Mastodawn

Google Tries to Defend Its Web Environment Integrity as Critics Slam It as Dangerous

https://programming.dev/post/1035659

Google Tries to Defend Its Web Environment Integrity as Critics Slam It as Dangerous - programming.dev

> > Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don’t give in to criminals or bullies > > Kick a puppy > Get attacked for kicking a puppy > “These attacks make me MORE likely to keep kicking puppies, as I don’t give in to intimidation from criminals and bullies that want healthy puppies for their nefarious ends.” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916444 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916444]

usernotfound Jul 29, 2023

Kick a puppy

If you have to resort to false equivalences like these, you’re not really making the anti-WEI crowd look good.

ruffsl Jul 29, 2023

I think the comment that the_lego is replying to also highlights the false equivalency of calling the anti-WEI crowd as criminals, as was not a good look for Google.

They have apologized for using the word criminals & bullies in a broader context and I appreciate that. However, the initial part of the comment is very telling of how they view those who oppose.

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916991

It is not just gaslighting but there were attempts to malign those who are oppos... | Hacker News

Kresten Jul 29, 2023

Agree

nottelling Jul 29, 2023

Analogies are inherently false equivalences.

It’s illustrating the problem with the argument, not equating DRM technology with puppy kicking.

Scary le Poo Jul 29, 2023

That is an analogy.

The analogy being, do something objectively bad, get called out for it, double down because you don’t like getting called out for it.

No one is equivocating anti-wei people to puppies.

usernotfound Jul 30, 2023

There’s some massive misunderstanding about my comment.

I called it a false equivalency because it’s comparing both the measures (“stronger safety”) and the thing is supposed to prevent (doxing and bullying) to puppy kicking.

That’s just emotional manipulation done badly. We all call it out when politicians use pedophiles to warrant Internet surveillance, and now apply it ourselves? I don’t know about you, but when I see bad reasoning, I’ll call it out. Even if it’s done by “my side”.

Scary le Poo Jul 30, 2023

No, it was not a comparison, it was an ANALOGY.

“A relationship of resemblance or equivalence between two situations, people, or objects, especially when used as a basis for explanation or extrapolation.”

The important word here is resemblance. This is an analogy showing a resemblance, not a comparison.

usernotfound Jul 30, 2023

Ok.

whatsarefoogee Jul 29, 2023

This is quite a bit worse than kicking a puppy. Of course, it’s horrible when puppies get kicked but ultimately they will be on. This, on the other hand would be a major set back to humanity, potentially permanent as our rights and privacy are erroded day by day.

Haui Jul 29, 2023

Quick correction: website scraping and ad blocking is not unlawful. It both is a means to make the web more accessible and the latter also reduces CO2 emission through reducing electricity usage from irrelevant ads. The same case could be made for web scraping as a user can make their own feed of news without having to sift through hundreds of pages. This as well can be done in a way that does not disrupt the pages‘ normal function.

That is where the two larger issues come in:

people can argue that you need to pay for viewing a page/getting information through apps And
branding powerusers as criminals („unlawful“) is unfair and false

The „pay for information“ is largely a phylosophical problem. It is no problem to pay for someones book or online course but the blanket statement that one has to pay for it is false. As an open source developer I give my work freely to others and in turn receive theirs freely as well (if they use the appropriate license of course).

We really have two sides forming. The „open internet“ crowd that works together for free or maybe accepts donations and the proprietary crowd which is having a huge influence right now.

Google putting in web DRM will cement that situation and make it possible that you can only use vanilla stuff on your browser and ultimately even shutting down any access to open source things completely by making it impossible to run on ubuntu since google will only accept windows clients (this is a possible outcome, not a guaranteed one).

All in all, we are unable to perfectly anticipate the outcome of this but if we see great harming potential, it is fair to weigh it agains the potential benefits (which is the lofty goal of weeding out bots and scammers). I think the cost benefit relation is heavily tilted here.

TL;DR: Tinkering with your browser is not illegal and should be allowed to continue. The cost of (potentially) weeding out bots and scammers is not worth potentially ruining the open source community.

Phoebe Jul 29, 2023

I work with cultural heritage and have the strong believe, that information should be open and easy accessible. Citizen have a right to access to knowledge and to educate themselves unter their circumstanses. But of course the Infrastructur cost money and this should always be a discurse between all parties. And not been dictated by major companies.

It is a really hard fight for museums, archives and libaries lately. What do you do when your electricity bill jumps up to 5 million during the war in the ukrain?

We need to unite and search for ways to keep the Internet accessible.

Haui Jul 29, 2023

I can relate. People like you are the structural pillars of our society.

I‘m not familiar to the laws concerning cultural heritage but some of the museums should be partially tax funded, no?

Phoebe Jul 29, 2023

Thanks 😊

Mostly you are right, of course it depence on the country. a lot of institutes are tax funded, but the cost can’t be covered just with that. Rent, wages, special rooms for the heritage… the new competitor is everything digital: a homepage, a database, social media. Museums need all of that to stay relevant. but the budget stays the same.

(And of course we depent on open data, to reduce thr dependence on big tech companies)

The war has shown how fragile this is. Cost of electricity had boomt, but there is no room to reduce it. Paintings, glas, it all needs their own temperature. But explain that to someone who is just Management. We scientist/ academics have a weak basis for negotiation, when the administration wants to save money. In my country cultural heritage is clearly not a priority, that leads to institutes having no money and losing relevance. Which is dangerous for the variety of knowledge.

Thanks for giving me the space to shortly explain this. I think we all need to work together to make the web, the heritage accessible! 😤

Haui Jul 29, 2023

Sure. You‘re welcome.

It’s heartbreaking how humanity treats its heritage especially given the extreme advancements of the last 100 yrs.

If you feel like your country does not do enough, consider writing letters to your local politicians and explain the situation. Often, people overestimate the amount effort it takes to make a difference with humans.

Good luck.

oblique_strategies Jul 30, 2023

Plus adblocking should be basic security posture these days. Does no one remember pop up ads delivering spy/malware? Still happening today, why should I allow a site to display ads that are intended to cause harm to my person and property. Does the ad service or site using it have no responsibility to safeguard their users against these threats when removing their ability to defend themselves?

Haui Jul 30, 2023

Yes, I remember the malicious popups from the past. In fact, some installers put non hazardous but still unwanted software of your pc while concealing it as just another page of things to accept (like avira for example). It’s all just harvesting that sacred attention and precious data. This is why it needs to stop. We don’t need to accept this. We can actually work together (open source) to advance and improve instead of letting someone use us for their gain while holding a carrot on a stick in our face.

TehPers Jul 31, 2023

Doesn’t Google scrape websites? Isn’t that the entire purpose of google.com? If that were illegal, then Google would be the biggest offender. The author should probably look where he’s pointing his gun before firing it.

Haui Jul 31, 2023

It sounds like the author is getting their points mixed up. It is not unlawful to scrape websites but google kind of makes it look that way which is inherently bad. There’s no two ways about this. Google needs to step back from this.

samokosik Jul 29, 2023

Google can fuck off with its WEI. That’s all I can say.

Nobody asked for drm for web.

wolf Jul 29, 2023

“WEI can potentially be used to impose restrictions on unlawful activities on the internet, such as downloading YouTube videos and other content, ad blocking, web scraping, etc.”

WTF. Most of these activities are actual lawful in the country I life in. (Especially with adblockers, the content mafia tried to outlaw it and failed in court, several times.)

interolivary Jul 29, 2023

Not a surprise that Google would like to make “downloading content” impossible

Paradox Jul 29, 2023

All of them are lawful

arvere Jul 30, 2023

not to mention that every single thing your browser is displaying has actually been downloaded. it’s conceptually impossible not to be the case…

Badland9085 Jul 29, 2023

They’re literally burning bridges after crossing them huh. Web scraping is illegal? Their fucking search engine was powered by a web scraper.

WEI is plain anti-competition to me now. Most, if not all, of their stated reasons are now just facade to me.

Fuck Google. I know this isn’t constructive or helpful, but fuck em.

meseek #2982 Jul 29, 2023

The standard “but it’s different when we do it” logic. It’s a powerful tool.

YonatanAvhar Jul 29, 2023

The reality distortion fields are strong around those Google statements

meseek #2982 Jul 29, 2023

I can’t even see Google from here (reality)

Laxaria Jul 29, 2023

Google gained control of the web by populating the world with Chrome/Chromium and wants to strong arm the web as a whole through it. Climbing the ladder and pulling it up from underneath them, with their fisted approach to Manifest V3 the beginning salvo.

For Google it’s just another day in the office.

GenderNeutralBro Jul 29, 2023

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Google is the new Microsoft.

floofloof Jul 29, 2023

Upvoted to keep attention on this thing, but that really was a vacuous article with almost no real information in it.

ruffsl Jul 29, 2023

Yeah, I found the discussions on HN and the debates in the Google group mailing list (“Intent to Prototype: Web environment integrity API”) much more interesting, but didn’t hot link the latter in the OP post to limit brigading. Although that mail list archive is made publicly accessable.

Sebeck0401 Jul 29, 2023

Is it just me or are Twitter, Reddit, and now Google, scrambling to lock their doors to any entities trying to scrape the web for new AI datasets?

All these hugely unpopular decisions, taken on short notice, that may be fatal to their platforms, seem to be more like knee jerk reactions to protect their treasure hoards of possible AI input data.

Opinions?

ruffsl Jul 29, 2023

scrambling to lock their doors

From a consumer perspective, it seems like all the FANG conglomerates are trying to shut the stable door after the AI horse has bolted, but perhaps from an industry perspective, their just trying to pull up the ladder behind themselves to curb competition, or stall any emerging upstarts, just like most FANGs where themselves only decades ago.

kbotc Jul 29, 2023

FANG isn’t really an accurate word anymore.

It’s MAAA: Meta, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon.

jadero Jul 29, 2023

Bonus: it sounds like a scream of terror.

Sigmatics Jul 29, 2023

Didn’t the N stand for Netflix?

This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥Jul 29, 2023

Lmao Netflix is nowhere in the near these behemoths

kameecoding Jul 30, 2023

well FAANG used to be mostly a shorthand for the big companies you might want to work at as a software developer/engineer.

not necessary because of the size of the company, since Microsoft is obviously missing from it.

DeadlineX Jul 30, 2023

It was actually about the stocks. Microsoft wasn’t a part of it because they weren’t “new”. I’m pretty sure Microsoft is actually in the new tech-stock-group.

After it was popularized as a group of tech stocks to buy, people just used it to talk about the biggest software companies, and a lot of devs I talked to (myself included) kinda implied Microsoft when we said FAANG. And while those companies did tend to pay higher than other devs, I think it’s pretty understood that comes with expectations and stress. None of my dev friends would ever wanna work in that environment.

kameecoding Jul 30, 2023

you are right it does come from Stocks, I only ever heard it used as the place lots of new people aim to work at over at /r/cscareerquestion

DeadlineX Jul 30, 2023

No problem! That means you get to be one of todays lucky 10,000. They were definitely sought out positions. It did eventually enter common discussion as just a group of tech giants that pay higher than others. That’s why Microsoft was always implied for me.

There were tons of people who’d get a couple years in at one of the major companies and then just use that experience to work wherever they wanted and enjoy themselves. I couldn’t see myself working for one of those companies though. I think it’d be cool to work on some of the stuff they work on, but it seems like the work culture has gone down hill from when Google used to be considered an awesome place to be a dev.

kbotc Jul 29, 2023

Yes, but Netflix isn’t in the same class anymore (High growth, dominating their relevant fields, diversification). Nvidia may fit.

Paralda Jul 29, 2023

Netflix was (and imo, should still be) there because of their tech. Netflix was years ahead of other companies in terms of their backend engineering when the term was coined, and in many ways they still are.

kbotc Jul 29, 2023

They don’t employ the people who made their backend so special anymore. Not one of their original chaos engineering team work there anymore, and Brendan Gregg (Hooray for learning BCC/perf!) is over at Intel

ruffsl Jul 29, 2023

They can try and reinvent themselves all they’d like, but I can’t be bothered to keep up with their rebrandings if they can’t be bothered to commit and sell off the domain name. Something something sacrifice, something, law of Equivalent exchange. /s

oce 🐆Jul 29, 2023

You’re missing Microsoft, it’s bigger than Meta.

kameecoding Jul 30, 2023

oh, MAMAA

I’ve just killed a man.

CallumWells Jul 31, 2023

You do know that FAANG is an acronym for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google, not a type of company. Saying “…like most FANGs [sic] where themselves only decades ago” makes no sense as far as I can read it.

ruffsl Jul 31, 2023

My phone keyboard spelling aside, when the acronym was first coined, correct, but it seems to have sence devolved into more of a colloquialism for large scale tech related corporations, outliving the precise corporate restructuring that once comprised the old acronym. At least that’s what I’ve experienced in my workplaces, as well as the comments here:

programming.dev/comment/1451760

Was there a equivalent house hold colloquialism for IBM, HP, Xerox, Bell System, etc. back in the day?

Google Tries to Defend Its Web Environment Integrity as Critics Slam It as Dangerous - programming.dev

> > Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don’t give in to criminals or bullies > > Kick a puppy > Get attacked for kicking a puppy > “These attacks make me MORE likely to keep kicking puppies, as I don’t give in to intimidation from criminals and bullies that want healthy puppies for their nefarious ends.” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916444 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916444]

CallumWells Aug 1, 2023

I just prefer that people actually are precise in their language to make things as clear as possible. Saying “FAANG-like companies” is precise and correct, saying “FAANGs” is nonsensical. I would always use FAANG as that acronym, if you just want to mean “Big Tech companies” then just say that instead. It’s a lot more clear to a lot more people who don’t share your tribal-speak of your workplace. People federated here are from a lot more places and making it easier for everyone to know what you’re actually meaning should be a good thing.

ruffsl Aug 1, 2023

Language is inherently messy, localized, and ephemeral, so it could be unwise to expect that kind of conformity on the global internet. It can be jarring, for example tech folk here in the EU seem to use corporate slang a lot differently than when I was working near SFO or DFW, we’re I’d suspect the greater non-homogeneity of native speakers, as compared to the US, had a lot to do with it.

That aside, I think we merely disagree on the colloquial use of FAANG in 2023, as (from my anecdotal perspective) it seems to have semantically shifted into a categorical noun in common vernacular, rather than a once precise acronym from a decade ago, given most of the conglomerates behind the initial spelling have either re-branded, fallen in stock valuation, declined in labor desirability, or whatever else that had originally garnered acclaim and publicity. In that respect, pluralization of such a noun seems mundane, if not a little odd looking for typographical formatting.

programming.dev/comment/1448032

Perhaps this could be coined as another stage of acronymization, or “acronym drift”; the process by which an acronym’s original expansion and meaning become less relevant or obscured over time, and the acronym itself is treated and used as a regular word, independent of its original expansion. This can happen when the original meaning of the acronym is no longer relevant, but the acronym continues to be used and recognized based on its familiarity. An example that comes to mind is Google’s original acronym for the QUIC protocol, which is no longer used to mean “Quick UDP Internet Connections”, as was initially proposed.

Google Tries to Defend Its Web Environment Integrity as Critics Slam It as Dangerous - programming.dev

> > Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don’t give in to criminals or bullies > > Kick a puppy > Get attacked for kicking a puppy > “These attacks make me MORE likely to keep kicking puppies, as I don’t give in to intimidation from criminals and bullies that want healthy puppies for their nefarious ends.” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916444 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916444]

CallumWells Aug 1, 2023

It seems to me that you missed my point.

ruffsl Aug 1, 2023

Fair enough. I just wanted to point out why you may see others, or news outlets, refer to tech giants, such as Microsoft, as FANGs or FAANGs given the historical context, regardless of how one may prefer to grammatically re-phrase such nonsensical statements. E.g:

So, who are the FAANGs?

What are FAANG or MAMAA Stocks? | The Motley Fool

These stocks are five industry leaders of the tech sector: Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet (Google).

The Motley Fool

Queen HawlSera Jul 29, 2023

Eh… nothing’s happening with Twitter outside of Elon being dumb as hell, as per usual.

FluffyPotato Jul 29, 2023

I my experience the people running large companies are idiots who got their position by brown nosing the right people so it doesn’t really surprise me. Google is pretty well known too for coming up with stupid ideas they scrap in a few years

ipkpjersi Jul 30, 2023

Hopefully this is just another idea they scrap and they don’t follow through with it.

NekoRiv Jul 30, 2023

Reminds me of the CEO saying that they don’t play video games but are behind stadia.

I called it in my circle that it would be shut down in roughly 3 years.

Carion Jul 30, 2023

They want to close the AI market

words_number Jul 29, 2023

That’s a good initiative from google to put more tracktion behind firefox again. Its userbase and amount of supporters will skyrocket!

agilob Jul 29, 2023

No, it won’t.