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"Google does good thing, therefore Google has too much power over the internet" is not a convincing point to make. This safety feature saves a nontrivial numbe

"Google does good thing, therefore Google has too much power over the internet" is not a convincing point to make. This safety feature saves a nontrivial number of people from life-changing mistakes. Yes we publishers have to take extra care. Hard to see a negative here.

ericselin 1y ago
I respectfully disagree with your premise. In this specific case, yes, "Google does good thing" in a sense. That is not why I'm saying Google has too much power. "Too much" is relative and whether they do good or bad debatable, of course, but it's hard to argue that they don't have a gigantic influence on the whole internet, no? :) Helping people avoid potentially devastating mistakes is of course a good thing.
- thetimman8 1y ago
  You're not wrong. You just picked a poor example which illustrates the opposite of the point you're making.
  - ericselin 1y ago
    Fair enough! :)
- neon_erosion 1y ago
  What point are you trying to make here? You hosted phishing sites on your primary domain, which was then flagged as unsafe. You chose not to use the tools that would have marked those sites as belonging to individual users, and the system worked as designed.
  - ericselin 1y ago
    Please note that this tool (PSL) is not available until you have a significant user base. Which probably means a significant amount of spam as well.
    - zamadatix 1y ago
      Where'd you see/hear that? It hasn't been my experience at least - but maybe I've just been lucky or undercounting the sites. There are required steps to follow but none are "have x users" or "see a lot of spam". It's mostly "follow proper DNS steps and guidelines in the given format" with a little "show you're doing this for the intended reason rather than to circumvent something the PSL is not meant for/for something the public can't get to anyways" (e.g. tricking rate limits, internal only or single user personal sites) added on top.
      - ericselin 1y ago
        https://github.com/publicsuffix/list/wiki/Guidelines#validation-and-non-acceptance-factors https://github.com/publicsuffix/list/wiki/Guidelines#validat... "Projects that are smaller in scale or are temporary or seasonal in nature will likely be declined. Examples of this might be private-use, sandbox, test, lab, beta, or other exploratory nature changes or requests. It should be expected that despite whatever site or service referred a requestor to seek addition of their domain(s) to the list, projects not serving more then thousands of users are quite likely to be declined." Maybe the rules have changed, or maybe you were lucky? :)
        deleted 1y ago
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        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        zamadatix 1y ago
        Ah yeah, looks like it was added in 2022 https://github.com/publicsuffix/list/wiki/Guidelines/_compare/7159affa2a56e2090c67ba9d08e97c6fc31e9e89...9636b47db674f65a16f3c461315ae01bf018822e https://github.com/publicsuffix/list/wiki/Guidelines/_compar... Thanks for the note!
- faust201 1y ago
  > but it's hard to argue that they don't have a gigantic influence on the whole internet, no? :) Then don't relate this to safe browsing. What is the connection? You could have just written a one liner. Google has too much power. This has nothing to do with safe-browsing. In fact you could write... - USA/China/EU etc has too much power.. You use the word relative in another reply.. Same way.. My employer has relatively too much power...
jlarocco 1y ago
Is it? Companies like Google coddle users instead of teaching them how to browse smarter and detect phishing for themselves. Google wants people to stay ignorant so they can squeeze them for money instead of phishers.
- fragmede 1y ago
  How does Google get money out of people in that case? As a corporation, Google contributes greatly to the education sector and also profits greatly, so it seems like they're pro-education to me, and are merely making the best of a bad situation, but I'd love to hear how Google extracts money from the people they've protected from phishing schemes in some secret way that I haven't considered. I do happen to have Google stock in my portfolio though, so maybe that indight's my entire comment for you though.
- judge2020 1y ago
  This is a fine mentality when it takes a certain amount of "Internet street smarts" (a term used in the article) to access the internet - at least beyond AOL etc. But over half of the world has internet access, mostly via Chrome (largely via Android inclusion). At least some frontline protection (that can be turned off) is warranted when you need to cater to at least the millions of people who just started accessing the internet today, and the billions who don't/can't/won't put the effort in to learn those "Internet street smarts".

ericselin 1y ago

I respectfully disagree with your premise. In this specific case, yes, "Google does good thing" in a sense. That is not why I'm saying Google has too much power. "Too much" is relative and whether they do good or bad debatable, of course, but it's hard to argue that they don't have a gigantic influence on the whole internet, no? :) Helping people avoid potentially devastating mistakes is of course a good thing.

thetimman8 1y ago
You're not wrong. You just picked a poor example which illustrates the opposite of the point you're making.
- ericselin 1y ago
  Fair enough! :)
neon_erosion 1y ago
What point are you trying to make here? You hosted phishing sites on your primary domain, which was then flagged as unsafe. You chose not to use the tools that would have marked those sites as belonging to individual users, and the system worked as designed.
- ericselin 1y ago
  Please note that this tool (PSL) is not available until you have a significant user base. Which probably means a significant amount of spam as well.
  - zamadatix 1y ago
    Where'd you see/hear that? It hasn't been my experience at least - but maybe I've just been lucky or undercounting the sites. There are required steps to follow but none are "have x users" or "see a lot of spam". It's mostly "follow proper DNS steps and guidelines in the given format" with a little "show you're doing this for the intended reason rather than to circumvent something the PSL is not meant for/for something the public can't get to anyways" (e.g. tricking rate limits, internal only or single user personal sites) added on top.
    - ericselin 1y ago
      https://github.com/publicsuffix/list/wiki/Guidelines#validation-and-non-acceptance-factors https://github.com/publicsuffix/list/wiki/Guidelines#validat... "Projects that are smaller in scale or are temporary or seasonal in nature will likely be declined. Examples of this might be private-use, sandbox, test, lab, beta, or other exploratory nature changes or requests. It should be expected that despite whatever site or service referred a requestor to seek addition of their domain(s) to the list, projects not serving more then thousands of users are quite likely to be declined." Maybe the rules have changed, or maybe you were lucky? :)
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - zamadatix 1y ago
        Ah yeah, looks like it was added in 2022 https://github.com/publicsuffix/list/wiki/Guidelines/_compare/7159affa2a56e2090c67ba9d08e97c6fc31e9e89...9636b47db674f65a16f3c461315ae01bf018822e https://github.com/publicsuffix/list/wiki/Guidelines/_compar... Thanks for the note!
faust201 1y ago
> but it's hard to argue that they don't have a gigantic influence on the whole internet, no? :) Then don't relate this to safe browsing. What is the connection? You could have just written a one liner. Google has too much power. This has nothing to do with safe-browsing. In fact you could write... - USA/China/EU etc has too much power.. You use the word relative in another reply.. Same way.. My employer has relatively too much power...

jlarocco 1y ago

Is it? Companies like Google coddle users instead of teaching them how to browse smarter and detect phishing for themselves. Google wants people to stay ignorant so they can squeeze them for money instead of phishers.

fragmede 1y ago
How does Google get money out of people in that case? As a corporation, Google contributes greatly to the education sector and also profits greatly, so it seems like they're pro-education to me, and are merely making the best of a bad situation, but I'd love to hear how Google extracts money from the people they've protected from phishing schemes in some secret way that I haven't considered. I do happen to have Google stock in my portfolio though, so maybe that indight's my entire comment for you though.
judge2020 1y ago
This is a fine mentality when it takes a certain amount of "Internet street smarts" (a term used in the article) to access the internet - at least beyond AOL etc. But over half of the world has internet access, mostly via Chrome (largely via Android inclusion). At least some frontline protection (that can be turned off) is warranted when you need to cater to at least the millions of people who just started accessing the internet today, and the billions who don't/can't/won't put the effort in to learn those "Internet street smarts".