SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Brave takes brave stand against Google's plan to turn websites into ad-blocker-thwarting Web Bundles:
A proposed Google web specification threatens to turn websites into inscrutable digital blobs that resist content blocking and code scrutiny, according to Peter Snyder, senior privacy researcher at Brave Software.
On Tuesday, Snyder published a memo warning that Web Bundles threaten user agency and web code observability. He raised this issue back in February, noting that Web Bundles would prevent ad blockers from blocking unwanted subresources. He said at the time he was trying to work with the spec's authors to address concerns but evidently not much progress has been made.
His company makes the Brave web browser, which is based on Google's open-source Chromium project though implements privacy protections, by addition or omission, not available in Google's commercial incarnation of Chromium, known as Chrome.
[...] The Web Bundles API is a Google-backed web specification for bundling the multitude of files that make up a website into a single .wbn file, which can then be shared or delivered from a content delivery network node rather than a more distant server. It's one of several related specifications for packaging websites.
The problem, as Snyder sees it, is that Web Bundles takes away the very essence of the web, the URL.
"At root, what makes the web different, more open, more user-centric than other application systems, is the URL," he wrote. "Because URLs (generally) point to one thing, researchers and activists can measure, analyze and reason about those URLs in advance; other users can then use this information to make decisions about whether, and in what way, they'd like to load the thing the URL points to."
An individual concerned about security or privacy, for example, can examine a JavaScript file associated with a particular URL and take action if it looks abusive. That becomes difficult when the file isn't easily teased out of a larger whole. Web Bundles set up private namespaces for URLs, so privacy tools that rely on URLs don't work.
"The concern is that by making URLs not meaningful, like just these arbitrary indexes into a package, the websites will become things like .SWF files or PDF files, just a big blob that you can't reason about independently, and it'll become an all or nothing deal," Snyder explained in a phone interview with The Register.
Separately, Google has been working to hide full URLs in the Chrome omnibox.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @11:55PM (18 children)
Google is actively trying to kill the web. That is what this thing means. 'Do no evil' my ass.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 30 2020, @12:00AM (6 children)
I pretty much agree. Google sees people like me who almost never load an advertisement, and they think they have to push their shit through my filters. Screw 'em.
(Score: 5, Informative) by NateMich on Sunday August 30 2020, @12:50AM
My response will be the same as it was when cable channels got out of control with advertisements.
I don't even own a TV anymore. There isn't really any reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2020, @05:17AM
C'mon, Runaway! Admit it! You like it when the push it through your filters! Not that you would ever admit it.
--
Black people think Kim Klacik is stupid. - Democrats
(And all Soylentils know how stupid Runaway is! Ha! Stuff up his "filters"!! Rich! Displacement and projection, as the same time.)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Sunday August 30 2020, @07:22AM (3 children)
It's not just stuff like this, it's everything else as well. Lots of web sites are now serving standard JPEG images as .webp which nothing except a web browser can do much with. Want to download an image for use somewhere? You can't use it until you pass it through a webp-to-normal conversion tool. Google have driven HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, whose primary design goal is optimisation to make content delivery from large Internet corporations like, say, Google, more efficient. TLS 1.3 is the same thing, make it as efficient to push content out to point-and-drool clients as possible. It's a slow takeover of the Internet world with Google formats designed by Google to serve Google's corporate goals.
The scary thing is that if MS had tried any of this twenty years ago there'd be nothing left of Redmond but a smoking crater. Now that Google has been doing it for years, the few voices of protest are so unusual that they make the front page of geek forum web sites.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2020, @08:16AM (2 children)
Webp is an open standard with source code licensed under BSD. If your tools can't read webp, you need better tools. GIMP has supported them for two years (longer, using separate plug-ins).
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Sunday August 30 2020, @08:09PM (1 child)
Much the same can be said of Office Open XML [wikipedia.org] format from Microsoft. Being open and having a BSD license still doesn't make it a good idea.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Monday August 31 2020, @03:54AM
If you are saying that webp is a broken proprietary spec the way Microsoft's offie XML, then citation needed, please. I'm not calling you wrong, but I'd like to see a source. If you just don't like yet another image format, I'm a little less sympathetic. That thinking would have left us with bmp & wav files. Yet another data format isn't that big of a problem as long as you aren't locked into ancient or proprietary tools.
Now a broken spec is another issue altogether. It's why a new format sometimes just needs to die. An intentionally broken spec is just hostile.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2020, @12:05AM (7 children)
I always knew this web thing would end up just being a fad. Usenet is still where it's at!
Seriously, if I can't block ads from "web bundles", I'm not going to be accessing any "web bundles". Any future browser/adblocker combo I use will have to be able to block web bundles completely. If that means, eventually, that I don't access anything on the web at all, so be it.
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Sunday August 30 2020, @02:03AM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Immerman on Sunday August 30 2020, @02:44AM (1 child)
"Anyone...can do it"
"script"
"web server"
All I can say is... you must live amidst a considerably more technically skilled population of "anyones" than I.
(Score: 0, Troll) by barbara hudson on Sunday August 30 2020, @10:52AM
Please don't misquote me to set up a straw man argument. It makes you look stupid and wastes my time.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Sunday August 30 2020, @09:38AM (3 children)
Until you're forced to do banking and purchasing on line, then you'll be using web bundles. The powers that be will make sure cash goes away.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Sunday August 30 2020, @10:50AM (1 child)
Also, just don't use google as your search engine and you won't be led to google AMP, which is what these bundles are primarily for. For googles convenience, not yours.
You don't NEED gmail, YouTube, google docs, Chromebooks, etc.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Acabatag on Sunday August 30 2020, @05:44PM
One can even have an Android phone without ever logging onto a Google account to use it. Just skip the Google logon when initially setting it up and sideload a different App store.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2020, @06:52PM
Judging from current bank websites, then, I have at least ten years before they implement web bundles. We'll all be scrabbling for scraps of food in the debris of the apocalyptic hellscape by then, so no worries.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday August 30 2020, @08:39AM (2 children)
the devil is in the details:
Do no evil*
*) leave that to us
I will not download from websites that are not websites, and to drift OT frankly I am fed up with news outlets too. Yesterday Kennedy jr. addresses a crowd in Berlin which wasn't seen since that adolf guy, not even russia today gives it the proper attention.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Sunday August 30 2020, @10:57AM (1 child)
Web bundles will primarily be used by google, not regular web sites. Same as google AMP. Don't use google search, you get the regular "unaccelerated by google " site. Problem solved.
Brave is just looking for publicity.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday August 30 2020, @03:12PM
"same as google amp" means disaster. Google upranked AMP pages. Which means Google can dictate whatever tech you should use, if they push hard enough. It kinda fizzled with amp, but the new generation of techies, that haven't experience monocultures and proprietary software abuses, and are about to learn some lessons, might fall for this one.
Account abandoned.