Google’s Plan To DRM The Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
Google needs to be broken up. It needs to separate in at least 5 different companies:
- Admob/Adsense
- Ads/Adwords
- Search
- Android
- Chrome
Okay then… How do 3/4/5 make money? Ist currently everything but 1/2 loosing money in support of propping up the ads?
Charge a fee, advertising is a scourge and needs to be removed from all societies with extreme prejudice.
Isn’t that the same situation with extra steps?
Advertising is based on mass-psychology and manipulation, it’s fundamentally unethical and its rooted in nazi propaganda.
Advertising isn’t rooted in Nazi propaganda lmao, it was here before and it will be here long after. Calling everything Nazi connected diminishes stuff that really is Nazi connected, like Fanta.
Bernays published Public Relations and Engineering of Consent in the 50’s, thats arguably when it became mainstream.
Indeed, advertisement makes us think that lies and exaggeration are normal. It is one of the causes of todays “alternative reality” people. Advertisement should be shunned and pushed back. Honesty and true information should replace it.
Why is it rooted in Nazi propaganda?
That’s not very socially inclusive
AdSense and AdWords are essentially the same thing. AdWords is how they monetize AdSense.
They dropped the “don’t be evil” a while ago.
“The slogan was also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent”
- Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail
Subtext: now that we have the market share, it’s our turn to exploit the users.
It’s sick.
Luckily, other browser manufacturers (Mozilla, Vivaldi, Brave, and even the WWWC) have already spoken out against this proposal. Google loves marketing it as ‘optional’, which it obviously won’t be once implemented. A system like this would be very dangerous for smaller browsers, as it’s incredibly vague who decides what authorities would be allowed to verify browsers.
Additionally, this is presented as a way to remove captchas from the web by proving a request is coming from genuine hardware. However, this proves absolutely nothing about a request being genuine or non-spam. The only thing this proves is that it was created by a ‘genuine device’, so all a malicious user would have to do is to (automatically) send the request via a verified device and they’d pass the check.
Maybe it’s just Google search (ironic), but I couldn’t find anything about the W3C speaking against the proposal. If W3C is against it then I think it’s even more likely the entire thing would be shot down.
Could’ve sworn I saw it in an article or post on here somewhere… but of course now that I actually need the post I can’t find it. Doesn’t really matter though, Chrome can unfortunately push standards through even if others don’t approve, just due to their sheer size alone.
The problem is that Google is able to more or less dictate how the web works at that time. Apart from Firefox and Safari, which both only have a minor market share, pretty much everything is Chrome based.
If Google wants to push some silly idea just to ensure that their silly ads are not blocked, then they’ll do it. I fear that noone really can stop this stupid idea.
We need to hope some governing body steps in and slaps Google with antitrust, because this is a pretty clear abuse of monopoly
I’m sure our octogenarian leaders who are oh so internet savvy will fully understand the nuances associated with browser market share will craft laws to resolve this issue.
/s unfortunately.
Truth be told… Google applies $$$ to our aged elected officials who don’t understand what a browser is much less the nuances behind chrome and chromium based browsers. And will vote by what their campaign donators say… :(
Hot take: the narrative that politicians do not understand technology due to their age is giving them too much credit. They have entire offices full of staffers whose entire job is to explain these things to them in ways they understand, as I am sure they have for some of the more important things. They just don’t care because their purpose is to serve corporations, not the public.
They just don’t care because their purpose is to serve corporations, not the public.
Sadly… This is probably pretty accurate for most of our modern politicians. I’m sure there’s the odd official who cares… But they are a vast minority.
The EU may be our only reasonable hope.
Chromium based forks (e.g. Brave) can disable or remove the features they don’t want. For example, if Google adds a feature that always shows their ads, Brave can disable that feaure or remove it. Being Chromium-based is not as bad as people usually seem to think.
In this proposed DRM-like feature it is slightly different case because Chrome browser is so widely used.
Governmental regulators need to be involved. But I don’t have my hopes up.
the problem is that this is a malignant feature that can only be used for evil
On the other hand, I don’t really have a fundamental problem with it. I don’t use Chrome and am not going to use this. My approach to websites using it will be the same as programs not running on my operating system: I’ll simply ignore them, same as I already ignore websites today that don’t serve me because of GDPR.
I also do see a problem in adblocking. It’s just that it’s the lesser of two evils for me and as such, I opt into it. Google, being on the other side of the situation, for good reasons comes to a different assessment.
All in all I don’t think this is a good development, but OTOH, if someone doesn’t want me to visit their site, that’s ok.
What about when your banking site or the site your landlord wants you to pay with doesn’t work because of this shit?
It’s gonna be a pain in the ass to switch browsers every time you run into one of these sites, and it’ll eventually make its way into most services just because they feel like it.
There are already way too many Android apps that refuse to work on rooted phones just because they feel like not working on rooted phones after they made safety net. It will be pervasive and at some point you’ll have no option but to comply.
Google became what it is because they had the best search results. Today, other like qwant and sometimes even bing are better. If it was not for Android, the reasons for remaining stuck with Google would have become sparse already. And I daresay Apple is now the less evil option.
I don’t know about that. Google is evil for sure, but I haven’t read anything about their factory workers leaping from buildings to escape life.
Who knows at this point? With this level of advanced capitalism, it’s getting kind of difficult to identify truly ethical corporations.
Google is evil for sure, but I haven’t read anything about their factory workers leaping from buildings to escape life.
Try again. This is from 1 month ago.
Google is still one of the better ones for sure… Apple has gone majorly down the route of proprietary tech, not contributing upstream to OSS they use, not updating OSS they used to regularly ship, and vendor lockin games.
i mean this is like working on the nuclear bomb except you’re eager to drop it on yourselves in the name of corporate profits and ad revenue. virulently disgusting
Everyone, please reach out to your local anti-trust government organization to ensure they are aware of this issue. They cannot do anything about something that they are unaware of. It’s easy to forget that the internet is a bubble and not everyone is clued into it’s issues.
Fine, I’ll make my own web, with blackjack, and hookers!
Fuck Google, I guess we’re going back to the days of BBS’.
Sure, bring that shit to Europe and let’s see how it goes…
Question: Would Pi-holes get around this or would websites still recognise that there’s traffic being blocked?
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Piholes don’t actually block the traffic. The ads still make it from google to your home network. Pihole just intercepts them and sends them off to nowhere before they get to any of your devices. So I believe they won’t be affected by this.
That’s not true. Pihole voids DNS requests, not the actual HTTP responses. When trying to look up an ad, it tells your devices to look at an unassigned ip address which will then not respond with anything.
I don’t know which one of you is correct so I’m upvoting all of you because I fucking love Pihole.
The rebuttal is correct.
DNS response from pihole makes it so your browser doesn’t even make the request to the server providing the AD. A blocked ad via DNS doesn’t make it to your device, and doesn’t even get downloaded from the remote server.
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Unironically: Ad blockers.
A lot of fraud happens online via ads which are hosted by Google and Facebook.
This is a power grab by Google. Nothing more.
