Chrome not proceeding with Web Integrity API deemed by many to be DRM

👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de to Technology@lemmy.world – 1621 points –
Chrome not proceeding with Web Integrity API deemed by many to be DRM
9to5google.com

The Chrome team says they're not going to pursue Web Integrity but...

it is piloting a new Android WebView Media Integrity API that’s “narrowly scoped, and only targets WebViews embedded in apps.”

They say its because the team "heard your feedback." I'm sure that's true, and I can wildly speculate that all the current anti-trust attention was a factor too.

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I'd like to believe that enough of us actually stopped using chrome and switched to Firefox the day they made that announcement that swayed them... But in reality I'm sure it was just the bad press and they're going to try to find a different more sneaky way to do the same shit.

I've been using Firefox since it was Mozilla.

Amateur. I've been using Firefox since Netscape Navigator.

I was born a decade after Netscape navigator was launched. I'm legally an adult. Wow, you're old!

What shall I say? The first browser I ever used was called "Arena" and it ran on a UNIX system because Windows back then didn't even have (native) networking - you had to purchase TCP/IP for it from third parties back then.

And one of the first websites I visited was "the original one" on Tim Barners-Lee's NEXT cube in CERN.

And guess what - there was a network way before the Web. We had chat, "social media" before it was called that, and played online multiplayer games. All without any spam or advertising.

... I still mud. Kind of funny having characters that haven't logged on for 28 years.

Yep. Could be about as long for me. It was crazy back then.

you had to purchase TCP/IP for it from third parties back then.

LOL WAT?!! The precursor to the WinRAR subscription, huh...

And one of the first websites I visited was "the original one" on Tim Barners-Lee's NEXT cube in CERN.

Wow, this is kinda like witnessing the moon landing live, right? That's amazing!

And guess what - there was a network way before the Web. We had chat, "social media" before it was called that, and played online multiplayer games. All without any spam or advertising.

Interesting... Which chat server was this? And what year approximately?

Well, the TCP/IP stack we had was not at all like WinRar. You bought a box with a bunch of disks (5.25in) and some thick paperback manuals. The price was about 150$, and installation was tricky. It only worked with a certain set of network cards. But it did work together with the other network stack back then: Novell Netware, which did the majority of work in corporate networks back then.

The chat had a bit different structure back then. Messages went from client to client, and the "TALK" server only did coordination. There was a system, IIRC it was called NICKSERV or something where you globally registered your nickname.

I was not only watching things back then. I wrote a number of tools that made the rounds back then, a client for such a multiplayer online game that worked both in a text terminal and with a GUI, and a non-interactive NNTP (USENET) client that allowed access to our equivalent of the fediverse remotely. And I even wrote our companies first SMTP (email) gateway to the internet back then. Not "installed" or "configured" - wrote.

Wow, you're old!

Well, I retire next year so, yeah, I'm that too.

I strayed away over IE6, then Chrome v1.0 for a short period, but then came back to my senses.

Chrome market share actually has been declining on desktops since this spring. Could be a factor

Can you actually stop using chrome on android? Because every link I click it opens in their webview app which is chrome

Dunno if this is what you mean, but you can definitely set another browser as default. Any context menus will change too: "Open with Firefox", or w/e you're using.

No, I'm not talking about default browser but the WebView app. For example I'm using Voyager for Lemmy, and if I click on this post's link it will open the website in the WebView, then I can click to Open with firefox.

But WebView itself is still chrome as you can see

You must be on stock android. I think you can still swap out the webview component but I forgot how

You can customize Voyager to open links in default browser not in-app: Settings -> General -> Open Links in

Weird, I can't see this option

It's only available if you are using the native app. The PWA doesn't have that option due to web limitations unfortunately.

Ohhhh I see. Yeah, I think Sync uses Chrome too. Sync has an option to always open links in external web browser, so that's how I got around that.

It's even crazier than that. On some versions of Android there is no webview, only chrome! I think that was around Android 8 or so they dropped webview then re-added webview in the next version

Yeah there is a setting and now when I click links it opens in Firefox. But if you use the Google search widget it still opens in chrome, which is to be expected I guess.

That's not only a problem for google search, most apps uses webview to handle web links. They can do like Voyager and have a option to open the default browser instead, but most of them don't bother with that.

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Actually right now Congress is writing new laws for the Internet, and the EU is looking pretty hard as well, so they might be backing off just so they can get the new laws being written minimized.

To be fair I still think Google services, Microsoft, etc and all that jazz is great, I'm no corporate shill or some free software nutter, but the issue however is the consistent anticompetitive strategies and vendor lock-in used to compensate for a lack of innovation.

Imagine if you could, for about a month, up to a year long period, where you just use a de-googled phone, a live USB and a portable hard drive, you'll actually have a different perspective and appreciation for what works with computers, printers, etc and our use of technology as a whole

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