There needs to be a unified fight against this, that involves not only browser companies but also the businesses running major websites. If it goes through and Google manages to persuade websites to use it, all the other browsers will be forced to implement it if they want to continue existing. And then no more freedom for web users.
Imagine, for a minute, that this passes. If a website exists that a specific entity disagrees with (say… a whistleblower forum, or accounts of how Google is abusing its powers, or accounts of a Government is abusing it’s citizens), all that would need to happen, is for the “integrity authority” to deny access to that site, and it will be censored. Whereas now, a website has to be taken offline (in most cases) to be effectively censored, if this passes, the “integrity authority” would just need to say nay.
Imagine never hearing of the Snowden files, or George Floyd, or the Russian-Ukraine war. Not because they didn’t exist or didn’t happen, but because you ‘weren’t allowed’ to see them by an entity who benefits from you not seeing them or knowing about them.
If this passes, we would be -officially- entering a dystopia.
Won’t there need to be backwards compatibility with sites that don’t implement this? The default would have to be that the browser is allowed to see a site that doesn’t require attestation. So if the whistleblower or political site just didn’t implement this, would that be a way around it?
At first, maybe. But not ultimately. If you compare it to TLS, for example, if the site use TLS 1.0, your browser will simply not load the site. This web integrity thing is similar.
Another, maybe more relevant, example, is Flash. Once Google decided Flash will no longer be supported on their browser, Flash died. I actually don’t disagree with the killing of Flash, but the idea is similar.
I actually don’t disagree with the killing of Flash
I miss it sometimes. There’s still no good way to have lightweight vector animations that wen designers or animators can work on (no code required), that work the same cross-browser. There’s some JS libraries but they often need developer involvement (a designer can’t always set everything up themselves) and tend to be quite heavy libraries (which slows down the page, which reduces your ranking in search engines)…
There needs to be a unified fight against this, that involves not only browser companies but also the businesses running major websites. If it goes through and Google manages to persuade websites to use it, all the other browsers will be forced to implement it if they want to continue existing. And then no more freedom for web users.
You’re right. But it’s so much worse than that.
Imagine, for a minute, that this passes. If a website exists that a specific entity disagrees with (say… a whistleblower forum, or accounts of how Google is abusing its powers, or accounts of a Government is abusing it’s citizens), all that would need to happen, is for the “integrity authority” to deny access to that site, and it will be censored. Whereas now, a website has to be taken offline (in most cases) to be effectively censored, if this passes, the “integrity authority” would just need to say nay.
Imagine never hearing of the Snowden files, or George Floyd, or the Russian-Ukraine war. Not because they didn’t exist or didn’t happen, but because you ‘weren’t allowed’ to see them by an entity who benefits from you not seeing them or knowing about them.
If this passes, we would be -officially- entering a dystopia.
Won’t there need to be backwards compatibility with sites that don’t implement this? The default would have to be that the browser is allowed to see a site that doesn’t require attestation. So if the whistleblower or political site just didn’t implement this, would that be a way around it?
At first, maybe. But not ultimately. If you compare it to TLS, for example, if the site use TLS 1.0, your browser will simply not load the site. This web integrity thing is similar.
Another, maybe more relevant, example, is Flash. Once Google decided Flash will no longer be supported on their browser, Flash died. I actually don’t disagree with the killing of Flash, but the idea is similar.
I miss it sometimes. There’s still no good way to have lightweight vector animations that wen designers or animators can work on (no code required), that work the same cross-browser. There’s some JS libraries but they often need developer involvement (a designer can’t always set everything up themselves) and tend to be quite heavy libraries (which slows down the page, which reduces your ranking in search engines)…