Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web
It's just a "proposal," but it's also being prototyped inside Chrome right now.
This is why proprietary software subjugates users. Stallman is right.
Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these:
Stallman was right again.
The browser engine implementing the client side of this is open source. Even the attester could be open source (because good crypto doesn't need obscurity). Also the server side can be open source. It will still be a DRM and you still can't do much about it, because you can't force server/service operators to use the opensource software in a way you want. So if they want to enable WEI, they can do it. No matter if it's proprietary or open source. Actually it's even easier when it's opensource.
Firefox mother fucker, do you use it?
Nobody's going to use it when 90% of the web blocks everything except genuine Chrome on genuine Windows.
Everyone going mad and many suggesting “if you have it use Safari instead!” when Apple implemented essentially this same thing quite some time ago in Safari 🤔
That said intentions are important. I have little faith that Big G’s goal is anything other than self servin.
It's a very different thing when a browser with negligible market share does that.
Safari has over 20% browser market share. That isn't negligible.
Safari neglegibe? It accounts for about a third of US internet traffic and is the only browser you can even get on iOS (everything else there is forced to be just a reskin)
Any chance you have a link or source for this? I usually keep up on tech news but don't remember anything of this nature.
Stallman would disapprove:
Google plan make people adict of their browser and now they want to dictate web standards!
That was clear when they launched their browser
I remember when Chrome launched. It was 2008 and I was in my first year of university. People were commonly using Internet Explorer or Firefox back then, with some outliers (I used Opera). Chrome gained popularity very quickly, since it was a lot faster and lighter weight than anything else at the time.
It's interesting that Chrome has lived long enough to see itself become the bloated browser.
Part of me wants to believe that this won’t be abused and it’ll actually make the web better. The other part of me knows better.
They could, theoretically, implement this on a way that just changes the pay structure for ad impressions but I think that all that will do is incentivize website owners using Google ads to block or nag “non-compliant” users… but here’s hoping they don’t abuse it I guess because there’s basically nothing we can do to change it once it’s out there. Genies out and all that
They outright said in their own press release it's primarily to increase ad visibility by breaking ad blockers.
There's no scenario where this makes the web better
The irony is that I wasn't that against ads until they got super intrusive and started causing performance issues and breaking web pages. And of course the privacy problems with tracking cookies. But yeah, fuck all ads now, and fuck Google for trying to wring as much ad revenue out of me as possible. I switched to Firefox with uBlock.
Yup. This won't be used just to serve up unblocksble ads. If you're signed in to Google, this DRM will be used to track you, as well. VPNs will be useless because the tracking won't be done through your IP address, but through your browser, identified by DRM and tied to your Google account.
That's what this is really about. Knowing who you are, where you are, where you go, what you see, what you buy, who you associate with. Forcing you to watch ads is just the icing on the cake.
We have to see if its even fully implement and pushed in the end.