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I personally choose to block ubiquitous 3rd parties by default[1], to fight both bloat AND privacy exposure. This AMP project reduces the bloat but at the cost

by gorhill 11y ago

I personally choose to block ubiquitous 3rd parties by default[1], to fight both bloat AND privacy exposure. This AMP project reduces the bloat but at the cost of increased privacy exposure. If I globally block `ampproject.org` when visiting a AMP-enabled web pages, the pages do not render at all. My understanding is that now all "Google and its partners" have foiled the ability of visitors to protect their privacy with this AMP project -- and all these partners are given access to my browsing history. This goes completely counter to "The Internet is for End Users"[2]. I hope people will boycott by blocking wholesale `ampproject.org` as 3rd party -- this needs to fail. [1] Examples: `twitter.com`, `facebook.[com|net]`, `gravatar.com`, `fonts.googleapis.com`, etc. [2] http://mnot.github.io/I-D/for-the-users/ http://mnot.github.io/I-D/for-the-users/

tombrossman 11y ago
I'm curious why you say "when visiting a AMP-enabled web pages, the pages do not render at all". I'm not seeing the same result. The first two 'AMP' pages I tested loaded very quickly and were easily readable. I use Firefox with NoScript, which is definitely blocking the JS from ampproject.org. I also use Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin (thanks btw) and I'm not having any trouble at all. Here are the figures for the two pages I've tested with so far: 1- Visiting https://www.ampproject.org/how-it-works/ https://www.ampproject.org/how-it-works/ loads a perfectly readable page weighing 16.05kB in 40ms. It's just one file, the HTML document. 2- Visiting The Verge's demo page http://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2015/10/7/9467149/google-accelerated-mobile-pages-caching-preview http://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2015/10/7/9467149/googl... also loads a single perfectly readable HTML document weighing 17.6kB in 184ms. I've used NoScript for quite a while and while I don't expect every page to work perfectly with it, the speed gains are incredible! AMP and NoScript aren't directly comparable but they seem to be accomplishing the same thing for me. Only one of them is also blocking third-party tracking and delivering feather-light pages which nearly always render acceptably. Can you please clarify whether you mean the pages are totally blank, or if they just don't render the same as if you had allowed them to execute JS? (obviously if you globally block ampproject.org you can't access even their index.html page but that's not the info I'm after...)
- plorkyeran 11y ago
  The Verge's page initially gave me a plain white page, but then I realized I was blocking JS from ampproject.org but allowing it from theverge.com, and that combination isn't supported. You have to either block or allow both.
- gorhill 11y ago
  This is what I get if I block `ampproject.org` (which -- given its purpose -- is meant to become ubiquitous): A blank page.[1] In reality, the speed gain (which is the advertised benefit of AMP) is just a matter of avoiding to pull all the optional 3rd parties. For example, a non-AMP random article from the same site[2], the page loads quite fast when I block all 3rd-party scripts/frames, except those from `vox-cdn.com` and `voxmedia.com`. The page renders fine -- with the virtuous "side effect" that 18 more 3rd-party are not logging network requests from my IP in their server logs (in this specific case).[3] [1] https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/585534/10397383/6c93aeae-6e75-11e5-918e-39a587ecb888.png https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/585534/10397383/6... [2] http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/9/9486505/california-calecpa-electronic-surveillance-warrant-law http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/9/9486505/california-calecpa... [3] The total number of 3rd-party in this specific case climb to at least 48 without a blocker.
elidourado 11y ago
What about selective noscript on amp pages? Should be doable with an extension. Pages will render and no tracking.

by gorhill 11y ago

tombrossman 11y ago

I'm curious why you say "when visiting a AMP-enabled web pages, the pages do not render at all". I'm not seeing the same result. The first two 'AMP' pages I tested loaded very quickly and were easily readable. I use Firefox with NoScript, which is definitely blocking the JS from ampproject.org. I also use Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin (thanks btw) and I'm not having any trouble at all. Here are the figures for the two pages I've tested with so far: 1- Visiting https://www.ampproject.org/how-it-works/ https://www.ampproject.org/how-it-works/ loads a perfectly readable page weighing 16.05kB in 40ms. It's just one file, the HTML document. 2- Visiting The Verge's demo page http://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2015/10/7/9467149/google-accelerated-mobile-pages-caching-preview http://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2015/10/7/9467149/googl... also loads a single perfectly readable HTML document weighing 17.6kB in 184ms. I've used NoScript for quite a while and while I don't expect every page to work perfectly with it, the speed gains are incredible! AMP and NoScript aren't directly comparable but they seem to be accomplishing the same thing for me. Only one of them is also blocking third-party tracking and delivering feather-light pages which nearly always render acceptably. Can you please clarify whether you mean the pages are totally blank, or if they just don't render the same as if you had allowed them to execute JS? (obviously if you globally block ampproject.org you can't access even their index.html page but that's not the info I'm after...)

plorkyeran 11y ago
The Verge's page initially gave me a plain white page, but then I realized I was blocking JS from ampproject.org but allowing it from theverge.com, and that combination isn't supported. You have to either block or allow both.
gorhill 11y ago
This is what I get if I block `ampproject.org` (which -- given its purpose -- is meant to become ubiquitous): A blank page.[1] In reality, the speed gain (which is the advertised benefit of AMP) is just a matter of avoiding to pull all the optional 3rd parties. For example, a non-AMP random article from the same site[2], the page loads quite fast when I block all 3rd-party scripts/frames, except those from `vox-cdn.com` and `voxmedia.com`. The page renders fine -- with the virtuous "side effect" that 18 more 3rd-party are not logging network requests from my IP in their server logs (in this specific case).[3] [1] https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/585534/10397383/6c93aeae-6e75-11e5-918e-39a587ecb888.png https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/585534/10397383/6... [2] http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/9/9486505/california-calecpa-electronic-surveillance-warrant-law http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/9/9486505/california-calecpa... [3] The total number of 3rd-party in this specific case climb to at least 48 without a blocker.

elidourado 11y ago

What about selective noscript on amp pages? Should be doable with an extension. Pages will render and no tracking.