https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/Ux5h_...
That makes it _really_ hard to believe they're debating in good faith.
Anyway the entire thread makes it sound like they're temporarily backing down but still intenting to implement something similar in the future:.
Apparently rights of way are tough to determine on this road that's well over a century old, but the Forest is working on it.
In the meantime, the doctors' business were figuratively destroyed and their property vandalized. [I don't approve of illegal actions.]
And I think they're genuinely confused by the reaction of the general public. They are so far out of touch, they just can't understand.
Google pushing things like this and being surprised by the violent backlash has the same feel.
There's no backlash. Is there anyone stating to stop buying Google Ads? Moving to Firefox (since there's no else alternative non-Google-chromium-based browser out there)? Except the HN audience, if course.
There's no danger from "users" for Google. Because their users are huge enterprises paging billions for ads. Not us.
DRM is what banks love. Recently, there're several major banks' mobile apps in Singapore stopped working as they started scanning all apps installed on a device, and some they don't like (MS Authenticator, for instance; F-Droid, and any opensource apk from there, also any developers installed app). This is nightmare as mobile bank apps are a first class citizen now. Web just does not open without push dialog. Not sms otp anymore, but the app push dialog. The only way to handle it is to buy a cheapest android and install all bank apps there.
> Recently, there're several major banks' mobile apps in Singapore stopped working as they started scanning all apps installed on a device, and some they don't like
This seriously triggers me. I can't even enable developer mode on my phone without these apps flipping out.
Banks in my country (Brazil) have a long standing tradition of doing this. Even on PCs they have these asinine "security plugins" for browsers. You literally cannot log into their systems without the goddamn thing installed. Not a single person managed to explain to me what they do, so years ago I was bored at work and tried my hand at reverse engineering the plugin to figure out why it made the computer so unusably slow.
I caught it intercepting every single network connection.
Didn't bother to check anything else. Just assumed it was phoning home with private information and started treating it like the malware it is from then on. Actually switched banks to one which didn't require this crap. These freaking banks think their "fraud prevention" justifies anything.
There's a package for this "banking security tool" in the Arch User Repository.
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/warsaw
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/warsaw-bin
Who the hell knows what this thing does nowadays? Maybe it doesn't monitor people anymore, it's been years and we even have a GDPR equivalent now. But I will never install it.
Check this out. They even have a Linux support page, complete with screenshots depicting it running as root.
https://seg.bb.com.br/duvidas.html?question=10
https://seg.bb.com.br/img/faq/linux/verificar_modulo2.png
I looked it up the package I posted above and found a gist with the unpacked contents:
https://gist.github.com/fititnt/8d94b0574c6a4ec7e8c4088c6474...
Literally asks for your root password, downloads some proprietary software off the internet and runs them without even computing checksums or anything.
Corporation that made this thing is owned by Diebold, the corporation that made our voting machines. Bone chilling.
Right, let me just put my tin foil hat.
I take it this is not the case, and theyre still making you install malware?
I've actually noticed and increased number of "this is it, I move to FF" posts, here and on Reddit. Since FF fixed their main performance problems, switching is not particularly burdensome anymore; and now the assumption that Google is "evil" has reached the same level of popularity that Microsoft used to have at the peak of their powers.
I think we're in a similar position as early-00s opensource: commercially fledgling, but establishing a solid mindstream in geek circles that will shape the future in unpredictable ways that are not favourable to Google.
Why did they roll it back, then?
While benefiting unethical businesses like Google? That's called a cartel.
Why do they want to silence opposition? Because their position does not stand up to scrutiny.
That is not want was said. People making direct and indirect threats against the author are not acting in good faith and want to just silence the author without anyone fairly evaluating the proposal.
>Why do they want to silence opposition?
Threats are not productive for deciding if a proposal should be adopted. They are just noise. Wanting to get rid of noise and focus on signal is not "silencing opposition."
Indeed that would be the case if that were so, yet it looks like what actually occurred here is the author is abusing the labelling of bullying and criminal in order to falsely tar all disagreement as that.
This labelling abuse is itself a bullying act designed to intimidate and shame into silence any disagreement by misrepresenting it as a threat. Which is itself a threat: agree with me or I will accuse you of evil and silence you.
That's what it seemed like at the time. Let's note that the quoted comments are from a months' old thread.
Do you have any evidence to support your claim about there being direct and indirect threats?
Yes, and that's the problem the GP is pointing out. We're a social species that's predisposed to defend a victim, that's why playing the victim is a very successful bullying tactic.
Read the Github issue and you will see people irrationally freaking out about this, indirectly and directly threatening to sue the author, etc. The people disagreeing and bring up problems were much more civilized until it went vital and then it turned into a cess pool of unproductive discussion.
First thing they should stop taking for granted the right to make proposals. Which obviously leads to the fact that they should accept when their BS is rejected.
We need a stronger response to their arrogance. Something that will affect network performance and intercept revenue. We can start by blocking them at the DNS level. Host with Google? Too bad your choice in tech sucks.
no, they don't. Google just criminally accused the opposition to their new "internet law" of being doing so in order to continue committing crimes.
The behavior from Google fits the same bill. The way they're doing it is just the difference between FOSS 'communities' and multi billion dollar corporations.
They likely have psychs on staff to manipulate the narrative around their totalitarian software and services.
"We are introducing web DRM to protect users from those evil people out there..."
The hell you are.
I cannot imagine the level of cognitive dissonance required to simultaneously believe you are passionate about the open web, and push something like WEI.
Either they're flat out lying about their "passion", or they've internalized some very contradictory ideas. Not sure which is worse.
Of course then there's:
> Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don't give in to criminals or bullies.
Which makes me think they're just lying. Or, at best, they don't understand basic logic. Personal attacks and doxing are unacceptable, but just because people who do bad things hold a certain opinion, it doesn't mean everyone who holds that opinion does bad things. Or even that more than a small, vocal minority do.
But ultimately Google is an advertising & surveillance capitalism company. If you're going to work there, and on one of most of their public-facing products, it's pretty likely you're going to eventually do shady things in service of the company's main revenue streams. Your continued employment depends on it.
Imagine a world where EME was not accepted as a standard.
1. Browsers do nothing to support DRM and sites like Netflix recommend people to just use a native app to experience the full Netflix experience. This weakens the open web by having sites leave the web and opt to move users to the mobile web instead.
2. Browsers adopt a closed standard for DRM. This weakens the open web because now a care use case of the web now uses a closed standard instead of an open one.
If only that had actually happened.
It would be easier if it was just Netflix using this crap like you imply. Nowadays, a good 10% of the websites have a popup "this page has DRM content, do you want to enable it?", I'm assuming it's used for advertising fingerprinting and malware even more than videos.
So yeah, requiring a netflix app is an improvement on the current situation.
> 2. Browsers adopt a closed standard for DRM. This weakens the open web because now a care use case of the web now uses a closed standard instead of an open one.
DRMs aren't the open web, they are the closed web, regardless if there's a specification or not, that doesn't change a thing.
And having an open specification for it lowers the cost of deploying them (as we've seen now, it's in a lot of places) which is bad.
If you are botherd by popups I'm sure you can disable them. I've never seen a popup asking me to enable DRM when I browse the web.
>DRMs aren't the open web
EME has a standardized javascript API for people to use. This is a public standard developed openly.
>And having an open specification for it lowers the cost of deploying them (as we've seen now, it's in a lot of places) which is bad.
Allowing copyright holders to have their hard work be protected is a good thing and allows for them to be willing to share them more if they can trust they won't be stolen from. Artists want control over how their art is used. Saying tough luck and that they should just deal with it being stolen is not productive and is ignoring their needs.
> Either they're flat out lying about their "passion", or they've internalized some very contradictory ideas. Not sure which is worse.
After observing Google for many years, I've figured out that when Googlers say "the open web", what they mean is "running in a browser, not a native app". So anything that makes apps running in a web browser more competitive with native apps is "good for the open web", even if it reduces openness. I think for a lot of people this is not even bad faith; it's just how language is used inside Google, and people pick it up and it shapes their thinking.
what does that even mean? we are talking about internet arguments here right? how does "safety" even enter the conversation? this guy sounds off his rocker.
> find ways to reduce the harms of invalid traffic across the whole web
crazy talk.
Curiously your HN profile says "removed due to doxing, because people are awful" so I'd like to think you at least would have the empathy to imagine someone experiencing something similar to what you experienced. Internet arguments can hurt people; period.
This is a complicated issue. I view work as a mutual exchange: I work on software in exchange for money. It is a bonus when I think the software or mission is genuinely cool. That said, I'm not one to be highly moralizing about it. I'd quit if someone asked me to do something illegal, and I will (and have) generally refuse to do work that is just simply morally bankrupt (And I have been tested on this. Early in my career, I refused to remove annual subscription renewal reminders for a subscription service. I didn't suggest that I would quit if it were done, but I voiced my disapproval and made it clear I wouldn't do it. We didn't wind up doing this, thankfully.) But, I will generally work on things that I don't agree with. I'm vocal about it, but work is work.
But y'know, people have livelihoods to maintain. It's easy to say this if you live alone, have plenty in the bank, a great safety net, and a great network. (Not that all of that applies to me, but for sake of argument.) Certainly the job market is also tighter and the future of software engineering as a career is uncertain in some regards. So outright refusing to do work could be a scary prospect. Even being vocal about it and rocking the boat may be scary.
But that said, this being the case does not make the answer any less certain. While harassment and toxicity that crosses certain lines is not something I think people should justify, I certainly understand the why: working on something like WEI triggers an immune response from the proponents of the open web. And while I'm sure many people would prefer to do things "right", I think that there is an overwhelming feeling that the open web is hostage to the big corporate interests, and that the open web proponents are strongly outnumbered and outgunned in the modern world. And Google never played fair anyway, so they probably don't feel especially enticed to either.
So I think it's natural. What's going to happen is that this will probably continue to escalate, and I can't really say I strongly blame anyone. Google is probably happy to push this responsibility onto employees knowing it could be very mentally taxing, employees with increasingly poor career prospects will not want to rock the boat, and disgruntled "internet activists" who feel pushed to their limits are unlikely to care tremendously about the emotional damage they cause (it's not like the Internet is really known for its kindness to begin with.)
I'm thinking it's gonna be a good time to pivot away from computer careers these next few years...
This was mostly a media/social media storm in a teacup. With bad press because its Google.
Chromium is huge because its open source, so the bar is higher than Macos, Safari & Windows.
But it didnt make this proposal much different/worse than any of the others that already exist and are enforced.
At least we got some hilarious statements like "its not needed because bots identify themselves by their user agent!"
But is PAT good? Well no. It's bad for similar but ultimately different reasons. But until Chrome adopts it, it's just not scary.
The health of the open web depends on not having different user agents being treated as second-class citizens. Not only that, but locking the internet behind CAPTCHAs and remote attestation to fight bots is bad because it will always be playing favorites to bots like Google's. Today, and in the past, we've already seen what it looks like when the Internet does this. But it's just not going to be an acceptable solution to bots. If the Internet of the future is a hellscape of big corps controlling literally everything that remains with cryptographically enforced adblock, Yes I'd happily see it burn down instead. I don't really care if other people would prefer that to nothing, because to me its a worthless future and a waste.
Attestation is not a real option that's really on the table.
If they don't want harassment or threats, they should maybe stop messing with people's stuff...