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WEI can potentially be used to impose restrictions on unlawful activities on the internet, such as downloading YouTube videos and other content, ad blocking, web scraping, etc.
Not one of those things is illegal.
Some are against a site’s TOS and some are outright fine.
Yeah that's bullsh*t by the author of the article.
If you are not using Firefox now is a good time to start.
Just switched yesterday, was way easier than I thought it would be. I'm converted on all my devices, all my stuff has been synced from Chrome in a few clicks. Just do it people.
If you haven't already, check out Firefox Sync.
You can sync your stuff across Firefox instances (PC, mobile, different PC profiles etc.) You can choose to sync logins, open tabs, bookmarks, add-ons etc.
Each place you use Firefox can choose to sync different stuff, so for example you can sync logins everywhere but only sync open tabs on the PC.
In case you replace the phone or your PC HDD crashes etc. all you have to do is login back to Firefox Sync and you get all that stuff back.
I love Firefox so much. Specially the built in sync. I can browse something on my phone and open it on my computer later and continue where I left off.
There is no defense of the move. It's bad for the internet. Pure and simple!
They claim it's to prevent bots, but we all know it'll soon become standard in every WAF out there (Cloudflare, Akamai, etc) to just blanket block browsers failing attestation.
All you need to know what will happen is to root an Android phone. You'd expect Netflix and bank apps and other highly sensitive apps to stop working. Okay, I can accept that, it kind of make sense. But the more you use the phone the more you realize a ton of apps also refuse to work. Zoom complains and marks your session as insecure, the Speedtest app refuses to test your speed, even the fucking weather app won't give you weather anymore. Jira/Confluence/Outlook/Teams also complain about it. It's ridiculous.
Even if it'd trust Google to not misuse the feature and genuinely use it to reduce ad fraud, the problem is the rest of the developers and companies. Those, they absolutely cannot be trusted to not abuse the feature to block everyone. Security "consultants" will start mandating its use to pass security audits, government websites will absolute use it, and before you know it, half the web refuses to work unless you use Chrome, Edge or Safari.
Yup I noticed this also. I used a rooted phone without Google apps on it and so many apps simply refused to work. They use Googles api in the background which means Google finds out about literally everything we do on our phones. They already own the entire operating system but we can't even run apps without them being in the middle.
This is all similar to using Microsoft Windows or Mac OS so I guess people are so used to this behavior that it's somehow ok.
But I'm a long term Linux user and I'm used to the OS not calling home and not reporting what apps I use. And this is how it should be. I'm so over big tech it's not even funny anymore.
The fraud-fighting project has fired up quite a controversy
fraud-fighting? Even Google's initial pitch was explicitly describing it as a way to sell more ads.
There's an ongoing protest against this on GitHub, symbolically modifying the code that would implement this in Chromium. See this lemmy post by the person who had this idea, and this GitHub commit. Feel free to "Review changes" --> "Approve". Around 300 people have joined so far.
It won't block browsers that spoof their identity? Yeah, sure.
From this github comment:
If you oppose this, don't just comment and complain, contact your antitrust authority today:
- UK:
Dear madam/sir
I dont trust googel. take me seriously.
yours, Willer
It's time to use web integrity against them, by blocking access to your site if they "pass" integrity checks, and telling them to use a freedom respecting browser instead.
Fuck Google 2023
It offers web publishers a way to integrate their websites or apps with a code that checks with a trusted party (such as Google)
Imma stop you right there...
Google: Do ~~no~~ ALL evil.
So, how the hell is this supposed to prevent bots? Unless Google are planning to completely lock the browser down to prevent user scripting and all extensions then surely you can still automate the browser?
Unless Google are planning to completely lock the browser down to prevent user scripting and all extensions
Ding ding ding!
Just like Trickle Down, “Don’t be evil” has aged well and deserves to be repackaged. /s
*waiting patiently for EU to catch on to this.
Google may not like the outcome…
I stopped trusting google when they decided to remove the "Do not be evil" clause
explain like i'm a developer why wei is bad? ad blocking can already be detected
Only browsers blessed by a single company can view the entire web. Not exactly a feature of the free and open web.
What people are rightfully scared of is that:
- Big websites will only accept attestations from big companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft
- Google, Apple, and Microsoft will refuse to attest your browser if you have an adblocker installed, or if you are using a browser or operating system they don't approve, or if you made modifications to your browser or your operating system etc.
While adblocking can be detected, you can block anti-adblock scripts, it's sort of a weapons race. Depending on how deep an attestation goes, it might be extremely difficult to fight. Attestations might also be used to block more than just adblockers, for example using Firefox, or rooting/jailbreaking your phone, or installing an alternative OS might make your phone ineligible for attestations and thus locked out of a lot of the internet.
This is much much more than just ad blocking. The mechanism is so generic that it can be used to lock out users for whatever reason. If the "attester" doesn't provide the requested proof then you're just shit outa luck. We should not hand such a power to anyone, let alone big for-profit companies.
Their proposal is that, when you visit a website using WEI, it doesn't let you see it right away. Instead, it first asks a third party if you're "legit", as opposed to maybe a bot or something.
The problem is, it would be really tricky to tell if you're "legit", because people get very, very tricky and clever with their bots (not to mention things like content farms, which aren't even bots, they're real humans, just doing the same job as a bot would). So, in order to try to do their jobs at all, these kind of third parties would have to try to find out a whole bunch of stuff about you.
Now, websites already try to do that, but for now the arms race is actually on our side; the end user has more or less full control over what code a website can run on their browser (which is how extensions like u-block and privacy badger work).
But if the end user could just block data collection, the third-party is back to square one. How can they possibly verify ("attest") that you aren't sus, if you're preventing all attempts at collecting data about yourself, or your device / operating system / browser / etc?
The answer is, they can't. So, to do a proper attestation, they have to have a whole bunch of information about you. And if they can't, they logically have no way of knowing if you're a bot. And if that's the case, when the third-party reports that back to the website you're trying to visit, they'll assume you're a bot, and block you. Obviously.
That's pretty much my understanding of the situation. In order to actually implement this proposal, it would require unprecedented invasive measures for data collection; and for people who try to block it, they might just end up being classified as "bots" and basically frozen out of major parts of the internet. Especially because, when you consider how people can essentially just use whatever hardware and software they want, it would be in these big companies' interests to restrict consumer choice to only the hardware and software they deem acceptable. Basically, it's a conflict of interest, especially because the one trying to push this on everyone is Google themselves.
Now, Google obviously denies all that. They assure us it won't be used for invasive data collection, that people will be able to opt out without losing access to websites, that there won't be any discrimination against anyone's personal choice of browser/OS/device/etc.
But it's bullshit. They're lying. It's that shrimple.
They don't care about a "safe web environment". That is not making them any more money. Knowing much more about their users and being able to perfectly match everything a user does anywhere with Googles advertising business, though, will.