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"Web Environment Integrity" is an all-out attack on the free Internet

"Web Environment Integrity" is an all-out attack on the free Internet — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/web-environment-integrity-is-an-all-out-attack-on-the-free-internet

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/2546109

Read why "Web Environment Integrity" is terrible, and why we must vocally oppose it now. Google's latest maneuver, if we don't act to stop it, threatens our freedom to explore the Internet with browsers of our choice.

44 comments

fist_of_fartitude

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Everyone who uses Chrome (or Brave, Vivaldi, Arc, or anything else that uses Chromium as a base) - you're helping google extend their power over the open web, and those helping them do this.

It's a small thing, but Google's power over the web derives from each of the the millions of people who continue to make Chrome the standard that webdevs cater to.

SubsAndDubs

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Just switched to Firefox today!

itadakimasu

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Sidebery v5 beta (on GitHub not on the addon store yet) + Firefox on MacOS and a few CSS tweaks has my experience almost exactly matching what I loved about Edge.

Just wish I could collapse (on demand , not via auto-hide) the vertical tabs sidebar to 1 icon wide when I need more horizontal room (anyone got a trick for that?)

UmbrellAssassin

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Love Edge? What the hell is wrong with you?

itadakimasu

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GFY

UmbrellAssassin

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Whatever way you mean that, doesn't matter ss you like the browser that by default, only people who can barely use a computer are forced to use.

Anaralah_Belore223

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Also do not forget Electron, which has chromium bundled on THEM!

fist_of_fartitude

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Yeah, also maybe we could get rid of election apps.

throwing_handles

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smolyeet

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I don’t think it’s fair to place the blame on the user. It’s not their fault for using a browser they like. Blame those whodient prevent or try to breakup google owning the browser. The damage is done an most of chromium’s base won’t know shit about this or why.

Gerula

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Everyone else should do something just not the holly user. No, they are not to be bothered by the consequences of their actions.

Well my friend when everbody flocked to Chrome or one of the various clones because they like it they gave power to Google whether they like it or not. And now Google is using this power against the user in it's best interest because they like it (to be read "can").

jackfrost

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But do they like Chrome, or do they just use it out of habit, and because it's the default on Android phones and constantly marketed on Google's search engine? Perhaps they use it because it's the "good enough" solution that's dropped right in front of them?

Kerfuffle

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I don’t think it’s fair to place the blame on the user.

Consumers/users don't deserve all the blame, obviously but they deserve a significant share.

It’s not their fault for using a browser they like.

A huge amount of what's wrong with the world comes down to people saying "I'm going to go ahead and do this even if it causes harm". Same situation here.

It's someone fault if they choose to do something that causes harm. We can't help what we like, but we can help what we do.

Aoxomoxoa35

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Not true. Brave is a fork of Chromium and will not be implementing WEI.

fist_of_fartitude

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You’re looking too narrowly. By getting devs to cater to whatever gets rolled out in Blink and v8, google extends the power they have over the whole ecosystem by making any browser that doesn’t follow them look “broken” (as opposed to, not slavishly following everything google does).

It also increases the difficulty of making a competing browser engine by adding tons of complexity (for questionable value), only further entrenching google’s dominance. But at least you get some stupid new CSS3 behaviors (that people will bitch about not working in Firefox or Safari) so I guess it’s worth it.

elscallr

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People who didn't live through the first browser migration (away from ie6) don't understand just how insidious browser lock in is.

Kangie

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Mosaic and Netscape would like a word.

elscallr

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In those days the internet was a curiosity, mostly untapped potential. It became a bit different in 2000 +/- 5 years, and started being a livelihood for most of the planet.

salient_one

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More and more people in the industry saying that Google is trying to implement it under false pretenses of making the web safer for the end user. But I guess for most it was obvious?

whatisallthis

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Almost all attempts at taking freedom away are done under the guise of increased safety.

yoz

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STOP USING GOOGLE

1984

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Nerds who are aware of this ignoring Google doesn't make a difference.

Make noise about them instead. Bring up articles about who they actually are and what they are trying to do.

But sure, also stop using them if you are still using that shit. I don't, there are tons of alternatives.

inspxtr

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as much as I would really like that, that’s a catch-all statement that is not realistic. Unfortunately google has its claws in enterprises, universities and organizations all over the world, across so many domains.

I don’t believe “stop using” is good enough, as it seems only a very small minority realistically could.

This needs to be paired with proper legislation, like others have said, from EU as an example.

If you have friends/family with Google employees, please raise this issue up with them. This also needs to come internally as well, in addition to top-down processes from regulation.

yoz

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I agree and I also agree with the YouTuber named Louis Rossman. He said that majority people- regular 9-5s/ normies dont care about this. They will only care if it starts to affect them personally until then goodluck asking them to stop using google products.

TLDR: We are royally fucked.

1984

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I think there will be two webs if this goes through.

One corporate web filled with surveillance, ads, forced use of approved operating systems and software, no ad blockers etc. This is the one all people who don't care will use.

Then you will have another web where servers do not implement this shit. You are free to use any operating system, plugins, etc. The servers will be run by individuals. It's the corporate free web that many of us actually want. It will have stuff like Lemmy and Mastadon, and probably some kind of a web search since the main search engines will all not be here I assume. New software technologies will evolve here.

As long as they don't put this shit on router and network level, it's possible to escape it by not using the ordinary web. But ofc we will have to use it to some degree at work, probably.

TwoGems

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Ribbit

cloudy1999

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Every day this week I've thought, 'Thank goodness for the EU.' They just keep stepping up against the tech companies.

umbrella

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What can we realistically do, shouldn't we be making more noise on the wider internet about this? I already use Firefox, and am barely using any service from Google, doesn't seem enough.

salient_one

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I can only hope that major players will somehow shame Google out of this obvious enshittification effort. That's probably naïve.

CrabAndBroom

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I think realistically, even if we did raise enough of an uproar, and the major players did actually pay attention enough to get Google to back down, they'd just wait 6 months and implement it anyway with a different name, or keep grinding away until people are too tired and distracted to fight it anymore. That seems to be the general playbook for stuff like this.

So I assume it will be implemented, and those who don't care will just put up with it, and those who do care about it will either figure out how to break it or just learn to live without certain things online I guess.

salient_one

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"Listen, and understand. That Google is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until the open web is dead."

001100010010

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I feel like the future of technology is just a constant war between hackers and pirates vs big tech, no one will really ever win, just a constant struggle (unless new laws are passed). Just like how games and video streaming have DRMs, but people still are able to circumvent them given enough time.

ZephyrXero

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Sounds like the Trusted Computing shit that was pushed onto processors, and can make running Linux more difficult.

Chrome has really become the new IE

salient_one

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Yep, some Microsoft employees think so too. Curiously, it appears that the article was deleted by the author. I wonder if they self-censored themselves or asked to remove it, perhaps by their employer.

TheBat

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Just when new-new IE became Chrome

Blurrg

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Replace chrome with Firefox on your parent’s computer!

vin

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Google about to do to www what they did to xmpp

moog

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goodbye adblock goodbye anything not chromium based goodbye fun

LedgeDrop

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Oh, it's worse then that: you want to scrape some content, cut and paste content, save an image, save a stream of music/video - "oh... sorry, you can't do that Dave cause the command line tool/3rd party website/gui isn't trusted, but if you subscribe to our ultra premium package you can have some of that functionality unlocked (but just for our site) or you can watch some ads. "

shinobizilla

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Whats not stopping some governments from embracing this? A new way to validate and monitor what you can and cannot do on the web is a nice way to assume control. They might consider this to be a good thing which worries me.