[–] jherazob@beehaw.org 160 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

Note of amusement: The GitHub issues tracker for that proposal got swamped with tickets either mocking this crap or denouncing it for what it is, this morning the person who seems to be the head of the project closed all those tickets and published this blog post, in essence saying "Shut up with your ethical considerations, give us a hand in putting up this electric fence around the web". Of course that didn't stop it.

Also somebody pointed out this gem in the proposal, quoted here:

6.2. Privacy considerations

Todo

Quick edit: This comment on one of the closed tickets points out the contact information of the Antitrust authorities of both US and EU, i think i'm gonna drop the EU folks a note

Edit: And they disabled commenting on the issues tracker

[–] TheOakTree@beehaw.org 73 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

My favorite part is when they ask you to give them the benefit of the doubt, but also anyone who disagrees with them in a way that doesn't fit their expectations is "noise."

[–] Norgur@kbin.social 35 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

And if you have issues with the "use case" itself, you're shit out of luck, shut it, shithead!

If you raise legal issues with the 'use case' of their 'web platform' thing, ppl will just not respond to you!

Meaning: we don't care if the shot we plan might be illegal, and we won't be stopped by you fucks telling us if it is or not "

[–] hassanmckusick@lemmy.discothe.quest 13 points 2 years ago

My favorite part was "even if you notice we intend to break the law just be quiet about it"

[–] ilmagico@beehaw.org 8 points 2 years ago

Benefit of the doubt, as in "I doubt this is a good idea"

[–] BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip 46 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Wow, that blog post is truly nauseating and infuriating to read, knowing the context.

Fuck Google. They're the Nestlé of tech.

[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I don't think Google has recently insisted that child slavery is just a thing we all have to be OK with if we want chocolate, or starved millions of babies by convincing their mothers that their breast milk is dangerous. But I also wouldn't be shocked to learn that they had...

[–] BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip 15 points 2 years ago

Ha! Fair point. I guess the Internet is ultimately peanuts compared to the real world.

But as far as relative negative effect on its sphere of influence, I'd say they're comparable.

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[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 94 points 2 years ago (7 children)

THIS IS NOT (just) ABOUT GOOGLE

Currently, attestation and "trusted computing" are already a thing, the main "sources of trust" are:

Microsoft
Apple
Smartphone manufacturers
Google
Third party attestators

This is already going on, you need a Microsoft signed stub to boot anything other than Windows on a PC, you need Apple's blessing to boot anything on a Mac, your smartphone manufacturer decides whether you can unlock it and lose attestation, all of Microsoft, Apple and Google run app attestation through their app stores, several governments and companies run attestation software on their company hardware, and so on.

This is the next logical step, to add "web app" attestation, since the previous ones had barely any pushback, and even fanboys of walled gardens cheering them up.

PS: Somewhat ironically, Google's Play Store attestation is one of the weaker ones, just look at Apple's and the list of stuff they collect from the user's device to "attest" it for any app.

[–] ModdedPhones@lemmy.ml 37 points 2 years ago

I started looking at Mac's for my next computer. Due to this amazing project. https://asahilinux.org/

[–] ech@lemm.ee 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

you need a Microsoft signed stub to boot anything other than Windows on a PC

Can you expand on this? Maybe I'm just misunderstanding you, but a "pc" is not a Windows made machine. It is a collection of disparate computer parts made by different companies with no requirement to run Windows as the exclusive OS once put together.

Even on a Windows OS, I can run any program I want (that's made to operate with Windows). I may get a warning if it's not a "known" developer, but I can still run it. Did I miss a big update to how 11 works with unknown software or something?

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

PCs have been switching to UEFI instead of legacy BIOS startups, one of the features of UEFI is Secure Boot, which ensures all code being run during the boot process is signed with a valid key, which most PC manufacturers have been choosing to be a Microsoft key by default because Windows requires Secure Boot and most PC users want to run Windows. Depending on the manufacturer, you may be able to switch to "legacy BIOS" boot, add your own keys, disable the check, or use a Microsoft signed stub for your alternative OS. Only the last one is guaranteed to work, though.

Even on a Windows OS, I can run any program I want

Windows 10/11 Home in S mode only allows running programs from the Microsoft Store, you need to upgrade the license if you want to "sideload" stuff.

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[–] Zeth0s@reddthat.com 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I believe he is talking about secure boot

https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot

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[+] 001100010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com 92 points 2 years ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (8 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 36 points 2 years ago

Please drink verification can

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 30 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Or they just ban you without recourse and poof all your data and accounts are dead.

Edit: consider using Google Takeout to download your data periodically as a hedge against trouble with your account. This will help prevent data loss in the event your account suddenly goes poof. It won't help you with the apps you bought though.

[–] tojikomori@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thanks for this. I skimmed the proposal doc itself and didn't quite understand the concern people have with it – most of the concerns that came to my own mind are already listed as non-goals. The first few lines of this comment express a realistic danger that's innate to what's actually being proposed.

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[–] rose@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 years ago

Glory to ~~Arstotzka~~ ... I mean Alphabet.

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[–] kool_newt@lemm.ee 85 points 2 years ago (9 children)

I'm working on essentially removing Google from my life.

[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 37 points 2 years ago (2 children)

!degoogle@lemmy.ml

For me the most annoying part was switching off gmail (I went to fastmail) and the hardest habbit to break was Google search (I mostly use DDG).

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[–] ConfusedLlama@kbin.social 31 points 2 years ago (3 children)

That is the only solution to all this!

To everyone: Please remove at least as much Google products/services as you can from your life. Start with the easiest ones. Have a plan and gradually find alternatives for all other products/services of them. Remove them from your life. It will help even if you do this partly. This is for the benefit of us all.

Also, let's do the same to Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Reddit etc. Let's not let our lives depend on them. They are corporations. They are programmed to maximize profit.

I know there's currently not a lot of good alternatives out there, but if enough of us ditch these ass-companies, more and more open-source, decentralized, not-for-benefit services will pop up, and the existing ones will improve greatly. These are not for-profit projects that can be bought by corporations later and used to their benefit. They will only benefit their users.

Let's do this!

Fuck megacorporations!

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[–] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The only thing I have left is YouTube. Apparently Piped allows registering and then storing subscriptions, maybe I'll move mine there.

Gotta say, deleting my google account would be very awesome to do

[–] ConfusedLlama@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago

I use FreeTube, which is opensource and allows you to subscribe to channels without an account. The awesome thing is that you can categorize channels under different "profiles".

However, I think it won't take too long for Google to paywall YouTube APIs and do what it can to prevent web scraping (through disabling login-less use or attempts such as the one linked in this thread.). So our best option would be to ask our favorite Youtubers to move (or duplicate) their videos to other platforms such a peertube, and start using those platforms ourselves.

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[–] Jaysyn@kbin.social 76 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's time for Alphabet to be broken up into separate letters.

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[–] pglpm@lemmy.ca 52 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

The number of people protesting against them in their "Issues" page is amazing. The devs have now blocked the creation of new issue tickets or of comments in existing ones.

It's funny how in the "explainer" they present this as something done for the "user", when it's clearly not developed for the "user". I wouldn't accept something like this even if it was developed by some government – even less by Google.

I have just reported their repository to GitHub as malware, as an act of protest, since they closed the possibility of submitting issues or commenting.

[–] ilmagico@beehaw.org 16 points 2 years ago

Yeah, as if github aka Microsoft is going to do anything about it ... but hey, anything to keep the pressure up and not letting this go through.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 31 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is why you donate to Mozilla, Thunderbird, and/or the EFF.

It's also why you use non-Chromium/non-Webkit browsers.

[–] gaw@lemmy.cafe 9 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Gonna play devil's advocate here.. I think most Mozilla money comes from Google and i think the reason Google keeps the money flowing to Mozilla is for Chrome to have a real competitor, Firefox to date is the only popular web browser with different engine and all that. Maybe it's fair for me to say that it resembles a tiny tiny fraction of why Intel keeps AMD alive back then.

As for EFF, i viewed them as just another NGO. For me most NGOs will have a non achievable goals, because it will be the dead of an NGO if they ever achive their goals. (No more money for them).

I'm not against people donating to Mozilla or EFF or Thunderbird Foundation. I think it will be better (yet longer process) if government can regulate big tech, much like what the European Union did with GDPR.

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[–] emma@beehaw.org 29 points 2 years ago

Ad blockers are my best disability accommodation. The things they do with ads to capture attention f with my brain. I'm really going to struggle if this happens. And I'm dependent on the internet for so many things, from groceries to prescriptions to people.

[–] Osayidan@social.vmdk.ca 24 points 2 years ago

That's one way to kill the WWW.

[–] sapient_cogbag@infosec.pub 22 points 2 years ago

This is nothing less than a brazen attempt at total control of the primary large-scale communication mechanism of humanity.

[–] heliodorh@beehaw.org 20 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I'm a non-techie and don't understand half of this, but from what I do understand, this is a goddamn nightmare. The world is seriously going to shit.

[–] JVT038@feddit.nl 39 points 2 years ago (3 children)

My ELI5 version:

Basically, the 'Web Environment Integrity' proposal is a new technique that verifies whether a visitor of a website is actually a human or a bot.

Currently, there are captchas where you need to select all the crosswalks, cars, bicycles, etc. which checks whether you're a bot, but this can sometimes be bypassed by the bots themselves.

This new 'Web Environment Integrity' thing goes as follows:

You visit a website
Website wants to know whether you're a human or a bot.
Your browser (or the 'client') will send request an 'environment attestation' from an 'attester'. This means that your browser (such as Firefox or Chrome) will request approval from some third-party (like Google or something) and the third-party (which is referred to as 'attester') will send your browser a message, which basically says 'This user is a bot' or 'This user is a human being'.
Your browser receives this message and will then send it to the website, together with the 'attester public key'. The 'attester public key' can be used by the website to verify whether the attester (a.k.a. the third-party checking whether you're a human or not) is trustworthy and will then check whether the attester says that you're a human or not.

I hope this clears things up and if I misinterpreted the GitHub explainer, please correct me.

The reason people (rightfully) worry about this, is because it gives attesters A LOT of power. If Google decides they don't like you, they won't tell the website that you're a human. Or maybe, if Google doesn't like the website you're trying to visit, they won't even cooperate with attesting. Lots of things can go wrong here.

[–] arthur@lemmy.zip 28 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

And the attester will know where you're navigating, always.

[–] HarkMahlberg@kbin.social 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Your final paragraph is the real kicker. Google would love nothing more than to be the ONLY trusted Attester and for Chrome to be the ONLY browser that receives the "Human" flag.

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[–] spark947@lemm.ee 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is so silly. There is no technical solution to trust. What if Russia or China want to run a bit farm? Or the US goverbment? Are you not going to trust their signatures, and face legal action i their markets? This stuff is so stupid, just be honest that you want people to watch your ads. Than we can all refuse and move on with our lives.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There is no technical solution to trust.

Google knows this. Trust isn't really the problem they're trying to solve.

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[–] Catsrules@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 years ago

Well good thing they have a company slogan of do no evil...... Oh wait.

[–] Faydaikin@beehaw.org 11 points 2 years ago

Yep, that sounds like a very Mega-Corp thing to do.

[–] FunzioneSperimentale@feddit.it 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Like everyone else, I was an avid google user and used google for all its services. Then I started to learn about privacy and switched to chrome to firefox with duckduckgo. Until yesterday I was also often using an adblocker for advertising, I then realized that this does harm to companies and sites that I am interested in. Advertising is fine, I enjoy it if it's on the site, but I want to be given a choice to behave. That's it. Tradotto con DeepL https://www.deepl.com/app/?utm_source=android&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=share-translation

[–] jherazob@beehaw.org 18 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Years ago i would have agreed with you, but on this era of heavy capitalist surveillance you don't want to give them the chance, they'll get every bit of data they can get about you. That and ads are strong dissemination vectors for malware. If i want to support something i'd rather do it directly, ads have proven to be noxious.

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Technology

THIS IS NOT (just) ABOUT GOOGLE