The year is 2023, every single major tech companies are racing each other to become Public Enemy No. 1. And the only Hero we have is the EU, will it be able to save the day?
this is why I’m switching to firefox
It’s fun to see capitalism doubling down on itself. 🫠
Man I love using Firefox.
Welp, there we go.
I’m working on the contrary, some sort of gemini web plus with modules, to keep the engine as small as possible to make porting/reinventions easier. The engine only provides basics like displaying text. Modules provide functionality like ‘video player’, gallery’, ‘search bar with filters’, ‘login’, keeping webshops, company pages, etc. in mind. There’s no JS or CSS, the styling is entirely in the hand of the browser/user (including dark mode, mobile view), the servers push only content. Likewise, active logins and payments will be handled by the browser, not the webpage. Though it will not be compatible with HTTPS/the current web. The protocol and the browser will be licensed open source.
I’m still planning, it’s not even in the prototype phase yet. Should i push this further? If so, how would i get financial support? opentech.fund, ngi.edu, nlnet?
Ad pushing is only part of the problem… These tokens will kill the #InternetArchive Wayback machine. It’s anti-library tech.
Anti-bot tech is inherently anti-human.
Why’s everyone blaming the engineers lol, pretty sure they’re just doing what they’re told right?
Software engineers have ethics classes, I’d imagine this would fall highly under unethical, just under building software for the military which google employees have protested in the past.
Software engineers have ethics classes
We do?
It was required for my degree, I’m sure it is required at more than just my university lol
Not my university. Outside of the engineering classes and prequisites for engineering classes, we only had to take rhetoric and a foreign language.
That’s disappointing to hear. Talked about ethics throughout my courses and one was half the class. Hopefully more professors and instructions sprinkle it in there at least.
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Sure, its not taught everywhere, it is still something discussed among peers and taught at some institutions. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be seeing engineers doing walkouts and protesting companies decisions.
are you seriously advocating for immoral choices right now? what the fuck is even the point of your comment except to disagree with no more information? bruh go hit a punching bag or some shit, then hop back online . or go to reddit because you will love it over there
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Losing your ad blocker on chrome is “just under” software designed to kill people? Lol really? Oh the oppression
Sure it won’t kill people like programming drones, but it is still unethical and would affect ~5 billion people negatively.
Right, but you said “just under”. There’s a preeetty fuckin wide gap between blocking ad blockers and dropping bombs guy.
- It’s not just ad blockers that is m issue with this. Read Mozilla’s post for a bunch of valid concerns.
- If you read my reply there is a comma prior to the just which makes a pause if it makes it better you could read it as [it’s] just under… Either way I am not trying to make the wide gape you are referring to, I was simply stating it as a matter of fact more ethical then programming for military use but still unethical.
I’m not saying concerns aren’t valid, I just took your comment to be calling it almost comparable to military software.
“…, it’s just under…” means the same thing, but I think you mean “it’s just under” as in “although, it’s under” rather than “just” being a measurement?
Yeah not intending it as a measurement; this comes to mind in situations like this
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Doing what you’re told does not relieve you of responsibility for the results of your actions
Exactly, headline should be more like “Google executives want Google engineers to make ad-blocking (near) impossible”
Isn’t Google famous for giving a large amount of creative freedom to their engineers (and having a lot of dead published products as a result)? Also, Google engineers are not exactly stuck at their job with little hope of finding anything else to survive.
a decade ago.
I believe that policy was reduced or removed many years ago. Around the time when all the cool new projects stopped, and Google scrubbed “don’t be evil” from their site and company philosophy.
The engineers are not blame free, and can do super shady shit too. For example, the issues with the WebHID “broswer” APIs.
Just following orders is not the ironclad excuse some of you seem to think it is.
They’re still bad people, but this kind of blame has to run uphill. The devs only have the option of quitting, not necessarily of not doing what they’re told.
That being said, I bet there are some Very Good Boys who enthusiastically and proactively suggest some evil shit to the execs.
Look dude, I hate advertising as much as anyone. I don’t want any TV and most streaming services have wedged in some form of advertising nowadays and I avoid all that.
But equating engineers trying to solve a problem like engineers figuring out how to block ads isn’t really equivalent to murder.
People only get held accountable for their actions and choices when the consequences are equivalent to murder? Their bosses hold some of the blame, sure, but they are not blameless and pretending they are just enables shit like this to keep happening.
I mean shit, they aren’t launching nukes here
Ah yes, because “just following orders” has worked out so well in the past.
That’s right, I just godwin’d this bitch.
Because it is still unclear if this is an official project requested by Google or just some engineers working alone until Google adopts the project.
The chances that a swashbuckling crew of rogue engineers organized a secret skunkworks project to implement their heartfelt, idealistic vision of an adblocker free web are… low.
This is exactly something an engineer who works at Google would want to work on, finding new ways to enrich Google is literally their job and there would be great personal benefit from coming up with the best way to implement this DRM crap for profit
True, but it’s not zero
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I don’t blame the engineers so much as the executives. Those engineers could be people from India on H-1B visas just trying to live a better life.
I’m afraid I disagree here. This line of thinking might lead some people to targeting Google engineers for harassment, doxxing, etc. We’re better than that, I hope. Instead, we need to call on governments to hit Google harder than they hit Microsoft over Internet Explorer. Back then, there were talks of forcing Microsoft to split off IE as a separate company, we need to make Google do the same with Chrome, and find some way to compel them to stop all browser development altogether. We have antitrust laws, we just aren’t using them.
I see your point
10:10 wholesome response.
People call on governments to do things all the time, but it’s often just ignored. How do we get governments to actually listen? How do we get this to actually happen? ~Strawberry
It isn’t Google Engineers wanting to do it. It’s Google engineers being told to do it.
So, Google, the Overlord of the Internet apperantly, wishes to make his Kingdom an uninhabitable hellscape of constant ad harrassment that anyone who wants to keep their sanity will interact with as little as possible, only going there when necessary.
Ok, then. Good luck with that Business.
Just wondering, will one day Humanity, who has pretty much agreed in perfect unison completely independent from each other, since the golden age of television, that we all hate ads, finally be heard?
Lmao yoavweiss seems to have recently broken the 4 year hiatus on his personal blog to make a new post about how the discussions around this retarded proposal are not constructive enough.
The most constructive that can ever be said about this is “fuck right off” dude.
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Please don’t blame the people who were forced to implement this. There are engineers to blame behind all shitty tech in the world. They’re just trying to work a job. There aren’t exactly a lot of jobs in the tech industry where you don’t work for some of the evilest motherfuckers alive building unimaginably evil stuff. I’m all for directing as much hate, vitriol, credible threats of violence, etc at the people on top, but let’s leave the poor sap who they forced to do their dirty work alone.
You think they acted alone?
They acted.
That’s petty as fuck. I’m an ex google eng and it’s not up to us what we work on. We get paid to work on shit and if we don’t do it someone else will. Plenty of resumes in the pool ready to hop in and take someone’s spot. Blame the company not the people doing the grunt work.
It’s like blaming the barista for the menu.
“Just doing my job” is a poor excuse. That’s no different than saying, “I’m just doing it for money”. When you’re a software engineer who could get another job without much trouble. Otherwise, you’re choosing to do what google tells you.
A menu you don’t like at a barista isn’t even remotely the same.
“The restaurant told me to not care and use rotten food for your meal, not my fault” is basically what I can relate it to
More like blaming the chef in a restaurant chain for the menu. Some corporate entity might be the one crafting the menu, but they’re still the ones cooking.
That isn’t to say we should hound the devs, but I thought we could use a better example.
I fail to see how the engineers building the technical side of this are relevant to this case. It’s not their decision to put this into Chromium or not.
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Dude they’re not murdering people they implemented tech use a new browser
An unethical tech which they could’ve refused and turned whistleblower about.
No point in whistleblowing when they are posting blogs about it…asking for feedback.
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Also, it is ‘they’re’, not ‘their’.
Thanks really picked what mattered from an auto correct
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True, it was not their decision, but they had the choice to show google the middle finger.
The next person would do it then. I don’t see that as a solution.
Anyone able to come up with this tech has the choice to just leave and work elsewhere.
Of course they have the choice. But be realistic. There is ALWAYS someone willing to do something for money. Not everyone thinks the same way as you do.
You always have a decision. Especially when you’re a highly qualified engineer that could choose to work somewhere else easily.
You say that like it’s easy to deal with a sudden loss of income and the potential that their living situation will radically change before they land that new job. I can’t imagine that working at that level leads to particular quick interview and hiring processes.
By all means… do that “Mr. Google”, and I’ll never touch any chromium-related browser, ever.
But it looks like that only affects users of the Chrome Browser right?
Google and Chrome really need to be broken up. Maybe people should start writing (physical) letters to the FTC asking to review Google’s recent actions as monopolistic behavior.
It wouldn’t be the first time. But showing the interest is the best way to get the ball rolling that we can do.
How does one do that?
I didn’t include details because I still had to research after the comment, but this page details several methods of contact. The antitrust email looks like a good place to start if you don’t want to mail anything. But physical mail is harder to ignore, it actually has to get into someone’s hands and be dealt with. So I’ll try to write up a letter and send that to maybe the regional office nearest Google’s HQ.
Have people not been trying that for years already? How do we know if there’s a good chance that’ll even do anything beyond get tossed in the trash? ~Strawberry
Honest curiosity on your answer to this.
Google is the developer of Chromium and the Chrome browser which uses Chromium. Chromium is free and open source (though owned by Google).
I’m not sure how you break up Chrome and Google. That’s literally their product. Who are we giving this to? There are browsers that do not use Chromium (e.g., Firefox and Safari being the big ones).
Companies have gotten broken up before, like AT&T once did many years ago. In this case, a Google breakup would probably separate some of their services into different companies. At the very least Google (the “advertising” company) should be separate from Chrome (the “browser” company), because it creates a conflict of interest and creates monopolistic behavior.
In any case, trying to do something is better than doing nothing and hoping it turns out all right.
I think the poster is making a good point though- In this split, google the advertising company can freely contribute to the open source chromium. You need some model that leads the chromium maintainer to reject changes like this.
I’m sure there’s some mechanism in antitrust to prevent the broken up companies from doing things like that. Otherwise, a “primary” company would just contract out the old other pieces and they’re basically whole again.
That’s true, I just wonder if open source changes anything, legally. Unless one term of the breakup is “will not contribute to chromium”
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Google isnt Google anymore. It’s Alphabet. Alphabet includes Google domains, Android, Gmail, YouTube, chrome, Google search, search ads, play store, fuscia, Google maps, authenticator, chat, classroom, assistant, meet, nest, pixel, waze, Gboard, messages, google tv, Google photos and the rest
Each one of these have their own presidents, their own boards, their own teams. They are all directed by Alphabet.
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Spin it off on their own and survive like Firefox. Browsers make money putting links in the homepage and adding search engines.
