Google is already pushing Web Environment Integrity into Chromium
Google is already pushing Web Environment Integrity into Chromium
github.com
[wei] Ensure Origin Trial enables full feature · chromium/chromium@6f47a22
381 comments
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It may be the last few years of the free web because of Google. Their goals are clear.
Please switch to Firefox, another search engine and another email provider...
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I've long been trying to de-googlify myself, but it's certainly ramped up this year.
Been trying out Kagi and just set up proton mail account. Not sure what I'll land on in the end but it's nice trying out newer services.
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It is hard when you have a business. You really have to actively try to stay away from them. They control so much business infrastructure.
I know my business partner (god bless him, great friend but...) is super into big tech and every new product they offer. So it's a bit of an uphill battle.
And I'm lucky. I own my own firm. Most people don't have such a luxury.
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It's not too hard. The most important things are web search and email. I still use Google Maps. But I don't want my private emails and searches at a company who is user hostile and preditory.
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I found out about Kagi from another Lemmy user and I've been really impressed. I feel like I'm getting better results than Google. I'm using their Personalized Results feature and it helps a ton!
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Any recommendations for free email providers?
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Any recommendations for free email providers?
I'm using proton. I like it a lot.
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Nothing is free. How would they make money as a company to pay employees and pay hosting bills?
All these big tech companies are free exactly because they are preditory on users.
Pay for good email like Fastmail or Proton.
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Register your own domain name with Gandi and they gift you free email with a choice of two webmail interfaces. It's really good, and owning the domain name enables moving to a different provider later if you wish.
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I do use the better options but lets be real, the battle was lost many years ago
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Don'tbe evil.-
Be Evil, Do Ads
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Can you explain this to a layman what this does?
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It's DRM, but for the whole web.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/
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Web dev here. It enforces the original markup and code from a server to be the markup and code that the browser interprets and executes, preventing any post-loading modifications.
That sounds a bit dry, but the implications are huge. It means:
- ad blockers won't work (the main reason for Google's ploy)
- many, if not most, other browser extensions won't work (eg.: accessibility, theming, anti-malware)
- people are going to start running into a lot of scam ads that ad blockers would otherwise prevent
- malicious websites will be able to operate with impunity since you cannot run security extensions to prevent them
- web developers are going to be crippled for lack of debugging ability
These are just a few things off the top of my head. There are endless and very dangerous implications to WEI. This is very, very bad for the web and antithesis of how it's supposed to be.
TBL is probably experiencing a sudden disturbance in the force.
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It's a way to disable ad blockers.
Presently web servers send data to your browser, which can arrange the content however you wish, because it's your browser on your device. Excluding content you don't like is fairly trivial.
This drm stuff will basically make the browser refuse to display anything unless the whole page is unaltered.
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Imagine you're a builder and you build a store (website). People can come into your store through the door or window. WEI will make sure you come through the door just as the builder intended.
At face value, that sounds fine, but now imagine that builder puts a maze (all of the ads littered on a webpage) on the other side of the door. It's a pain in the ass to get through and someone (adblock) has told you about the window that lets you skip the maze. You can get what you want and the store gets to sell a thing. Everyone's happy except the maze builder (Google), so they're trying to force the entire world to go through the maze.
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There might have be a time when Google tried not to be evil, but they've been Satin himself for a good number of years now. It just took them a while to realize the irony of their mission statement. It's funny I used to get mad at Microsoft for being evil, but they've got nothing on Google.
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They removed 'don't be evil' from their code of conduct 5 years ago.
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There's a "we told you this would happen" going on here.
If chromium didn't have a monopoly amongst browsers, they would have a much harder time pushing this through.
Imagine everyone using a browser built by an advertising company.
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That's not even the biggest level of "we told you this would happen."
They pulled this shit previously with other standards (WebHID). Where they proposed a terrible standard, and then implemented it ignoring all feedback. Only last time it played out over months, and this time... weeks?
Sweet jesus.
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I moved to FF the same time I found out about the DRM shit. It takes literally 10 minutes and the only thing FF lacks is tab groups. Not a big loss compared to a stupid bigtech telling me what I can use.
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FF has tab containers which, while I haven’t used much myself, seem pretty similar to tab groups from a quick search. Edit: Also looks like there’s “Simple tab groups” extension which maybe even more similar to what you may want
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The problem is that Mozilla dropped the ball so hard, by focusing on making their C-staff into millionaires instead of making a good product, that it no longer matters. Their market share is so small that Firefox compatibility no longer matters.
Soon websites will require that DRM and either Firefox will implement it or it will be unable to render those websites.
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And this is the consequence of browser vendors relying on Chromium.
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To be honest - easy to pull a Microsoft a fork a branch without the crap.
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Ohnonono Well time to burn down google I guess ¯(ツ)/¯
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It's always good time for this
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Fuck you Google.
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The Internet in the last five or so years has just been less fun and interesting to use in general. Except for anywhere I can interact with friends, I just don't really care for using corporate social media sites anymore. I've pretty much removed Google from my life except for YouTube and rarely Google Maps, and if Google tries to use this to force ads into YouTube (which I'm sure is going to be one of its uses) then I will just stop using YouTube. I will just stop patronizing any site or business that tries to implement this as a feature to stop my browser choice, OS choice, or my extension choice (which included adblock extensions). I miss the days when the Internet was less corporately controlled than it is now, and I think we need a renaissance of those days.
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this is a userbase killer right here
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If manifest 3 didn't change egoogke chrome share I doubt this will.
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Manifest 3 didn't create noticable chnages for the average user. Not yet anyway.
The idea is these changes are never a full at first. The internet will not break tomorrow because of integrity checking.
But it will in a few years. And people will be upset then. When it's far too late.
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hey everyone a friendly reminder that alternatives exist, and just drop this shit fast and move to better alternatives. In this case firefox.
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The problems start to happen when buisnesses adopt this en masse. Expect all banks to implement this for example. You can use Firefox all you want, but then you won't be able to do online banking.
Standards are really fucking important to help people stay functional in a society. This is one area that the ANCAP mindset just gets it totally wrong, unless you like the idea of being a hermit.
Anyway, we are already seeing some websites basically reject browsers like Firefox because they basically give the consumer too much protection and freedom. Arguably we've seen this before, but this may be a new tier of corporate lockout of open standards as consumer protection gets thrown in the trash. Thanks America.
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This needs to be pinned at the top of every single threat about this. Far too many people are just saying "Well I'll just keep using Firefox". They do not understand the gravity of the issue.
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If my bank does this I'll take my custom to a smaller one that doesn't.
I don't think they will though, since they gave me a hardware thingy to login to my online banking from my rooted android 🫠
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I don't think that checks out.
Firefox only exists because it's primarily funded by Google. It's funded by Google to ensure they actually have some competition and avoid becoming a Monopoly.
If they kill Firefox or otherwise make it unusable they'll be shooting themselves in the foot.
However, if it ends up being a bad experience that no one wants to use, well that's not on them and they have no responsibility to fix it.
What will likely happen is Firefox will also adopt this DRM.
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The issue isn't that we have no alternative, it's that this feature will basically eliminate those alternatives sadly. You can read more about it here if you haven't, but it's bad.
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For sure, I agree and it's bad. But frankly unsurprising. This is the trajectory of the internet: greater control.
We've become too dependent on centralized tech companies and erred in allowing tech companies to change, define, and control the internet in the first place.
Alternatives must be promoted in mass scale.
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When websites start blocking clients that don't implement the wei handshake, you'll be forced to use one that does if you want to visit those sites. Firefox will either adopt it or become a second rate browser.
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For now, Mozilla's official stance is to oppose this proposal: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/852#issuecomment-1648820747
I wish that this kind of thing would generate enough outrage to increase Firefox' market share considerably (from the <3% it is today), and in that way deter websites from adopting it since they would block a larger share of users. Unfortunately, I think that might be too naive of me...
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Websites should be able to block me. I can just go elsewhere.
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As pointed out above, individual use of Firefox doesn't really do that much. Especially when Firefox already doesn't work properly for some sites. Plus, lots of people (myself included) need to use Chrome for work. This shit sucks.
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Have you used Firefox recently? I haven't had even one instance of a website not working simply because of Firefox.
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for work purposes, ok fine. but personal purposes i'd try and steer clear as much as i can.
My general point is we should use alternatives whenever possible to discourage this kind of centralized power developing in the first place.
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I'm do not experience any of these improper working sites. My daily driver is Librewolf, where this sometimes occur, but when it does, I just switch to vanilla Firefox, and everything is fine.
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As an aside, I know we're not supposed to care about Reddit, but the lack of this news getting any attention over there is just depressing. Hell the Firefox sub hasn't had any posts in days apparently.
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People that care about this stuff are probably already jumped ship.
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That's because the firefox sub moved to Lemmy...
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Wow they moved incredibly fast, even considering the repository was first committed to in April 2023. I wonder why the outrage only started a few days ago? There was also a discussion, started in May.
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It's a shame that no matter the amount of outrage, no matter what the pitfalls of this change may be, it's going to happen no matter what because money.
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Luckily we have choices. From WebKit browsers to Mozilla browsers. This will make me quit chrome. (Way overdue anyways)
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Well, I don't know about now, but this Microsoft employee says some time ago an outrage worked.
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Could there be lawsuits over this?
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If there will be, google is powerful than most governments. They know there will be some lawsuit and they are prepared for it. Its just cost of doing business.
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Not directly but this could be an antitrust case in some places.
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Reasonable people will disagree... but no, probably not. This is a feature which websites can choose to use in the same way that websites can choose to use notifications. Even if you dislike the fact that web browsers provide the option, it's the website itself that's actively choosing to impose on you.
Now, the counterpoint to this argument is that the feature in question will most likely further strengthen Google's position as the market leader and lock out new independent browsers. This is certainly true and similar logic has indeed been employed in cases like the Microsoft antitrust case. With that being said, Google still has that extra layer of abstraction sitting between it and the actual mechanism of action (i.e.: independent website owners who want DRM). Think of it like the Uber of anti-trust law.
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Chrome is a bag of shit anyway, easy jump
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Chromium, not chrome. Which means also Brave, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi and a lot more. Basically only Firefox and Safari are left as the big non-chromium ones.
But that's not the worst of it. Even if you tear out this code, more and more websites will be built that rely on it. Which means Firefox etc also need to include it to keep functioning.
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If WebKit and Mozilla put up enough fight. It will not be the standard.
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Well, you can’t say not chrome because it does include chrome, yes, it extends to other browsers using the same codebase, I understand I’m well versed. Either which way, fuck google
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Isn‘t Safari‘s WebKit the origin of Chromium‘s Blink 😉
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Not saying you don't realize, but Safari already has this tech. They call it Personal Access Tokens.
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Well, that's the worst case scenario. I hope that Brave will fork Chromium and leave the WEI out. Brave prides itself on being the no nonsense browser ...
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Pardon my ignorance but Can someone explain what google is trying to do?
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Pardon formatting, on mobile. Its a form of device authentication. Apple does this with safari already BTW, and it can reduce things like captcha because the authentication is done on the backend when a request hits a server. While still an issue in concept with Apple doing it, chromium browsers are a much larger market share. In layman's terms this is basically the company saying, hey you are attempting to visit this site, we need to verify the device (or browser, or add on configuration, or no ad blocker, etc) is 'authentic'. Which of course is nebulous. It can be whatever the entity in charge of attestation wants it to be.
This sets the precedent that whomever is controlling verification, can deny whomever they see fit. I'm running GrapheneOS on my phone currently, they could deny for that. Or, if you are blocking ads. Maybe you're not sharing specific information about your device, and they want to harvest that. Too bad, comply or you're 'not allowed to do x or y'.
This is the gist. The web should be able to be accessed by anybody. It isn't for companies to own nor should it be built that way. Web2 is a corporate hellscape.
Edit wrt Safari: https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-attestation/
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From my limited understanding as a common pleb, they are inserting DRM into Chromium browsers to prevent ad-blockers.
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Internet with no ad-blockers is like a nightmare
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To be fair, it is useful for other purposes, but the cost to users is likely to be huge, with ad blocking being one of them. It probably also prevents other things even outside your browser because there's no point in securing a browser running in an untrusted environment. IIRC there is/was an issue running Netflix on certain Android devices and rooted devices after a similar feature was added to Android.
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EME for the rest of the internet, not just video. Basically doing what hulu does to stop screen recording/as blocking but across every webpage
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Feels so good to see Google getting called out for this in the GitHub comments
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Does it? It's making me depressed.
Because every last single thing said in those comments will be ignored. I sincerely doubt they're even reading them.
They know what they're doing. They know what people will say. They're going to do it anyway.
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Regulate Big Tech and be done with it.
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Gross.
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i've been using a samsung chromebook plus since it launched until now... and it's end-of-support next month. being a typical human with low funds for new gear, i WAS considering a new chromebook of some kind. The chrome drm bullshit doesn't effect me too much as I use this mostly within the linux container, or firefox android version... however, I realize i need to take a stand and not financially support these tyrants.
so, what are my options? a pinebook running debian? are there any good netbooks out there? I don't use this thing for games or streaming media at all - mostly ssh, some browsing, etc. it's about time I take the final steps to de-goog my life.
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Install Linux on your current chromebook. If the hardware is still good that's a no-brainer in my book.
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i'm in the middle of this process now, and just frustrating myself. i've forgotten too much of the inner workings of the kernel - that is, my old knowledge doesn't apply anymore. I've got a dualboot working, but can't for the life of me get the wifi module to load. not relevant to this thread, so i won't dirty it up. but, thank you for getting my head in the right space!
i will, somehow, get some flavor working
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Get a used Thinkpad. They run Debian well!
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Used thinkpads (like the T480) are a great choice.
I use Manjaro Cinnamon on mine.
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Fuck this is trash. DRM for the web. I wish people would understand websites like kbin are not free and that if you use a website you need to pay to keep it alive. But no one wants to pay for anything on the internet, and so we have ads. Ads will for sure kill the internet.
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The fact that people feel entitled to free content online really activates my almonds. They'll whine and moan about enshittification and how eg. news is just clickbait now, and then promptly shit their pants when someone suggests they actually pay for things since they clearly don't want ads either
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Surely you can reverse that and point out corporations whining and moaning about people expecting free content when they're barely paying their employees enough to afford to pay their bills.
The problem starts with corporate greed, hoarding revenue by keeping employee's salaries to the minimum acceptable, providing as little functionality as possible to reduce overheads, double dipping by selling a product/subscription and then selling their customer's data, and then complaining they aren't getting more money for what little they are doing.
Then inevitably a little guy like Kbin comes along and suffers because the internet is filled with soulless, ultra-capitalist corpo scumbags.
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Can someone ELI5 how this could prevent a fork of Chromium from just not playing nice and telling the website "yeah yeah, it's all untempered wink wink" and then still remove/alter stuff as it pleases?
Edit: ok I think I got it ... it's basically the server that decides if it trusts the judgment of the client or not. Can't wait to see that cat-and-mouse game going on 🙄
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Yeah, I can imagine a fork of chromium existing that takes all the data and does the rendering pipeline """normally""", but then on the side does something completely different and shows THAT to the user, while giving the server an idea that nothing is wrong and what it is doing is just normal chromium stuff.
But such an idea will be done entirely by enthusiasts, slowly, on an obscure basis. For the majority of users, that will never even be a conceivable notion of something they can do with the internet. Itll never be something you see on a top, mainstream browser.
In other words, Google wins.
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it’s basically the server that decides if it trusts the judgment of the client or not. Can’t wait to see that cat-and-mouse game going on
This is partially correct. The server will check that you have a valid token issued by a trusted third party, who will almost certainly be Google, Microsoft, or Apple. When you connect to the web page, your browser will give this token to the server and say "hey look I'm legit." The token will have enough information on it to identify that it is relevant (being provided by a client that matches the hardware it is meant to verify) as well as a cryptographic signature that verifies it is in fact from the trusted third party. So it's less the server trusting the judgement of the client than it is the server trusting the judgement of whatever third party is attesting to your system.
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I guess I'll never use Chrome or Google products again then
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So..I don't use chrome anymore, but I use Vivaldi. Guess this'll fuck that up too or will they remove it?
Edit: looks like they're concerned about it but also are worried stripping it out will f up theye browser being accepted
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Hey, fellow Vivaldi user👋 . Yep, one of the Vivaldi devs already said if it was added upstream, they'd strip it out of the Chromium code, but they acknowledge that this would cause problems if WEI became standard. Websites would start to expect it, and not having that functionality would be a death-sentence for any browser (Chromium or otherwise).
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That's great to hear. I like it and would like to continue
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I don't understand. Isn't someone just going to fork Chromium, take out this stuff, put in something that spoofs the DRM to the sites so that adblocking still works?
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Isn’t someone just going to fork Chromium, take out this stuff,
Yes, upstream Chromium forks will likely try to remove this functionality, but
put in something that spoofs the DRM to the sites so that adblocking still works?
This is the part that is not possible. The browser is not doing the attestation; it's a third party who serves as Attestor. All the browser does is makes the request to the attestor, and passes the attestor's results to the server you're talking to. There is no way a change in the browser could thwart this if the server you're talking to expects attestation.
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This violates just about every single open web principal that allowed Google to gain so much power. When they changed their motto from Don't Be Evil, to Do No Harm, they obviously chose deception. Their new motto should be Do Whatever is Profitable, or more succinctly Be Evil.
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I don't really understand how that's possible. The browser gets a token from the third party, and passes that token to the server to "prove" it's running the DRM. The server then passes code back to the browser. At that point, why can't the browser just cut out the DOM elements which are ads?
I don't understand how code I write on hardware I run locally can ever have it's hands tied like this.
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NOOOOOOO
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I wonder how many people will be ok with this, considering that there's a large portion of folks who does not know what's AdBlock
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Yup. The vast majority of internet users NEVER:
- Customizes their web experience
- Uses apps almost exclusively
- Navigates beyond the first page/screen
How will they react to this?
"Shut the hell up, fucking nerd and your fucking idiotic, stupid ass 'privacy' bullshit. God WHO THE FUCK CARES!? I was literally - LITERALLY - never inconvenienced by any of that stuff, so SHUT UP!"
That's how.
We're doomed. We were always doomed.
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We’re doomed. We were always doomed.
I'm afraid that's always been the case because the mass majority just don't a give a shit. They'll happily conform to whatever the monopolies tell them to.
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Would be kinda cool to go back to irc or usenet, because the average internet user does not and will not give a shit about privacy, and definitely won't get a complicated chat thing setup.
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Can someone ELI5 me on what this is and why it is bad?
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google want websites to be able to check whether you're running an approved browser. And they also want to be the ones to have the authority to decide what an "approved browser" is.
Given that google is an advertising company that owns a browser, constantly tries to cripple ad blockers they will probably simply start saying that any browser that doesn't implement the stuff they want (crippled ad blockers) is "untrustworthy"
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Would it be possible to create a fork of chromium to avoid google's influence?
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The biggest problem is if Google can influence all the major websites (banks, e-commerce, news sites, streaming services, social media, etc) to adopt this standard.
They've done it before with AMP.
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They won't even have to force them this time, they'll do it voluntarily because it would mean they can serve unblockable ads, track users much better, and for banks it would actually increase security for the user (but also force you to consume their content how they want, preventing stuff like accessibility extensions).
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And fuck AMP, it's a fucking travesty.
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Not really, since Google develops Chromium.
FireFox receives most of their funding from Google, even though they've come out as opposing this plan. They have next to no market share.
The only other browser engine that can seriously compete with Chromium is Safari.
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Google is actively trying to drive people like me away. I have been trying my hardest to keep using Android, if Google keeps this up I might have to unwillingly move to Apple. At least they do more than just pretend to care about their users' privacy.
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They did, but hardly anyone uses safari, so it can’t be used by itself to enforce standards like the google thing will be able to do. It’s just an extra thing they have for now.
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You, me, and everybody else commenting on this post are a miniscule, almost infintesimal percentage of Google's global userbase. If each and every one of us statistical outliers stopped using Google everything right this second they wouldn't even notice.
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I moved to Apple a few years ago, and recently I've stopped using Chrome for anything but work, where it's required (web development, lol). Still married to gmail and google calendar but maybe it's time I get away from those too...
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I just don't understand why they're trying to solve this issue on the client side. It seems like a losing battle to me.
Instead, focus on the server side. If you want to push ads, then host on (or tunnel from) the content server. Get rid of all the div>s and tags and scripts and adserver links that the adblockers are using to identify ads. Just assemble the page on the host so that it looks indistinguisable from the content the user is looking for and push it out. EAT BACHELOR CHOW! NOW WITH FLAVOR! Google could even start an ad-friendly hosting service that does this - some sitebuilder tools, identify where you want Google Adsense, and host the damn thing.
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Unless everybody fully customises the display and styling of the adverts for their own website, there's going to be some sort of targetable, recognisable pattern in the way AdSense content looks. Most developers just want an easy drop-in solution.
Furthermore, Google don't necessarily want to give you that level of control over the adverts, because that makes it easier to game the ads system with malicious, fake and misleading clicks or invisible adverts. They need their tracking tech attached to it.
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So render to image? That sounds terribly inefficient. That means you're drastically increasing the load on the server and sending way more data over the wire. And then on the client side, your page no longer changes to fit the huge variety of viewport sizes. And say goodbye to being able to copy-paste. Or any kind of user interaction. And anyone with visual disabilities can go fuck themselves, I guess.
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No, they didn't mean to render it all as an image, but that everything comes from the content server you're getting the content you want from and thus the ads should be indistinguishable from content. I don't understand how you could misunderstand it to such a degree as to think they meant to render it all as an image.
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I guess I won that bet. :/
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This won't be used just to block ads. If you're signed in to Google, this DRM will be used to track you, as well. VPNs will be useless because the tracking won't be done through your IP address, but through your browser, identified by DRM and tied to your Google account.
That's what this is really about. Knowing, where you go, what you see, what you buy, who you associate with. Forcing you to watch ads is just the icing on the cake
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Any ideas what the behavior of webpages will be if somebody uses PiHole?
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Since PiHole isn't part of the browser but in the network I assume that still works.
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PiHole can be bypassed with DNS over HTTPS, although there's ways to prevent that.
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I quite disagree, it is very hard. Sure, switching search engine takes all of two seconds, and email can be had from many vendors free and commercial.
But calendaring! A calendar that is at least somewhat integrated with am email client, supports more than one actual calendar, and has real-world capability to share them with others - "if you succeed in this, two me how."
(not sure this worked as intended. I meant to reply to https://lemmy.world/comment/1748023)
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Tutanota is trying, but there's still ways to go
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What does this mean?
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Ew
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I run Chrome to use work (Google) email and services, and Firefox for as much as possible. The challenge is that about a 10% of things I use only work properly on Chrome. It's IE6 all over again, history repeating itself.
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The real two internets is happening
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Why is this bad? On first read, it seems like it could replace personally identifiable advertiser cookies with a trusted assertion that I am a human. Feels like a win
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oh, hai guys
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Hello there browser which already implemented DRM similar to this a while ago!
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Safari is ahead on this DRM game. It already deployed attestation silently a while ago: https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-attestation/
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381 comments
I'll keep using Firefox and be extremely vocal about websites that won't support it. I mean that's all I can really do.
And hope the EU will oppose it.
EU really is the one doing all the good work. Meanwhile, the US government is useless as a government for its size.
Why would they? It's FrEE maRKeT. Google can point to Edge and Safari as proof that they don't have a monopoly on browsers, so no anti-trust issue there no sireee. The fact that Edge is based on Chromium does not factor into this (in fact the EU loves it, just look at what they did to "liberalize" the electricity market, aside from some extremely anecdotal stories, it's all companies whose only job is to build a website and the fiscal "infrastructure" to buy energy from state-controlled producers to resell it at a markup using state-controlled energy distributors, but hey there is a private middleman so it's liberal and the innovation/investment dividends will pay out any year now... any year...).
The concept of the WWW being supported by free, standard, interoperable protocols was never codified into law. Despite how much good it has done so many industries to have a common free interoperable tech stack, it doesn't have to be this way; the French Minitel was a walled garden built by France Telecom, and that was 100% legal, because interoperability is not a legal requirement. The Apple Store and Game Consoles work under the same principle, you basically can't sell anything on there without abiding by some asinine rules (Apple has had some issues but IIRC that has to do with them abusing their monopoly position to extract 30 % of all sales, not with the fact that they have an exclusive App Store to begin with).
Also this whole bullshit is not new and was never legally challenged because there is no case. For years you could not even browse instagram in your browser because they "only supported the mobile app", which was a blatant way to force you into a walled garden where they can force you to watch as many ads as they want and where scraping is much harder.
I expect we'll lose about 90% of the web within five years as this becomes normalized.
It will primarily be the seo driven AI crap driven ripoff regurgitated shitfest that's arisen in the last 5 years tho.
I'll be waiting for a search engine to arise that only shows user controllable presentation and will use that.
A way to filter out the corporate trash will make the human web better, not worse.
Check out Kagi. It's a subscription search service since they don't show you ads, but that also means they don't track you at all (no search history, for example). They also let you influence the priorities of the sites you see in the results or even completely block them, and the results are usually better than Google with less bullshit – or even at worst as good as Google. Some people seem to be skeptical about paying for a search engine, but everybody wanting shit for free is what got us into this fucking mess in the first place
Which part? I feel it will be part I don't even want. I might be forced to use that part for work, but that will be nice filter.
I was thinking that "they" ( governments and big corporations) should have their own internet which is clean and ordered and "safe" and leave us on other part. This might be a way to achieve that.
Yeah, this is pretty much my take.
The web sites that are interested in this tool never wanted to be actual web sites. They wanted to be closed client-server systems with proprietary, opaque protocols… HTTP was just a convenient implementation to leverage.
What WEI does is basically allow all of these wanna-be walled gardens to become actual walled gardens.
They never wanted to be interoperable in the first place, so what are we losing? Good riddance.
Maybe with this in place, we’ll be able to start rebuilding the interoperable web that we had before VC money took it over.
We just need a compelling business model for it. “Free” ad-supported is toxic for open discourse, and now it’s functionally deprecated on the open web. I think that’s a good thing, but good changes are not necessarily easy to endure.
I’m not sure how we’ll do it. Attention tokens and all that crypto stuff seems like garbage, but having a thousand different subscriptions to get past paywalls is not great either.
You might want to recommend forks of Firefox too. Part of the reason Chrome/Chromium is dominant is because of its forks, and a fork of Firefox might appeal to someone more than the main browser. I use Pulse, but Waterfox is also solid from what I've heard.
Unfortunately when my bank or other critical institution rejects Firefox for failure to use attestation, I can't even do that. I'll be forced to use Chrome. Firefox would have to adopt WEI to remain compatible. In that case I can use Firefox, but it would be the same as using Chrome.
I'd say the monopoly Google has with Chrome is way more threatening than in the early 2000's with MS and IE. That threat resulted in an anti-trust lawsuit, but not a peep from any government about the destruction Google is doing.
Not much you can do about institutions you have no control over, but surely you could go to a different bank?
Assuming there is a bank that doesn't use this of course.
I‘m old so i actually remember this but I‘m old so my memory might be shit but wasn‘t the lawsuit about the fact that microsoft shipped IE wirth windows as a default browser and not about it being too dominant?
Took the words right out of my mouth. I don't even know that eu cares. Google is as evil as everyone feared if not worse. Apple is pretty bad too, not even allowing any browser but their own on mobile. People don't realize it, but browser choice is actually a huge deal when it comes to causing damage to society (or protecting it)
Is Brave safe from these shenanigans? Asking for a friend.
Brave is built on Chromium. So, by default, no they are not safe from this. Without extra effort, Brave will have this feature. I don't know if its feasible but there's a chance the Brave devs can remove the code from their distribution, but that's the best case scenario and just puts them in the same position as Firefox: they get locked out because they refuse to implement the spec.
Brave is a re-skin of Chromium.
I know I'm just dreaming, but I really like the Gemini protocol and hope it'll grow and develop more. It doesn't have everything, but it's very close to the "old web'.