Don't know who needs to hear this, but the recent explainer about "Web Environment Integrity":
- will not ship in current form (I'll block it; and yes, I can do that)
- was not an "official" Google propsoal. Individuals with @google.com (and @microsoft.com, etc.) addrs do dumb stuff all the time (ask me how I know!)
- is very much worth worrying about as a direction of travel, but not without context
@fabrice I'm saying that implications you'd naturally draw of 4 webkit.org, or mozilla.org, folks doing something similar are absolutely not what you can expect here, in large part because the process is both more open (by design) and more responsive to input (by design).
Blink is used to adjudicating risks from leadership, so the usual "go fever" of other projects, rather than a public exploratory phase, aren't comprable.
@fabrice To put meat on these bones, imagine working in an org that has been on the backfoot for ~10+ years as regards web APIs. The noise you'll make from a deficit of investment is always about how terrible the leaders are for, you know, leading!
Meanwhile, the local effort is all around differentiating on some OS/stack basis to prove value in a commodity environment.
In that environment, the idea that there are unruly, unkempt engineers running around proposing things is *wild*.
@fabrice Now, switch places: imagine working on the leading engine, all caught up (to a first approximation), doing All The Good One Can Do for the the web.
Your project is to improve anti-fraud in a privacy-improving way, and you're inheriting all the goodwill of a team that has bested all, both with quality and openness.
You don't feel all the anticipatory pain of what *could* go wrong, because Google doesn't have the sort of hierarchy that would force you to ask anyone "should we?"
@fabrice "should they", WRT this proposal, spelled this way, with this justification? Obviously not. But there's no gatekeepers inside Google for proposals.
Chromium is ahead (thank the giant money spigot in the sky & competitor misreading of mobile), which means that mistakes are "cheap"; they only cost you promotion opportunity. Many people will make mistakes under this regime!
@fabrice But there's no chokepoint. GOOGL isn't MSFT. You don't have to go through That One Person Who Says OK to put something up. That's how Standford-but-makes-money works, in practice.
You can impute (disreputably) that things *don't* work like that (despite all the evidence at TC39, etc.), or you can engage it more honestly and say "Google's kind of a mess! We can, and shoud, argue down dumb shit because people doing the arguing are in a system where they win for listening"
@fabrice I want to stress that this isn't true for *most* of Google. Blink is different. And that's really the key insight here.
Blink is different.
@slightlyoff @fabrice Yeah, there seems to be nothing in that scheme that prevents the various parties involved and the sites from colluding to enable mass surveillance.
Rather I expect that to very quickly get linked up under the guise of analysis or advertising.
@slightlyoff @lispi314 @fabrice @slightlyoff @lispi314 @fabrice
so if apple did it and no one noticed, that means their implementation isn't evil and terrible, right?
> This feature is largely bad for the web and the industry generally, like all attestation (see below).
damn it.
@ocdtrekkie
> If Google wants to portray this as a rogue proposal, Google should clearly indicate that by firing everyone involved
The old 'if your hand offends thee, cut if off' argument. This is the nuclear option, and in any sensible country, would be illegal under laws protecting workers' rights. Goggle could simply make a public statement repudiating the WEI proposal, and committing to doing nothing of the sort.
@ocdtrekkie
... obviously including removing any WEI code from their software, which would send a much clearer and more meaningful signal than firing people.
@strypey @slightlyoff @fabrice Commitments mean nothing. Google committed to keeping DoubleClick data separate from Google Ads.
Legally binding contracts, maybe, but what would the terms be and to who?
But again, this is far from the first distinctly unethical work out of this team. And considering the fact it likely primarily serves to ensure ads are authentically served... I think it's far more likely that this is indeed entirely endorsed by Google.
@ocdtrekkie
> I think it's far more likely that this is indeed entirely endorsed by Google
This I agree with. But all the more reason not to demand they shoot the messengers doing their dirty work.
I don't know where you live, but AFAICT the US has no functioning social welfare system. Nor any other social safety net that isn't mostly holes. Getting fired can be Very Bad, not only for the fired, but for their family. Advocating for this is a failure of solidarity.
@strypey @slightlyoff @fabrice I disagree strongly: The people doing this work are both *not good people* and extremely hireable as senior Googlers. They are very white collar people who have an express goal to make the Internet harm the rest of us more.
That being said, I agree if their work is not rogue, firing them would be wrong. That would be scapegoating. But if they are doing bad things without Google's approval, Google should dismiss them.
@ocdtrekkie
> I share no solidarity with people who voluntarily work to make the world worse for at least five times my salary, and you shouldn't either
I don't discriminate against other workers for any reason. Nor do I encourage their employers to do it for me. The sophistry you engage in here doesn't change anything. Making common cause with employers against their employees is scabbing.
As Florence Reece asked in 1931 "which side are you on?"
@strypey @slightlyoff @fabrice I think we're veering deeply off topic, but if you expect me to support everyone who works in any field of work in the name of solidarity, hard pass from me. I can absolutely hope people who work to support Donald Trump get fired and struggle to pay rent because of it.
People trying to build the torment nexus at Google can go in the same bucket.
@ocdtrekkie
> People trying to build the torment nexus at Google can go in the same bucket
Highly paid developers at companies like Goggle have been unionising, *with* the more precarious employees (cleaners etc) so their working conditions improve.
> you expect me to support everyone who works in any field of work in the name of solidarity, hard pass from me
"Don't scab for the bosses,
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organise."
@ocdtrekkie
I've been organising to replace (and abolish) corporations as a fulltime (unpaid) career since I left high school. I'll tell you this for free. You don't beat them by playing into the hands of their divide-and-rule strategies. Anyone who is not one of them (the 0.1%) is one of us, whether they know it yet or not.
@strypey @slightlyoff @fabrice You are assuming these Googlers are not in that 0.1%. And your arguments are so deeply flawed as to be ridiculous. Opposing anyone getting fired who is or could one day be in a union is, frankly, ridiculous.
Shall we take a look at police unions, and some firings they have strongly opposed?
@ocdtrekkie
> You are assuming these Googlers are not in that 0.1%
Anyone who is employed at Goggle, rather than being an owner of Goggle is definitely not in the top 1%, let alone the 0.1%.
> Opposing anyone getting fired who is or could one day be in a union is, frankly, ridiculous
Do you know these workers whose bosses you are siding with are not already union members?
> Shall we take a look at police unions, and some firings they have strongly opposed?
Strawman.
@strypey @slightlyoff @fabrice
> Strawman
I don't think it is. But let me give you a chance to clarify: What unions and union members am I not required to unconditionally support in your worldview?
@ocdtrekkie
As anyone who knows the history of the labour movement can tell you, police associations are a special case (including those masquerading as "unions"), and there's been many a long, complicated debate on how union activists ought to think about them.
It's a strawman because none of this has anything to do with the much simpler case we're actually talking about.
@strypey I believe in AGAB. All Googlers Are Bad.
Anyways, we actually were talking about Web Environment Integrity, and you went *way* off course to push your own unrelated agenda.
Thanks for derailing, have a good night.
@ocdtrekkie
> Anyways, we actually were talking about Web Environment Integrity, and you went *way* off course to push your own unrelated agenda
No, you did that when you said;
> Google should clearly indicate that by firing everyone involved.
https://mastodon.social/@ocdtrekkie/110844524863696578
> Thanks for derailing, have a good night
Ditto.
@ocdtrekkie
> People who do bad things should be fired. Full stop
I hope you remember you said that when you get fired for doing something that powerful social networks declare to be "bad things".
> Will mute now
Typical. Coward.
Alex Russell
Fabrice Desré
LisPi
Ryan
ocdtrekkie
dango🍡
Strypey