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are they seriously still going ahead with this shit? Web Integrity API is the worst idea in existence
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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If the web integrity API goes live and I can't use some sites because of it, it will be very nice to have a very clear filter on what websites are complete garbage for using it. Vivat librewolf + VPN!
any websites that implement that API will never see me visit them ever again
Probably Netflix, YouTube, and streaming apps first. I'd say banks, but banks are slow. Games won't take long. If there's not enough blowback it'll spread to every website that uses captchas today.
I feel like if a bank is going to use it, there needs to be a clear financial reason to. Because if someone can't access their account, they might lose their shit and leave for the first bank whose website works.
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This is the kick in the butt I needed to de-google my life. I've already gotten halfway there, just need to make the full switch to proton mail, and then see what I can disconnect from my android phone.
I would hate to switch to Apple, but I may consider it if they are gonna pull this nonsense.
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they are already implementing it in chome
Once the web became a corporate landscape it instantly turned to shit. Give me pure html/css sites again hosted by my friends'.
Look up neocities
Neocities + Fediverse (or at least foss alternatives) is the way to (mostly) escape the corporate internet
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f i r e f o x
we should have been using it for decades now.
but then simply switching browsers won't really do in the long run, next step is hopefully banding together to eat the rich....
I started using Firefox after Opera changed to being Chromium-based about 10 years ago. (RIP) Fortunately Firefox is a lot better than it used to be so it's not so bad.
Oddly enough I got a lot of unprompted flack from my colleagues about using non-Chrome browsers. It boggles my mind how much people are really attached to Chrome.
why is this even a comic
It is part of serie "Day 622 of poorly drawn stuff until YouTube brings back the dislike count or a better video platform appears", they are mostly about internet things.
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comics are an incredible storyboarding-esque medium that you can use to draw and talk about anything. it doesn't even need to be limited to a 4-panel gag. I love comics
What's Web Integrity API and how does it affect non-Chromium browsers?
From my understanding, it allows a website to check if you’re running a Chromium browser, and block your access to the site or to features of the site if you aren’t
Well then I am a chromium browser. At least as long you need to think that.
What technology they are using I can't fake on a Firefox?
It's the API itself, it's a little more complicated than just checking if you have a chromium browser. What it's looking for is special tokens generated by google within chromium browsers. Google is selling this idea as a way to help verify identity of the end user and thus block bots. That's concerning, because it suggests that google will have some verification method likely involving ID and generate a unique token with that info associated with it. This is a real concern for web privacy for like a million reasons, obviously, and ideally should not be adopted by anyone. If other tech gatekeepers adopt it (and they would love to) it will block giant swathes of the internet from people refusing to use the tech and further googles monopoly over general consumer browser use. Now, could the token be fudged? Possibly. But it will take time to figure out.
And what's really fucking infuriating about this is that it honestly has nothing to do with making the internet a better place to be or improving the safety of the internet or protecting children or anything like that.
It's about ads.
They're literally trying to fuck the entire internet in broad daylight so that they have a way to guarantee to their advertisers that they are targeting you with the ads the advertisers want you to see.
"integrity"
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This is why google wanted to deprecate the User-Agent header.
god that'll make it impossible to do a bunch of frontend work for anything but their browser. which is another reason they want to do it, i'm sure
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Bing for enterprise is already blocking browsers that aren't Edge. Clicking "Edge" from the list of browser identities in Firefox seems to go around the block.
Soon, we'll get to "Best viewed with Chrome", "Best viewed on 1920x1080", "Google Chrome NOW!" even though other browsers could load the webpages just fine.
Oh, wait.
On what grounds? I know why google wants this, but why would the average website do this?
I can already picture Google down-ranking search results for any website that doesn't implement it because obviously "if they aren't using the integrity API we can't guarantee they're safe for our users"
Which... would just de-value Google Search, no?
This is the process Cory Doctorow termed “enshittification.” Services start out by prioritizing functionality for the users, even running at a loss to do so. This is one reason why new companies have a massive burn rate compared to their income.
The second step is they stop prioritizing users and start prioritizing “partners.” Those could be news sources, sellers, whatever. User functionality is compromised to optimize the “partner” experience.
Finally, they start to fuck over partners too, in order to shovel as much money as possible into the company’s accounts. Facebook did it with news sites - especially video. Twitter is doing a speed run on this. Google is accused of being well on its way with search, and I have no idea about their other services.
So, yes, Google may fuck up search just like Facebook fucked up their feed and Twitter is fucking up absolutely everything.
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The 'average' website wouldn't but many of the social giants are desperately looking for a way to limit bot use. So Google gives them what they want and simultaneously gets to be the most reliable advertiser, ensuring impressions are viewed by not just a human but the right human.
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This goes with other changes they did to chromium. Google claims it is to prevent bots, but it really is a crackdown on ads blocking and any other "tampering" with their websites.
If you care about keeping web free, you should stop using chrome and its derivatives and switch to Firefox. They are believing that Firefox user base is low and websites can simply exclude FF and force it to implement it as well.
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It's not just chromium in and of itself. It's that it would be a browser that's unmodifiable by the user, so no unapproved extensions, no ad blockers, etc.
It's a way for google to tell its ad buyers that "hey, we can 100% guarantee the end user is seeing your ads if they're using this browser". And then all of the corporate websites cater only to that browser, or give a different user experience for all other browsers.
Personally, I find this problematic for several reasons:
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I wouldn't be in control of my browser and how it executes arbitrary code on my machine
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The system creates second class citizens on the internet
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It cedes control of the open internet to corporations, like google
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Privacy; I don't give a shit what google says about pseudonymous and group identities, researchers have found problems after problems after problems...
You know, I can’t wait for the EU to tear Googles ass open until an elephant can walk through it. DMA my beloved
They already did so with META and won. And are currently doing so to YouTube.
EU is the internets lifesaver
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Enshitification of the entire internet to force more ads
Thanks, capitalists :)
sometimes i wonder if its better to just let the internet die
Reject modernity, embrace tradition. Let's go back to the old internet powered by people who knew how to connect their computer to the web and their custom webpages
That reminds me, I should get around to making my own website on neocities.
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Well to be fair, if google wanted to kill Firefox they could just stop paying Mozilla for using their search engine as the default. That's basically the only thing that's keeping them afloat.
They don't want to "kill Firefox" though. They want people to use Google products in all forms - using Google through Firefox is better than scattering users to other browsers without a Google default. By forcing users to Chromium they don't just kill Firefox, they direct users TO ever more Google products in the process.
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Hey can the antitrust people looking at Google do something about this? Thanks.
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