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.
K, I'm still not using Google search engine anymore. And once I find a replacement for any other Google services and devices I have, it's out with those as well.
Both leaving reddit and leaving google s.e. were two things that I thought would be harder than they were.
Just need to install Linux as your primary OS and your transition to software freedom will be complete.
Doing so on the desktop is easy enough. Getting rid of Android appears to be a much harder challenge, though.
Android is opensource. You can get phones that support ROMs like LineageOS (would recommend a FairPhone) or /e/ (godawful name, good ROM) for example - you can buy the Murena phone for this.
Linux phones are about 5 years away from mainstream usability, IMO.
I'm really looking forward to Linux phones. Have been for years. It's sad that Mozilla and Canonicals ventures didn't pan out because both had really fun ideas. Hell I say they had the right ideas, it just wasn't the right time.
Until banking apps except the use of custom ROMs it will be a major stumbling block to switching to them.
I've never had an issue using banking apps from Lineage. I use 3 different pretty mainstream ones
I have 3 banking apps installed right now through Aurora Store (FLOSS access to Google Store). They work fine. The only bank that didn't like my degoogled phone, I dropped.
Monesse, Monzo and Revolut all refused to work for me. They're mobile-only banks so maybe that's the reason.
Revolut has worked for me no problem 🤔 What problems did you face?
I second the recommendation for Fairphone w/ CalyxOS. Feels just like having a Google Pixel running Android. Just way way more private.
Is this gonna turn into a new meme?
Maybe 😄
I’ve tried running Replicant and degoogled Lineage OS on an old Samsung phone many years ago. The experience was a bit rough, but tolerable as long as you’re a tech enthusiast and willing to make some sacrifices. Back then it wasn’t quite acceptable to me, because my bank app didn’t work. Then they announced that they were going to phase out the old code paper, so authentication through a mobile app was seen as the only acceptable method going forward.
I have tried /e/ os, I have found it to be meh
Fingers crossed that linux gets better support and development on phones
Lemmy has a hate boner for Apple but iOS is dope
Apple is not much different than Google
Heaps better when it comes to data collection and privacy, if you’re concerned about that.
their privacy policy is not much different.
You’re arguing in favor of an advertising company?
You appear to be doing something similar.
I can reccommend graphene os however u need a pixel for that
I use it for work but at home with gaming and stuff it's just not sustainable
Proton keeps getting better and better. I long for the day when I can ditch windows completely and it might not be too far away.
If by "not too far away" you mean "5+ years ago," then sure. That's how long I've been gaming Linux-only, anyway.
Is it possible to mod Bethesda games on Linux?
Yes, I've done it myself following some tutorials online for Skyrim SE. It's not as simple as on Windows but it's definitely possible.
Cool, I'll have to look into that. That's mainly what's keeping me from going entirely Linux. I run Mint on my laptop.
Yeah you just use Mod Organizer 2 same as on Windows.
How’s Factorio on Linux?
If I can play that I’ll move.
it's native since inception, i believe
prolly even runs better than on windows, although it doesn't really matter since it's so freaking optimized
It works perfectly fine for me.
What games do you play that aren't compatible? I don't play many of the really mainstream games. I think the last game I played that wasn't compatible at the time was genshin impact.
Leaving google isn't hard.
Leaving YouTube specifically, however... Well, it's been getting easier as content seems to be less and less frequent or quality.
I use piped/newpipe etc. and simply support creators i watch via patreon/direct donations/merch. Less money for shitty ad company more money for creatives.
Maps is the last one to replace. There are so many ads now that I'll tolerate a lower quality alternative.
There's are some OpenStreetMap-based apps that are worth checking out. Some of them are made for specific purposes, while other are for general navigation. I've tried some of them through the time with various success, though I've still haven't found a favorite to stick with for good. But I believe making the switch is definitely possible and probably worth it!
You can install all the mentioned apps through F-Droid:
Additionally, use Transportr for public transport navigation almost anywhere in the world, and GMaps WV, a restricted WebView wrapper for accessing the web version of Google Maps. Intended for use when OpenStreetMap isn't enough.
I use OSMAND
I can definitely recommend maps.me it's a great app with default offline maps. It was a great tool when traveling abroad without internet
https://grayjay.app/
I've been using it. It's actually pretty great.
Nebula is a good alternative
I still worry that leaving Reddit is going to make it tilt to the right. I spent a decade posting there in the hopes that it would nudge people towards sanity.
I think it probably already is somewhat, but there comes a point where trying to change the system from within becomes futile and complicit.
I'd rather be out here making a better place.
The right use it and all other social media sites for coordinated disinformation. No matter how much you try to combat it you're going up against people/ideas with deep pockets and a lot of resources meaning your voice is just a drop in the bucket.
Sure, but there are a lot more of us, and we make more sense.
It's important to present people with the contrasting view when they're presented with disinformation. It's natural to believe the first thing you read if it's just a narrative with no dissent.
leaving reddit is easy leaving google is pretty damn difficult
The hard part is the cost difference (I haven't looked terribly deeply yet) Family Proton (3TB) is 395 AUD (when you sign up for 2 years)
2 TB, 125 AUD per year for google drive, and it's per year.
Pro-rata that's literally twice as expensive, and you have to sign up for 2 years to get that rate, which makes moving my stuff a hard pill to swallow :(
Is there a plug and play service that's as good as proton without the hefty premium?
(The single plans are even more steep, 24 months, 158 AUD per year for only 500 GB...)
This is something I wrote in another thread earlier but it's relevant here too
I replaced gmail with protonmail and everything else with nextcloud. Couldn't go back.
Hosting your own nextcloud I’m guessing?
If so how did you install it?
Their docker stack is pretty simple to setup
Nope, I don't have a server and I also want to secure my files in a different location so I paid for hetzner.
After a lot of privacy switching I finally did try NextCloud, but I couldn't get port forwarding to work on my Internet and gave up... For now
You are probably behind a nat. I contacted my isp and they disabled it, since it works perfectly!
What do you mean nat? For me there is an app with an option (apparently no other way) and it didn't worj
Compare what your router reports as ip and compare what your public ip is. If its not the same then that means you are behind a nat(?)(or something else) and you can't port forward now.
Question: can email from gmail be imported into proton mail?
Yes, they even have a walk through on how to do it.
https://proton.me/support/switch-from-gmail-to-proton
Based
Honestly. Off the back of this debacle I switched to Firefox and duckduckgo. Previously I used to use the shit out of incognito because I hated that when I searched for something once that I then get that thing popping up everywhere else in ads etc. Since the switch I no longer get the feeling of being stalked.
NoScript helps a lot, too. I suppose other extensions also. It’s horrifying how many sites embed Google and Facebook tracking, including ones that really shouldn’t like medical sites and banks.
DuckDuckGo has an extension that blocks trackers.
My concern is saving my email and photos before my account is randomly banned one day with no customer service and no recourse. God only knows what data they already harvested from when I used to back up my photos with their service.
Just grab a copy using Google Takeout, then after that use Syncrify, FolderSync, Resilio Sync or something else to automatically copy your phone media to your computer.
Definitely the first step is to get more SSDs. I was traveling a lot and barely used a desktop or even a laptop for 6-7 years. I’ll check out those sync systems, thanks.
On the topic of this, what is the best alternative out there? A few years ago I've tried a couple options, out of curiosity, but the search quality was super poor for anything that's not in English, and the accuracy of found content wasn't always there
I reckon Kagi is the best search engine out there. It's paid though. Second I'd have Qwant followed by DDG.
Best? Kagi. Best free? Probably bing or searx
https://ecosia.org as a search engine :) Uses bing in the background (and newly also google), but your data isn't sold (AFAIK).
Or https://duckduckgo.com
If you want opensource there's YaCy
I'm on Kagi but I did the one time payment and am unsure about whether I'll extend. Results are good but 10 dollars a month isn't insignificant (cheap plan is orders of magnitude less than what I need in searches)
I tried kagi and wasn't impressed. For all but one or two queries the results were exactly the same as ddg. Not to mention they had that stupid metric stating 78%+ unique kagi results for every search, even though that was blatantly untrue. They seem pretty dishonest as a company.
I used Ecosia for a long time (almost 5 years) but the search results are pretty bad. Often I had to use another search engine to actually find what I was looking for. DuckDuckGo is pretty good, Brave Search is OK as well but SearXNG is my personal favorite.
They're just starting it smaller scale. Within a year it'll be pushed out to everyone broadly.
This is literally going to be what they did for FLoC. Basically release it as topics.
Google absolutely cannot stop tracking everyone at this point. I'm pretty sure they've put the entire house on the bet to track people more and do everything to ensure that Google Chrome tracks every aspect of your web browsing experience.
So while WEI is dead, I think Google's boat is so far out to sea now that it's either try this again a bit more gently or watch the ship sink. Everyone said FLoC was dead and they absolutely put it into the web browser with Topics. Nothing convinces me this is any different, they are absolutely going to, and I dare say have an existential need to, put this shit in everyone's browser.
They get the permissions for the little thing that is worded vaguely enough to them funnel people into the larger thing
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.
LOL WAT?!! The precursor to the WinRAR subscription, huh...
Wow, this is kinda like witnessing the moon landing live, right? That's amazing!
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.
Well, I retire next year so, yeah, I'm that too.
Bah.. NCSA Mosaic FTW.
I strayed away over IE6, then Chrome v1.0 for a short period, but then came back to my senses.
From now on, the only browser I’m installing is Firefox.
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
I've been using Firefox for a couple months now, no issues.
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.
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
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.
Not proceeding for now.
Yes, something tells me that they will just switch to attempting to introduce this piecemeal so that fewer people will notice what's going on.
Bet they'll just rename it later, like what they did with FLoC to Ad Topics.
What's funny is how these companies refer to ads as if it's something we should be excited about.
"Good news! We're implementing a new ad delivery feature for your enjoyment! You can now choose what ads to watch, yay!"
Some people actually like personalized ads!
I have no idea why, it feels counter productive to want them to influence you to buy shit you don't need.
I like my ads to be as unrelated to me as possible, because I wouldn't spend money on those things anyways.
I have to admit that it can be funny with personalized ads when you google something extremely expensive and get ads for it for months after. Many years ago I searched for a high speed camera (like the one the Slow Mo Guys use) and while I very much want one, I could never afford to spend 0,5 to 1,5 million Euro (or whatever the price was) on one camera. So it was amusing to see all the ads urging me (a then teenager) to buy one.
I looked up the backgammon start position, since then all Google wants to sell me is backgammon boards.
The most interesting and absurd ad I ever got on youtube was for a device for inspecting the coils on a huge grid transformer.
this has me thinking, i might actually be interested in looking at ads if they had only completely random things, like literally anything that exists. At least i wouldnt be annoyed with them so much.
In my experience, ad personalization is still so bad it has no impact, like in your last example. But at least now I'm not seeing random shit. I don't really bother to try and counter targeted ads, and the vast majority of the ads I get are for products I actually already bought or never intended to buy but was researching for other purposes. Yes, Google knows I spent a lot of time researching drills, but guess what, Home Depot isn't telling them I bought a drill, so I'll get drill ads for a month. And yeah, I looked at a bunch of luxury sail yachts, private jets, and cars, but it's not because I suddenly make more money. It's because I'm interested in design and engineering. But Google just stupidly assumes I became a billionaire overnight and gives me 100' yacht ads.
I'd honestly be more worried about a random ad getting lucky and pre-emptively catching my interest. Targeted ads are so reactive it's not a problem.
'Heard your feedback' is becoming the death flag of future fuckery these last few years
more like they realised that the Irish data protection officer looked like they were gonna side with privacy advocates over anti-adblock, which is a precursor (and main usecase of) this API
I had to look this one up.
https://www.digitalguardian.com/blog/irish-data-protection-puts-google-notice-data-privacy-again
edit: that's from 2020 about google, not chrome
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
That usually means they will have something worse at a later time.
The most likely option is that they will rebrand and we will have to push back against a "completely new, completely different functionality" in a few months.
They have to figure out how to apply DRM to YouTube first.
I mean, Widevine is present in all browsers and actively used by Netflix for example. YouTube also uses this when you're watching movies on YouTube Movies.
Not running DRM on the majority of YouTube content is also likely due to the added cost of running such encryption (the encryption is usually on a per-customer level, not one key fits all) and the added bandwidth and computer cycles required. Not to mention that this might be a legal struggle with the content creators.
Yeah, it makes me worried about what they have planned to replace it.
They had some of those changes already checked into their code base. It'll be interesting to see how much of that code comes back out.
My money is on zero. They'll comment it out and then turn it back on when no one is looking.
Comment out? Nah, they'll just put it behind a feature flag so it keeps passing the tests.
The Advert People are easily startled, but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers.
...yet.
Yeah gotta wait for the heat on this antitrust probe to die down before doing the dirty.
This is your wake up to stop using Chrome and Chromium based browsers (e.g. Brave, Vivaldi, etc). Switch to Firefox if you haven't already.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
Tbf, I have tried but on Android the performance is dogshit. There is a few seconds difference between Firefox loading pages and Chrome loading unfortunately.
If there was a third option I'd gladly take it, but for now Firefox just doesn't have the functionality and I'm willing to put up with the current state of Google shit. If it gets much worse I may just have to suck it up though.
I use Fennec (fork of Firefox)
the real problem will begin when big websites start blocking unverified browsers. it means the end of spam and ad blockers, but it also means the end of privacy.
My biggest problem is the security and sandboxing around Firefox. I use both, but I feel my passwords are safer in Chrome tbh
I use Firefox on Mobile with the bitwarden addon. Works well for me. Plus you export all your saved Google passwords into bitwarden. I need to make the switch on my PC now.
But the add-on isn't sandboxed like in chrome. Like i remember, depending on if you use an external MAC like apparmor or not, where if you're runnimg in Linux and you're using Firefox, websites could steal your ssh keys from ~/.ssh/
Malicious addons or websites could easily do the same thing, and steal your bitwarden credentials. Unless you have the premium version, you can't put otp on it.
Disgusting piece of craps! All should continue to open eyes, against google. They wont stop!
Spread the word to install firefox based browser, use different frontends to block youtube ads in browser, Invidious and use piped youtube apps on android to block youtbe ads: Newpipe
This should never be left up to Chrome. We need antitrust laws.
We'll see how this shakes out in a year.
Eternal vigilance is the price for a free web.
Do we get freedom with it or do we have to double eternal vigilance to get both? 🤔
I believe the scale is
n * log2(n).Yes.
the web has been getting so shitty lately i've actually gotten into drawing and reading and vinyl and film, which i highly recommend as a backup plan; just the idea of this feels like the atomic bomb for the internet
The mainstream web... yes.
The back of the house has never been fucking better. Mastodon changed the game. Why hang out at some asshole's website, hating the website, lacking features and full of advertisements to suck you dry, when you can just come down to the flea market of federated social media and shoot the shit with someone real?
"Flea market of federated social media" is an awesome description!
Moving it to WebView just makes it a Trojan horse for the rest of the web.
Isn't Webview just a proprietary Android thingy? I still don't like it, but that sounds pretty isolated to me.
I think Android WebView is open source as part of AOSP, but yes, it is Android only.
The "don't be evil" motto was replaced with "don't be evil, but greedy and posessive is okay"
And then later edited to
Soon after it changes to it's final form:
I just figured they skipped straight to:
Then it will eventually come to its end and become:
Some people have moved to /e/ already.
It has always been...
I don't care what Chrome does to fuck every single users possible, provided that it doesn't affect FF.
This integrity thing was one of the worst thing they could've ever come up with that would've definitely affect me.
Fuck them. Fuck with your own users. I ain't one.
That's the problem. They could have made it a requirement for a site to work in Chrome. And since Chrome has such a majority sites would have to comply. Then the other browsers would have to fall in line or just stop working with most websites. Google's monopoly is complete enough that they can dictate how the web works. You need to both care what chrome does and care that other people are still using it or you're just as fucked as they are.
Please, people, stop using Chromium-based browsers and handing Google a near-monopoly. Firefox is awesome and has even more privacy-oriented derivates.
Bope. I'll continue using Brave, as it's the best browser out there for my use case. Thank you for you concern. Firefox plainly sucks, thanks to Mozilla, and I tell this after having been a FF user, supporter and advocate for almost 20 years.
What sucks so much in FF?
Yes, performance used to be spotty but this is no longer the case.
UI/UX/Performance/Mobile app/Slow on Linux/Mozilla (the latter is the worst)
I'm not open to further debate. You asked, I replied. I preferred to migrate to a different browser and never look back, thanks to Mozilla.
Your info isn't up to date
Yeah, sure /s.
Fuck Mozilla, really. I wouldn't go back to FF even if it was the last browser on earth, as long as it gives oxygen to Mozilla. I'd like Moz Corp. to disappear.
If Mozilla were to disappear, Chromium web engine would have a true monopoly. Seeing how bad things are getting with their almost monopoly, I'd like to help avoid that.
I do understand this feeling. It's how I felt when I first left Firefox for Chrome. I would check in every few years for about 10-15 years and see if I was still better off on Chrome, and I was. But then one time, it just wasn't the case any more. I switched back to Firefox and now Chrome feels shitty, slow, and bloated to me.
I've been using FF (and Thunderbird) for about 5 years now on my dual core old laptop running Gentoo, and it's always run pretty smooth. Especially when they switched to the Quantum web engine.
Of course. Everybody is having a great time on FF, that why this happens:
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
Yeah, surely Chrome/Google/$EandomEvilCorp are to blame, but Not Mozilla, the can't do anything wrong, poor souls /s
I'm not arguing that people are switching to Firefox. I'm only saying that your argument about FF on Linux is just plain wrong.
I also prefer the UI/UX of FF over Chromium based browsers, but that's very subjective of course.
Yeah, the current management is so horny to have Chrome be the next Internet Explorer like that. So sad Google has fallen so far.
I'm not sure on stats or anything, I know Google has paid a lot of money to get Chrome as a default browser, but I remember a time when it became ubiquitous because the family nerd would tell their parents to use it and so on. It could possibly happen again and have a lot of people switch to firefox because their favourite site stopped working on Chrome. It's the kind of plan that could backfire pretty bad. There's a lot of legal reasons for their hesitance I'm sure, but I think that sort of thing would also play into it. A bunch of parents calling up their children because something stopped working and being told to download firefox isn't outside the scope of reality I don't think.
"We've decided not to pursue Web Integrity API."
"Oh great! But what's that giant thing under the tarp behind you"
"Oh don't worry..."
we already have play integrity and now we have this webview attestation now?
Floc returned as something else, we will see this come back I am certain
One small victory to fend off the cancer that is current year google.
You did it everyone! Good job!
Way too early to celebrate hombre. Don't do this to yourself.
While this "battle" may be won for now, I've no doubt Google will simply try to implement this in a different way with less backlash.
Ah, let me guess, now Google's gonna get everyone and their sister to move all their content to apps...
They already have. I can barely go to a mobile page that isn't broken or doesn't have a pop up I must dismiss telling me it's better in the app when it most certainly is not. Some things I use have let their desktop web pages go into disrepair and when I contact them with my issues logging in they just tell me to use the app and that their site has been down for months. Gotta force that tracking and those arbitration clauses somehow.
Tell them that you don't own a smartphone and that you can't use their product.
Might not solve the issue in the short run, but eventually they'll hopefully realize that a desktop site is important as well.
Usually I tell them I have a right to privacy and I won't be using their product and that they need to delete my account and my data.
Good! Now we just need to degoogle everything else on the internet.
Rriiiiiiiigghhhhtt.
I'll just be standing over here, watching them not do that.
Web Integrity API proposal is what happens when Big Tech takes over the internet.
I absolutely do not trust Chrome or the google team. It does not make me feel any better the only barrier to them trying to ruin a internet a bit is some backlash.
I have not followed this stuff very closely. Here's a question. This article says:
Has there not been DRM on the web for many years by now for videos?
This is worse. Let's go with an example: on an Android phone, you visit a website. The website asks for an integrity check, the browser works with Google Play Services to complete the check.
What if you have a de-Googled phone without Play Services, or if you made modifications to restrict Google's tracking? Then Google can refuse to verify you. What if you installed an ad blocker in your browser? Google can refuse to verify you.
If you fail verification, the website could ask you to complete a captcha, or just refuse to show you anything.
This would bring DRM to everything on the internet. If you wanted to get grandma's apple brown betty recipe even the text would be unavailable unless your browser and the page agree that it should happen. And the browser wouldn't give the OK unless the page is advertiser friendly, and the page won't give the greenlight if you've blocked any ads recently.
The Media Integrity API is something that streaming video services want and applies only to Android apps that are built on web technologies. This has nothing to do with conventional web experiences or even the Chrome browser on Android: it's effectively a solution for when media is served on webpages that are embedded inside an Android app.
Typically an Android app will use native libraries like ExoPlayer to request and serve DRM content, for instance a video from a paid streaming service to ensure that the viewer is permitted to watch it. Chrome is built on top of open video codecs and doesn't inherently support DRM in this manner (as far as I'm aware), so if an app developer wants to use web technologies by leveraging a WebView, they are restricted to which codecs and DRM is available.
It's my understanding that this new library offers a solution to such developers. As a reminder, this doesn't apply to the web at large.
From my perspective, this is no different than DRM offerings that are supported natively in all operating systems, including Android, iOS, Mac and Windows.
That's why DRM is bad period. It takes away your power and gives it to a single authority
The difficulty as I've understood it, is that this isn't sustainable for streaming services: if a bad actor knows how to serve the media request, there are no guarantees if they are actually licenced to watch it. I'm not especially knowledgeable in this field though, so perhaps there are other solutions that would mitigate concerns around the use of DRM.
I personally think that the end does justify the means. Sure Disney, Netflix and others might be concerned about piracy but at the end of the day they don't have much to say in terms of morals.
Yeah, but they were testing the waters with this one. The hydra's going to grow another head eventually. It'll be interesting to see how/if the media integrity API gets leveraged in the Android Chrome browser. They're eventually going to attack this problem from a slightly different angle.
Good summary. I used to think that apps were soooo much better than web apps, but I've come to realize that frequently the web UI is made intentionally janky to nudge users onto the apps where ads can't be blocked.
Ads can actually be blocked in apps if you use a VPN that has the ability. Though not all apps will function with a VPN enabled
While technically correct, not really feasible on mobile devices, especially when they have not been rooted and they are controlled by the telco you get your service from.
Wdym not feasible? I'm currently doing it on a non rooted android device using Mullvad VPN. Not sure what the telco has to do with ads but you can remove all of that bloatware using adb anyways.
Speaking generally, but if you lack the knowledge how to root a phone, if you're just using the phone as it's given to you by the phone company, they tend to control the things on there to a certain extent, and settings have a way of being switched back to the default values, etc.
Not that it's literally impossible to do.
P.S. and to be honest I'm also over using the work rooted, I really mean to say one where the user has changed portions of the phone away from the default software that the phone company has on it.
Or a PiHole! Still not as good as uBlock in a browser but an improvement.
This is essentially an attempt to further embed Google's existing dominance. What we need is a serious competitor in the Android space, that can involve a webstore, an api, etc that can provide an alternative force catering to both OEM and consumers alike that stands to challenge Google's dominance to the OHA alliance.
Google will just buy such a competitor like Facebook did with Instagram.
Every movement has a start.
Dont care all drm should be outlawed
I am not asking for much. Just break up Google and throw both the big shareholders as well as the executives in jail for the rest of their lifes. If you go as far and decide to take all their money and spend it on social services, healthcare and education for the general public, I wouldn't be mad.
"All I'm asking for, is giving some people life imprisonment for an action that currently is completely legal."
Listen, I'm completely for seizing the means of production and stuff. Google is evil. They can go fuck themselves. However, saying something so incredibly stupid (like you suggested above) voids any credibility that you have.
You are getting mad at an internet post by a random person who has exactly zero credibility to begin with. I sourced nothing, I claimed nothing, I didn't even pretend that any opinion I hold is of value. As much as I am for calling out shit and as much as I applaud you doing that if for no other reason than out of principle, why? Why don't you use your brain against someone actually doing harm and argue with a shitpost done by a shitposter on a platform that is mostly about shitposting instead?
All of that pointless stuff aside: Legal ≠ Right I hope you will agree with me on that. We'd like to pretend the rules we make up are just. We'd especially like to believe that if they are democratically legitimated someway or another, they must be morally okay. That is not the case. It never was and never will be. If you base your whole stance on something being legal, then that's a huge issue in and of itself.
At this point in history money is power is law. If you are rich enough, you have to be the utmost incompetent idiot around to do something blatantly illegal and get in trouble for it. I for one don't think this is the way. So maybe a bit more anarchy from time to time would serve us all well to balance out rich people's crap.
Also: It's a shitpost. A freaking shitpost. Vote it down and move on. I'd do the same if I didn't think it would be worth engaging with you.
Listen... Humans find patterns everywhere they go. That's just how humans work. Your idea is clearly a left wing idea (anti-corporation, breaking monopolies, etc.). I get it. I support this ideology. However, when you call for imprisoning people for life right beside the presentation of this idea, you unknowingly draw up a terrible association to it. Unfortunately, the first thing that people think about when they hear "communism", is "gulags". You unknowingly reinforce people's beliefs regarding this.
Agreed completely. However, I don't think that the solution for this is undermining law and order. Vigilantism helps nobody. Except for non-democratic systems, violence always leads to your idea being dismissed immediately. Hence, it should be avoided as much as possible (except in cases where you are in immediate danger).
Words have meanings. Not all people have an advanced sense of humor like you. At least I don't. Sure, if you meant the above as a joke, you should probably have put an "/s" in front of it. This is exactly how the far right does its dog whistling.
A: "Black people something something racist......"
B: "You can't say that bro... That's racist"
A: "It's a shitpost bro! Move on..... People can't take a joke these days....."
You seem like good people. I hope you have a nice and relaxing weekend.
Awwww you too!!! <3
Google isn't proceeding. Maybe now they'll realize YouTube is also suffering from their poor decisions.
YouTube isn't suffering. Lemmy has an active userbase of just over 30K. Given the fact a lot of people have multiple accounts (I do), that's less than 30K active users.
On top of that, probably less than half of Lemmy users actually cry about YouTube.
Even if we are generous, and say the entirety of Lemmy, and each user is unique, 30K is nothing lol.
thank FUCK
Unpopular opinion here: I kind of hoped they'd go through with it, as that would completely kill Chrome and Chromium and would lead to a repeat of IE vs Firefox, except Chrome would be the new IE. The fact that they backtracked means that they too saw that people would be massively flocking to Firefox.
I think it's less, "We're worried people will flock to Firefox," and more, "We could get in a lot of legal trouble for trying to force everyone onto Chrome".
Most Chrome users don't even know what a web browser is. They would have remained on Chrome and the web would have suffered for it.
To be fair, most IE 5 and 6 users didn't know what a web browser was either and here we are.
But that was broken and didn't provide the right functionality. Chrome's change breaks everything else, not itself.
It definitely wouldn't. The majority of people would never know the difference. Most people use Chrome and don't use ad blockers.
Careful what you wish for.
I still think it will come out but on the down low
It wouldn't. If Google only owned Chrome, then maybe. But combined with services like AdSense, Google can easily leverage people and site operators to keep using Chrome.
Firefox is losing users year over year. I think it's beyond saving.
Victory!
One set of standards for the internet systems, and multiple measurements and methods I say, hardly makes sense to split the whole web to pieces over advertising money, especially when access to knowledge, strength, capability to invent and discover of all sorts is now at such an all time high.
We've yet to build anything on the moon or create livable spaces in outer space
Ha, suck on that!
I wish they did, so chrome could loose some market share
Problem is big sites you're forced to use (banking sites, work HR systems, etc) would've made shitty decisions and required it to use their site. It would be like the old "you have to use IE 6" era
Banking site: We've implemented the Web Integrity API because security is important to us.
Also the banking site: Your password can only be six characters.
@ryper what? That's bizarre. Is this a US thing??
I'm in Canada and I haven't registered on a banking site recently, but I have definitely had stupidly low password length limits on banking sites in the past. The password from my old Bank of Montreal account that was last updated in 2015 is only 6 characters, and it's only numbers and letters; I would have definitely had 1Password generate a better password if the rules had allowed it.
Interesting. I'm in New Zealand and my bank passwords are all proper length and characterset. They also have 2FA.
I always thought it was just the US that has an antiquated banking system.
Tangerine used to have 4-6 digit PIN (no password) to access your online-only account.
Not sure if they still do. I believe so, though.
Various state and federal accessibility laws would've made that a very questionable decision for a lot of industries. Given that it would cost money simply to get programmers to implement and might lead to more costs from legal challenges I suspect a lot of sites like banks and the like would've avoided it.
Now when it comes to basically any news site, entertainment service, social media, online store, or anything else that makes extra money on ads and harvesting user data? Oh yeah, they'd implement it in a heartbeat.
no, websites would implement and force you to use chrome
How can you be sure? Are you in their team and are aware of all the talks?
There's this thing called sarcasm. I'm not surprised you didn't spot it; it's an advanced skill.
then you haven't understood "this thing" in my comment