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"I have encouraged the team working on this to ignore feedback in any forum in which something like Chromium's code of conduct is not being maintained as anythi

"I have encouraged the team working on this to ignore feedback in any forum in which something like Chromium's code of conduct is not being maintained as anything else would be creating an unsafe working environment." - Rick Byers https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/Ux5h_kGO22g/m/0doc7unxAQAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/Ux5h_...

luag 3y ago
> It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it
alephxyz 3y ago
> Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don't give in to criminals or bullies That makes it _really_ hard to believe they're debating in good faith. Anyway the entire thread makes it sound like they're temporarily backing down but still intenting to implement something similar in the future:.
- tjpnz 3y ago
  >who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses While benefiting unethical businesses like Google? That's called a cartel.
- beej71 3y ago
  In my town, a couple (both doctors) unilaterally gated a forest service road that led to a popular outdoor area used by the citizens for years. Apparently rights of way are tough to determine on this road that's well over a century old, but the Forest is working on it. In the meantime, the doctors' business were figuratively destroyed and their property vandalized. [I don't approve of illegal actions.] And I think they're genuinely confused by the reaction of the general public. They are so far out of touch, they just can't understand. Google pushing things like this and being surprised by the violent backlash has the same feel.
  - zx8080 3y ago
    > violent backlash There's no backlash. Is there anyone stating to stop buying Google Ads? Moving to Firefox (since there's no else alternative non-Google-chromium-based browser out there)? Except the HN audience, if course. There's no danger from "users" for Google. Because their users are huge enterprises paging billions for ads. Not us. DRM is what banks love. Recently, there're several major banks' mobile apps in Singapore stopped working as they started scanning all apps installed on a device, and some they don't like (MS Authenticator, for instance; F-Droid, and any opensource apk from there, also any developers installed app). This is nightmare as mobile bank apps are a first class citizen now. Web just does not open without push dialog. Not sms otp anymore, but the app push dialog. The only way to handle it is to buy a cheapest android and install all bank apps there.
    - marak830 3y ago
      Wait what? Do you have any further details about the f-droid and Ms auth? Damnit I'm going to have to do a PSA at work if this is true.
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      > DRM is what banks love. > Recently, there're several major banks' mobile apps in Singapore stopped working as they started scanning all apps installed on a device, and some they don't like This seriously triggers me. I can't even enable developer mode on my phone without these apps flipping out. Banks in my country (Brazil) have a long standing tradition of doing this. Even on PCs they have these asinine "security plugins" for browsers. You literally cannot log into their systems without the goddamn thing installed. Not a single person managed to explain to me what they do, so years ago I was bored at work and tried my hand at reverse engineering the plugin to figure out why it made the computer so unusably slow. I caught it intercepting every single network connection. Didn't bother to check anything else. Just assumed it was phoning home with private information and started treating it like the malware it is from then on. Actually switched banks to one which didn't require this crap. These freaking banks think their "fraud prevention" justifies anything. There's a package for this "banking security tool" in the Arch User Repository. https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/warsaw https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/warsaw https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/warsaw-bin https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/warsaw-bin Who the hell knows what this thing does nowadays? Maybe it doesn't monitor people anymore, it's been years and we even have a GDPR equivalent now. But I will never install it.
- keepamovin 3y ago
  They're saying anything that disagrees with them is bullying and criminal. But, labelling anything that disagrees with them as bullying, is a bullying tactic to try to silence dissent. Why do they want to silence opposition? Because their position does not stand up to scrutiny.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    >They're saying anything that disagrees with them is bullying and criminal. That is not want was said. People making direct and indirect threats against the author are not acting in good faith and want to just silence the author without anyone fairly evaluating the proposal. >Why do they want to silence opposition? Threats are not productive for deciding if a proposal should be adopted. They are just noise. Wanting to get rid of noise and focus on signal is not "silencing opposition."
    - keepamovin 3y ago
      > People making direct and indirect threats against the author Indeed that would be the case if that were so, yet it looks like what actually occurred here is the author is abusing the labelling of bullying and criminal in order to falsely tar all disagreement as that. This labelling abuse is itself a bullying act designed to intimidate and shame into silence any disagreement by misrepresenting it as a threat. Which is itself a threat: agree with me or I will accuse you of evil and silence you. That's what it seemed like at the time. Let's note that the quoted comments are from a months' old thread. Do you have any evidence to support your claim about there being direct and indirect threats?
      - cbolton 3y ago
        In the linked Groups post, the author reports "physical threats and other forms of abuse". I find that very easy to believe and your post reads very uncharitable, unless you have concrete reasons to think that the author is lying.
        3y ago
- stodor89 3y ago
  Justifying shady corporate practices by pretending to stand the moral high-ground is nothing new. Just recall Apple's child pornography nonsense. "We are introducing web DRM to protect users from those evil people out there..." The hell you are.
kelnos 3y ago
> It's somewhat ironic to me that some folks arguing passionately for the openness of the web (something I and many of the proposal contributors are also passionate about) I cannot imagine the level of cognitive dissonance required to simultaneously believe you are passionate about the open web, and push something like WEI. Either they're flat out lying about their "passion", or they've internalized some very contradictory ideas. Not sure which is worse. Of course then there's: > Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don't give in to criminals or bullies. Which makes me think they're just lying. Or, at best, they don't understand basic logic. Personal attacks and doxing are unacceptable, but just because people who do bad things hold a certain opinion, it doesn't mean everyone who holds that opinion does bad things. Or even that more than a small, vocal minority do. But ultimately Google is an advertising & surveillance capitalism company. If you're going to work there, and on one of most of their public-facing products, it's pretty likely you're going to eventually do shady things in service of the company's main revenue streams. Your continued employment depends on it.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >I cannot imagine the level of cognitive dissonance required to simultaneously believe you are passionate about the open web, and push something like WEI. Imagine a world where EME was not accepted as a standard. 1. Browsers do nothing to support DRM and sites like Netflix recommend people to just use a native app to experience the full Netflix experience. This weakens the open web by having sites leave the web and opt to move users to the mobile web instead. 2. Browsers adopt a closed standard for DRM. This weakens the open web because now a care use case of the web now uses a closed standard instead of an open one.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    3. Firefox somehow manages to remain the dominant browser, refuses to adopt the standard and sites have to suck it up and deal with it. If only that had actually happened.
38 3y ago
> unsafe working environment what does that even mean? we are talking about internet arguments here right? how does "safety" even enter the conversation? this guy sounds off his rocker. > find ways to reduce the harms of invalid traffic across the whole web crazy talk.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  Makes sense to me. If during the course of your work you have to read a bunch of internet comments with so much vitriol it is a personal and psychological safety issue. Personally I would not have chosen any job that would subject me to this kind of psychological abuse, and I would imagine someone choosing to work at Google would have thought the same. Curiously your HN profile says "removed due to doxing, because people are awful" so I'd like to think you at least would have the empathy to imagine someone experiencing something similar to what you experienced. Internet arguments can hurt people; period.
  - 38 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - jchw 3y ago
    Agreed. And, I can imagine anyone working on anything like WEI will not find a safe work environment so as long as their work environment involves being on the internet in any shape or form. So I guess if you work on the Chrome team and this is assigned to you, I genuinely do feel empathy, although I also think that you should probably quit if you value psychological safety. This is a complicated issue. I view work as a mutual exchange: I work on software in exchange for money. It is a bonus when I think the software or mission is genuinely cool. That said, I'm not one to be highly moralizing about it. I'd quit if someone asked me to do something illegal, and I will (and have) generally refuse to do work that is just simply morally bankrupt (And I have been tested on this. Early in my career, I refused to remove annual subscription renewal reminders for a subscription service. I didn't suggest that I would quit if it were done, but I voiced my disapproval and made it clear I wouldn't do it. We didn't wind up doing this, thankfully.) But, I will generally work on things that I don't agree with. I'm vocal about it, but work is work. But y'know, people have livelihoods to maintain. It's easy to say this if you live alone, have plenty in the bank, a great safety net, and a great network. (Not that all of that applies to me, but for sake of argument.) Certainly the job market is also tighter and the future of software engineering as a career is uncertain in some regards. So outright refusing to do work could be a scary prospect. Even being vocal about it and rocking the boat may be scary. But that said, this being the case does not make the answer any less certain. While harassment and toxicity that crosses certain lines is not something I think people should justify, I certainly understand the why: working on something like WEI triggers an immune response from the proponents of the open web. And while I'm sure many people would prefer to do things "right", I think that there is an overwhelming feeling that the open web is hostage to the big corporate interests, and that the open web proponents are strongly outnumbered and outgunned in the modern world. And Google never played fair anyway, so they probably don't feel especially enticed to either. So I think it's natural. What's going to happen is that this will probably continue to escalate, and I can't really say I strongly blame anyone. Google is probably happy to push this responsibility onto employees knowing it could be very mentally taxing, employees with increasingly poor career prospects will not want to rock the boat, and disgruntled "internet activists" who feel pushed to their limits are unlikely to care tremendously about the emotional damage they cause (it's not like the Internet is really known for its kindness to begin with.) I'm thinking it's gonna be a good time to pivot away from computer careers these next few years...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gardenhedge 3y ago
Nonsense and an excuse to ignore any criticism they don't like
Pannoniae 3y ago
I'm sorry for the raw words but this is soy as fuck. This is the usual excuse of "well, we got harassment (which we totally deserved) so we are finally justified to do <bad thing>"... These companies present it like harassment and threats just come out of nowhere because people are unreasonable or "hateful", and they refuse to acknowledge they deliberately create the conditions for such extreme measures. If they don't want harassment or threats, they should maybe stop messing with people's stuff...

luag 3y ago

> It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it

alephxyz 3y ago

> Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don't give in to criminals or bullies That makes it _really_ hard to believe they're debating in good faith. Anyway the entire thread makes it sound like they're temporarily backing down but still intenting to implement something similar in the future:.

tjpnz 3y ago
>who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses While benefiting unethical businesses like Google? That's called a cartel.
beej71 3y ago
In my town, a couple (both doctors) unilaterally gated a forest service road that led to a popular outdoor area used by the citizens for years. Apparently rights of way are tough to determine on this road that's well over a century old, but the Forest is working on it. In the meantime, the doctors' business were figuratively destroyed and their property vandalized. [I don't approve of illegal actions.] And I think they're genuinely confused by the reaction of the general public. They are so far out of touch, they just can't understand. Google pushing things like this and being surprised by the violent backlash has the same feel.
- zx8080 3y ago
  > violent backlash There's no backlash. Is there anyone stating to stop buying Google Ads? Moving to Firefox (since there's no else alternative non-Google-chromium-based browser out there)? Except the HN audience, if course. There's no danger from "users" for Google. Because their users are huge enterprises paging billions for ads. Not us. DRM is what banks love. Recently, there're several major banks' mobile apps in Singapore stopped working as they started scanning all apps installed on a device, and some they don't like (MS Authenticator, for instance; F-Droid, and any opensource apk from there, also any developers installed app). This is nightmare as mobile bank apps are a first class citizen now. Web just does not open without push dialog. Not sms otp anymore, but the app push dialog. The only way to handle it is to buy a cheapest android and install all bank apps there.
  - marak830 3y ago
    Wait what? Do you have any further details about the f-droid and Ms auth? Damnit I'm going to have to do a PSA at work if this is true.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    > DRM is what banks love. > Recently, there're several major banks' mobile apps in Singapore stopped working as they started scanning all apps installed on a device, and some they don't like This seriously triggers me. I can't even enable developer mode on my phone without these apps flipping out. Banks in my country (Brazil) have a long standing tradition of doing this. Even on PCs they have these asinine "security plugins" for browsers. You literally cannot log into their systems without the goddamn thing installed. Not a single person managed to explain to me what they do, so years ago I was bored at work and tried my hand at reverse engineering the plugin to figure out why it made the computer so unusably slow. I caught it intercepting every single network connection. Didn't bother to check anything else. Just assumed it was phoning home with private information and started treating it like the malware it is from then on. Actually switched banks to one which didn't require this crap. These freaking banks think their "fraud prevention" justifies anything. There's a package for this "banking security tool" in the Arch User Repository. https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/warsaw https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/warsaw https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/warsaw-bin https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/warsaw-bin Who the hell knows what this thing does nowadays? Maybe it doesn't monitor people anymore, it's been years and we even have a GDPR equivalent now. But I will never install it.
keepamovin 3y ago
They're saying anything that disagrees with them is bullying and criminal. But, labelling anything that disagrees with them as bullying, is a bullying tactic to try to silence dissent. Why do they want to silence opposition? Because their position does not stand up to scrutiny.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >They're saying anything that disagrees with them is bullying and criminal. That is not want was said. People making direct and indirect threats against the author are not acting in good faith and want to just silence the author without anyone fairly evaluating the proposal. >Why do they want to silence opposition? Threats are not productive for deciding if a proposal should be adopted. They are just noise. Wanting to get rid of noise and focus on signal is not "silencing opposition."
  - keepamovin 3y ago
    > People making direct and indirect threats against the author Indeed that would be the case if that were so, yet it looks like what actually occurred here is the author is abusing the labelling of bullying and criminal in order to falsely tar all disagreement as that. This labelling abuse is itself a bullying act designed to intimidate and shame into silence any disagreement by misrepresenting it as a threat. Which is itself a threat: agree with me or I will accuse you of evil and silence you. That's what it seemed like at the time. Let's note that the quoted comments are from a months' old thread. Do you have any evidence to support your claim about there being direct and indirect threats?
    - cbolton 3y ago
      In the linked Groups post, the author reports "physical threats and other forms of abuse". I find that very easy to believe and your post reads very uncharitable, unless you have concrete reasons to think that the author is lying.
      - 3y ago
stodor89 3y ago
Justifying shady corporate practices by pretending to stand the moral high-ground is nothing new. Just recall Apple's child pornography nonsense. "We are introducing web DRM to protect users from those evil people out there..." The hell you are.

kelnos 3y ago

> It's somewhat ironic to me that some folks arguing passionately for the openness of the web (something I and many of the proposal contributors are also passionate about) I cannot imagine the level of cognitive dissonance required to simultaneously believe you are passionate about the open web, and push something like WEI. Either they're flat out lying about their "passion", or they've internalized some very contradictory ideas. Not sure which is worse. Of course then there's: > Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don't give in to criminals or bullies. Which makes me think they're just lying. Or, at best, they don't understand basic logic. Personal attacks and doxing are unacceptable, but just because people who do bad things hold a certain opinion, it doesn't mean everyone who holds that opinion does bad things. Or even that more than a small, vocal minority do. But ultimately Google is an advertising & surveillance capitalism company. If you're going to work there, and on one of most of their public-facing products, it's pretty likely you're going to eventually do shady things in service of the company's main revenue streams. Your continued employment depends on it.

charcircuit 3y ago
>I cannot imagine the level of cognitive dissonance required to simultaneously believe you are passionate about the open web, and push something like WEI. Imagine a world where EME was not accepted as a standard. 1. Browsers do nothing to support DRM and sites like Netflix recommend people to just use a native app to experience the full Netflix experience. This weakens the open web by having sites leave the web and opt to move users to the mobile web instead. 2. Browsers adopt a closed standard for DRM. This weakens the open web because now a care use case of the web now uses a closed standard instead of an open one.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  3. Firefox somehow manages to remain the dominant browser, refuses to adopt the standard and sites have to suck it up and deal with it. If only that had actually happened.

38 3y ago

> unsafe working environment what does that even mean? we are talking about internet arguments here right? how does "safety" even enter the conversation? this guy sounds off his rocker. > find ways to reduce the harms of invalid traffic across the whole web crazy talk.

kccqzy 3y ago
Makes sense to me. If during the course of your work you have to read a bunch of internet comments with so much vitriol it is a personal and psychological safety issue. Personally I would not have chosen any job that would subject me to this kind of psychological abuse, and I would imagine someone choosing to work at Google would have thought the same. Curiously your HN profile says "removed due to doxing, because people are awful" so I'd like to think you at least would have the empathy to imagine someone experiencing something similar to what you experienced. Internet arguments can hurt people; period.
- 38 3y ago
  [flagged]
- jchw 3y ago
  Agreed. And, I can imagine anyone working on anything like WEI will not find a safe work environment so as long as their work environment involves being on the internet in any shape or form. So I guess if you work on the Chrome team and this is assigned to you, I genuinely do feel empathy, although I also think that you should probably quit if you value psychological safety. This is a complicated issue. I view work as a mutual exchange: I work on software in exchange for money. It is a bonus when I think the software or mission is genuinely cool. That said, I'm not one to be highly moralizing about it. I'd quit if someone asked me to do something illegal, and I will (and have) generally refuse to do work that is just simply morally bankrupt (And I have been tested on this. Early in my career, I refused to remove annual subscription renewal reminders for a subscription service. I didn't suggest that I would quit if it were done, but I voiced my disapproval and made it clear I wouldn't do it. We didn't wind up doing this, thankfully.) But, I will generally work on things that I don't agree with. I'm vocal about it, but work is work. But y'know, people have livelihoods to maintain. It's easy to say this if you live alone, have plenty in the bank, a great safety net, and a great network. (Not that all of that applies to me, but for sake of argument.) Certainly the job market is also tighter and the future of software engineering as a career is uncertain in some regards. So outright refusing to do work could be a scary prospect. Even being vocal about it and rocking the boat may be scary. But that said, this being the case does not make the answer any less certain. While harassment and toxicity that crosses certain lines is not something I think people should justify, I certainly understand the why: working on something like WEI triggers an immune response from the proponents of the open web. And while I'm sure many people would prefer to do things "right", I think that there is an overwhelming feeling that the open web is hostage to the big corporate interests, and that the open web proponents are strongly outnumbered and outgunned in the modern world. And Google never played fair anyway, so they probably don't feel especially enticed to either. So I think it's natural. What's going to happen is that this will probably continue to escalate, and I can't really say I strongly blame anyone. Google is probably happy to push this responsibility onto employees knowing it could be very mentally taxing, employees with increasingly poor career prospects will not want to rock the boat, and disgruntled "internet activists" who feel pushed to their limits are unlikely to care tremendously about the emotional damage they cause (it's not like the Internet is really known for its kindness to begin with.) I'm thinking it's gonna be a good time to pivot away from computer careers these next few years...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gardenhedge 3y ago

Nonsense and an excuse to ignore any criticism they don't like

Pannoniae 3y ago

I'm sorry for the raw words but this is soy as fuck. This is the usual excuse of "well, we got harassment (which we totally deserved) so we are finally justified to do <bad thing>"... These companies present it like harassment and threats just come out of nowhere because people are unreasonable or "hateful", and they refuse to acknowledge they deliberately create the conditions for such extreme measures. If they don't want harassment or threats, they should maybe stop messing with people's stuff...