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Correct me if I'm wrong, but this plugin just removes stuff that the site puts over the content to restrict it. It doesn't fool the site into sending the conte

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this plugin just removes stuff that the site puts over the content to restrict it. It doesn't fool the site into sending the content to the user's computer; it's already done that. Am I wrong in this? IMO, there needs to be shift in understanding. They sent their information to my computer. Whatever I do with what they sent is my business, not theirs. It's on my computer. And yet they want it to stop. IMO, if you want it to stop, don't be lazy; don't send it in the first place. Then a bypass might have CFAA behind it. These are the same people who want to use my bandwidth and CPU capacity to track me everywhere I go on the web. If they can make legal claims about what I do with the information they send to my computer, I should be able to make legal claims for them using my own computer against me without my consent. Of course, I'm also more than a little drunk at the moment, so what do I know?

anon373839 2y ago
Even though drunk, I think you have articulated valid points. Visiting a website is not making a binding promise that your user agent will execute all scripts that are served. In fact, if you consider a11y needs, the web could never work that way. I don’t think publishing information can come with a conditional license on how the information is processed (“the reader shall not skip ahead to the ending of this book”).
squigz 2y ago
> IMO, there needs to be shift in understanding. They sent their information to my computer. Whatever I do with what they sent is my business, not theirs. It's on my computer. And yet they want it to stop. This is the whole thing to me. Companies like YT have no right to force me to see stuff I don't want to, or bypass what I say goes on in my browser (i.e., an adblocker) If they don't like it, they can not serve my requests. Simple.
- appplication 2y ago
  This is such a wildly first-amendment-forward take I couldn’t even begin to understand how you could construct a principled argument against it.
  - idle_zealot 2y ago
    The argument against it is that by visiting a site you are initiating an exchange as determined by the site operator. In the case of YT, you are watching a video you want to, and must in return watch ads or pay for a premium subscription. The technical details, according to this argument, are invisible to most people and therefore irrelevant. This is, of course, a stance that only makes sense to someone without a real sense of ownership over their computing devices, i.e. to someone who views computers as appliances that are used to consume services.
    - iopq 2y ago
      I didn't sign a contract, so any exchange youtube perceives from my visit is their own hallucination because I didn't agree to their terms.
      - raizer88 2y ago
        Pretty sure today you can't visit YouTube without accepting a ToS.
        iopq 2y ago
        Or else what? I didn't accept anything when I went to youtube.com Can you force me to keep to an agreement I didn't agree to?
        DEADMINCE 2y ago
        Sure you can; I do it every day.
        p_l 2y ago
        If the page content included the content that was supposed to be behind paywall, but you didn't agree to any ToS because you never had seen the paywall, how far in the forest does the pained cry of IP lawyer carry?
        mvdtnz 2y ago
        Of course you can.
- leetcrew 2y ago
  > If they don't like it, they can not serve my requests. Simple. this can just as easily be flipped around. if you don't like it, why are you requesting the page? no one is forcing you to view ads on youtube. what they are trying very hard to do is make it difficult for you to consume the thing that costs them money serve without also viewing the ads that pay for it. I get it. I don't like ads either, and I also avoid viewing them whenever possible. I would prefer to pay whatever it costs to serve me the content plus a reasonable profit. but elevating this technical workaround to some sort of moral principle is not tenable. you're not entitled to make up whatever terms you want for consuming the work of others, and it's absurd to think otherwise.
  - iopq 2y ago
    I don't know if I want to see the content or not until I request the page. What if I go on youtube, but some scammer replaced it with a page that says "your computer is hacked, send BTC to enable youtube, go to scamwebsite.com". My safe browsing add-on should be able to block the content of scamwebsite.com, or even block this message completely if the maintainers act more quickly than youtube To argue "you visited youtube.com and the scammer has the right to show you the scam message" is not logical, so why should "you visited youtube.com and Google has the right to show you advertisements" hold? You only argued from the act of visiting the website and it costing someone money. It costs the scammer money to serve the requests from billions of people hitting the website, that doesn't change from the perspective of your argument.
    - mvdtnz 2y ago
      You've invented a scenario that doesn't even make glancing contact with reality in order to rationalize your point of view. I'm actually on your side in this argument but not for this totally contrived reason.
      - iopq 2y ago
        It doesn't have to be youtube.com plenty of sites get hacked and hackers phish their users, it's very real
nurple 2y ago
And yet what we see progressing with the likes of Win11 and WEI is that they're working deliberately and tirelessly to make the majority of the PC landscape into appliances like phones. Perhaps someday I will be arrested for connecting to the internet with a pre-TPM machine.
- p_l 2y ago
  Arguably Microsoft is funnily enough on side of consumers in that, comparably to many others, because their business incentives match up with ensuring that there has to be a way to be a real owner of the machine. They did bend to allow Protected Video/Audio Path, but those aren't backed by TPM - they are backed by Intel ME, they are most probable reason AMD PSP isn't open source, they are part of the reason HDMI 2.0 can't be supported properly with open source components. But so long as Microsoft wants to have certain high-paying customers interested, it's going to offer and push systems with more owner control than some.
  - nurple 2y ago
    Sure... enterprise and gov customers. But I think their moves with win11 show that they view most windows users as products, not customers. Even Apple lets big customers sideload apps, but not the product class of customer.
    - p_l 2y ago
      Apple explicitly makes it so that they keep the keys to the machine in ways you cannot deal with. Microsoft, in order to support enterprise and government clients, pushes certain policies onto hardware manufacturers. While it's not the same as pushing it for everyone, enterprises being at times stingy means you can acquire relatively cheaply hardware that is "certified" for Microsoft Windows Enterprise - where Microsoft certification requires certain owner-friendly policies (including complete removal of vendor keys from secure boot and resigning everything with your own).
Krasnol 2y ago
The argument works in real life too: Ads are stealing our attention. They shouldn't be allowed to do that.
realusername 2y ago
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but this plugin just removes stuff that the site puts over the content to restrict it Most of the time those plugins get the same view as what you would see from Google. Those plugins can't bypass any real server side login obviously. And I'd argue that showing some different content to Google or with some heuristics to users is basically kind of fraud anyways.

anon373839 2y ago

Even though drunk, I think you have articulated valid points. Visiting a website is not making a binding promise that your user agent will execute all scripts that are served. In fact, if you consider a11y needs, the web could never work that way. I don’t think publishing information can come with a conditional license on how the information is processed (“the reader shall not skip ahead to the ending of this book”).

squigz 2y ago

> IMO, there needs to be shift in understanding. They sent their information to my computer. Whatever I do with what they sent is my business, not theirs. It's on my computer. And yet they want it to stop. This is the whole thing to me. Companies like YT have no right to force me to see stuff I don't want to, or bypass what I say goes on in my browser (i.e., an adblocker) If they don't like it, they can not serve my requests. Simple.

appplication 2y ago
This is such a wildly first-amendment-forward take I couldn’t even begin to understand how you could construct a principled argument against it.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  The argument against it is that by visiting a site you are initiating an exchange as determined by the site operator. In the case of YT, you are watching a video you want to, and must in return watch ads or pay for a premium subscription. The technical details, according to this argument, are invisible to most people and therefore irrelevant. This is, of course, a stance that only makes sense to someone without a real sense of ownership over their computing devices, i.e. to someone who views computers as appliances that are used to consume services.
  - iopq 2y ago
    I didn't sign a contract, so any exchange youtube perceives from my visit is their own hallucination because I didn't agree to their terms.
    - raizer88 2y ago
      Pretty sure today you can't visit YouTube without accepting a ToS.
      - iopq 2y ago
        Or else what? I didn't accept anything when I went to youtube.com Can you force me to keep to an agreement I didn't agree to?
      - DEADMINCE 2y ago
        Sure you can; I do it every day.
      - p_l 2y ago
        If the page content included the content that was supposed to be behind paywall, but you didn't agree to any ToS because you never had seen the paywall, how far in the forest does the pained cry of IP lawyer carry?
      - mvdtnz 2y ago
        Of course you can.
leetcrew 2y ago
> If they don't like it, they can not serve my requests. Simple. this can just as easily be flipped around. if you don't like it, why are you requesting the page? no one is forcing you to view ads on youtube. what they are trying very hard to do is make it difficult for you to consume the thing that costs them money serve without also viewing the ads that pay for it. I get it. I don't like ads either, and I also avoid viewing them whenever possible. I would prefer to pay whatever it costs to serve me the content plus a reasonable profit. but elevating this technical workaround to some sort of moral principle is not tenable. you're not entitled to make up whatever terms you want for consuming the work of others, and it's absurd to think otherwise.
- iopq 2y ago
  I don't know if I want to see the content or not until I request the page. What if I go on youtube, but some scammer replaced it with a page that says "your computer is hacked, send BTC to enable youtube, go to scamwebsite.com". My safe browsing add-on should be able to block the content of scamwebsite.com, or even block this message completely if the maintainers act more quickly than youtube To argue "you visited youtube.com and the scammer has the right to show you the scam message" is not logical, so why should "you visited youtube.com and Google has the right to show you advertisements" hold? You only argued from the act of visiting the website and it costing someone money. It costs the scammer money to serve the requests from billions of people hitting the website, that doesn't change from the perspective of your argument.
  - mvdtnz 2y ago
    You've invented a scenario that doesn't even make glancing contact with reality in order to rationalize your point of view. I'm actually on your side in this argument but not for this totally contrived reason.
    - iopq 2y ago
      It doesn't have to be youtube.com plenty of sites get hacked and hackers phish their users, it's very real

nurple 2y ago

And yet what we see progressing with the likes of Win11 and WEI is that they're working deliberately and tirelessly to make the majority of the PC landscape into appliances like phones. Perhaps someday I will be arrested for connecting to the internet with a pre-TPM machine.

p_l 2y ago
Arguably Microsoft is funnily enough on side of consumers in that, comparably to many others, because their business incentives match up with ensuring that there has to be a way to be a real owner of the machine. They did bend to allow Protected Video/Audio Path, but those aren't backed by TPM - they are backed by Intel ME, they are most probable reason AMD PSP isn't open source, they are part of the reason HDMI 2.0 can't be supported properly with open source components. But so long as Microsoft wants to have certain high-paying customers interested, it's going to offer and push systems with more owner control than some.
- nurple 2y ago
  Sure... enterprise and gov customers. But I think their moves with win11 show that they view most windows users as products, not customers. Even Apple lets big customers sideload apps, but not the product class of customer.
  - p_l 2y ago
    Apple explicitly makes it so that they keep the keys to the machine in ways you cannot deal with. Microsoft, in order to support enterprise and government clients, pushes certain policies onto hardware manufacturers. While it's not the same as pushing it for everyone, enterprises being at times stingy means you can acquire relatively cheaply hardware that is "certified" for Microsoft Windows Enterprise - where Microsoft certification requires certain owner-friendly policies (including complete removal of vendor keys from secure boot and resigning everything with your own).

Krasnol 2y ago

The argument works in real life too: Ads are stealing our attention. They shouldn't be allowed to do that.

realusername 2y ago

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but this plugin just removes stuff that the site puts over the content to restrict it Most of the time those plugins get the same view as what you would see from Google. Those plugins can't bypass any real server side login obviously. And I'd argue that showing some different content to Google or with some heuristics to users is basically kind of fraud anyways.