The boiling frog of digital freedom

ono@lemmy.ca to Technology@beehaw.org – 52 points –
gazoche.xyz
9

Weird that this only goes back to 2011. I’ve been seeing it going back to microcodes printed by each color printer/copier in the 1980s, and it really goes all the way back to tight control of religious texts by the Egyptian and Israeli priests. Some might even argue that it’s pre-written text, as shamans had exclusive control of a lot of technologies including the creation of petroglyphs and pictographs, as well as the formation of pharmaceutical and psychedelic drugs.

And that’s only in the West and the New World; the East has a long standing tradition of limiting technological freedom as well.

As for current issues, the most insidious seems to be a combination of technological monoculture (which is different from interoperability) and abuse of dark patterns to get people to use freedom limiting “features” that are against their own best interests.

”Note: the dates of past events are only approximate. The other half of the timeline is wildly speculative and hypothetical

Watch how many people are going to treat this shit as if it’s absolutely happening.

2023: Google rolls out Web Environment Integrity checks into Chrome

It hasn't. WEI is only a proposal draft, for now.

It has allready been implemented in Chromium/Chrome (link). Websites only have to start using it.

Edit: see comment

That commit doesn't implement WEI; it adds some development tests for the hypothetical API, and actually adds a feature to prevent the API from even getting enabled for testing.

Websites can't start using it, because it isn't there.

Ahh, sorry my mistake. I remembered reading a headline somewhere about Google having already implemented it, but I didn't check. Thanks!

I smell a lot of .onions in my future

I don't know man. Onion is not convenient, and in the modern day and age, especially online, convenience is king.

Edit: I'm dumb, misread you comment as "in the future", not "in my future".