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Comment by cf141q5325 | Hacker News Reader

The complexity equivalent to regulatory capture. I once got banned from /r/firefox for implying intent on googles behalf here. Apparently that is a conspiracy theory.

In the end there are however clear incentives and profiteers of the development. Google has an incentive to keep the web complex enough to the point where they are the monopoly. Same goes for governments and complexity of security mechanisms.

How ever we got here, now google is the internet and security is achieved by things like TLS. Its inefficiencies that are profitable for existing power structures.

Which also makes it a lucky coincidence that mozilla is behaving as user -unfriendly as they do.

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I would imagine it's regulatory capture by accident - Chrome constantly gets requests from developers (which includes big corporations) to add features, so I imagine saying 'no' requires a lot of user research to back up why users/developers actually don't want a feature.

Google doesn't need to bother with intentionally adding complexity. That's happening by itself just fine.

They just need to not aggressively fight complexity.

And calling TLS a inefficiency that is profitable for existing power structures.

Or implying that Mozillas user unfriendlyness is a lucky coincidence.

Sounds quite a lot like conspiracy theories to be honest.

I mean I wouldn't even call most of the recent moves Mozilla did user unfriendly. Depending on the user they target they weren't. They just made the mistake to forget that many of their "simple" users are there due to their "tech enthusiast" users... A mistake easy to do is you mainly look at statistics.

Increasing complexity has these effects intent or not. I think the description of complexity capture still fits. Its a situation that is beneficial for google so they are a unlikely source for a fix here. And like others in the thread pointed out, the entry hurdle is too large for new competition. The only way out is with an alternative without the complexity.

I am going to stick with the TLS part though. The more complexity you add in crypto the less safe it becomes. Adding unnecessary complexity weakens the entire solution. And the current "is" situation is certificate authorities and man in the middle attacks. Not to mention overblown implementation you have to patch till the end of time.

edit: I think its also not a surprise that the question boils down to complexity. I would argue its the big open question of our time. We keep building till the negative consequences can no longer be dealt with through technology alone.

Embrace

Extend

Extinguish

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