Technology

This is the most disturbing "boring dystopia" thing yet.

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.

"But it'll make us lots of money..."

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.

Trust me, I'm Google.

Dear madam/sir

I dont trust googel. take me seriously.

yours, Willer

This is actually already implemented, see here.

Unless Google are planning to completely lock the browser down to prevent user scripting and all extensions

Ding ding ding!

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.