this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
905 points (98.9% liked)

Technology

33645 readers
94 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 235 points 11 months ago (17 children)

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.

[–] Wootz 160 points 11 months ago (2 children)

And hope the EU will oppose it.

[–] [email protected] 141 points 11 months ago (4 children)

EU really is the one doing all the good work. Meanwhile, the US government is useless as a government for its size.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 11 months ago (1 children)

corporate-owned america, baby!

[–] WhatAmLemmy 34 points 11 months ago

Why aren’t the vaccuous, corporate whore sociopaths defending our freedoms!?!

[–] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Maybe if our politicians weren't fucking 80 years old and actually understood technology even a little bit.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 45 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (15 replies)
[–] [email protected] 176 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (12 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (13 children)

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.

load more comments (13 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
[–] [email protected] 159 points 11 months ago (37 children)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago

Be Evil, Do Ads

load more comments (36 replies)
[–] [email protected] 133 points 11 months ago (7 children)

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.

[–] Goodie 41 points 11 months ago

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.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] bappity 56 points 11 months ago (1 children)

this is a userbase killer right here

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If manifest 3 didn't change egoogke chrome share I doubt this will.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 56 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Ohnonono Well time to burn down google I guess ¯\(ツ)

[–] [email protected] 52 points 11 months ago

Fuck you Google.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 11 months ago (17 children)

hey everyone a friendly reminder that alternatives exist, and just drop this shit fast and move to better alternatives. In this case firefox.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 11 months ago (6 children)

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.

[–] deweydecibel 25 points 11 months ago

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.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (16 replies)
[–] deweydecibel 46 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 11 months ago

People that care about this stuff are probably already jumped ship.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago

That's because the firefox sub moved to Lemmy...

[–] Fpsfrank85 36 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Could there be lawsuits over this?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Google isn't more powerful than any governments it's just the USA that allows them to have power.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (7 children)

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.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Chrome is a bag of shit anyway, easy jump

[–] venoft 29 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)

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.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Pardon my ignorance but Can someone explain what google is trying to do?

[–] [email protected] 78 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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/

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

I suspect "authentic" will mean "pays a license fee to Google." In this respect it will work like other forms of DRM, and it will have the same effect of excluding new and smaller players from the market. Except in this case the market is the whole of the web.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (4 children)

From my limited understanding as a common pleb, they are inserting DRM into Chromium browsers to prevent ad-blockers.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Internet with no ad-blockers is like a nightmare

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (10 children)

Yes, it is a nightmare. The insane volume of ads and clickbait injected into web pages is killing the internet as an information source. Most of the searchable stuff is unusable. Which explains why ChatGPT was so enthusiastically embraced - it's really just synthesizing content into a readable form that doesn't require navigating around a jungle of animated gifs and flashing ads. That's also I think why Lemmy and Mastodon are so refreshing to use, and hopefully will stay that way - although money seems to find a way to ruin everything. Lemmy right now feels a lot like the internet used to be before the big money came along and ruined it with advertising and platform lock-ins.

load more comments (10 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Regulate Big Tech and be done with it.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Feels so good to see Google getting called out for this in the GitHub comments

[–] deweydecibel 19 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago
load more comments
view more: next ›