A peaceful protest against Web Environment Integrity

mrmanager@lemmy.today to Technology@lemmy.world – 516 points – A peaceful protest againt Web Environment Integrity by th3maid · Pull Request #187 · chromium/chromium
github.com

I thought this was kind of a fun way to show discontent with Chromiums added Web Integration - someone made a pull request to simply remove it.

Its already been approved by a lot of us, why not add your approval as well? Click the Approve button and add your name to the list of people supporting the removal.

Google will of course not care but I thought it was a fun gesture.

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For anyone scratching their heads

With the TL;DR being: Google/Alphabet wants to more easily block non-chrome browsers ability to use their services, and prevent the use of adblocking.

Which also means that many people using accessability tools will be unable to access them. And they are trying to get Firefox to implement it as well, so they don't take all the blame when shit hits the fan and they start getting multi-billion dollar monopoly fines from the EU.

It's ad blocking and entire operating systems, or computers configured in any way they don't like.

If this goes through, they can force you to install any plugins they wish, or disable any plugins they wish. Or make sure you don't run Linux and only Windows or Mac. They can force you to have your camera on. They can do anything since they make the rules.

No innovation will take place. Competing browsers or software will not be allowed or manipulated into marketed as "unsafe".

This is a takeover of the open web stack as we know it.

They also could use it to slowly push ChromeOS-only features and services. Don't forget they have their own "OS"!

worth noting you can sign the CLA and you vote is not just a protest but a legitimate vote.

Don't forget to report the proposal as malicious code!

How do I do that?

In the repository, there's a button on the right that says "Report this repository". Click on it, then select malicious code and other type of malicious code. Make sure to specify it's against the free, open web and w3c standards!

I just had to explain to my wife how much of a nerd I am that I'm laughing at a GitHub pull request

Um... I don't use Github personally (although I should.. I know..) so.. how do I do this?

Why should you? Git, yes. GitHub? Only if you want to.

Log in to your GitHub account and click on the review button off that pull request (see below). Then select approve and maybe add a comment.

Did you read the comment

Yes, and then I explained exactly how to do this. I assumed that creating a GitHub account isn't the problem for anyone posting on Lemmy.

Create an account and log in. Follow the link and click the green button. Thank you. :)

If you have an account, click the green "review changes" button, select "approve", and then click "submit review"

If you want to protest that much just use Firefox...

Chromium is by far the dominant browser engine. What they do is effectively the standard and implemented by websites and thus approved. That's why this has to be stopped there.

Google doesn't care about this protest because it has no real impact on their business. This is more of an emotional thing, this is for us. I'm not saying that people shouldn't fight. But in reality, spreading information about the upcoming change and urging people to switch to other browsers (along with replacing other services) is the only thing that could produce tangible results in the long term. Hence, I tend to agree with the user above.

We will see. It could get picked up by some media person and made into a bigger thing. After all, many developers are approving this at a rapid pace right now, several per minute.

If I was writing an article about this as a tech journalist, I would include that x number of developers have signed a PR trying to remove this shit from chromium. It has a value as a symbolic message.

Once upon a time IE6 was the dominant browser engine.

And there are still WebApps today (especially in the business internal network world) that only work with IE6 because Microsoft was just throwing their own standards out and doing whatever they wanted.

When you are the dominant player and you make standards that no one else can follow, you destroy competition. We got lucky that businesses and developers liked blink and WebKit, if businesses had been able to make more money from only supporting trident that's exactly what would have happened. "Use IE without tabs or an adblocker or you can't access Facebook, Steam, Gmail, your bank, etc"

You don't have the choice as an individual when the choice is made for you.

You have a choice as an individual today, but you might not in a few years.

Luckily "effectively the standard" is just a temporary thing. What browser was considered "standard" has changed many times in the past, and will continue to change in the future. Of course for this to happen everyone who cares must keep on pushing.

Thanks for the initiative, approved.

If Google does push this how soon could they start implementation?

Looks like it doesn't build successfully. :/

yeah I'd prefer a PR that removes the filename and actually builds so it could be merged.. the emojis might be better as a comment. although json doesn't support comments iirc so maybe just a thoughtful commit message.

It's reached 333 protesters! that's 1/3 of the way to 1000, it'd be cool if it kept on increasing :)

Yeah I don't know if someone posted it on reddit, could help I guess.