…for now. This isn’t a beloved google service that people were relying on. This is the means by which google intents to subjugate and fully enshittify the web. They’ll try again under different names until one takes. It only has to work once.
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They will learn from this effort, call it R&D, and start working on something that is effectively worse but break it into smaller pieces. The new project will be less obviously evil at a glance.
Google temporarily delays rollout of their DRM for Web until public attention shifts to something worse they propose that was always a smokescreen.
They will try it again in like two to three years from now. This time they will just do a under the radar and somewhat diluted version of it.
I mean, it was under the radar to begin with. It wasn’t on any main google channels, it was mostly only discussed by the developers who handled the project.
The only reason people know about this to begin with is because there were fortunately a lot of people paying attention. I remember the first time I saw anything about it was on HackerNews and it was straight from the dev. Maybe it was even just the github. Either way, it was not advertised in any major way other than not outright being hidden.
When it originally hit, I remember arguments about how its “just a few developers,” and “we’ll wait until it actually ends up in chrome” and so on. The whole point was that it was still relatively early on in development and was just at proposal stage. This thankfully went from obscure developer news to big worldwide general tech news and Google backed down… for now.
We can be thankful developers with consciences are paying attention, in the meantime.
These, if I am correct, were the original links on HackerNews from around 4 months ago. Not exactly major advertising blitz from Google or anything, mostly wonky/technical documents.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36778999 / https://chromestatus.com/feature/5796524191121408
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817305 / https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity
For now.
Tech companies repeatedly float shit people don’t want to see if the reaction is mild enough to actually go through with it.
Then they either wait until it is, or mull over ways to sell this as a good idea to consumers.
It was only 5 years ago TotalBiscuit / John Bain was still railing against the initial spread of microtransactions and DLC fragmentation of games.
And now they are utterly and completely ubiquitous.
Until the next time this comes around.
And thousends of devs also working so that Google also runs into a wall next time.
The price for privacy and freedom? Eternal Vigilance.
Google will try and try again, so stay watchful everyone.
How much was that fake news rag got paid to run this bullshit…
Owned by: https://www.northdata.com/Softonic+International+SA,+Barcelona/NIF+A62134341
“Marketplace for the Sale of Software Applications and Other Web Solutions for Consumer Technology; and Sale of Advertising Engagement Opportunities and Revenue Share To Solution Providers”
🙃
Well someone got receipts haha
In my personal experience this is blatantly untrue, because now I can’t even log into my Google/YouTube account on Librewolf anymore. I get a prompt saying “this browser may be insecure” and requesting that I use Chrome instead. This is exactly what the Web Environment Integrity API was intended for — maybe they did decide to shelve it for general use, but Google is still absolutely trying to push this bullshit for their own services.
I never had this issue for the past 2 years I’ve used Librewolf until, coincidentally, Google “decided” to “sunset” its browser DRM.
??? No problems with Vivaldi (Chromium) nor with Midori (Gecko), Vivaldi with the own ad/tracker blocker + iFrame script installed as extension, Midory with uBO + Greasymonkey with the iFrame script. in both YT 100% clean of ads and nags.
Anyway i use more and more alternatives to YT, front-ends and desktop clients, which offer me videos in better quality, faster and without garbage and tracking.
Front-ends
Desktop
If necessary, there are also other solutions.
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I log in without issue on Brave and per fingerprint tests on multiple sites I’m randomized.
Not that I’d ever normally do so (privacy guy) but I just logged into it without issue from both Brave and Fennec on my phone and and both Brave and Firefox on the desktop.
One of the reasons I’m usually not a fan of browser spinoffs is theyre known for doing weird shit, clearly it sees something security wise it doesn’t like with LibreWolf. If it was a blanket thing they were doing I would have got that too.
What version of Firefox is it based on?
They are still going to pursue it, just under a different name and rolling-out timeline. What they changed is only the way they are announcing it publicly.
It’s going to be “DRM for the Web, but with extra steps”.
Lets call it what it is, googles attempt to create a situation in which they can ban all competition and establish a global monopoly.
I partially agree. They created a monopoly because they offer the best search engine service. You can’t be accused of making a monopoly if your competition is embarrassingly bad and no one wants to use any service but yours.
What they are doing now, regardless of how they gained this monopoly, is ensuring that every cow that feeds on the grass of their field yields profitable milk.
Noone would care if they only had a monopoly in the search engine market. But they are also the biggest ad network, email provider and browser maker, and they also own the (effectively only) video platform.
DDG is pretty good and I use it exclusively. Google spams your search results with sponsored links. That’s bullshit
But if you implement something in your browser that allows websites to block anything that isn’t an accepted browser (and websites use it because they don’t want their precious data to feed random AIs) you effectively prevent any potential competition from crawling websites to build a search index that might threaten your position.
This is what I meant, if everyone is running googles web integrity API it also effectively allows google to ban other browsers from even existing by denying them access to all major sites.
meanwhile apple already did it without even asking.
“The company [Google] claimed that this new API would help combat online fraud and abuse, and that it would do so in a privacy-friendly manner.”
Lied. The word is lied.
