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j12345 ,

Google engineers want me to stop using anything from google

yoz ,

Already switched to proton mail, MEGA, startpage search , firefox. Hoping more people to donate to pine64 Linux phones so that they become mainstream.

Kidplayer_666 ,

And when it comes to phones, there are now quite a few alternatives to Stock Android. /eOS uses MicroG instead of google services to allow for almost all apps to run fine while being more private and open source. You can also just use LineageOS and use MicroG as an alternative!

yoz ,

MicroG depends on Google. Yea…fuck that

Kidplayer_666 ,

Better for most people who still need to use most apps

over_clox ,

deleted_by_moderator

    •
    faintedheart ,

    Will use firefox until it gets broken into pieces. I would rather stop using the internet other than for necessary situations.

    MercuryUprising ,

    Yeah, 100%. I would pretty much rather just use whatever underground internet pops up to replace the advertising based one. Advertisements are one of those things that I absolutely cannot stand.

    vacuumflower ,

    It doesn’t have to be underground at all, they are not yet making ads and DRM parts of TCP.

    BorgDrone ,

    I don’t trust Mozilla either. They have demonstrated on multiple occasions that they are willing to trade their user’s privacy and security for money. Example 1, Example 2. Both examples show extremely poor judgement from Mozilla. I no longer trust them to put the user first.

    For now I’m sticking with Safari. At least there I’m the paying customer, and since I’m already running macOS/iOS I don’t need to trust an additional party.

    Jmr ,

    They have a similar system. Private Access Tokens

    clegko ,
    @clegko@lemmy.world avatar

    Wow, two very small issues that Mozilla has done and quickly listened to user feedback and walked it back. Totally a legit reason to not use it.

    BorgDrone ,

    Installing software on your computer without your consent is not a small issue. The fact that they even considered it, let alone let it go into production shows serious problems with their judgement.

    Cedarwood ,

    For real. Google continues to seriously underestimate my infinite loathing for ads. I will uninternet myself

    willow ,
    @willow@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    The thing is, Google has been a major donor to Mozilla Foundation from the start. Google has been financially supporting Firefox to deflect the accusations of Chrome being a monopoly.

    markon ,

    That’s what I’m feeling too. If all the end to end encryption is banned, and the new kid safety act passes here in the US those will just be more nails in the coffin. It’s so sad to me never it’s been a huge part of my life. If it comes to that I’ll miss you all.

    vacuumflower ,

    I’m not even upset. Yeah, it’s finally clear that it’s not our late 90s and early 00s Web anymore.

    So what? What it’s magic was based on wasn’t so technologically or computationally complex, FFS. There’s been plenty of hypertext systems, some distributed. There are some hobbyist ones now, like Gemini again.

    I’m looking forward to the niche being filled by better solutions, made after the experience of WWW as it was. It’s amazingly cool.

    emokidforever ,

    When will they understand, if I’m introduced to your product through an advertisement, I do not want to buy it. I will make a point not to. Do not annoy me. If your product is good enough, it will be bought.

    bellsDoSing ,

    I’m in the same boat as you. But considering there’s this thing called the “ad industry”, there’s bound to be a considerable portion of people that are influenced enough by ads, even just at a subconcious level, that investing money into ads is a worthwhile thing to do for businesses selling products and businesses offering ad platforms.

    PastorHaggis ,
    @PastorHaggis@lemmy.world avatar

    I think that, to good day, the only item I have ever bought because of an ad was my eargasm ear plugs. I may have seen them somewhere else first but an ad popped up and I happened to be in the market so I got them and don’t regret it at all. Otherwise I buy things because I do the research, not because they push the ads out.

    Neve8028 ,

    Ad companies figured out that sales are much better with whatever publicity they can get, even bad publicity. It doesn’t work with some people, like you, but they haven statistically proven that just getting their name out in any capacity will increase sales.

    urda ,
    @urda@lebowski.social avatar

    The engineers to blame are

    github.com/RupertBenWiser

    github.com/yoavweiss

    SpaceNoodle ,

    You think they acted alone?

    pulaskiwasright ,

    They acted.

    bestnerd ,

    That’s petty as fuck. I’m an ex google eng and it’s not up to us what we work on. We get paid to work on shit and if we don’t do it someone else will. Plenty of resumes in the pool ready to hop in and take someone’s spot. Blame the company not the people doing the grunt work.

    It’s like blaming the barista for the menu.

    Dark_Blade ,
    @Dark_Blade@lemmy.world avatar

    More like blaming the chef in a restaurant chain for the menu. Some corporate entity might be the one crafting the menu, but they’re still the ones cooking.

    That isn’t to say we should hound the devs, but I thought we could use a better example.

    pulaskiwasright , (edited )

    “Just doing my job” is a poor excuse. That’s no different than saying, “I’m just doing it for money”. When you’re a software engineer who could get another job without much trouble. Otherwise, you’re choosing to do what google tells you.

    A menu you don’t like at a barista isn’t even remotely the same.

    Mawks ,

    “The restaurant told me to not care and use rotten food for your meal, not my fault” is basically what I can relate it to

    Atemu ,
    @Atemu@lemmy.ml avatar

    I fail to see how the engineers building the technical side of this are relevant to this case. It’s not their decision to put this into Chromium or not.

    mp04610 ,

    True, it was not their decision, but they had the choice to show google the middle finger.

    BackStabbath ,

    The next person would do it then. I don’t see that as a solution.

    kouichi ,

    Anyone able to come up with this tech has the choice to just leave and work elsewhere.

    BackStabbath ,

    Of course they have the choice. But be realistic. There is ALWAYS someone willing to do something for money. Not everyone thinks the same way as you do.

    pulaskiwasright ,

    You always have a decision. Especially when you’re a highly qualified engineer that could choose to work somewhere else easily.

    SuiXi3D ,
    @SuiXi3D@kbin.social avatar

    You say that like it’s easy to deal with a sudden loss of income and the potential that their living situation will radically change before they land that new job. I can’t imagine that working at that level leads to particular quick interview and hiring processes.

    TheBat ,
    @TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

    Oh they’re just following orders, is it?

    bestnerd , (edited )

    Dude they’re not murdering people they implemented tech use a new browser

    TheBat ,
    @TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

    An unethical tech which they could’ve refused and turned whistleblower about.

    bestnerd ,

    No point in whistleblowing when they are posting blogs about it…asking for feedback.

    TheBat ,
    @TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

    Which tell me they have zero ethics or morals. Fuck them.

    TheBat ,
    @TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

    Also, it is ‘they’re’, not ‘their’.

    bestnerd ,

    Thanks really picked what mattered from an auto correct

    Widowmaker_Best_Girl ,

    deleted_by_moderator

    •
    TheBat ,
    @TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

    Oh no you’re right. It’s not an acceptable defence when it’s war crimes. Otherwise it’s totally a-ok. Betting sites and apps ask you to target patients under medication who are far more susceptible to gambling? Not your fault. Big G asks you to turn internet into adridden dystopia? Not your fault.

    Stfu.

    herrvogel ,

    Lmao yoavweiss seems to have recently broken the 4 year hiatus on his personal blog to make a new post about how the discussions around this retarded proposal are not constructive enough.

    The most constructive that can ever be said about this is “fuck right off” dude.

    TheBat ,
    @TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

    That’s not right in my opinion.

    I’m partial to ‘get fucked’.

    poop ,

    Please don’t blame the people who were forced to implement this. There are engineers to blame behind all shitty tech in the world. They’re just trying to work a job. There aren’t exactly a lot of jobs in the tech industry where you don’t work for some of the evilest motherfuckers alive building unimaginably evil stuff. I’m all for directing as much hate, vitriol, credible threats of violence, etc at the people on top, but let’s leave the poor sap who they forced to do their dirty work alone.

    MonsiuerPatEBrown ,

    It was not hilarious when MS tried to control stuff like this with IE.

    This is a boring fight, and it is why tech companies need a broken up and a kick in the profits/pants.

    kicksystem ,

    Smart people coming up with smart ideas to do dumb things. When will we start shaming such people?

    LifeInMultipleChoice , (edited )

    When companies stop paying them so much for making them more money.

    brygphilomena ,

    Their examples are business issues where they want a tech solution.

    These are working on a foundation that the internet today, with all it’s venture capital money, “free” websites and services that run at a loss is how the internet should look. So they are building technical solutions to force some “trust” facilitate this internet. If a business or website cannot function or be profitable without this, that company does not deserve to survive. It’s putting businesses ahead of users.

    It works off the assumption that websites should know who the person visiting their website is (or that it’s even a human.)

    IMO, we need to return to the assumption that users are anonymous and remind people that you don’t know who is on the other side so we should not trust at all.

    Auli ,

    And we would not have the internet we have today without this. Do people want to go back to static sites forums and all that? I mean this stuff costs money and people don’t want to pay with cash so what is the option?

    kava ,

    Oh no, how will the multi billion dollar companies survive i feel so much pity. They deserve more money you’re right

    fsxylo ,

    Fuuuuck yes I do.

    zyS7 ,

    Seriously, what the fuck is this guy on? Do I want individual forums with independent communities and separate identities in each of them? You’re goddamn right I do!

    phillaholic ,

    You remember what site you’re on right?

    willy096 ,

    Sometimes it is unbelievable. They want to make the Internet their own, following their model… luckily there will always be people fighting to keep the Internet free, where anyone can decide, in this case, whether to swallow ads or not

    diyrebel ,

    It is indeed another attack on principles.

    luckily there will always be people fighting to keep the Internet free

    Google’s move makes the fight much more uphill for freedom fighters. The real problem is the masses of pawns who fail to vote with their feet. Some of them voted with their feet merely because CAPTCHA is inconvenient. Eliminating the CAPTCHA puts these users on the wrong side of the fight.

    SCB ,

    keep the internet free

    Never see ads

    Gonna have to pick one

    MercuryUprising ,

    Absolutely untrue. People run websites and pay for their servers themselves. People inherently want to post stuff on the internet and many websites don’t have ads at all. Think of pretty much every old blog that used to exist, or every portfolio page for an artist. I will simply stop using Google’s internet and that will be that. I pretty much already have to be honest, Google results are absolute dog shit.

    SCB ,

    Cool man, do you. Totally respect that.

    I do remember old school GeoShitties and blogs tho. Livejournal most assuredly had ads: bradfitz.com/misc/bct/

    MercuryUprising ,

    I loved Geocities. I personally had like five different pages on it, including one that acted like a virtual tour of a video game world I used to play where you would navigate through map screens and could “talk” to characters. My friends and I would also have a communal page, which worked like our own mini-reddit where we would post cool shit, and then webring to our individual sites. I also currently have an ad-free website, which I operate and create all the content for myself.

    SCB ,

    Geocities was dope AF man!

    TikTok is the closest thing we have to a mainstream recreation of those days, if you curate your feed properly. It was truly the Silver Age of the internet

    postmateDumbass ,

    Destruction of the Commons is key to capitalism.

    The internet is a huge ripe field to exploit.

    The destruction of the free resource is a consequence of how we organize society.

    housepanther ,
    @housepanther@lemmy.goblackcat.com avatar

    It’s fun to see capitalism doubling down on itself. 🫠

    itsmaxyd ,

    You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain

    edgerunnergit ,

    They have become the villain a long time back.

    zerkrazus , (edited )

    Similar things are done with TV and streaming unfortunately. You ever notice how commercials/ads have louder volume than whatever content you’re watching? It’s intentional. If you’re someone who doesn’t skip them and doesn’t mute them, they want you to be able to hear them from another room and then they hope you’ll come back to see the ad. It’s so dumb.

    Valmond ,

    Yeah and as it’s illegal to bump up the volume (where I live) they bump up loudness instead, making the sound crappy but it’s perceived as higher volume. God I hate that crap

    MariaRomanov ,
    @MariaRomanov@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    I don’t know that we’re watching the internet collapse. I think we are witnessing tech companies respond to growing financial pressure by accelerating their monetization plans, and it’s blowing up in their faces. The result will be the reinvention of the web. I don’t necessarily know if decentralized apps are going to take off, but I do think the internet will shift towards smaller (possibly open source) sites in retaliation.

    Pratai ,

    Google executives want this, NOT the engineers.

    Goodie ,

    Their engineers are super fucking shady too. For example, the issies with the WebHID “browser” APIs

    Pratai ,

    And you think it was the engineer’s idea to do that?

    Goodie ,

    There’s literally a comment from an Google engineer, about WebHID saying that they had engineers “motivated to execute on” as part of their reasoning for telling others to go fuck themselves.

    Ogmios ,

    Guess who’s opinion matters here?

    azuth ,

    They put their name on it. I hope it was monetary worth it because the public should not cut them any slack.

    obinice ,
    @obinice@lemmy.world avatar

    I really need to ween myself off the Internet so that, once it becomes an unusable hellhole in the next 20 years or so, I’ll be able to give it up entirely and move on to better things.

    Sjotroll ,

    Yeah, I’ve never even thought about modern life without the use of internet for everything else other than professional work, just like I’ve never thought possible for me to stop using Reddit. But now thanks to spez I stopped using Reddit, and I can now really imagine a world where I don’t surf the internet for fun. Part of me wants the internet to become an unusable hellhole.

    mexicancartel ,

    There will always be websites for us. Better websites who care about their users. Websites that still support firefox. So we only need to stay away from the hellhole websites and chromium based browsers

    diyrebel ,

    The problem is search engines have proven not to keep up with our needs. Sites trashed up with cookie popups, subscription nags, and CAPTCHAs are making it into the highest ranks of search results. Cloudflare sites in particular.

    mexicancartel ,

    I didn’t say many sites will be favourable for us. But atleast there will be some sites.

    We have have wiby.me for search websites with no fancy graphics, and all your concerns. Results are usually programmer centric though. Tried for 2-3 hours to find the name of this search engine lol

    diyrebel , (edited )

    I was thrilled when .me was first introduced. Then for a while wiby.me was itself a Tor-hostile Cloudflare site. I’m glad you brought it up because it prompted me to check again & it seems at the moment wiby is a user-respecting non-Cloudflare site. Note there was another search engine similar to wiby which I can’t track down right now… but it’s possible I’m confusing that other one with wiby. Err… I think both were unusable for a while.

    (edit) The other site is search·marginalia·nu. That’s the one that became a despicable CF site. I think wiby broke down for tor users for a while but glad to see at the moment that it’s still usable. I just got good results when searching for a recipe.

    corstian ,

    Am I the only one thinking these trust tokens are not going to prevent bots from scraping websites?

    Eventually, somewhere, someone will just develop the infrastructure to work their way around this, right?

    diyrebel ,

    It would stop beneficial bots like the ones I create¹ as a small-time hobbyist because the little guy does not have the resources for this arms race. You may be right when it comes to large-scale scraping ops that are done by a business (e.g. scraping RyanAir or Southwest airlines so an airfare consolidation site can show more fares).

    ① e.g. I wrote a bot that scraped the real estate market sites, scraped the public transport sites, and found me a house with the shortest public transport commute.

    SIGSEGV ,
    @SIGSEGV@waveform.social avatar

    Are you willing to share the source for said bot?

    diyrebel , (edited )

    It was coded 8 years ago in Tcl¹ for a one-off project in Belgium. Would you really be interested?

    The APIs would have changed dramatically by now & some of the real estate sites no longer exist. Some of the sites brought in CAPTCHAs. It was coded to use Tor & the public transport site has become Tor-hostile and also changed their API. It’s also very user unfriendly… a collection of scripts & variety of hacks because I was my only user.

    I didn’t publish the code at the time because I worried that it would trigger the target sites to become bot-hostile.

    ① Also note that I use Tcl for personal use but I resist publishing any Tcl code because I would rather not promote the Tcl language. Why? Because the Tcl folks have jailed a large portion of their docs in Cloudflare’s walled garden. I believe programming language docs should be openly public.

    SIGSEGV ,
    @SIGSEGV@waveform.social avatar

    I wouldn’t be trying to use or adapt it; it was more of an intellectual curiosity. I haven’t written scrapers or used Tcl, so, yeah, I would be interested to take a peek :-)

    I’d like to write something similar, but I’d probably use Lisp or Python.

    heimchen ,

    How would this impact selenium based bots?

    diyrebel ,

    Perhaps not at all.

    But the limitation of using is a big one. Being forced to work in java, forced to use the resource hog of a modern gui browser, forced to reveal more browserprint info, being browser-dependent, etc. Selenium is my last choice when desperation is sufficiently high.

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