explorative people might find their way to federated spaces or Usenet, etc.
Then don't let Chrome be a super majority of users.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
Exactly this is the problem, when I talk non-geek (including my wife) about privacy they answer "what the hell have you to hide !" ... It's so difficult to convince people :'(
But they do care about their money. Explain it in ways that will resonate with them.
Without ad blocking, they'll encounter "scam ads" that take over the browser and demand calling "support" that collects their credit card info and costs them hundreds of dollars in fraudulent charges. At the very least, it's a pain in the ass they have deal with by calling their credit card provider to cancel the charges.
Security extensions from antivirus/antimalware applications won't work and subject them to even more of the above.
Malicious "attestation" services can falsely verify unscrupulous websites as legitimate.
If you have a better plan, let me know.
Otherwise you can roll over and let the internet die and ill do what i can.
Allrighty mr. Dramagoodie. You go fight the good fight, or whatever your psykosis is called. Firefox is life, but normies be normies. You make zero impact.
Firefox literally used to be a significant browser before Chrome showed up. Users have to download Chrome. It's not like it default. It's just a matter of changing habits. They swapped from Firefox to Chrome they can back. They'll do it for thr same reason so many people left IE for Firefox: it sucked.
When ads get overbearing and scammy, your favorite neighbor IT guy will install Firefox for them or something and tell them to use it. A child or grandchild will do the same. So it has always been. That's how adblock even became so big. People didn't use it before.
Ads are so bad now, I actually went out of my way to install Firefox on my phone. My less technical relatives just refuse to use anything but apps.
I think some people must be young and have not witnessed the late 90s, early 00s, before Firefox.
You had way more new users whose only notion of the internet was the blue e icon. Macs were less popular and of course there were no smartphones.
Microsoft pulled all the bullshit. "Extending" the standards so standards compliant browsers would not work, serving broken pages on non IE browsers and convincing an enormous amount of moron webmasters to tell you to go "upgrade" to IE while your browser could perfectly render their site.
Yet Firefox did break that stranglehold.
But you need to connect with people. Don't try to do it via relatively abstract concepts such as privacy or freedom. Tell them that they won't be able to block any ads in a year or so if they keep using Chrome. That they won't be able to download whatever they want.. etc etc.
The internet was better before the normies joined. "I don't see the problem, Chrome is fine, I don't care if it spies" is a very common thing I hear.
The silver lining here might also be that the internet that we knew and loved 25 years ago might actually reappear. The 'other' stuff would just become background noise to the ones 'in the know'.
Lol wouldn't that be epic. IRC becoming a big thing again because discord, whatsapp, and all thr other business social media go to shit.
I'm ready.
I can't get into discord. As an old EFnet user, it's just clunky to me? I'm not sure, but it's not sticking for me
I was a regular Teamspeak user and Discord is just more friendly than TS imo
I sometimes wonder if this would be best outcome. Rather than spending so much effort trying to fight for the internet at large, those of us “in the know” just take our balls and go play in our own corner.
The fediverse might be a test of this it continues to survive but never turns mainstream.
There is an author - Tad Williams, who wrote the "Otherland" series. One of the chapters has the some of the main ensemble going to "treehouse" - aka what happened in this universe when the nerds, geeks and techno wizards took their ball and went home. The series as a whole is interesting if you like sci-fi. That chapter however seems more and more on the nose the older I get.
News headline, October 2078
Google finds users are covering their ears and closing their eyes; releases nanobots to force eyes open and lock hands behind back.
Man I love using Firefox.
Ad pushing is only part of the problem… These tokens will kill the #InternetArchive Wayback machine. It’s anti-library tech.
Anti-bot tech is inherently anti-human.
I find it disturbing that there are people out there who spend much of their time thinking about new ways to get people to see adverts. Surely it falls under the "bullshit jobs" category that David Graeber once wrote about.
I don't know if it's the Google engineers that "want" to do this
And another question: did someone already lay out a roadmap to google's collapse?
Right now we're going through a financial crisis, big tech needs to start making proper money so they try to squeeze the users. Google hopes to "drm the internet" to maximise ad revenue. Let's assume they succeed. 3 years from now the dystopia of dead adblockers is live, google and other leeches make bank off ads.
But there's no more adblockers and no more ad revenue left to squeeze out (because every internet user is already chained to a screen and force fed ads within ads). And shareholders demand increase in profits. What do they do then? Is there any hint of a long-term strategy? How long before the maximum theoretical ad revenue is reached and plateaus? Then COVID29 or something comes, fed raises rastes again and...?
Use Firefox.
Even the Android version lets you install uBlock Origin.
Google controls way too much. People need to stop using their products. Many people complaining right now are still using Google stuff. If everyone concerned stop using Google stuff, that would cause them to reconsider very quickly.
There are no laws stating that we have to watch or see ads, so forcing us to watch them feels like a huge overstep. Companies shouldn't be able to have this much control over a public service.
It isn't Google Engineers wanting to do it. It's Google engineers being told to do it.
I'm not even joking, shit like this is bringing back my depression.
This is why I recently switched back to Firefox.
While nice to do, it's not going to solve the problem when the likes of Cloudflare are already on board with this. Apple has already implemented a similar system in Safari as well. Feels like the horse has already left the barn.
Philosophically I want to agree with you, but when sites like banks and employment finders are going to require this it's really going to create a horrible world of the haves and have-nots.
Google engineers want me to stop using anything from google
Even if they do that, some people will just create illegal website mirrors that remove ads.
On reddit, people already copy paste articles when there's a paywall. I can totally envision that thing to be more common.
I am not fucking kidding, I will stop using websites if I cannot block ads. This is non negotiable. I don't care about your business model, I have zero money to give you. I tried the official reddit app, and uninstalled within a week.
When will they understand, if I'm introduced to your product through an advertisement, I do not want to buy it. I will make a point not to. Do not annoy me. If your product is good enough, it will be bought.
It was not hilarious when MS tried to control stuff like this with IE.
This is a boring fight, and it is why tech companies need a broken up and a kick in the profits/pants.
Their examples are business issues where they want a tech solution.
These are working on a foundation that the internet today, with all it's venture capital money, "free" websites and services that run at a loss is how the internet should look. So they are building technical solutions to force some "trust" facilitate this internet. If a business or website cannot function or be profitable without this, that company does not deserve to survive. It's putting businesses ahead of users.
It works off the assumption that websites should know who the person visiting their website is (or that it's even a human.)
IMO, we need to return to the assumption that users are anonymous and remind people that you don't know who is on the other side so we should not trust at all.
Smart people coming up with smart ideas to do dumb things. When will we start shaming such people?
Sometimes it is unbelievable. They want to make the Internet their own, following their model... luckily there will always be people fighting to keep the Internet free, where anyone can decide, in this case, whether to swallow ads or not
The engineers to blame are
https://github.com/RupertBenWiser
https://github.com/yoavweiss
Lmao yoavweiss seems to have recently broken the 4 year hiatus on his personal blog to make a new post about how the discussions around this retarded proposal are not constructive enough.
The most constructive that can ever be said about this is "fuck right off" dude.
You think they acted alone?
They acted.
That’s petty as fuck. I’m an ex google eng and it’s not up to us what we work on. We get paid to work on shit and if we don’t do it someone else will. Plenty of resumes in the pool ready to hop in and take someone’s spot. Blame the company not the people doing the grunt work.
It’s like blaming the barista for the menu.
“Just doing my job” is a poor excuse. That’s no different than saying, “I’m just doing it for money”. When you’re a software engineer who could get another job without much trouble. Otherwise, you’re choosing to do what google tells you.
A menu you don’t like at a barista isn’t even remotely the same.
"The restaurant told me to not care and use rotten food for your meal, not my fault" is basically what I can relate it to
More like blaming the chef in a restaurant chain for the menu. Some corporate entity might be the one crafting the menu, but they’re still the ones cooking.
That isn’t to say we should hound the devs, but I thought we could use a better example.
Please don’t blame the people who were forced to implement this. There are engineers to blame behind all shitty tech in the world. They’re just trying to work a job. There aren’t exactly a lot of jobs in the tech industry where you don’t work for some of the evilest motherfuckers alive building unimaginably evil stuff. I’m all for directing as much hate, vitriol, credible threats of violence, etc at the people on top, but let’s leave the poor sap who they forced to do their dirty work alone.
I fail to see how the engineers building the technical side of this are relevant to this case. It's not their decision to put this into Chromium or not.
True, it was not their decision, but they had the choice to show google the middle finger.
The next person would do it then. I don't see that as a solution.
Anyone able to come up with this tech has the choice to just leave and work elsewhere.
Of course they have the choice. But be realistic. There is ALWAYS someone willing to do something for money. Not everyone thinks the same way as you do.
You always have a decision. Especially when you’re a highly qualified engineer that could choose to work somewhere else easily.
You say that like it’s easy to deal with a sudden loss of income and the potential that their living situation will radically change before they land that new job. I can’t imagine that working at that level leads to particular quick interview and hiring processes.
Dude they’re not murdering people they implemented tech use a new browser
No point in whistleblowing when they are posting blogs about it…asking for feedback.
Thanks really picked what mattered from an auto correct
I don't know that we're watching the internet collapse. I think we are witnessing tech companies respond to growing financial pressure by accelerating their monetization plans, and it's blowing up in their faces. The result will be the reinvention of the web. I don't necessarily know if decentralized apps are going to take off, but I do think the internet will shift towards smaller (possibly open source) sites in retaliation.
Similar things are done with TV and streaming unfortunately. You ever notice how commercials/ads have louder volume than whatever content you're watching? It's intentional. If you're someone who doesn't skip them and doesn't mute them, they want you to be able to hear them from another room and then they hope you'll come back to see the ad. It's so dumb.
It's fun to see capitalism doubling down on itself. 🫠
Their engineers are super fucking shady too. For example, the issies with the WebHID "browser" APIs
There's literally a comment from an Google engineer, about WebHID saying that they had engineers "motivated to execute on" as part of their reasoning for telling others to go fuck themselves.
They put their name on it. I hope it was monetary worth it because the public should not cut them any slack.
Am I the only one thinking these trust tokens are not going to prevent bots from scraping websites?
Eventually, somewhere, someone will just develop the infrastructure to work their way around this, right?
You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain
I really need to ween myself off the Internet so that, once it becomes an unusable hellhole in the next 20 years or so, I'll be able to give it up entirely and move on to better things.
What a cursed timeline this is
I can’t imagine anyone who uses the internet thinking the current ad technology is effective, the web is broken because of ads
Back when Threads got released someone told me on Lemmy that Meta will not pull an EEE on ActivotyPub because something something antitrust Microsoft long ago millions of dollars.
How is Manifestv3 different?
Google engineers need to fuck off.
Related: https://lemmy.world/post/2235459
So, we will be forced to see ads, while they can’t yet control who’s publishing those ads. I wonder why Google (and any other ad company) hasn’t been sued yet for showing and infecting malware into the people who click on their ads. Maybe is not that critical or easy for a domestic user, but corporations or governments?
And it’s not because it’s impossible to verify malware before accepting their ads, it’s because THEY DONT CARE. If they can detect music on videos for copyright claims, they can analyze everything, they can also verify publishers. And if they can’t with an algorithm, they should use humans to manually verify publishers.
Per the article, this is already being integrated into Chromium as we speak, as in days ago: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/6f47a22906b2899412e79a2727355efa9cc8f5bd
Imagine someone telling you this is your job and you do it.
Maybe we should create another internet?
this is why I'm switching to firefox
imagine working on shit like this. like wouldn't that make your life worse as well? how fucking malignant
Forced to implement is the wrong term - they were tasked with designing it. They can't just swap one person out for another - losing the lead dev or designer would be delay or kill the effort
They could've pushed back - software ethics is a required course for very good reason - but it's easy to never ask if you should do something and skip straight to how. It gets easier to skip that piece every time, and the company isn't going to respect it - we need outside pressure so they can point to us and say "this will have repercussions"
They don't deserve death threats, but trashing everything they push on GitHub is fair. Measured steady pressure - save the most extreme stuff for upper management and shareholders
For the engineers you have to make them understand they did bad and they should feel bad, they need to feel that their peers have lost respect for them, not that this is the public lashing out
Your notion is just wrong. First of all engineers can't push back on something like this. They can try to push back on stuff that might be wrong for the product, that is not performant or potentially break stuff, but not on something that can make the company so much money. If this is the roadmap, they must align, they are being paid (tons of money) to implement the company's vision.
Second of all, you are looking at this as a consumer perspective. They are part of the company and most likely heavily invested in it. And if such thing will increase the company's revenue, it will icrease theirs too. They won't feel bad trust me, they know where they are and what they're doing.
"Curse googles sudden but constant betrayal!"
Yes because that's beneficial to society and definitely not solely for the purpose of making the company and their executives richer.
Basically adware.
It's NOT the engineers. It's the executives and corporate management that decides that. The engineers just get paid to implement it.
It's almost like Google wants me to trade my android phone in on an iphone.
I think the key is not Firefox but Apple. If Apple does not join the DRM web future, Google cannot force it.
Imagine if ads had remained a single static banner at the top/bottom of the page and was hosted by the site itself. Maybe there wouldn't be an arms race to infiltrate every aspect of our digital lives.
They can't stop dns filters :)
Welp, there we go.
I'm working on the contrary, some sort of gemini web plus with modules, to keep the engine as small as possible to make porting/reinventions easier. The engine only provides basics like displaying text. Modules provide functionality like 'video player', gallery', 'search bar with filters', 'login', keeping webshops, company pages, etc. in mind. There's no JS or CSS, the styling is entirely in the hand of the browser/user (including dark mode, mobile view), the servers push only content. Likewise, active logins and payments will be handled by the browser, not the webpage. Though it will not be compatible with HTTPS/the current web. The protocol and the browser will be licensed open source.
I'm still planning, it's not even in the prototype phase yet. Should i push this further? If so, how would i get financial support? opentech.fund, ngi.edu, nlnet?
Yeah, it’s executives and shareholders too
I’m not sure how you can blame a corporation for doing the job of a corporation. It’s capitalism doing its thing.
I will blame the end users. When the masses of anti-bot pro-advertising normies decide to run browsers that play the token game, it will be on them. Just as countless shitty websites get high ranking search results today.. it’s because the masses endorse it.
Boycotts are far too rare. It’s the consumer’s job to #boycott. They don’t do their job and this is the real point of failure (which Google gladly exploits).
Engineers could leave and find a new job. “Just doing my job” is not a real defense.
This guy is amazing. He is asking for patience to move this to a proper place to discuss this website drm and then commits it to chrome lol.
Fuckers
You're right, they can only try. They can express concerns, they can interpret goals a little differently to minimize harm, they can stretch the truth and make the project seem less feasible. None of that is going to do much if management is driving this through - loudly resigning in protest is the last move, and unless you have a big name it's not going to do much.
But you're wrong that I'm coming at this as a consumer - I'm a dev and I've been put in this situation before (although our work wasn't public).
You're also wrong on the googler front - most of them aren't making that much, better than they'd make most other places, but not life changing amounts
When you talk to a googler, there's a pride, and buried under that usually an insecurity. They got into the bleeding edge of tech... Or so they thought.
Last Thanksgiving I was talking to someone who worked for them, and once the conversation got technical I could see it in his eyes. I happened to be well versed in the topic, and so I started asking questions about his approach. And as much as I tried to hide it (he is family) he must've seen the disappointment on my face... He just deflated. He knew deep down what he was doing wasn't actually that cool or special - it's just a lie that he hears constantly
Working at a company like Google, you're constantly being told you're doing important work that could change the world. There's pride and status there. They've crafted a bubble where everyone reinforces that belief, that "what we're doing is good and important"
When you step outside that bubble and realize the technical community doesn't respect you, personally, not because of Google but because of your own actions? That pokes a person right in the place they put their self-worth
So, Google, the Overlord of the Internet apperantly, wishes to make his Kingdom an uninhabitable hellscape of constant ad harrassment that anyone who wants to keep their sanity will interact with as little as possible, only going there when necessary.
Ok, then. Good luck with that Business.
Just wondering, will one day Humanity, who has pretty much agreed in perfect unison completely independent from each other, since the golden age of television, that we all hate ads, finally be heard?
Really curious about how they'll try this shit in the EU. That'll be fun.
Can someone shed some light for me? I'm a noob and I'm not sure I understand what is being proposed by google here. From what I can tell, they're proposing a cryptographically signed token that details information about a website user's 'environment', which I take to mean, their device OS and browser information, for the sake of verifying their humanity for website owners and advertisers. Isn't this sort of information already collected when a user visits a webpage, and doesn't google (or whomever) already collect and use this data (and more) for fingerprinting? How is this new proposal different, and something to be specifically concerned about?
I know there are anti-fingerprinting browser privacy addons that spoof this information, or prevent its collection. Is the concern that these tools will become inoperable?
For the record I don't like google or any company collecting any fingerprinting information, but it's already being done widely and in an unregulated manner, isn't it?
The issue tracker of the GitHub repo is just ridiculous.
Don't blame the engineers. It's leadership.
Cash Rules Everything Around Me...
I'm afraid I disagree here. This line of thinking might lead some people to targeting Google engineers for harassment, doxxing, etc. We're better than that, I hope. Instead, we need to call on governments to hit Google harder than they hit Microsoft over Internet Explorer. Back then, there were talks of forcing Microsoft to split off IE as a separate company, we need to make Google do the same with Chrome, and find some way to compel them to stop all browser development altogether. We have antitrust laws, we just aren't using them.
I see your point
10:10 wholesome response.
People call on governments to do things all the time, but it's often just ignored. How do we get governments to actually listen? How do we get this to actually happen? ~Strawberry
I don't blame the engineers so much as the executives. Those engineers could be people from India on H-1B visas just trying to live a better life.
I am also very worried about the privacy implications of storing these tokens (as mentioned in the post).
I don't understand how this will make ad blockers unusable. This new API might tell the site the user is using an ad blocker, but that tech seems to exist already..?
Apple and Cloudflare already added something like this called Private Access Tokens https://developer.apple.com/news/
Why don’t they collaborate with them?
By all means... do that "Mr. Google", and I'll never touch any chromium-related browser, ever.
They can try. Maybe it gets more people to learn about pinhole or other adblocking, with a little bit of luck it even rescues one or two people from the claws of windows.
But it looks like that only affects users of the Chrome Browser right?
So let's say the API sever for the authentication that the browser has not been altered goes down. Does that mean that all sites that require the browser are unreachable?
Yep, and they won't give a shit.
challenge accepted
Are there any implications for DNS-based ad blocking, as is done with Pi Hole?
Pi Hole only works if DNS over HTTPS isn't forced.
Which it is already on Android, if I'm not mistaken.
For a tech community there are a lot of uninformed and fear mongering posts in here. From the article:
Basically it can be summed up as “nothing in the new thing actually says it will make blocking ads impossible or even harder, but who knows right? So just trust that it will based on nothing other than fear mongering”
Sites have been detecting ad blockers and refusing to show you content unless you disable them for years. Sites already have paywalls as drm to restrict what you can see. This really isn’t bringing the ability do any of these DRM things since those already exist.
Having said all that - is there much of a reason for this new thing to exist? Debatable at this stage. The only benefit I can see to users is it could eliminate captchas and other “are you human?” checks, as well as maybe reduce cheaters in browser based games (which tbh I don’t even know if that’s a thing).
I think the issue is that Google has both A) a track record of backdooring restrictions on adblocking, and B) an overwhelming motivation to do so seeing as how they generate their revenue from online advertising. They've forfeited the benefit of the doubt, especially when they've already disclosed that the whole point of the change is to enhance the profitability of online advertising:
So given that once implemented, this hop and this skip would just require a teensy jump in order to further restrict adblocking, it is reasonable to assume that's within their desired goals.
Google has a track record of attack articles written against them, all talking up their intentions to tank adblocking, including this attack article. And yet, my adblocker still works and my ads are still blocked. Strange that we just assume this is what they intend to do, when there's no evidence they've pulled it off, we treat it as if they have.
💯. People are talking like there's currently no way for websites to detect ad blockers or implement paywalls, and this is Googles way of doing it.
Are you really certain that Google is trying to eliminate adblocking is just an alarmist assumption?
Threatens, as in, hasn't happened and may not. Not all threats are true.
idk how well stuff works on Chrome Mobile. I use a different Chrome-based mobile browser that does allow extensions, and Ublock Origin works great on it. Turns out there's more than one way to skin a cat. Who knew?
I'm well read on Manifest v3. I'm also aware of a Ublock Origin version that is designed to work under it. I have it installed and ready to go, for if and when the old one stops working. But that has only been threatened, too, and not even by Google.
I'm not certain it is just an assumption, but I am also not certain it is a prophecy. Until I get more certain, I'm not going to bust my hump worrying about it. And I'm certainly not going to bellow to the hillsides that we're all doomed.
They can do this without this new API though. Many sites block users if they use ad blockers, have for years, and that's without this API.
Chrome isn't the only browser on mobiles. If Chrome doesn't let you block ads and you want to block ads, use a browser that does. Based on your logic, google would have eliminated ad blockers from Android overall already, yet they haven't.
The fact is that this new API doesn't block ad-blockers. Sites can already choose to block access if you have an ad blocker. There's no change.
In other posts, I've tried to point out how some of the articles and comments around WEI are more speculative than factual and received downvotes and accusations of boot-licking for it. Welcome to the club, I guess.
The speculation isn't baseless, but I'm concerned about the lack of accurate information about WEI in its current form. If the majority of people believe WEI is immediately capable of enforcing web page integrity, share that incorrect fact around, and incite others, it's going to create a very good excuse for dismissing all dissenting feedback of WEI as FUD. The first post linking to the GitHub repository brought in so many pissed off/uninformed people that the authors of the proposal actually locked the repo issues, preventing anyone else from voicing their concerns or providing examples of how implementing the specification could have unintended or negative consequences.
Furthermore, by highlighting the DRM and anti-adblock aspect of WEI, it's failing to give proper attention to many of the other valid concerns like:
I very well could be wrong, but I think our (the public) opinions would have held more weight if they were presented in a rational, informed, and objective manner. Talking to software engineers as people generally goes down better than treating them like emotionless cogs in the corporate machine, you know?
#CAPTCHA elimination is not a benefit. The CAPTCHA motive of separating humans from bots is responsible for killing beneficial bots. The only good thing about it is humans get fed-up with CAPTCHAs and the captcha-pushers lose human traffic. That backlash is a good thing™. Remove that backlash and beneficial bots are defeated on a much larger scale.
Why has Google have gone to this, becoming greedy bastards?
I have too use Edge at work. Is Edge also implementing this shit?
Ah yes kill the internet. I'm OK with that.
AFAIK, AGhome doesn't block youtube ads (which is part of Mr. Google's ebool domain). So.... don't think so, tim.
What about search engines? DDG and bing suck ass, google is the only of the three that returns results that actually remotely match what I type in.