Your choice of browser matters — Google’s Web DRM and the open internet
https://grafcube.codeberg.page/blog/2023/08/06/web-drm-api.html
I wrote this blog post to inform the people I know who aren’t as tech savvy or otherwise don’t put any thought into their choice of browser. Another goal is to help get enough awareness on the topic and make sure it fails.
@opensource @privacy #webintegrityapi #WEI #google #mozilla #chrome #firefox #chromium #foss #opensource #OpenWeb #privacy #drm #nodrm #drmfree #freesoftware #browser
This new invention from Google has nothing to do with the browser you use. It is an API incorporated into, with Google affiliates and its own, web pages, which allows these pages to block any browser “for security reasons”, when it does not have a Google Token incorporated, that accredits it as secure. That is, it is then Google itself who decides which browser is worthy to access the web. It doesn’t matter which browser you use, or incorporate this Token in it, or forget about a large part of the internet and anyway about any Google page or service (Gmail, YouTube, GDrive, GoogleMaps, …). This is the danger that the free internet faces, that Google decides which browser is worth using and which is not, being able to allow only Chrome itself as the only valid browser to access half of the pages on the network, and Game over for everyone else, Chromium, Gecko, WebKit or any other, without Google Token in it no internet, except if some geek comes up with some Fake Token which can be used (complicated)🤬.
For the downvoters, also Firefox and forks need to insert this Google Token in the Browser or die. Because of this Mozilla, Vivaldi and several others have started a protest before the legislator to prevent this crap. In the EU there is already a debate whether or not this is compatible with GDPR and user rights. We’ll see what comes of this. It is legitimate that Google provides tools to web pages to protect against entries from bots and insecure browsers, but it is not legitimate that the decision which browser is secure and which is not, depends on this company, only a certificate from an independent technical institution can be valid on technical grounds and not by Google itself for possible commercial reasons.