l'dea alla base dell'ultimo libro di dave eggers e' proprio queste aziende che ci vogliono
liberare dall'onere della scelta.
On 01/08/23 09:55, Giacomo Tesio wrote:
Using a free browser is now more important than ever.
We've written recently on this topic, but the issue we wrote
about there was minor compared to the gross injustice Google
is now attempting to force down the throats of web users
around the world.
The so-called "Web Environment Integrity" (WEI) is the worst
stunt we've seen from them in some time. Beginning its life
as an innocuous, if worrying, policy document posted to
Microsoft GitHub, Google has now fast-tracked its development
into their Chromium browser. At its current rate of progress,
WEI will be upon us in no time.
By giving developers an API through which they can approve
certain browser configurations while forbidding others, WEI is
a tremendous step toward the "enshittification" of the web
as a whole. Many of us have grown up with a specific idea of
the Internet, the notion of it as a collection of hyperlinked
pages that can be accessed by a wide variety of different
machines, programs, and operating systems.
WEI is this idea's antithesis.
Compared to its staggering potential effects, the technical
means through which WEI will accomplish its ends is relatively
simple. Before serving a web page, a server can ask a third-party
"verification" service to make sure that the user's browsing
environment has not been "tampered" with. A translation of the
policy's terminology will help us here: this Google-owned server
will be asked to make sure that the browser does not deviate in
any way from Google's accepted browser configuration, precluding
any meaningful use of the four freedoms. It is not far-fetched
to imagine a future in which sites simply refuse to serve pages
to users running free browsers or free operating systems.
If WEI isn't stopped now, that future will come sooner than we think.
While Web Environment Integrity has a policy document that attempts
to explain valid ways in which it could be used, these are all
non-issues compared to the way that we know it will be used.
It will be used by governments to ensure that only their officially
"approved" (read: backdoored) browsers are able to access the
Internet; it will be used by corporations like Netflix to further
Digital Restrictions Management (DRM); it will be used by Google
to deny access to their services unless you are using a browser
that gels with their profit margin.
Once upon a time, Google's official policy was "don't be evil."
With the rapid progress they've made on Web Environment Integrity
in such a short time, we can say very safely that their policy
is now to pioneer evil.
As we write this, talented and well-paid Google engineers and
executives are working to dismantle what makes the web the web.
Given that Google is one of the largest corporations on the planet,
our only hope of saving the Internet as we know it is a clear and
principled stance for freedom, a collective upholding of the
communal principles on which the web was based.
Let us repeat: there is absolutely no legitimate justification for WEI.
The use cases that the policy document highlights are nothing compared
to its real use case, which is developing a method to obtain complete
and total restriction of the free Internet.
We urge everyone involved in a decision-making capacity at Google
to consider the principles on which the web was founded, and to
carefully contemplate whether Web Environment Integrity aligns
with those principles.
We hope that they will realize WEI's fundamental incompatibility
with the free Internet and cease work on the standard immediately.
And if they don't? Well, they ought to be ashamed.
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/web-environment-integrity-is-an-all-out-attack-on-the-free-internet
Dopo tutti questi anni di Google, sperare che gli sviluppatori di
Google si vergognino di ciò che stanno facendo è estremamente ingenuo.
Può però essere utile a chi legge i suoi lobbisti più o meno
insospettabili, sapere a cosa Google sta puntando da anni.
Ma come con ChatGPT e Microsoft/OpenAI, anche in questo caso vedremo
spuntare come funghi allucinogeni diversi utili idioti pronti a difendere
a spada tratta la povera Google che non vuole altro che proteggere
i poveri utenti... dalla propria libertà.
Loro non si vergogneranno, ma noi potremo indignarci disgustati.
Giacomo
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