I can’t wait to have to download a crack for my browser so a website thinks that my browser is using wei and no-adblock.
Just use Firefox. I don’t understand why people are so hell-bent on using a Chromium-based browser.
EDIT: I see now that I was grossly misinformed on the issue. Thanks for the replies.
my browser hasn’t got higher privileges than my admin user account
They’ll fix that. The endgame might very well be you can only run a trusted browser, safely checked by your OS, itself trusted, running on fully signed code from a trusted source, started on a trusted motherboard/CPU, with hardware lockdown that would only boot trusted kernel and embed private keys so deep that you’d need a full lab to recover them, only to have them remotely disabled if anything funky seems to be happening at any point in that chain.
For now, this is fiction. For now. We already started moving that way with secureboot, opaque UEFI in our systems and TPM modules. The only saving grace is that they currently all have flaws.
Vudu, Hulu, and I’m sure others already prevent Hdx+ content unless it’s through chrome or Microsoft’s whatever-it-is.
A few of us sitting and using Firefox while Google is suggesting being able to control what computer you use, what software is installed, what plugins you are allowed to have?
This is a very big threat not solved by using Firefox.
Despite turning off settings to open new tabs, every website I open browsing on mobile opens a new tab
That shouldn’t happen, I’ve just set Homepage > Opening screen to last tab and when I open firefox it defaults to the last tab that I was on before exiting the browser
I had to adjust a ton of settings to stop it from downloading in the background every file I just wanted to view or print
Iirc its just setting browser.download.open_pdf_attachments_inline to true at about:config
Fair enough, you have an opinion, that firefox is wrong in everything it does, it’s not valid, but you need to learn the defaults. Be well.
Right. I mean there’s always going to be a way. Your open source browser can run a spoof of an “official” browser, present itself as a valid user, load the page with all the ads and tracking in a sandbox in between, strip all of it out and serve you the actual content.
Or maybe people will eventually be fed up and we’ll start our own internet completely out of corporate control.
Your open source browser can run a spoof of an “official” browser
Not if the server requires the digital signature of a challenge to be produced by a key whose certificate is signed by a “trusted” third party, said third party only providing that key at runtime, if your browser can also provide the same kind of authorization from the OS, itself being only able to produce it if it can safely determine that it’s running on completely locked-down hardware AND having online-activated DRM tells him he can provide such key; the hardware itself requiring constant online connexion to ensure it’s “authorized”, and including yet another layer of keys in hardware.
There’s been progress toward this kind of things. At every step, people warning about the risks are seen as lunatics. SecureBoot preventing booting a custom kernel? No problem, microsoft will sign your keys. TPM not delivering keys to non-trusted kernels? No problem, just don’t use it (and don’t get the keys, obviously). UEFI requiring digital signature to be flashed? It’s for your safety, but we won’t give you the keys or it would defeat the purpose. Embedded CPU inside your CPU running opaque code on every operation you do? Trust me bro, there’s no problem here.
Sure, opensource (or even just open at this point) alternative will most likely remain available as a niche, but once all major services that people want requires such a chain of control, the vast majority of people will gladly flock to locked-down system. Heck, it’s already happening. Nowadays I can’t even log into my bank website without a trusted iOS or Android device. The “free, open” alternative will be rare, expensive, and only work for people that cares. Which is not too much sadly.
The web is already decentralized. Always was. It’s the people that want centralized services for convenience, and some of these services have valid reasons to be centralized. Web3 have nothing to do with any of this.
I hear web3 is a decentralised web.
That’s the cryptobros’ vision of the “decentralized web”
Maybe the thing to do here, when web sites start enforcing this, is to swamp them with support requests. Don’t write a screed or manifesto with ethical or technical reasons why this is wrong. Pretend to be a non-technically-inclined user and tell them you’ve spent hours trying to get it to work and your browser keeps throwing up errors you don’t understand. They will ignore the principles, but if they think the technology is “too hard” for their “dumb users,” that might carry more weight.
I don’t think this will work. If companies can get away of slapping us by doing “please use Google Chrome or other Chromium-based browsers” just because Google implements the most niche, probably privacy-last, feature ever, then they will get away with it this time, again.
I literally can’t log into the Amtrak Android app unless I have Chrome installed. It strictly relies on Chrome custom tabs. Other browsers that support custom tabs don’t work.
I cannot imagine any reason for this except sheer ineptitude.
Guess what Amtrak support told me when I reported this as a bug?
That’s what we thought about VBScript, and Active X and Shockwave Flash, and Silverlight, at different points in the history of the Internet.
Adobe and Microsoft have both wrecked hard (at their peak) in their attempts to close and DRM the Internet.
Looks like it’s Googles turn to find out if they have the clout to manage it.
The free internet is bad for Google.
Yeah, it’s a great line. Herbert was a genius and it’s easy to forget that, at many levels, the Dune series is a political science treatise.
Secutity is not priotity.
Never forget: https://contrachrome.com/
