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.
Google: The Evil Empire
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thank FUCK
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.
I use Fennec (fork of Firefox)
the real problem will begin when big websites start blocking unverified browsers. it means the end of spam and ad blockers, but it also means the end of privacy.
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.
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.
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Not proceeding for now.
Yes, something tells me that they will just switch to attempting to introduce this piecemeal so that fewer people will notice what’s going on.
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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I would rather have the ads based on the content I am viewing rather than me.
It obviously isn’t a necessity looking at how many Lemmy servers are running on nothing but good will
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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.
more targeted ads means more spying. That’s bad news in theory and in practice.
I am not asking for much. Just break up Google and throw both the big shareholders as well as the executives in jail for the rest of their lifes. If you go as far and decide to take all their money and spend it on social services, healthcare and education for the general public, I wouldn’t be mad.
“All I’m asking for, is giving some people life imprisonment for an action that currently is completely legal.”
Listen, I’m completely for seizing the means of production and stuff. Google is evil. They can go fuck themselves. However, saying something so incredibly stupid (like you suggested above) voids any credibility that you have.
You are getting mad at an internet post by a random person who has exactly zero credibility to begin with. I sourced nothing, I claimed nothing, I didn’t even pretend that any opinion I hold is of value. As much as I am for calling out shit and as much as I applaud you doing that if for no other reason than out of principle, why? Why don’t you use your brain against someone actually doing harm and argue with a shitpost done by a shitposter on a platform that is mostly about shitposting instead?
All of that pointless stuff aside: Legal ≠ Right I hope you will agree with me on that. We’d like to pretend the rules we make up are just. We’d especially like to believe that if they are democratically legitimated someway or another, they must be morally okay. That is not the case. It never was and never will be. If you base your whole stance on something being legal, then that’s a huge issue in and of itself.
At this point in history money is power is law. If you are rich enough, you have to be the utmost incompetent idiot around to do something blatantly illegal and get in trouble for it. I for one don’t think this is the way. So maybe a bit more anarchy from time to time would serve us all well to balance out rich people’s crap.
Also: It’s a shitpost. A freaking shitpost. Vote it down and move on. I’d do the same if I didn’t think it would be worth engaging with you.
You are getting mad at an internet post by a random person who has exactly zero credibility to begin with. I sourced nothing, I claimed nothing, I didn’t even pretend that any opinion I hold is of value.
Listen… Humans find patterns everywhere they go. That’s just how humans work. Your idea is clearly a left wing idea (anti-corporation, breaking monopolies, etc.). I get it. I support this ideology. However, when you call for imprisoning people for life right beside the presentation of this idea, you unknowingly draw up a terrible association to it. Unfortunately, the first thing that people think about when they hear “communism”, is “gulags”. You unknowingly reinforce people’s beliefs regarding this.
All of that pointless stuff aside: Legal ≠ Right I hope you will agree with me on that.
Agreed completely. However, I don’t think that the solution for this is undermining law and order. Vigilantism helps nobody. Except for non-democratic systems, violence always leads to your idea being dismissed immediately. Hence, it should be avoided as much as possible (except in cases where you are in immediate danger).
Also: It’s a shitpost. A freaking shitpost. Vote it down and move on. I’d do the same if I didn’t think it would be worth engaging with you.
Words have meanings. Not all people have an advanced sense of humor like you. At least I don’t. Sure, if you meant the above as a joke, you should probably have put an “/s” in front of it. This is exactly how the far right does its dog whistling.
A: “Black people something something racist…”
B: “You can’t say that bro… That’s racist”
A: “It’s a shitpost bro! Move on… People can’t take a joke these days…”
You seem like good people. I hope you have a nice and relaxing weekend.
Awwww you too!!! <3
I don’t care what Chrome does to fuck every single users possible, provided that it doesn’t affect FF.
This integrity thing was one of the worst thing they could’ve ever come up with that would’ve definitely affect me.
Fuck them. Fuck with your own users. I ain’t one.
That’s the problem. They could have made it a requirement for a site to work in Chrome. And since Chrome has such a majority sites would have to comply. Then the other browsers would have to fall in line or just stop working with most websites. Google’s monopoly is complete enough that they can dictate how the web works. You need to both care what chrome does and care that other people are still using it or you’re just as fucked as they are.
Yeah, the current management is so horny to have Chrome be the next Internet Explorer like that. So sad Google has fallen so far.
I’m not sure on stats or anything, I know Google has paid a lot of money to get Chrome as a default browser, but I remember a time when it became ubiquitous because the family nerd would tell their parents to use it and so on. It could possibly happen again and have a lot of people switch to firefox because their favourite site stopped working on Chrome. It’s the kind of plan that could backfire pretty bad. There’s a lot of legal reasons for their hesitance I’m sure, but I think that sort of thing would also play into it. A bunch of parents calling up their children because something stopped working and being told to download firefox isn’t outside the scope of reality I don’t think.
Please, people, stop using Chromium-based browsers and handing Google a near-monopoly. Firefox is awesome and has even more privacy-oriented derivates.
Bope. I’ll continue using Brave, as it’s the best browser out there for my use case. Thank you for you concern. Firefox plainly sucks, thanks to Mozilla, and I tell this after having been a FF user, supporter and advocate for almost 20 years.
What sucks so much in FF?
Yes, performance used to be spotty but this is no longer the case.
UI/UX/Performance/Mobile app/Slow on Linux/Mozilla (the latter is the worst)
I’m not open to further debate. You asked, I replied. I preferred to migrate to a different browser and never look back, thanks to Mozilla.
Your info isn’t up to date
Yeah, sure /s.
Fuck Mozilla, really. I wouldn’t go back to FF even if it was the last browser on earth, as long as it gives oxygen to Mozilla. I’d like Moz Corp. to disappear.
I’ve been using FF (and Thunderbird) for about 5 years now on my dual core old laptop running Gentoo, and it’s always run pretty smooth. Especially when they switched to the Quantum web engine.
Of course. Everybody is having a great time on FF, that why this happens:
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
Yeah, surely Chrome/Google/$EandomEvilCorp are to blame, but Not Mozilla, the can’t do anything wrong, poor souls /s
Google isn’t proceeding. Maybe now they’ll realize YouTube is also suffering from their poor decisions.
YouTube isn’t suffering. Lemmy has an active userbase of just over 30K. Given the fact a lot of people have multiple accounts (I do), that’s less than 30K active users.
On top of that, probably less than half of Lemmy users actually cry about YouTube.
Even if we are generous, and say the entirety of Lemmy, and each user is unique, 30K is nothing lol.
K, I’m still not using Google search engine anymore. And once I find a replacement for any other Google services and devices I have, it’s out with those as well.
My concern is saving my email and photos before my account is randomly banned one day with no customer service and no recourse. God only knows what data they already harvested from when I used to back up my photos with their service.
Just grab a copy using Google Takeout, then after that use Syncrify, FolderSync, Resilio Sync or something else to automatically copy your phone media to your computer.
Definitely the first step is to get more SSDs. I was traveling a lot and barely used a desktop or even a laptop for 6-7 years. I’ll check out those sync systems, thanks.
Honestly. Off the back of this debacle I switched to Firefox and duckduckgo. Previously I used to use the shit out of incognito because I hated that when I searched for something once that I then get that thing popping up everywhere else in ads etc. Since the switch I no longer get the feeling of being stalked.
NoScript helps a lot, too. I suppose other extensions also. It’s horrifying how many sites embed Google and Facebook tracking, including ones that really shouldn’t like medical sites and banks.
DuckDuckGo has an extension that blocks trackers.
On the topic of this, what is the best alternative out there? A few years ago I’ve tried a couple options, out of curiosity, but the search quality was super poor for anything that’s not in English, and the accuracy of found content wasn’t always there
Best? Kagi. Best free? Probably bing or searx
I reckon Kagi is the best search engine out there. It’s paid though. Second I’d have Qwant followed by DDG.
This is something I wrote in another thread earlier but it’s relevant here too
A security guy popular in the internet, Ollam, recently left Delta’s program because they are changing it to be more pay to play vs miles traveled or something. Delta walked it back but he’s sticking to his guns. In his rant, he said something poignant. Something to the effect of “if your significant other raises their hand like they’re gonna hit you, but they don’t? The time to leave is now.” (Video)
(Quote)
Both leaving reddit and leaving google s.e. were two things that I thought would be harder than they were.
The hard part is the cost difference (I haven’t looked terribly deeply yet) Family Proton (3TB) is 395 AUD (when you sign up for 2 years)
2 TB, 125 AUD per year for google drive, and it’s per year.
Pro-rata that’s literally twice as expensive, and you have to sign up for 2 years to get that rate, which makes moving my stuff a hard pill to swallow :(
Is there a plug and play service that’s as good as proton without the hefty premium?
(The single plans are even more steep, 24 months, 158 AUD per year for only 500 GB…)
leaving reddit is easy leaving google is pretty damn difficult
Just need to install Linux as your primary OS and your transition to software freedom will be complete.
I use it for work but at home with gaming and stuff it’s just not sustainable
What games do you play that aren’t compatible? I don’t play many of the really mainstream games. I think the last game I played that wasn’t compatible at the time was genshin impact.
Proton keeps getting better and better. I long for the day when I can ditch windows completely and it might not be too far away.
If by “not too far away” you mean “5+ years ago,” then sure. That’s how long I’ve been gaming Linux-only, anyway.
Is it possible to mod Bethesda games on Linux?
Yeah you just use Mod Organizer 2 same as on Windows.
Yes, I’ve done it myself following some tutorials online for Skyrim SE. It’s not as simple as on Windows but it’s definitely possible.
How’s Factorio on Linux?
If I can play that I’ll move.
it’s native since inception, i believe
prolly even runs better than on windows, although it doesn’t really matter since it’s so freaking optimized
It works perfectly fine for me.
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Doing so on the desktop is easy enough. Getting rid of Android appears to be a much harder challenge, though.
Android is opensource. You can get phones that support ROMs like LineageOS (would recommend a FairPhone) or /e/ (godawful name, good ROM) for example - you can buy the Murena phone for this.
Linux phones are about 5 years away from mainstream usability, IMO.
I second the recommendation for Fairphone w/ CalyxOS. Feels just like having a Google Pixel running Android. Just way way more private.
.
Maybe 😄
I’ve tried running Replicant and degoogled Lineage OS on an old Samsung phone many years ago. The experience was a bit rough, but tolerable as long as you’re a tech enthusiast and willing to make some sacrifices. Back then it wasn’t quite acceptable to me, because my bank app didn’t work. Then they announced that they were going to phase out the old code paper, so authentication through a mobile app was seen as the only acceptable method going forward.
I have tried /e/ os, I have found it to be meh
I’m really looking forward to Linux phones. Have been for years. It’s sad that Mozilla and Canonicals ventures didn’t pan out because both had really fun ideas. Hell I say they had the right ideas, it just wasn’t the right time.
Until banking apps except the use of custom ROMs it will be a major stumbling block to switching to them.
I’ve never had an issue using banking apps from Lineage. I use 3 different pretty mainstream ones
I have 3 banking apps installed right now through Aurora Store (FLOSS access to Google Store). They work fine. The only bank that didn’t like my degoogled phone, I dropped.
Monesse, Monzo and Revolut all refused to work for me. They’re mobile-only banks so maybe that’s the reason.
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Lemmy has a hate boner for Apple but iOS is dope
.
Heaps better when it comes to data collection and privacy, if you’re concerned about that.
.
Fingers crossed that linux gets better support and development on phones
I can reccommend graphene os however u need a pixel for that
I still worry that leaving Reddit is going to make it tilt to the right. I spent a decade posting there in the hopes that it would nudge people towards sanity.
I think it probably already is somewhat, but there comes a point where trying to change the system from within becomes futile and complicit.
I’d rather be out here making a better place.
The right use it and all other social media sites for coordinated disinformation. No matter how much you try to combat it you’re going up against people/ideas with deep pockets and a lot of resources meaning your voice is just a drop in the bucket.
Sure, but there are a lot more of us, and we make more sense.
It’s important to present people with the contrasting view when they’re presented with disinformation. It’s natural to believe the first thing you read if it’s just a narrative with no dissent.
Leaving google isn’t hard.
Leaving YouTube specifically, however… Well, it’s been getting easier as content seems to be less and less frequent or quality.
Maps is the last one to replace. There are so many ads now that I’ll tolerate a lower quality alternative.
I use OSMAND
There’s are some OpenStreetMap-based apps that are worth checking out. Some of them are made for specific purposes, while other are for general navigation. I’ve tried some of them through the time with various success, though I’ve still haven’t found a favorite to stick with for good. But I believe making the switch is definitely possible and probably worth it!
You can install all the mentioned apps through F-Droid:
- GraphHopper Maps
- OsmAnd+
- Organic Maps (hike/bike)
- Alpi Maps (hike/bike)
- SeaMapDroid (nautical)
Additionally, use Transportr for public transport navigation almost anywhere in the world, and GMaps WV, a restricted WebView wrapper for accessing the web version of Google Maps. Intended for use when OpenStreetMap isn’t enough.
This is true, I still use youtube and I don’t see it changing soon since there are no viable alternatives.
Peer tube but no one actually makes content for it far as I can tell.
and you can’t watch content from other instances right?
Personally, I can’t imagine what is on YouTub that’s worth watching. I don’t know, I haven’t used it in ages.
The sheer variety is the key to YouTube’s dominant position. Whatever subject you want to watch something about, there’s a very good chance you’ll find it.
I think that’s unfair, there is so much content there and so many content creators that saying there is nothing worth watching just comes out as snobbish.
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VSauce2 is so weird. His topics are interesting and research behind the vids is done well, but the presentation is, well, not for me. Too many jump cuts and “reveals”.
Closest I’d say would be a service like Odysee. Can’t really say whether their practices are better than yt or not, but I can at least confirm I’ve found a few channels I don’t wanna sub to on yt also have accounts on Odysee. As to whether or not they made those accounts/channels is a different story.
I use piped/newpipe etc. and simply support creators i watch via patreon/direct donations/merch. Less money for shitty ad company more money for creatives.
Nebula is a good alternative
Hardcore Mode on IVPN is insane (it blocks Google). Sadly it’ll break a lot of stuff though, but fuck Google.
I adjusted my entire digital life so I can do everything without ever connecting to Google services. I block them in my self-hosted Pi-Hole, on NextDNS and in my OPNsense Firewall.
Mainly I’m talking about random captchas that break. Everything else I can live with.
I refuse to use services that force me to surrender to Google. Why don’t people use hCaptcha, it’s not perfect, but it’s far better than this Google garbage…
That’s much easier said than done. Right now I’m dealing with a late payment on a website because first I couldn’t access the website via VPN (blocked by Cloudflare), then even after allowing the IP to bypass the VPN I couldn’t pass the hidden captcha. After completely disabling the VPN + Google blocker my real IP was blacklisted due to forgetting to clear cookies between the two. Now my credit is being impacted.
That’s why I isolate my financial stuff from everything else, separate device with a separate browser, separate dedicated IP address, etc.
I replaced gmail with protonmail and everything else with nextcloud. Couldn’t go back.
After a lot of privacy switching I finally did try NextCloud, but I couldn’t get port forwarding to work on my Internet and gave up… For now
You are probably behind a nat. I contacted my isp and they disabled it, since it works perfectly!
What do you mean nat? For me there is an app with an option (apparently no other way) and it didn’t worj
Compare what your router reports as ip and compare what your public ip is. If its not the same then that means you are behind a nat(?)(or something else) and you can’t port forward now.
Hosting your own nextcloud I’m guessing?
If so how did you install it?
Their docker stack is pretty simple to setup
Nope, I don’t have a server and I also want to secure my files in a different location so I paid for hetzner.
Question: can email from gmail be imported into proton mail?
Yes, they even have a walk through on how to do it.
Based
https://ecosia.org as a search engine :) Uses bing in the background (and newly also google), but your data isn’t sold (AFAIK).
If you want opensource there’s YaCy
I’m on Kagi but I did the one time payment and am unsure about whether I’ll extend. Results are good but 10 dollars a month isn’t insignificant (cheap plan is orders of magnitude less than what I need in searches)
I tried kagi and wasn’t impressed. For all but one or two queries the results were exactly the same as ddg. Not to mention they had that stupid metric stating 78%+ unique kagi results for every search, even though that was blatantly untrue. They seem pretty dishonest as a company.
I used Ecosia for a long time (almost 5 years) but the search results are pretty bad. Often I had to use another search engine to actually find what I was looking for. DuckDuckGo is pretty good, Brave Search is OK as well but SearXNG is my personal favorite.
I use SearXNG. Google’s search results aren’t even good anymore so there’s really no excuse not to switch at this point. For awhile I couldn’t break the habit but recently Google has gotten considerably worse.
I wish they did, so chrome could loose some market share
no, websites would implement and force you to use chrome
Problem is big sites you’re forced to use (banking sites, work HR systems, etc) would’ve made shitty decisions and required it to use their site. It would be like the old “you have to use IE 6” era
Various state and federal accessibility laws would’ve made that a very questionable decision for a lot of industries. Given that it would cost money simply to get programmers to implement and might lead to more costs from legal challenges I suspect a lot of sites like banks and the like would’ve avoided it.
Now when it comes to basically any news site, entertainment service, social media, online store, or anything else that makes extra money on ads and harvesting user data? Oh yeah, they’d implement it in a heartbeat.
Banking site: We’ve implemented the Web Integrity API because security is important to us.
Also the banking site: Your password can only be six characters.
I’m in Canada and I haven’t registered on a banking site recently, but I have definitely had stupidly low password length limits on banking sites in the past. The password from my old Bank of Montreal account that was last updated in 2015 is only 6 characters, and it’s only numbers and letters; I would have definitely had 1Password generate a better password if the rules had allowed it.
Interesting. I’m in New Zealand and my bank passwords are all proper length and characterset. They also have 2FA.
I always thought it was just the US that has an antiquated banking system.
Tangerine used to have 4-6 digit PIN (no password) to access your online-only account.
Not sure if they still do. I believe so, though.
…yet.
Yeah gotta wait for the heat on this antitrust probe to die down before doing the dirty.
Unpopular opinion here: I kind of hoped they’d go through with it, as that would completely kill Chrome and Chromium and would lead to a repeat of IE vs Firefox, except Chrome would be the new IE. The fact that they backtracked means that they too saw that people would be massively flocking to Firefox.
It wouldn’t. If Google only owned Chrome, then maybe. But combined with services like AdSense, Google can easily leverage people and site operators to keep using Chrome.
Firefox is losing users year over year. I think it’s beyond saving.
that would completely kill Chrome and Chromium
It definitely wouldn’t. The majority of people would never know the difference. Most people use Chrome and don’t use ad blockers.
Careful what you wish for.
I still think it will come out but on the down low
Most Chrome users don’t even know what a web browser is. They would have remained on Chrome and the web would have suffered for it.
To be fair, most IE 5 and 6 users didn’t know what a web browser was either and here we are.
But that was broken and didn’t provide the right functionality. Chrome’s change breaks everything else, not itself.
I think it’s less, “We’re worried people will flock to Firefox,” and more, “We could get in a lot of legal trouble for trying to force everyone onto Chrome”.
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I absolutely do not trust Chrome or the google team. It does not make me feel any better the only barrier to them trying to ruin a internet a bit is some backlash.
