The much maligned “Trusted Computing” idea requires that the party you are supposed to trust deserves to be trusted, and Google is DEFINITELY NOT worthy of being trusted, this is a naked power grab to destroy the open web for Google’s ad profits no matter the consequences, this would put heavy surveillance in Google’s hands, this would eliminate ad-blocking, this would break any and all accessibility features, this would obliterate any competing platform, this is very much opposed to what the web is.
This is why we need Firefox.
And Firefox needs to be a market that can’t be ignored.
Firefox depends on google for funding though. Google could probably deal a killing blow quite easily.
Mozilla is trying to reduce its dependency on the Google search deal. The dependence is big, but Mozilla has some reserves and receives the money for channeling searches to Google. They could and already make such deals with other search providers.
i think they probably donate so much to make sure they have at least one competitor so they don’t get busted up like Standard Oil
They are not donating, if I remember correctly fairly recently Microsoft outbid them and bing was default for a bit.
But maybe I’m not remembering correctly tbh.
I’m skeptical if the government would even do that given how stacked it is with cronies
Don’t know what government you’re referring to, but if the EU anti-trust regulation kicks in it will affect everyone. EU agencies are slow but they do their job eventually.
Man, I hope the EU pulls the trigger on Google. They are way, way overdue for getting broken up. It’s insane how easily they can change the entire internet on a whim with zero oversight. The Biden admin will never do it.
Yeah I think they are still in court with the EU. If Mozilla fell, the EU would almost certainly come after chrome immediately.
Vote with your wallet. I recently increased my monthly donation to Mozilla.
I thought I read somewhere that donations to Mozilla legally can’t go to Firefox.
Indeed. Donations go to Mozilla Foundations for their activities (advocacy and whatever). Firefox is developed by Mozilla Corp.,whom can’t legally receive donations.
They do that because of Firefox goes, Google is open to being trust busted. Killing Firefox would be literal suicide for Google
I’ve never donated to Mozilla before, but will now.
Great idea, Mozilla does good things for the internet. Though, please keep in mind that donations to Mozilla never reach Firefox. That is, as donations go to the foundation, a non-profit, while Firefox is developed by a for-profit subsidiary.
@TheYang Exactly! Came here to say this. Everybody actively using chromium based browsers is a part of the problem.
Stop with this excuse and stop Insulting people. I’ve been on Firefox for nearly 20 years, but Mozilla has ruined it for me little by little. The last straw has been the horrible UI redesign. So I switched to a Chromium browser. Tell Mozilla to make a better browser and to listen to their community, instead of blaming people for using what serves them best.
What does your UI gripe have to do with this biased tabloid piece you shared?
Firefox is fine and works even better than it ever has. If you cared about the UI so much you’d have tried any of its forks that use different and older designs.
Or even if Microsoft edge disables this
Firefox will most likely support this, if it doesn’t want to get cut off from most of the web.
However, it would be nice to have a Firefox or Chromium fork with a switch to disable the “feature”, an option to remove any links to websites requiring this stuff, and some search engine free of links to websites requiring it.
However non technical folk will not be able to or really be interested in all that and will just download the regular browser and leave the option enabled. This only gets traction if the option it turned off by default.
Firefox will most likely support this, if it doesn’t want to get cut off from most of the web.
well, if more people used Firefox websites couldn’t just throw them under the bus, which is why I said it’s so important.
We’ll have to see, but I’d hope Firefox puts up at least some resistance.
It’s time for Alphabet to be broken up into separate letters.
Or have some letters removed all together.
Pretty much the entire US needs a healthy dose of monopoly busting.
Hell, just look at the Ma Bell breakup and the path all of those companies took to where they are now. We’re basically back to step 1.
Give me Firefox or give me death.
This is so silly. There is no technical solution to trust. What if Russia or China want to run a bit farm? Or the US goverbment? Are you not going to trust their signatures, and face legal action i their markets? This stuff is so stupid, just be honest that you want people to watch your ads. Than we can all refuse and move on with our lives.
There is no technical solution to trust.
Google knows this. Trust isn’t really the problem they’re trying to solve.
This is my biggest issue, it’s such a bare-faced lie!
It’s completely insane for the browser to need to trust the client. Instead, you implement zero-trust, and require authentication and authorization for anything sensitive.
The server absolutely shouldn’t trust the client isn’t malicious, instead it should assume it is malicious until proven otherwise
OTOH, this will create a massive “in” group, and a much smaller “out” group. It almost formalizes the Indie Web, which would take us back to the early 90’s, but with better bandwidth. I’d be into that.
Until you’re required to use their software for, say, banking or legal procedures. You DO NOT want this to become the status quo
I was not advocating for it at all. Just looking on the bright side.
Indeed, IDK if you remember back in the bad old days but you used to need a specific browser, and if that browser was IE, good luck if you weren’t on Windows. Sites would just block you.
I really hope this doesn’t become a thing again - it’s already stupid with so many “best on chrome” stuff, but at least I think Apple and Safari put a dent in that because Apple users are a big enough group, and generally identified to have and spend more money than Android / Linux / Windows users so there’s that. And Firefox is… well… something. 10% now? IDK, it’s hard to be single browser now adays, but with these “for security” things? Who knows.
I guess if Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla all refuse to go this way, it’ll break it. The other option is something like Lets Encrypt being big enough they can’t delist the attester, but it just attest everything so turns into garbage. Or enough accepted attesters (if it’s like SSL PKI) “attest” that you paid them $50 that year and that’s about it, so again, everyone who cares gets a Comodo attestation or whatever and use a browser / extension / proxy / OS / whatever that just sends valid garbage or spoofed stuff to them, like many do for the various existing non-secure identity fields.
I’ve never in my life used IE, and did just fine without it. I’ve been using Firefox since it was called Netscape, and before that was Mosaic or something. I’m not supporting what Google is trying to do, I’m saying it will have consequences they don’t intend. They play whack-a-mole and the moles dig deeper.
Well good thing they have a company slogan of do no evil… Oh wait.
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Arstotzka… I mean Alphabet.Please drink verification can
Thanks for this. I skimmed the proposal doc itself and didn’t quite understand the concern people have with it – most of the concerns that came to my own mind are already listed as non-goals. The first few lines of this comment express a realistic danger that’s innate to what’s actually being proposed.
Being listed as a non-goal means nothing though. Who says it won’t become a goal later on?
I’m sorta sitting here in that same scenario. My iphone screen was severely broken last week, I don’t use any other apple services. When I tried to get into it, my phone went into security lock mode. Coincidentally all of my 2FAs for my other accounts did their monthly checkin. No phone, no checkin so now I’m locked out of nearly all of my work accounts. Apple ID will renew in a few days, but I didn’t think to take my broken phone with me on a trip, so my SIM with my phone number is now 1000s of miles away. So now I’m boned til I get home. 2FA works well until it works too well.
I would just move on at step 3
Or they just ban you without recourse and poof all your data and accounts are dead.
Edit: consider using Google Takeout to download your data periodically as a hedge against trouble with your account. This will help prevent data loss in the event your account suddenly goes poof. It won’t help you with the apps you bought though.
Don’t forget you also lose all the android apps you purchased. Oh wait, isn’t there a community that helps you avoid that?
Sorry, can’t run code not signed by an attester recognized by your hardware manufacturer.
Please enable bootlock and wipe your device to regain attested status.
Can’t enable bootlock, your device’s attestation expired 1 months ago, please use an up to date device if you wish to use attestation.
Rip Linux, Android custom roms.
Kind of. Several apps already refuse to run without bootlock or on a rooted system if it wasn’t for Magisk, this will make web apps to refuse running too.
This is a total affront to the ethos of the web and everyone involved in drafting this awful proposal should be publicly shamed. Stick sandwich boards on each of them saying “I tried to build the Torment Nexus”, chain them together and march them through the streets while ringing a bell and chanting “shame”.
Here you go
If only Ben was wiser.
Those names read like some characters in a bad novel…
I’m a non-techie and don’t understand half of this, but from what I do understand, this is a goddamn nightmare. The world is seriously going to shit.
So, a lot of the replies are highlighting how this is “nightmare fuel”.
I’ll try to provide insight into the “not nightmare” parts.The proposal is for how to share this information between parties, and they call out that they’re specifically envisioning it being between the operating system and the website. This makes it browser agnostic in principle.
Most security exploits happen either because the users computer is compromised, or a sensitive resource, like a bank, can’t tell if they’re actually talking to the user.
This provides a mechanism where the website can tell that the computer it’s talking to is actually the one running the website, and not just some intermediate, and it can also tell if the end computer is compromised without having access to the computer directly.The people who are claiming that this provides a mechanism for user tracking or leaks your browsing history to arrestors are perhaps overreacting a bit.
I work in the software security sector, specifically with device management systems that are intended to ensure that websites are only accessed by machines managed by the company, and that they meet the configuration guidelines of the company for a computer accessing their secure resources.
This is basically a generalization of already existing functionality built into Mac, windows, Android and iPhones.
Could this be used for no good? Sure. Probably will be.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t legitimate uses for something like this and the authors are openly evil.
This is a draft of a proposal, under discussion before preliminary conversations happen with the browser community.My ELI5 version:
Basically, the ‘Web Environment Integrity’ proposal is a new technique that verifies whether a visitor of a website is actually a human or a bot.
Currently, there are captchas where you need to select all the crosswalks, cars, bicycles, etc. which checks whether you’re a bot, but this can sometimes be bypassed by the bots themselves.
This new ‘Web Environment Integrity’ thing goes as follows:
- You visit a website
- Website wants to know whether you’re a human or a bot.
- Your browser (or the ‘client’) will send request an ‘environment attestation’ from an ‘attester’. This means that your browser (such as Firefox or Chrome) will request approval from some third-party (like Google or something) and the third-party (which is referred to as ‘attester’) will send your browser a message, which basically says ‘This user is a bot’ or ‘This user is a human being’.
- Your browser receives this message and will then send it to the website, together with the ‘attester public key’. The ‘attester public key’ can be used by the website to verify whether the attester (a.k.a. the third-party checking whether you’re a human or not) is trustworthy and will then check whether the attester says that you’re a human or not.
I hope this clears things up and if I misinterpreted the GitHub explainer, please correct me.
The reason people (rightfully) worry about this, is because it gives attesters A LOT of power. If Google decides they don’t like you, they won’t tell the website that you’re a human. Or maybe, if Google doesn’t like the website you’re trying to visit, they won’t even cooperate with attesting. Lots of things can go wrong here.
And the attester will know where you’re navigating, always.
It sounds like VPN’s would also get flagged as bots? Or could easily be treated as such.
They could get rid of ad blockers, anonymity, Tor, VPNs, Firefox, torrenting sites, independently hosted websites, open-source servers and non-Google Linux clients all in one go. It would be a corporate dream come true.
Or we could stop using their tools and services and fork off the internet run for people from the internet run for profit. It doesn’t need to be big or slick; it just needs to be there.
I like the idea of Internet 2.0. Kinda like what we are doing here on Lemmy. Corporate ruins it, we build it anew!
There are even alternative root-servers so we can even escape from the TLD hell
Appreciate you and everyone else who broke this down for me!
- You open an app…
The rest already works like that.
You can replace Google with Apple, Microsoft, any other hardware manufacturer, or any company hardware attestation software.
Your final paragraph is the real kicker. Google would love nothing more than to be the ONLY trusted Attester and for Chrome to be the ONLY browser that receives the “Human” flag.
Too late.
Microsoft, Apple, and most hardware manufacturers have been the ONLY trusted attester on their own hardware for years already.
Also Microsoft on most PCs.
And I’m sure Google definitely wouldn’t require your copy of Chrome to be free of any Ad-Blocking or Anti-Tracking extensions to get that “Human” flag /s
This is nothing less than a brazen attempt at total control of the primary large-scale communication mechanism of humanity.
deleted by creator
Note of amusement: The GitHub issues tracker for that proposal got swamped with tickets either mocking this crap or denouncing it for what it is, this morning the person who seems to be the head of the project closed all those tickets and published this blog post, in essence saying “Shut up with your ethical considerations, give us a hand in putting up this electric fence around the web”. Of course that didn’t stop it.
Also somebody pointed out this gem in the proposal, quoted here:
6.2. Privacy considerations
Todo
Quick edit: This comment on one of the closed tickets points out the contact information of the Antitrust authorities of both US and EU, i think i’m gonna drop the EU folks a note
Edit: And they disabled commenting on the issues tracker
We developers should stop just looking at the technical side of our work only. There’s social, economic and values to be taken into account when we put our minds to solve a problem. We tend to go blindly into it, without thinking what it can cause when it is released into the world.
It’s like if we put a bunch of developers into a secret project to develop an Internet World Wide Nuclear Bomb a là Project Manhattan… the leaders shouldn’t really have to hide what they were about to do, just throw the developers and engineers troubles to solve and they wouldn’t mind what it will be used for. It’s just tech, right?
At least this guy seems to fit the type: I want to do this technology I’ve been tasked for, I’m trying to solve a technological problem. The rest of the world is telling him «Man, this is a bad idea to implement.» and he whines saying «I want solutions to this technology, not what is wrong with it!»
(And if you aren’t one of those developers, congratulations, we need more of you!)
[Don’t assume consensus nor finished state]
Often a proposal is just that - someone trying to solve a problem by proposing technical means to address it. Having a proposal sent out to public forums doesn’t necessarily imply that the sender’s employer is determined on pushing that proposal as is.
It also doesn’t mean that the proposal is “done” and the proposal authors won’t appreciate constructive suggestions for improvement.
[Be the signal, not the noise]
In cases where controversial browser proposals (or lack of adoption for features folks want, which is a related, but different, subject), it’s not uncommon to see issues with dozens or even hundreds of comments from presumably well-intentioned folks, trying to influence the team working on the feature to change their minds.
In the many years I’ve been working on the web platform, I’ve yet to see this work. Not even once.
…?
What is this, “Good vibes only?”The amount of noise IS the signal
Never seen it work? These faang people are totally delusional. Google keeps putting off their third party cookie retirement exactly because of outcries like this.
“Good vibes only” seems to be embedded in the culture of web development today. Influential devs’ Twitter accounts have strong Instagram vibes: constantly promoting and congratulating each other, never sharing substantive criticisms. Hustle hustle.
People with deep, valid criticisms of popular frameworks like React seem to be ostracized as cranks.
It’s all very vapid and depressing.
Do you have an article about react? I’d love to read it. And yes tech is chock full of egos and fakers.
Alex Russell is a good read on React. His position gives him a broad view of its impacts and has kept him from being sidelined. This Changelog podcast is a decent distillation of his criticisms – it was recorded earlier this year, a few days after his Market For Lemons blog post.
(Sorry for the late reply! I’ve been a bit swamped lately and away from kbin.)
Wow, that blog post is truly nauseating and infuriating to read, knowing the context.
Fuck Google. They’re the Nestlé of tech.
I don’t think Google has recently insisted that child slavery is just a thing we all have to be OK with if we want chocolate, or starved millions of babies by convincing their mothers that their breast milk is dangerous. But I also wouldn’t be shocked to learn that they had…
No, but they accepted to publish political fake news ads for one of the running parties (the fascistoid one, of course) in the last elections here in Brazil.
That party has lost, but it was too close. In the 4 last years, during their mandate, hunger, violence, discrimination rape, and other problems rose to the highest levels in the century.
Google and other big tech companies have been influencing elections in a lot of places, and the consequences are enormous.
Ha! Fair point. I guess the Internet is ultimately peanuts compared to the real world.
But as far as relative negative effect on its sphere of influence, I’d say they’re comparable.
My favorite part is when they ask you to give them the benefit of the doubt, but also anyone who disagrees with them in a way that doesn’t fit their expectations is “noise.”
Benefit of the doubt, as in “I doubt this is a good idea”
And if you have issues with the “use case” itself, you’re shit out of luck, shut it, shithead!
If you raise legal issues with the ‘use case’ of their ‘web platform’ thing, ppl will just not respond to you!
Meaning: we don’t care if the shot we plan might be illegal, and we won’t be stopped by you fucks telling us if it is or not "
My favorite part was “even if you notice we intend to break the law just be quiet about it”
What benefit of the doubt?
The absolute best possible case is repulsive.
Like everyone else, I was an avid google user and used google for all its services. Then I started to learn about privacy and switched to chrome to firefox with duckduckgo. Until yesterday I was also often using an adblocker for advertising, I then realized that this does harm to companies and sites that I am interested in. Advertising is fine, I enjoy it if it’s on the site, but I want to be given a choice to behave. That’s it. Tradotto con DeepL https://www.deepl.com/app/?utm_source=android&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=share-translation
Years ago i would have agreed with you, but on this era of heavy capitalist surveillance you don’t want to give them the chance, they’ll get every bit of data they can get about you. That and ads are strong dissemination vectors for malware. If i want to support something i’d rather do it directly, ads have proven to be noxious.
I wish there was some kind of “ethical ad” standard, such that we can be served ads, maybe even “relevant” ads (with relevant topics picked by users), but without any tracking or malware, and in fact, with some kind of technology that prevents tracking instead of certifying to the advertisers that the user didn’t “tamper” with their pc so they can track as much as they want (I’m not aware of such a standard or technology. Genuine question: is there such a thing?).
Heck, I’d be even in favor of a standard to “pay to disable ads”, with reasonable fees, so that websites I like get their per-view dues, but without tracking or ads. If there was some kind of technology to send money to others without being tracked, kinda like back in the day when we used to buy newspapers at the newsstand with actual cash, but digital … who said “cryptocurrency”? Right, I heard they were actually invented to be used as currency, rather than high risk investing/speculation device … anyways, let me not digress (too much) …
Can’t agree too much with you. Here, take this as a sign of my appreciation🎖
duckduckgo shows basic ads when you search for anything
Alright, I’m kinda slow today, so tell me if I got it right: We, the users, will be “kindly asked” to get one thingamabob signature/identifier of “integrity”, so websites “know” whether we’re good or bad guys?
Your hardware and OS already gets asked to verify whether it’s safe to run an app on it (see: banking apps).
Same thing, but now with web browsers.
That’s one way to kill the WWW.
