I’m happy to see this being noticed more and more. Google wants to destroy the open web, so it’s a lot at stake.
Google basically says “Trust us”. What a joke.
Yes exactly. This is what worries me the most since I also run only Linux, and I can’t imagine even being interested in computers anymore if Linux is not allowed on the web. That would be horrific.
It’s 100% critically dangerous and must be stopped.
They’ve needed to be broken up for over a decade now, but that’d require the government to actually enforce antitrust/monopoly laws
What really disturbs me is how the recent tech shenanigans have been a long time coming; seems the internet we have come to know for the last 15 years only existed thanks to the ridiculous interest rates post 2008.
I’d be interested to hear more of your theory on this:
the internet we have come to know for the last 15 years only existed thanks to the ridiculous interest rates post 2008.
“All Google associated platforms hereby block all ios devices.”
I am not a fan of apple. But this would piss a lot of people off but is well within their ability and rights to do. And unfortunately they have enough of a monopoly with the internet (Google, youtube, and all the other sites served through their dns) that they can essentially break the internet for people they block. They would get 90% of those ios users to switch to Android.
The flow of information through the internet is one of the greatest advancements of man kind and we have to trust a massive cooperation not to destroy it.
I am not a fan of apple. But this would piss a lot of people off but is well within their ability and rights to do.
That’s a goddamn lie. They absolutely DO NOT have the “right” to engage in behavior that blatantly anti-competitive!
You underestimate the willingness of iOS users to tolerate a sub-par experience in exchange for their fancy walled garden ecosystem.
Just the os alone is restrictive as hell, and they don’t care.
Could they do it? Maybe. But it would be profoundly stupid of them to try.
Your high-horse opinion of Apple users aside, you are right that OP is greatly overestimating people’s commitment to google’s services over their iPhones.
I think you underestimate how much of the internet depends on Google to operate.
Funny how services that used to work transparently, no longer do.
VPN? Works with some sites, not others. Same with email. Can just see the big G wading into that and the waters being royally roiled.
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.
Not one of those things is illegal.
Some are against a site’s TOS and some are outright fine.
Scraping itself is not illegal. It’s not until an AI generates a copyrighted IP that it becomes an issue.
It’s like if I were trying to start an art business. You come to me and ask me to draw a princess. I’ve never seen a princess before, so I go online and look up images of princesses to get an idea what to draw. I go back to the studio and draw you a picture of Snow White.
Me looking up princess images is fine. It’s only when I sell a Disney® IP without their permission that it becomes illegal. And, even then, it’s a civil matter, not criminal.
If you are not using Firefox now is a good time to start.
Just switched yesterday, was way easier than I thought it would be. I’m converted on all my devices, all my stuff has been synced from Chrome in a few clicks. Just do it people.
If you haven’t already, check out Firefox Sync.
You can sync your stuff across Firefox instances (PC, mobile, different PC profiles etc.) You can choose to sync logins, open tabs, bookmarks, add-ons etc.
Each place you use Firefox can choose to sync different stuff, so for example you can sync logins everywhere but only sync open tabs on the PC.
In case you replace the phone or your PC HDD crashes etc. all you have to do is login back to Firefox Sync and you get all that stuff back.
I’ve been using Firefox mobile for a few years now too, and the one thing I’ll point out is that the addon store is a lot more limited than on PC – unless you’re using Firefox nightly or beta, which lets you use any. But for the average user that only needs ublock or noscript, etc. it’s a perfect choice:)
It’s kind of silly. I use nightly with custom add-ons and most of the add-ons work without issue. The UI might not be the best for the phone but they’re functional. I’m not sure why the mobile add-ons are so restricted, even enabling them in nightly is bizarre. You need to go in and tap on the FF icon in the version info page or something like that…
I recently switched and all’s good so far. Correct me if I’m wrong, wei would also be able to block certain browsers, including Firefox, right? I wish just switching browsers would be enough to avoid Wei though :/
If google gets their way websites will be able to block OS’s and browsers. But if enough people switch to Firefox they won’t be able to push this change as easily. Google Chrome has about an 80% marketshare in the browser market and most of the alternatives are forks of Chromium which google controls. If this doesn’t change Google will be able to do anything they want.
Firefox in the meanwhile but long term we need to move away from the unfathomably bloated web protocol standard/browsers.
Web protocol? Which one?
I wouldn’t consider http or dns bloated, for instance. And tcp/ip isn’t web-specific enough for me to think that’s what you mean by “the web protocol”.
Are you just trying to say you don’t like websites in a way that sounds techy?
I’m referring to the totality of what is required to make a complete and secure web browser from scratch.
There is no defense of the move. It’s bad for the internet. Pure and simple!
this reads like a script of a Pitch meeting.
and is it going to be hard for people to accept this WEI?
No, it’s gonna be super easy, barely an inconvenience .
Oh, really?
yea, you see, majority of people don’t give a fuck and have no idea what it is about.
Oh wow, wow wow wow
They used to have a motto like “Do no evil”, which was kinda sus to begin with (they were a search engine in a time when many didn’t even consider the evil possibilities of the internet). But if you start out with a motto like that, it’s even more sus if you suddenly drop it, which they did.
They didn’t “drop it”. It’s still there. Scroll all the way to the bottom.
They simply removed it from higher profile places and don’t mention it until the very end. Sort of a jab at the old policy.
Usually when a company loudly proclaims that “we have this quality” they’re compensating for not in fact having it.
You get the same in people: “I’m so smart”, “I’m so beautiful”, “I’m so confident” and so on are usually said to others by people who don’t actually believe they have such (otherwise self-evident) qualities.
In that logic “Do no Evil” was a red flag.
