this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Google's New Web Environment Integrity Proposal Dismissed by Brave, Mozilla, and Vivaldi (news.itsfoss.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 163 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (14 children)

I don't understand why so many opinion pieces and news keep on saying that Web Environment Integrity could be abused and that's why we should oppose it. This misses the point a great deal.

Implementation of Web Environment Integrity in browsers IS ITSELF AN ABUSE, because I have the right to go around the web without continually proving who I am, even less against a 3rd party.

It's as if someone said that some officer (and not even a government one) should always be by your side when you go out, ready to certify who you are, whenever you speak with people on the street – and even with friends. Would you accept that?

Are we totally out of our minds??

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago

I can only assume these opinion pieces are written by people who use Google for everything they do and trust them.

Dumb fucks, to quote Zuckerberg...

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[–] [email protected] 126 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So like 8% of the market, mostly from Mozilla?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

Well... Normie stream love their 69 chrome versions so that's where we are at... Competition

[–] [email protected] 117 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Will have to wait and see how Apple reacts with Safari. Mozilla dismissing the proposal is big, but Apple has the second largest mobile OS marketshare with iOS, and so Safari is very relevant for websites to support it.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Doesn't Safari already have their own version of this?

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Lmao, no. Google is out of their minds. Apple has zero interest in controlling browsers or ads.

https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/31/technology/business/apple-net-neutrality/index.html

[–] [email protected] 100 points 1 year ago

From the article:

"We work hard to build great products, and what consumers do with those tools is up to them — not Apple, and not broadband providers," Cynthia Hogan, VP of public policy at Apple

Prove it, then. Unlock the bootloader. Allow us to install our own apps. Let us install our own OS on the hardware. I get they don't want to open source their iOS, that's fine. They say "what consumers do with those tools is up to them", but then they lock those tools down TIGHT. Actions speak much louder than words. They say those tools are ours? They need to show us that this is true.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but this is basically the same thing: https://blog.cloudflare.com/eliminating-captchas-on-iphones-and-macs-using-new-standard/

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Google: "How cute, anyway as I was saying..."

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago

Good.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

I can't honestly see how any other company can single-handedly stop Google if they go though with this. Google has the ability to strong arm this proposal by having Youtube and Google search dependent on Web Environment Integrity. There are enough alternative to web search but I can't see how anyone can fight Google's dominance in video hosting to stop them.

You would almost have to have every other major website intentionally break on Chrome to even the playing field, and if Google still don't back down you are left with a divided internet.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago

What I'm getting from this is that some monopoly busting is sorely needed.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

EU commission, really. That's the only way

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

LOL, sorry but if it is control over my computer vs youtube going away my reasponse is "bye bye, YouTube, don't let the door hit you on the way out"

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I think YouTube and Google Search are the least of our worries. There will be companies who would have a field day picking up the pieces if that happened.

It's everyone else using it that suddenly means you can't run an ad/script blocker on the ickier parts of the web that really need it. The modern internet is an unusable mess, and only ad blockers make it tolerable again.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good fucking riddance

[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's "dismissed" as in "they say it's rubbish". It doesn't mean they won't ultimately be forced to use it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

😪

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

Microsoft are staying suspiciously quiet then. And what about Apple?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apple already added basically the same thing about a year ago: https://blog.cloudflare.com/eliminating-captchas-on-iphones-and-macs-using-new-standard/

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is this technically equivalent to Google's proposal? Apple say that their version was developed in collaboration with Google, so it would be surprising for Google to go and deploy a second version of the same thing, were it not for the fact that Google always has two competing versions of everything.

And I guess the main reason people are more concerned about Google's version is that they are so dominant in the browser market.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

The details are a bit different. PATs use HTTP headers during a request while WEI is a JS browser API. But otherwise the general structure and end result are the same. A website requests an integrity check, an attester checks your device, and if the attester doesn't like your device then you're SOL.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Edge is a Chromium browser isn't it? Then again, so is Brave and the article indicates they are making a point of removing this stuff from their build. Safari is it's own thing though afaik.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Brave is a chromium fork with custom stuff, they can just not implement it if they want.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

There needs to be a unified fight against this, that involves not only browser companies but also the businesses running major websites. If it goes through and Google manages to persuade websites to use it, all the other browsers will be forced to implement it if they want to continue existing. And then no more freedom for web users.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (7 children)

You're right. But it's so much worse than that.

Imagine, for a minute, that this passes. If a website exists that a specific entity disagrees with (say... a whistleblower forum, or accounts of how Google is abusing its powers, or accounts of a Government is abusing it's citizens), all that would need to happen, is for the "integrity authority" to deny access to that site, and it will be censored. Whereas now, a website has to be taken offline (in most cases) to be effectively censored, if this passes, the "integrity authority" would just need to say nay.

Imagine never hearing of the Snowden files, or George Floyd, or the Russian-Ukraine war. Not because they didn't exist or didn't happen, but because you 'weren't allowed' to see them by an entity who benefits from you not seeing them or knowing about them.

If this passes, we would be -officially- entering a dystopia.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's kind of the opposite of this though, it's not censorship. It's not that you aren't allowed to visit other sites, it's that sites can choose to let you in or not.

The scary part is we don't know what makes that decision, and from Google's proposal is that it could just be anything they decide. So it's not censorship, but it is saying "You aren't playing by our rules (like by using an ad blocker, or you visited too many whistleblower forums, or we just plain decided we don't like you) so you don't get to use gmail/your bank/whoever decides to implement this"

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Safari is its own thing, but so is Mozilla. It affects everyone, it affects the very landscape of the web.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Brave can suck it too.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

At this point, why don't the companies who run Chrome derivatives work together to build a fork that evolves separately from Chrome? Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, etc. will never get the marketshare on their own to rival Chrome, but together, they could make a dent with a unified browser engine.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Gecko (Firefox engine) already is worked on, why not contribute there instead of losing community? If anything why those browsers use engine that is controlled by a single company?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

Alternative plan: why not use gecko? I know it's more work to do so, but I would call that the lesser of two evils at this point.

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