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And another question: did someone already lay out a roadmap to google’s collapse?
Right now we’re going through a financial crisis, big tech needs to start making proper money so they try to squeeze the users. Google hopes to “drm the internet” to maximise ad revenue. Let’s assume they succeed. 3 years from now the dystopia of dead adblockers is live, google and other leeches make bank off ads.
But there’s no more adblockers and no more ad revenue left to squeeze out (because every internet user is already chained to a screen and force fed ads within ads). And shareholders demand increase in profits. What do they do then? Is there any hint of a long-term strategy? How long before the maximum theoretical ad revenue is reached and plateaus? Then COVID29 or something comes, fed raises rastes again and…?
You’re describing the inherent limitations of capitalism. Our entire economy is predicated on infinite growth, which doesn’t exist and isn’t possible. What you describe is the eventual collapse of not just organizations, but of the US as a whole.
No, not the US as a whole, but perhaps the end of the insane and without reasonable measures Capitalism that it has spawned. This is the theorized late-stage capitalism, but it was brought to this level by a broken and out of control system, whereas the academic model of capitalism would have had certain mechanisms of balance to prevent exactly where we are.
The system of the present is too imbalanced to function with all these corporations, conglomerates, and billionaires holding a disproportionate amount of the wealth and keeping it from circulating. The economic system in the US just can’t work this way, so some drastic shift to reduce or remove the wealth gap will need to change.
Capitalism doesn’t require infinite growth. This is some trite line that was invented on Twitter and became the common wisdom in online discussions about the failings of current national and global economic systems. It’s not true. It appears to be true that the current model of capitalism favored the globe over requires infinite growth, but the current implementation of capitalism is not the same as it has always been implemented or will always be. There are more than enough legitimate criticisms of both capitalism writ large as well as current systems, we should be directing our ire through those arguments and not one that is factually false.
Life finds a way
Yarr
I hope **chrome **fails terribly. Just like Internet Explorer(IE). Firefox all the way
Mozilla I think gets millions from google. At least they did at one point in a deal to set google as a default engine.
They do. The majority of Mozilla’s funding is from Google. That said, they’re still our best hope. I’m sure Firefox has constant internal conversations about how to handle their relationship with Google, and they probably have standing offers from many others to switch to a different search engine.
I just wish Firefox would improve their UI and add a few features without needing to rely on extensions (tab groups, vertical tabs, sharing tabs from mobile to desktop, etc.).
Hey you have genuine wants and needs from a web browser and I respect that.
I’ll say though that this sort of attitude (well Chrome has this little thing I like so I allow them to take control of what was once the independent internet) is what is going to screw us.
Are we seriously sitting here, in the shadow of the open internet’s apocalypse, complaining yet again about Firefox’s UI?
It’s like Superman trying to rescue you from a fire and you complaining about his breath.
There’s no UI in the world that will make the internet bareable without functional ad blockers.
Anyone still using Google products is a fuckin idiot, IMO
I’m sorry but this sentiment is so utterly detached from the technical capabilities and general engagement of the average layman that it bears a response.
Tech savvy people have this awful habit of calling anyone not in our specific field an idiot when they don’t do things our preferred way, and it’s not a good look. Those people aren’t the weird ones, we are. And if you’re the sort of person who thinks you’ve elevated yourself above the commoners because you don’t use Google’s stuff … yeah, that and 5 bucks will get you a latte. There are oceans of professional expertise you’re not privvy to, and unless you really think you’re doing better than everyone at everything, a little humility, temperance, and grace for others is warranted.
I have to agree with this.
I’m basically “the idiot”. Decently tech savvy, but non-IT. Very capable of learning what I need to know, but I haven’t really had the time or mental capacity to learn how to do a lot of the things I need to to get away from corporate overlords.
I’m working on it, and have been for a while, but in the meantime I do use several google services, because that’s what I’ve been using for many many years and change is really hard. Especially when you have to initiate the change yourself, and especially when you know if you switch to a stop-gap solution you’ll loose all impetus to actually keep making the change (which I will).
The biggest challenge is learning what is worth it to self-host, what hard/software to use for the configuration I want, what’s compatible with devices I own (windows, Linux, iOS and android), etc. I’ve been running Plex for like 10 years now (windows then Linux), but it’s a very basic setup on a host pc I don’t use for much else. Beyond that, I need to learn almost everything from the bottom up, and that’s a lot to learn -just- to avoid an existing company and their existing products that I’ve been using for years. Unlike my Plex content, I would actually care if I lost my other self-host data, so not something to fuck around half-ass with.
I can’t blame people for not wanting to/knowing how to do it. I like learning this shit (because of the end result, not because I have interest in it, sorry not sorry) and I still don’t actually want to do it.
There are hardly any alternatives for people who don’t have the time to self-host and setup everything.
“Oh but Firefox!” the tools that Mozilla provides are indeed good - but there’s no Mozilla Photos, Mozilla Notes, Mozilla Assistant, and so on.
“Oh but Microsoft!” and why would that be better than Google?
“Oh but mix Firefox with Proton and this specific GitHub project for photo management and this FOSS notes apps with a Docker backend for sync and thi-” I wish I had the time to do that, truly, I actually prefer many of the FOSS alternatives I’ve seen lately. I do not have the time nor hardware to do this correctly.
I wholeheartedly agree. I’m a technical person, I run Linux as my primary OS and use FOSS software. But I also have a full time job and 2 small kids, and frankly I just don’t have the time or patience to be a full time sysadmin. Proton has come a long way in providing alternatives to Gmail, GCalendar, GDrive, etc., but like you said if you want to replace ALL of Google you practically have to self host a gazillion Nextcloud instances or whatever.
OK, then let’s check my idiocy.
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Web-browser? I’m using Firefox since the beginning of this year.
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Email? I’ve an account on ProtonMail for serious stuff, and Gmail for garbage, less serious stuff and spam collector.
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Cloud storage? Well, unless anyone can gift me a Raspberry Pi, a hub and an ELI5 Nextcloud manual for dummies, I have to keep using Google Drive.
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Videos? That depends. I’m watching videos on Youtube, but I’m uploading my own content on Peertube.
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Phone? I need another ELI5 custom rom manual for dummies, and it has to be specific for my device. Otherwise, I’ll keep using Android, but with most minimum usage of Google apps.
I think that’s all.
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Except when it doesn’t. That saying never made sense (far more species have gone extinct than exist today) and it doesn’t apply here.
Piracy will continue, obviously, but what we’re seeing here is the creation of an internet we can’t even fathom yet. This is just where it starts.
Also consider how much more difficult it will be for the average person to participate in piracy. Remember a few months back when Microsoft floated they were basically looking to lock down windows? No unsigned apps, no win32, etc. People will get around that, of course, but fewer people will. Especially if they continue with this trend towards stripping options and de-admin-ing all users unless they pay for an enterprise license.
Then there’s the dangerous trend toward encryption being broken by regulation and possibly even VPNs being rendered useless for anyone but businesses. There goes secure torrenting.
The trends don’t look good, across the board. We can’t just sit here and hope it all works out and the loopholes are found, like it always has before.
Use Firefox.
Support Firefox.
Using alternative Chromium based browsers is not it.
Firefox is wonderful 💯
I absolutely would if I could get it to run decently on my Mac… it just slows to a crawl, especially page scrolling. I’m stuck on Edge for now, but having a look at Orion as an alternative
I’ve been using firefox almost exclusively on my macs for years. It never gives me any issues.
And then the plan to force everyone to abandon Firefox whether they like it or not.
- Implement the misfeatures.
- Movie and music websites will be the first to announce requiring DRM to be able to watch movies or listen to tunes.
- The banks will be next. “For your safety, you must use an Official Approved Browser™ to be allowed access to your money!”
- Then ecommerce sites. “You must have DRM enabled to be allowed to buy anything.”
- Then comes the social media sites. For your safety, of course…
At that point, the userbase of anything that’s not Chrome or not DRM’d to death will be so eroded that virtually everyone else will abandon Firefox support, DRM will get enabled by default. Also, comes the lobbyists to Congress demanding changes to the DMCA to throw users in prison who dare to try to crack the DRM to block ads. “Ad-blocking is stealing!”
This right here is what has always scared me. The internet is getting more and more controlled and locked down as the years go on. The general population will not take up for, Linux, Firefox, etc. Neither will the services we now rely upon like banking etc. So we will be forced.
I think it was always sketch from the beginning that governments and educational institutions used proprietary software. Too much money changing hands. Too many opaque business dealings. Too many cogs who don’t care to understand, though they’re not unreachable. Louis Rossman, the Mac repair guy from YouTube has done a lot of pro-consumer, pro-freedom videos lately and a few of my non-nerdy friends have really had light bulbs go off for them.
Just means I’ll have the shittiest Chromebook I can buy used, for access to the sites you just listed, and my Linux laptop for everything else. If their non-financial, non-commerce site won’t let me in with my adblocking Linux machine, I just won’t go there. There will be lots of site still, run by us, that don’t do this shit, and they’ll get my traffic.
And I can bet that Google will spy on your home network from that shitty chromebook
Just means I’ll have the shittiest Chromebook I can buy
Google Exec: “But you did buy it, yes?”
Not from them! They don’t make a dime when I buy yours.
My thoughts on buying used Nintendo games. Love the IPS hate how Nintendo treats people. I’ll gladly buy the new Pokémon game from you for 2 quid less than retail.
To all of mentioned above from the bottom of my heart
Then ecommerce sites. “You must have DRM enabled to be allowed to buy anything.”
I’m actually not sure about this one. Money is money. If I’m a vendor, and a bunch of bots want to give me money, I say bring it on. Why would any ecommerce vendor add that layer of friction, which could actually prevent a user from buying something from them? What’s in it for the vendor?
Seems to me the more likely anti-consumer hell is a points dystopia leveraged by monopolistic companies. Like apple, microsoft, or disney moving to some sort of loyalty points system where you can only buy their products using a currency and credit system that they control. Like, ‘stream this movie using your disney points card’. We’re not far off from that really.
Hi. I finally have the balls to ask, what is DRM? I am kind of a neophyte in all tech matters. But I managed to get out of Reddit because it was full of baits and ridden with apple ads. And so I like this new platform, reminds me of the good old gamefaqs forums days. Hope all this slicker simpler UI from and for users never die…
Digital Rights Management. AKA the stuff that’s supposed to prevent unauthorized copying and suchlike, but in practice just means the pirates have a better experience than legit customers.
I don’t think any of this would stop me from using FF for day to day browsing.
2 - At this point I’d just pirate it. I don’t care. If you’re going to be hostile to paying customers, I’m going to be a non-paying customer again.
3 - Separate banking app. Not bothered about desktop banking
4 - Fine I’ll support local businesses where possible, and use dedicated apps or if necessary Chrome (preferably sandboxed) specifically for shopping where not.
5 - Social media was a mistake anyway, already deleted Twitter, I need very little excuse to get rid of Facebook as well.
Honestly I think this is just the end phase of “Web 2.0” as I remember all this shit being labelled at the time. We managed fine with independent forums etc before and will manage again.
Edit: I love the irony that people are killing off Reddit due to API access but the only way I’ve been able to post on lemmy.world is via the website. Connect app? Nope!
Pretty much on board with this plan and already moving that direction step by step. Last year I started my deGoogling process again including switching to Firefox and working towards a gApps free phone. This year I mostly left Reddit. When the YouTube adblock stuff started coming up I’ve been waiting… show me one un-blockable ad, I fucking double dog dare you YouTube.
We’re ripe for a video revolution because content creators might be the only people more pissed at YouTube than the users. I kind of disengaged when everyone started having to imply controversial topics or use similar sounding words. That was too far for me and if I can’t speak freely, or I have to listen to a bunch of people constantly self-censor, I will freely find my way to the door in search of greener pastures.
Facebook popped this shit up on me the other day that said “Your AdBlocker will prevent you from seeing important updates from your Friends! Disable it now.” Important updates from my friends you say? Like the ones where my naive friends like a random super-popular post and get inadvertently subscribed to a page and later that page takes out an ad and my friends name gets put under it like “Billy Bob likes this corporate swill” Never gonna happen. If I can’t use it without an ad blocker I’m deleting what I can and moving on. If I’m paying for a product, I’ll pay for one that puts the benefit to the user as their first priority.
Thanks for letting me rant on your comment. Here’s to hoping the internet somehow gets less shitty. :)
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It isn’t Google Engineers wanting to do it. It’s Google engineers being told to do it.
this is what i’m frustrated with. why do all these engineers let themselves be told what to do even if it makes a worse-functioning tool? that’s not real engineering.
“because they’ll get fired”
not if enough of them do the thing that should’ve been what got them interested in engineering in the first place.
maybe we shouldn’t call them engineers, but something else relating to being the one who does the dirty work for institutions that aim to steal people’s attention and decrease their quality of life.
and if they do get fired, then they should join together and make the reasonable company that makes good tools for human use.
A point made by Morten Rand-Hendriksen: We software engineers are not real engineers. Unlike other kind of engineers, we do not have to follow industry code of conudct like meachincal engineers or civil engineers. We are just a bunch dudes that learned to use tensorflow on stackoverflow. That is why our work is dangerous and we can always just “be told” what to do for money.
Airplanes could not be built like that. Calling ourselfs “engineers” is misleading as it suggest we follow some ethics or code of conduct. It will hurt us on the long run.
That’s called doing your job though. Do you just regularly… tell your boss to fuck off with their requirements?
In an environment where software engineers are being laid off by the thousands, I don’t think anyone’s going to hand in a resignation letter just because the prestigious ad company they’re working for is… making them force ads on people.
Many of them will also have to go back to India if they quit their jobs. What’s that, a 10x difference in income?
Also, it’s probably only a handful of people who are implementing this ‘enhancement.’ It’s not like a small team has any real bargaining power.
Google and Chrome really need to be broken up. Maybe people should start writing (physical) letters to the FTC asking to review Google’s recent actions as monopolistic behavior.
It wouldn’t be the first time. But showing the interest is the best way to get the ball rolling that we can do.
Honest curiosity on your answer to this.
Google is the developer of Chromium and the Chrome browser which uses Chromium. Chromium is free and open source (though owned by Google).
I’m not sure how you break up Chrome and Google. That’s literally their product. Who are we giving this to? There are browsers that do not use Chromium (e.g., Firefox and Safari being the big ones).
Companies have gotten broken up before, like AT&T once did many years ago. In this case, a Google breakup would probably separate some of their services into different companies. At the very least Google (the “advertising” company) should be separate from Chrome (the “browser” company), because it creates a conflict of interest and creates monopolistic behavior.
In any case, trying to do something is better than doing nothing and hoping it turns out all right.
The year is 2023, every single major tech companies are racing each other to become Public Enemy No. 1. And the only Hero we have is the EU, will it be able to save the day?
Don’t have too much faith in the EU. Corporations are still heavily influencing politics. They will probably come with half assed laws that have loopholes or workarounds.
Like GDPR?
/s
I don’t get the “/s”.
The #GDPR is absolutely a perfect example of ½-assed laws & loopholes. I have filed reports on dozens of GDPR violations; not a single one of them lead to enforcement. The GDPR is just a prop to make people feel comfortable as the EU destroys the offline infrastructure.
I did as well for the Catholic Church. I don’t want to have my name associated with a gang of child molesters so I invoked the right to be forgotten. The church told me that baptism is sacred and cannot be undone. The Dutch institution for GDPR claims never did anything about it because they’re overloaded with requests.
Oh well, I’m not willing to give it more energy either. It’s mildly annoying but doesn’t affect my day to day life.
Maybe you misunderstand the enforcement part of the GDPR. It’s not made for you to get personal enforcement out of it. It works on the basis of multiple infractions being recorded and then escalating the agencies response level.
I work with many companies as IT consultant and I can assure you, that they all FEAR the GDPR and treat natural person data very well because of that. Enforcement of GDPR does happen and you can review every enforcement on a public website called enforcement tracker. There are almost 1980 enforcement actions in their database.
I have also personally requested information about me and my family through the rights bestowed by the GDPR regulations and have EVERY TIME gotten the information within 30 days.
Maybe you misunderstand the enforcement part of the GDPR. It’s not made for you to get personal enforcement out of it.
You obviously have not read article 77. This article entitles individuals to report GDPR violations to a DPA for enforcement. Article 77 does not distinguish violations against an individual (which I suppose is what you mean by “personal enforcement”) and violations against many. Some of the violations I have reported can only be construed as violations against the general public. E.g. an org fails to designate a DPO.
The problem is there is nothing to enforce article 77 itself. When a DPA neglects to act on an article 77 report, there is no recourse. There is only a provision that allows lawsuits against the GDPR violators. But then when someone did that, and then claimed legal costs, an Italian court decided for everyone in a precedence-setting case that legal costs are not recoverable. Which essentially neuters the court action remedy. So we have an unenforced article 77 and a costly & impractical direct action option.
It works on the basis of multiple infractions being recorded and then escalating the agencies response level.
It’s not even doing that much, in some cases. The report has to get past the front desk secretary and be submitted into the litigation chamber before it’s even considered as something that would indicate a trend. If it doesn’t get past the secretary it does nothing whatsoever. Some of my reports were flippantly rejected by a pre-screening secretary for bogus reasons (e.g. “your complaint is ‘contractual in nature’” when in fact there is no contractual agreement, apart from the fact that the existence of a contract does not nullify the GDPR anyway).
I work with many companies as IT consultant and I can assure you, that they all FEAR the GDPR
So you’re only seeing the commercial response. Gov agencies & NGOs are also subject to the GDPR, which is where you see the most recklessness (likely due to the lack of penalty). On the commercial side banks also don’t give much of a shit about the GDPR because when they violate it there’s a shit ton of banking regs they point to and the DPAs are afraid to act against banks because of the messy entanglement of AML/KYC laws that essentially push #banks to violate the GDPR.
Enforcement of GDPR does happen and you can review every enforcement on a public website called enforcement tracker.
Indeed I’ve browsed through the enforcement tracker. It’s a good prop for making the public believe that the #GDPR is being well enforced. They are cherry-picking cases to enforce to convince the public that something is being done, but people who actually submit reports know better. We see the reports that are clearly going unenforced.
I have also personally requested information about me and my family through the rights bestowed by the GDPR
I have had article 15 access requests denied which I then reported to the DPA, who opened a case but just sat on it. For years, so far.
(edit) By the way, I suggest you leave Lemmy·world for a different instance. If you care about privacy at all, you don’t use Cloudflare nodes. I cannot even see the msg I wrote (which you replied to) because #lemmyWorld blocks me (which I give some detail here: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/1435972). I had to reply to you based purely on your msg without context.
Forcing this might very well be something EU opposes. While there is a lot of corporate lobbying, Google would be forcing everyone to either use chromium or make compatibility changes into other browser. While not a total monopoly, it still limits the options radically. Therefore there might be hope that EU forbids this type of action. Let’s see…
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We already can’t due to Google’s pushing of irrelevant promoted sites and failing to take meaningful action against SEO in recent years.
The EU has a larger population than the US, that’s not a market you just leave. Also, Europe is not the same as the European Union.
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The EU has a PPP GDP of $24.05 trillion compared to the US’ $25.4 trillion. That is a market of significant size and leaving it will affect Google’s bottom line.
You can compare Alabama and France all you want, that is irrelevant. Or should I perhaps start comparing Mississippi and Luxembourg?
Lastly, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Google isn’t the only search engine in existence. Bing, Qwant et al. will gladly fill the void that Google leaves behind.
Even if they do that, some people will just create illegal website mirrors that remove ads.
On reddit, people already copy paste articles when there’s a paywall. I can totally envision that thing to be more common.
I am not fucking kidding, I will stop using websites if I cannot block ads. This is non negotiable. I don’t care about your business model, I have zero money to give you. I tried the official reddit app, and uninstalled within a week.
Same here. Actually I uninstalled the official Reddit app within a day after seeing all these ads. My web experience is almost completely ad-free and if some ad or site comes around with ads ir user tracking, I don’t use it.
I haven’t watched any un-proxied YouTube video for over five years now. Not sure how long this will still be possible in the future but I hope that also in the future people will find ways to circumvene big-tech surveillance.
I said this the other day and had a user suggest there’s no point because Google will win, and it’ll be impossible to avoid this DRM garbage. They didn’t seem to grasp that you can just not use the websites that use that tech.
I won’t use them then, and go offline I guess
I’ve even seen websites that copy stackoverflow questions and answers word for word, and just displays them differently.
I think that’s spammy SEO abuse though… Not circumventing ads or anything.
Well if the OG source uses DRM, fuck em! I don’t care if Google’s search engine goes to shit. Not sure how much shittier it can get, but fuck em!
“Google engineers want…”
No. Google executives want this to happen. Google’s CEO wants this to happen.
They want to change the internet and remove any little bit of freedom for their own corporate profits.
Fuck “do no evil” Google.
Do? No, evil.
Why not both, Google engineers and Google execs? If you’ve ever looked at how Google engineers talk on the Linux kernel mailing lists, and their code in android internals, they tend to have a “we know best” or holier than thou attitude.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see this trash also coming from the same kind of Google developers who act like that.
These engineers are just trying to keep their job. There’s probably a lead or a manager somewhere in line with upper management involved in this and looking over the developers’ shoulders.
Google engineers can work anywhere they want. They’re responsible for this shit too. Tech is full of greedy devs with no ethics.
That’s a narrow way to view things. Google hires a LOT of people with work visas that tie them to the company.
Are the Google executives the ones that are going to write it?
No, Indian people on H-1B visas desperate for a better life are going to write it.
Holy shit. This! ☝️☝️☝️
Google execs incentivize engineers to build shit by dangling promotions to those who participate.
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.
Use Firefox.
Even the Android version lets you install uBlock Origin.
Can’t on iOS though 😓
That’s Apples fault. They force every mobile browser to be a reskinned version of Safari.
Why’s everyone blaming the engineers lol, pretty sure they’re just doing what they’re told right?
Exactly, headline should be more like “Google executives want Google engineers to make ad-blocking (near) impossible”
Alright, today is oficially the day I switch to Firefox
Google is such a bad company. People should discontinue use of all their software and at the very least stop using chrome or chromium. They’ve got the internet by the balls.
I’ve tried internet without adblock and it’s almost unusable.
On banking websites, yes.
You know something is wrong if your bank’s website needs adblocking. No wonder the internet has gone to shit… Is it that bad in other countries? ( i live in a country where bank sites dont have ads )
