The Chrome team says they’re not going to pursue Web Integrity but…
it is piloting a new Android WebView Media Integrity API that’s “narrowly scoped, and only targets WebViews embedded in apps.”
They say its because the team “heard your feedback.” I’m sure that’s true, and I can wildly speculate that all the current anti-trust attention was a factor too.
I’d like to believe that enough of us actually stopped using chrome and switched to Firefox the day they made that announcement that swayed them… But in reality I’m sure it was just the bad press and they’re going to try to find a different more sneaky way to do the same shit.
I’ve been using Firefox since it was Mozilla.
Amateur. I’ve been using Firefox since Netscape Navigator.
I was born a decade after Netscape navigator was launched. I’m legally an adult. Wow, you’re old!
What shall I say? The first browser I ever used was called “Arena” and it ran on a UNIX system because Windows back then didn’t even have (native) networking - you had to purchase TCP/IP for it from third parties back then.
And one of the first websites I visited was “the original one” on Tim Barners-Lee’s NEXT cube in CERN.
And guess what - there was a network way before the Web. We had chat, “social media” before it was called that, and played online multiplayer games. All without any spam or advertising.
… I still mud. Kind of funny having characters that haven’t logged on for 28 years.
Yep. Could be about as long for me. It was crazy back then.
you had to purchase TCP/IP for it from third parties back then.
LOL WAT?!! The precursor to the WinRAR subscription, huh…
And one of the first websites I visited was “the original one” on Tim Barners-Lee’s NEXT cube in CERN.
Wow, this is kinda like witnessing the moon landing live, right? That’s amazing!
And guess what - there was a network way before the Web. We had chat, “social media” before it was called that, and played online multiplayer games. All without any spam or advertising.
Interesting… Which chat server was this? And what year approximately?
Well, the TCP/IP stack we had was not at all like WinRar. You bought a box with a bunch of disks (5.25in) and some thick paperback manuals. The price was about 150$, and installation was tricky. It only worked with a certain set of network cards. But it did work together with the other network stack back then: Novell Netware, which did the majority of work in corporate networks back then.
The chat had a bit different structure back then. Messages went from client to client, and the “TALK” server only did coordination. There was a system, IIRC it was called NICKSERV or something where you globally registered your nickname.
I was not only watching things back then. I wrote a number of tools that made the rounds back then, a client for such a multiplayer online game that worked both in a text terminal and with a GUI, and a non-interactive NNTP (USENET) client that allowed access to our equivalent of the fediverse remotely. And I even wrote our companies first SMTP (email) gateway to the internet back then. Not “installed” or “configured” - wrote.
Wow, you’re old!
Well, I retire next year so, yeah, I’m that too.
Bah… NCSA Mosaic FTW.
I strayed away over IE6, then Chrome v1.0 for a short period, but then came back to my senses.
From now on, the only browser I’m installing is Firefox.
Chrome market share actually has been declining on desktops since this spring. Could be a factor
Can you actually stop using chrome on android? Because every link I click it opens in their webview app which is chrome
Dunno if this is what you mean, but you can definitely set another browser as default. Any context menus will change too: “Open with Firefox”, or w/e you’re using.
No, I’m not talking about default browser but the WebView app. For example I’m using Voyager for Lemmy, and if I click on this post’s link it will open the website in the WebView, then I can click to Open with firefox.
But WebView itself is still chrome as you can see
You must be on stock android. I think you can still swap out the webview component but I forgot how
You can customize Voyager to open links in default browser not in-app: Settings -> General -> Open Links in
Weird, I can’t see this option
It’s only available if you are using the native app. The PWA doesn’t have that option due to web limitations unfortunately.
Ohhhh I see. Yeah, I think Sync uses Chrome too. Sync has an option to always open links in external web browser, so that’s how I got around that.
It’s even crazier than that. On some versions of Android there is no webview, only chrome! I think that was around Android 8 or so they dropped webview then re-added webview in the next version
I’ve been using Firefox for a couple months now, no issues.
Actually right now Congress is writing new laws for the Internet, and the EU is looking pretty hard as well, so they might be backing off just so they can get the new laws being written minimized.
To be fair I still think Google services, Microsoft, etc and all that jazz is great, I’m no corporate shill or some free software nutter, but the issue however is the consistent anticompetitive strategies and vendor lock-in used to compensate for a lack of innovation.
Imagine if you could, for about a month, up to a year long period, where you just use a de-googled phone, a live USB and a portable hard drive, you’ll actually have a different perspective and appreciation for what works with computers, printers, etc and our use of technology as a whole
Bet they’ll just rename it later, like what they did with FLoC to Ad Topics.
What’s funny is how these companies refer to ads as if it’s something we should be excited about.
“Good news! We’re implementing a new ad delivery feature for your enjoyment! You can now choose what ads to watch, yay!”
Some people actually like personalized ads!
I have no idea why, it feels counter productive to want them to influence you to buy shit you don’t need.
I like my ads to be as unrelated to me as possible, because I wouldn’t spend money on those things anyways.
I have to admit that it can be funny with personalized ads when you google something extremely expensive and get ads for it for months after. Many years ago I searched for a high speed camera (like the one the Slow Mo Guys use) and while I very much want one, I could never afford to spend 0,5 to 1,5 million Euro (or whatever the price was) on one camera. So it was amusing to see all the ads urging me (a then teenager) to buy one.
I looked up the backgammon start position, since then all Google wants to sell me is backgammon boards.
The most interesting and absurd ad I ever got on youtube was for a device for inspecting the coils on a huge grid transformer.
this has me thinking, i might actually be interested in looking at ads if they had only completely random things, like literally anything that exists. At least i wouldnt be annoyed with them so much.
In my experience, ad personalization is still so bad it has no impact, like in your last example. But at least now I’m not seeing random shit. I don’t really bother to try and counter targeted ads, and the vast majority of the ads I get are for products I actually already bought or never intended to buy but was researching for other purposes. Yes, Google knows I spent a lot of time researching drills, but guess what, Home Depot isn’t telling them I bought a drill, so I’ll get drill ads for a month. And yeah, I looked at a bunch of luxury sail yachts, private jets, and cars, but it’s not because I suddenly make more money. It’s because I’m interested in design and engineering. But Google just stupidly assumes I became a billionaire overnight and gives me 100’ yacht ads.
I’d honestly be more worried about a random ad getting lucky and pre-emptively catching my interest. Targeted ads are so reactive it’s not a problem.
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more targeted ads means more spying. That’s bad news in theory and in practice.
I would rather have the ads based on the content I am viewing rather than me.
There’s also a difference between me being a good target for an ad they are going to run and that being a useful ad for me to see. Google optimizes stuff for the advertisers, not for the users.
If it actually tried to find ads for the users instead of finding users for the ads, maybe it would be okay. But that will never happen.
It obviously isn’t a necessity looking at how many Lemmy servers are running on nothing but good will
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That usually means they will have something worse at a later time.
The most likely option is that they will rebrand and we will have to push back against a “completely new, completely different functionality” in a few months.
They have to figure out how to apply DRM to YouTube first.
I mean, Widevine is present in all browsers and actively used by Netflix for example. YouTube also uses this when you’re watching movies on YouTube Movies.
Not running DRM on the majority of YouTube content is also likely due to the added cost of running such encryption (the encryption is usually on a per-customer level, not one key fits all) and the added bandwidth and computer cycles required. Not to mention that this might be a legal struggle with the content creators.
Yeah, it makes me worried about what they have planned to replace it.
‘Heard your feedback’ is becoming the death flag of future fuckery these last few years
The Advert People are easily startled, but they’ll soon be back, and in greater numbers.
This is your wake up to stop using Chrome and Chromium based browsers (e.g. Brave, Vivaldi, etc). Switch to Firefox if you haven’t already.
Tbf, I have tried but on Android the performance is dogshit. There is a few seconds difference between Firefox loading pages and Chrome loading unfortunately.
If there was a third option I’d gladly take it, but for now Firefox just doesn’t have the functionality and I’m willing to put up with the current state of Google shit. If it gets much worse I may just have to suck it up though.
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My biggest problem is the security and sandboxing around Firefox. I use both, but I feel my passwords are safer in Chrome tbh
I use Firefox on Mobile with the bitwarden addon. Works well for me. Plus you export all your saved Google passwords into bitwarden. I need to make the switch on my PC now.
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But the add-on isn’t sandboxed like in chrome. Like i remember, depending on if you use an external MAC like apparmor or not, where if you’re runnimg in Linux and you’re using Firefox, websites could steal your ssh keys from ~/.ssh/
Malicious addons or websites could easily do the same thing, and steal your bitwarden credentials. Unless you have the premium version, you can’t put otp on it.
…yet.
Yeah gotta wait for the heat on this antitrust probe to die down before doing the dirty.
This should never be left up to Chrome. We need antitrust laws.
We’ll see how this shakes out in a year.
Eternal vigilance is the price for a free web.
Do we get freedom with it or do we have to double eternal vigilance to get both? 🤔
I believe the scale is
n * log2(n).Yes.
Not proceeding for now.
They’re just starting it smaller scale. Within a year it’ll be pushed out to everyone broadly.
This is literally going to be what they did for FLoC. Basically release it as topics.
Google absolutely cannot stop tracking everyone at this point. I’m pretty sure they’ve put the entire house on the bet to track people more and do everything to ensure that Google Chrome tracks every aspect of your web browsing experience.
So while WEI is dead, I think Google’s boat is so far out to sea now that it’s either try this again a bit more gently or watch the ship sink. Everyone said FLoC was dead and they absolutely put it into the web browser with Topics. Nothing convinces me this is any different, they are absolutely going to, and I dare say have an existential need to, put this shit in everyone’s browser.
They get the permissions for the little thing that is worded vaguely enough to them funnel people into the larger thing
Moving it to WebView just makes it a Trojan horse for the rest of the web.
Isn’t Webview just a proprietary Android thingy? I still don’t like it, but that sounds pretty isolated to me.
I think Android WebView is open source as part of AOSP, but yes, it is Android only.
The “don’t be evil” motto was replaced with “don’t be evil, but greedy and posessive is okay”
And then later edited to
“
don’t be evil, butgreedy and posessive is okay”Soon after it changes to it’s final form:
“
don’t be evil, butgreedy and posessive is okay”I just figured they skipped straight to:
“
don’tbe evil,butgreedy and posessive is okay”Then it will eventually come to its end and become:
“
don’t be evil, but greedy and posessive is okay”Some people have moved to /e/ already.
It has always been…
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“We’ve decided not to pursue Web Integrity API.”
“Oh great! But what’s that giant thing under the tarp behind you”
“Oh don’t worry…”
we already have play integrity and now we have this webview attestation now?
