Technology

Firefox it is again?

Firefox has been better for 5 years or so. Please use it. It's good for the open web, it's good for privacy, it's good for blocking ads, just use it, please.

Google really scared of those adblockers it seems

At this point, I only keep Chrome around for the odd website that only works on Chrome. It's astonishing how quickly Google is burning through good will lately.

Fuck google

I've been warning people that Google making up their own web standards will end in disaster, for years.

Who would of thought to let an Ad company running everything would be a good thing.

Your computer should say what you tell it to say - so if I want to spoof my browser and OS I can do that right? Right?

Write to your country’s anti-trust body if you feel Google is unilaterally going after the open web with WEI (content below taken from HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36880390).

US:

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation
antitrust@ftc.gov

EU:

https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/antitrust/contact_en
comp-greffe-antitrust@ec.europa.eu

UK:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tell-the-cma-about-a-competition…
general.enquiries@cma.gov.uk

India:

https://www.cci.gov.in/antitrust/
https://www.cci.gov.in/filing/atd

Example email:

Google has proposed a new Web Environment Integrity standard, outlined here: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md

This standard would allow Google applications to block users who are not using Google products like Chrome or Android, and encourages other web developers to do the same, with the goal of eliminating ad blockers and competing web browsers.

Google has already begun implementing this in their browser here: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/6f47a22906b2899412e79a2727355efa9cc8f5bd

Basic facts:

    Google is a developer of popular websites such as google.com and youtube.com (currently the two most popular websites in the world according to SimilarWeb)
    Google is the developer of the most popular browser in the world, Chrome, with around 65% of market share. Most other popular browsers are based on Chromium, also developed primarily by Google.
    Google is the developer of the most popular mobile operating system in the world, Android, with around 70% of market share.

Currently, Google’s websites can be viewed on any web-standards-compliant browser on a device made by any manufacturer. This WEI proposal would allow Google websites to reject users that are not running a Google-approved browser on a Google-approved device. For example, Google could require that Youtube or Google Search can only be viewed using an official Android app or the Chrome browser, thereby noncompetitively locking consumers into using Google products while providing no benefit to those consumers.

Google is also primarily an ad company, with the majority of its revenue coming from ads. Google’s business model is challenged by browsers that do not show ads the way Google intends. This proposal would encourage any web developer using Google’s ad services to reject users that are not running a verified Google-approved version of Chrome, to ensure ads are viewed the way the advertiser wishes. This is not a hypothetical hidden agenda, it is explicitly stated in the proposal:

“Users like visiting websites that are expensive to create and maintain, but they often want or need to do it without paying directly. These websites fund themselves with ads, but the advertisers can only afford to pay for humans to see the ads, rather than robots. This creates a need for human users to prove to websites that they’re human, sometimes through tasks like challenges or logins.”

The proposed solution here is to allow web developers to reject any user that cannot prove they have viewed Google-served ads with their own human eyes.

It is essential to combat this proposal now, while it is still in an early stage. Once this is rolled out into Chrome and deployed around the world, it will be extremely difficult to rollback. It may be impossible to prevent this proposal if Google is allowed to continue owning the entire stack of website, browser, operating system, and hardware.

Thank you for your consideration of this important issue.

"Don't be evil" my arse

Well, according to the proposal, it doesn't send it to websites. It sends all your data to an attestation server, AKA Google probably, and the attestation server sends stuff to the website.

Use firefox with brave or Duckduckgo.

Can someone tell me how it can be "tamper proof"? Any encryption key inside chrome can be extracted and used to sign anything the user might want to send back.

I just was updating my browser setup on my Linux laptop today, and wanted to install an extension I used to like using a few years ago ... 'TrackMeNot'. I couldn't find it on the Chrome Store at all. I had a feeling why... yup!

https://www.trackmenot.io/googleban#:~:text=Google%20falsely%20labels%20TrackMeNot%20as%20malware%2C%20bans%20it,of%20being%20removed%20from%20the%20Chrome%20Web%20Store.

Of course they would gin up a reason to suppress a plugin that lets users obscure their search engine activity. Slimy Bastards. At least the extension is still available, and still works, if one locally installs the unpacked version: https://github.com/vtoubiana/TrackMeNot-Chrome

We should indeed all move to Firefox (despite their own stupid issues -- someone please start a new browser engine, even if it's a Herculean task these days!)

dOn'T bE eViL