6 ms·

Moral posturing sure is fun, but we'll see what happens once Chrome becomes the only browser that you can use to log in to your bank. Mozilla made lots of noise

• bee_rider 3y ago
  It would be annoying to buy a separate device just to access my bank. Not annoying enough to change banks of course, but it could be the straw that broke the camel’s back if I was already inclined to switch.
  • quickthrower2 3y ago
    Cryptocurrency gets a lot of hate, but it doesn’t mandate your user agent.
    • slimsag 3y ago
      If banks require WEI, then maybe it's time to boycott the banks too. Brave should start redirecting people who go to bank websites to a crypto exchange instead. oh wait..
      • Dah00n 3y ago
        Not the best forum for Brave criticism... or snarky comments :)
  • Semaphor 3y ago
    > It would be annoying to buy a separate device just to access my bank. Not annoying enough to change banks of course Why "of course"? That would very much be annoying enough for me to switch. I switched banks because they decided to randomly start requiring SafetyNet to pass.
    • bee_rider 3y ago
      I dunno. I just like my credit union I guess. All my auto payments are set up with them, I’ve overdraw a bunch of times and they haven’t charged me (I fix it soon afterwards, it is just a matter of account juggling), they do everything pretty quickly and have friendly customer service. Actually come to think of it, it is not a very serious problem for me, I already have an iPhone which will presumably support whatever DRM scheme. So, I guess I already have the second locked down device anyway. Linux on the laptop/desktop for real internet, iPhone for the nanny-corp net I guess.
  • silisili 3y ago
    Weird. I'd find changing browsers a bigger pain than changing banks. I have like six accounts already, if one refuses to work with Brave, I'll just move the funds and cancel it...
• Teever 3y ago
  There seems to be a lot of condemnation and finger wagging towards the small-time browser makers in your comment. Do you feel that Google is being a good steward of the internet with their dominant position?
  • dxyms 3y ago
    I think it's just a defeatist attitude, no real condemnation.
  • p-e-w 3y ago
    Google isn't a "steward" of anything. They are an entity concerned with expanding their own power. And there is absolutely nothing that you, or I, or any other browser maker, can do about it. But at the very least, we can be honest. If Mozilla published a blog post today that said something like "While we are ideologically opposed to WebEnvironmentIntegrity, we will almost certainly be forced to implement it in Firefox eventually", my respect for them would rise tremendously. Firefox has lost. There is no shame in admitting it. But there is shame in pretending it isn't so.
    • ssklash 3y ago
      When you're a core member of the W3C, and you use that position to push browser features that help your browser and remove features that hurt your ad/surveillance-based business model, you are a steward, and a bad faith one at that. Your own phrasing indicates that there is a battle to be lost or won, and Google has indeed won. Which is pretty clearly a bad thing for the Internet as a whole, and quite good for a single company and their shareholders.
    • bryanrasmussen 3y ago
      historically respect has been reserved for people who kept fighting to the bitter end and not for those who gave up.
      • p-e-w 3y ago
        Nope. Only for those lucky one-in-a-thousand among them who did eventually win. Nobody respects, or even remembers, those who fought "to the bitter end" but lost anyway.
• mouse_ 3y ago
  I know resistance is futile but saying it doesn't improve anything I say give people the right to try.
• userbinator 3y ago
  If you think you're going to lose and give up, you'll certainly lose. If you keep fighting, you might get a chance to win. which they will lose just like they lost all the other battles they fought over the past 10 years or so. The public managed to convince Intel to disable the serial number feature of their processors 23 years ago. It's possible --- there just needs to be enough opposition. Stop with the defeatism and start by exercising your right to free speech upon everyone who supports WEI and the authoritarian dystopia.
  • p-e-w 3y ago
    > The public managed to convince Intel to disable the serial number feature of their processors 23 years ago. At a time when technology companies were just companies – not the system that effectively runs much of the world. Mozilla also pushed Microsoft out of a core market once. That would never happen today, regardless of how good Firefox becomes. Today's technology industry is nothing like it was in the 90s. "The public" has as much chance of stopping WEI as it has of getting the United States Military to disarm.
    • bawolff 3y ago
      > Mozilla also pushed Microsoft out of a core market once. That would never happen today, regardless of how good Firefox becomes. Didn't chrome effectively do that in the present? Edge is barely an independent browser
      • p-e-w 3y ago
        Yeah, but Google is a million times more powerful than Mozilla. Which is the whole point.
    • TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
      > Today's technology industry is nothing like it was in the 90s Mozilla did not dethrone IE in the 90s. And I disagree with your statement that end users (“the public”) can’t stop a browser feature. MV3 was scaled back because of this.
• EMIRELADERO 3y ago
  As I said in another comment before, you could have said the same thing about Apple's restrictions on iOS app distribution, and yet that's about to change due to legislation from the EU. What leads you to think that a similar thing won't happen here, if the problem is serious enough?
  • Dah00n 3y ago
    In my opinion this is different. As I see it, in your example, this would be suing an app maker for the closed down app store. In OPs example Google is providing a feature, that you can use or not freely, then the bank dicided to use it. The problem is of course Google providing it but it is the bank that close down their site for non-chrome users, not Google.
    • EMIRELADERO 3y ago
      Legislatively speaking at least, it has a simple solution. Make it illegal for entities above a certain size to refuse service to users based on the status/control of the devices used to access them.
• irdc 3y ago
  > (…) we'll see what happens once Chrome becomes the only browser that you can use to log in to your bank. I guess the EU will sue Google for anti-competitive behaviour.
  • msla 3y ago
    OK, we'll have twenty browsers, all different skins on Chromium and all controlled by Google, and see if the EU legislators can understand the concept, and, if they can, whether the banks will allow them to continue to understand said concept.
  • Dah00n 3y ago
    I doubt they will since it is the bank using a feature, not Google that force them.
  • ggm 3y ago
    If the reason "only chrome" works is that the others refuse to ship signed binaries, I think google is going to be in court with a reasonable case. They make the signing barrier low. It's as low as store entry. The refusal to sign code isn't an "only google can do it" thing its "only signed browsers can do it, but there can be many signed browsers" of course the case is more complex: the reasons they won't sign will be material.
    • irdc 3y ago
      Yes, but each and every website needs to explicitly allow each and every browser key. Which increases barriers to entry for new browser vendors and makes Open Source / Free Software browsers nigh impossible. The EU isn’t stupid and is kinda fond of Open Source / Free Software (because it serves as a way to make the EU economy and society less dependent on foreign tech giants). Don’t worry, Brussels will save ya. :)
      • mike_hearn 3y ago
        > Yes, but each and every website needs to explicitly allow each and every browser key You mean like how browsers need to explicitly allow each and every root CA key? If that's the basis on which a legal case is built then it'd fail even in the ECJ, because all that's required is set up an equivalent of the root store programmes and it's solved. The way this would actually work is something like: websites just "apt-get install browser-keys", add a bit of JS to their HTML and now their nginx or apache or AWS LB just adds an extra header to proxied HTTP requests saying "X-User-Agent-Accuracy: HIGH" and "X-Extensions-Signing-Keys: <...>". Then every so often you do an apt-get update and the latest round of browser/extension signing keys get added. So there's no reason why obscure browsers can't take part in this scheme, just like how obscure CAs can take part in the web PKI. Nor does it make open source browsers impossible. Just like how there are open source CA software stacks, so too can you compile your own browser, publish the code, sign binaries of it and get those signing keys into whatever equivalent of the root store programme would appear. Availability of source code is irrelevant. Establishing trust in your operation is the hard part but you have to do that anyway if you want to get users, just like how you can set up your own CA using a simple GUI on macOS but getting people to actually trust it is a different kettle of fish. Not that there's much chance of any of this actually happening outside of mobile anyway. It's all quite theoretical on desktop. Windows is too far behind on remote attestation tech and the general OS security stance for it to happen anytime soon, especially with so many users not upgrading to Windows 11. But if people want to argue against remote attestation, you'll have to learn how it actually works. Otherwise you're just going to make bad arguments and your opponents will beat you.
• EMM_386 3y ago
  > just like they lost all the other battles they fought over the past 10 years or so. History repeats itself. I'm old enough to remember the IE lawsuit in 2001. Now I'm reading articles about how Microsoft is abusing its desktop position to push Edge, and Chrome is abusing its stance as the dominant browser to push this nonsense. Give it 10 more years, it will die down. Then 10 years after that we'll be discussing the same thing again.
  • technick 3y ago
    Google begged me at least 3 times today to use chrome, with things like "For a faster google experience, try Chrome" or "Google drive is better on Chrome". I'm a firefox user till the day it dies, or I die, which ever one comes first.
• noufalibrahim 3y ago
  Memories are short. Everyone who got on the early web knew the problems that would come with one browser dominating the market. We had that with IE and it took a lot of work and trouble to dismantle that. It was quite obvious from day 1 that Chrome was going to do, or atleast try to do, the same thing. Yet, people fell in line. That's the problem and I'm not sure resistance or anything else is going to solve that.
• ameminator 3y ago
  As a side note, as of today Firefox has something like 2.79% of the browser market, coming in fifth, behind Opera, Edge, Safari and (of course) Chrome. Firefox only comes slightly ahead of Samsung Internet which I have only just heard of today. It's really sad to see how far Firefox has fallen. The stats: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
  • jgaa 3y ago
    One reason may be that they alienate users by copying the look, bad habits and feel of Chrome. They also engage in dark pattern UI behavior that pisses me off each time I get it in my face. Dear Firefox: If I wanted Chrome, I would use Chrome. Please be an alternative to Chrome.
  • toyg 3y ago
    3 of those are preinstalled on devices by their corporate owners (Safari is literally imposed on all iOS users). Opera today is really a VPN/proxy/bandwidth optimiser for bandwidth-poor Asian markets, and iirc is government-mandated in some cases. Firefox can do better for sure, but its competitors basically cheat.
• Prickle 3y ago
  Serious question. Am I the only person around here that doesn't do online banking at all? I don't trust the bank's website, so I always just go to the local branch. (Not that I need to do that much at all outside of withdrawing cash.)
  • silversmith 3y ago
    I think you might be. For me, the bank website is where I pay the bills, review my cash flow, and manage investments / savings. Even if others could be replaced, I can't imagine going to a physical branch just to pay for my internet connection.
    • Prickle 3y ago
      It helps that I live in Japan, so a non-online payment isn't too difficult to setup. I use one time use cashcards for the majority of online transactions.
• jgaa 3y ago
  I will not surrender in this fight. If my bank prevents me from logging in with a reasonable browser (as opposed to a privacy nightmare designed to facilitate advertisers) - I will do my bank business in person, the bank.
• xlii 3y ago
  If past is any indicator then good luck with that. ActiveX was a thing and some institutions required Internet Explorer in order to log in/provide documents. It was THE most popular browser back then. I’m curious about Apple’s stance on this. If Safari decides to not have WEI it might get very interesting.
  • imbnwa 3y ago
    And people were just out in full-force demanding Apple let other browser engines onto iOS. Hopefully those types see how practically foolish that is.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• technick 3y ago
  That's what happens when you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything. Half the population doesn't have a backbone these days, all they care about is being inconvenienced.