It's not just the newer generations. I have multiple friends who are literally afraid of using ad blockers and sideloading apps on their Macs in fear of some imaginary boogeyman out to get them. And VPNs are exclusively the domain of criminals, apparently. There are a dominating amount of people who have turned into the caricature of the perfect CONSUMER. It is so frustrating.
It can go the other way, too. I’m a computer programmer and I don’t use an ad-blocker, one of the reasons being that the presence of add is a very good indicator of websites that I should avoid. That strategy makes me actuality consume less content on the web, which I find as a big plus, and that’s because the great majority of today’s websites are filled with ads.
Related, the same goes for TV, where I don’t try to avoid them by purchasing an even more exclusive access to TV content (such as streaming), I just choose not to watch it because mainstream TV has become infested by ads. So the idea is not to play the game, just to ignore it.
While I understand the motivation, decent ad blockers such as uBlock Origin do a lot more than just block visible conventional advertisements. So by not running an ad block, unfortunately there might be a great deal of private data about your browser habits that are being exfiltrated without your knowledge.
That's not a very useful approach unless you go full Ted Kaczynski and disconnect entirely. For those of us living in a society, not seing ads when vising websites you effectively have to visit to do that is the preferable option.
Nothing about an ad blocker stops you from limiting your exposure to ad-supported media but it makes it more bearable in the cases where avoiding it would be even worse.
To be fair, adblockers have an inordinate amount of access. We all trust uBlock’s creator but I’ve never met him. So it’s a realistic risk but we (hope) not a threat
>To be fair, chromium has an inordinate amount of access. We all trust chromium’s developers but I’ve never met them. So it’s a realistic risk but we (hope) not a threat.
>To be fair, Windows has an inordinate amount of access. We all trust Microsoft developers but I’ve never met them. So it’s a realistic risk but we (hope) not a threat.
I can keep going to point out how flawed this line of reasoning is, especially the second one with forced push for Recall.
It’s weakly worse to trust your OS + Browser + third party, than just OS + Browser.
Moreover, small projects can be purchased more easily. See PIA. Users need to stay updated about ownership changes. It might be viable for us, but not for everyone.
The ones using declarative blocking (like everything compatible with Safari or newer Manifest V3 web extensions for Chrome and Firefox) don't need access to your browsing context.
They're not as powerful as the ones that are able to inject content into visited pages or programmatically inspect and block/alter HTTP requests, but personally I think it's a reasonable tradeoff for the reasons you mentioned.
Chrome/Google got a very bad rep for pushing this change, and I don't want to speculate about their actual motivations, but the security aspect of it seems sound to me.
With uBlock Lite (which uses MV3), it's also possible to additionally grant "full site access" on a site by site base in case the rules-based blocking alone isn't enough; that seems ideal to me.
It really is not a reasonable tradeoff because it effectively freezes the tools the blockers have in the ongoing arms race while the advertisers are able to adopt new tricks. Which is also why advertising companies (which includes all major browser makers) would like to pass it off a reasonable tradeoff.
That would be the express road to long-term unpatched vulnerabilities.
There's basically two ways to have safe web extensions: Carefully control their entire supply chain (which could easily cause big antitrust problems for Google as the vendor of the most popular browser), or minimize the things they have access to.
It is the better road, and the road chosen by most other things that aren't SaaS, including Google's other most popular thing, Android. Keep the default to auto-update, fine, but let me disable that, as the Android app store does. Attacks from previously trusted extensions (and apps) being updated and then doing malicious things (requesting new permissions to do them is not significant friction) are worse and more frequent than old unpatched extensions being vulnerable to something. (That "something" likely being in the realm of XSS or click-jacking from a malicious page, much harder to widely exploit.)
I'm sure it's happened, but I haven't heard of an extension suffering from a significant "unpatched vulnerability" and being exploited in the wild -- I have heard of things like this click-jacking issue in Privacy Badger: https://blog.lizzie.io/clickjacking-privacy-badger.html No wild exploits afaik, just the PoC, and the ultimate worst-case impact was just (reversibly) disabling the extension for the page or a site, which isn't very severe. Perhaps a more advanced extension like Ruffle that uses Rust and WASM has a more severe attack surface than the majority of extensions written in JavaScript, but even if it does, it must be exploited by a malicious page targeting it, vs. the alternative of auto-updating to a malicious version and doing whatever it can get away with immediately.
Extensions getting taken over or just transferred to new owners and updating to do something new and malicious is quite routine and multiple examples come readily to my mind. The first to come to mind is Stylish, several years ago: https://robertheaton.com/2018/07/02/stylish-browser-extensio... (I was not impacted because I didn't update the extension during its vulnerable window, which was months, and apparently over a year for Chrome.)
The safe way to handle these issues is to let users turn off auto-updating, and to have actual policies to mitigate the damages from malicious extensions. Firefox itself will disable extensions that become known to be defective in someway, this can be independent of whether the issue is an unpatched vulnerability, whether there's a patch/update to address it, whether the extension isn't just bugged but doing something malicious, whether it always was malicious from first install or just suddenly became malicious... See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-cause-issues-ar...
You're taking about access you're afraid an extension might be exploited to expose versus ad networks and social media plugins that are known to expose.
I'll take the potential bogeyman over the real one, thanks.
I am pretty sure most extensions (or at least ublock) can be set to stay off on specific websites? The extension can have an extra list of known safe sites that don't have ads where the extension stays off by default (should still be turn on-able because the list might be outdated).
In uBlock's case, when you first install it on Firefox you are peomoted to give it permission to "Access data for all websites that you visit". Even if you disable adblocking on a specific website Unlock still has access to it and can see it.
If you go to your government’s office and they give you a list of names of known advertisers, then walk along your merry way and use the list to not engage those advertisers, the only trust you need is the source of the information on that list, not the list or your observance to it.
Your observance of it is open source in the case of ublock. The list should still be scrutinized, it’s a local system with an unverified source. That’s all.
"With software, either the users control the program, or the program controls the users."
- Richard M. Stallman, 2011, writing in Der Spiegel
He was right. He was always right. About all of it. People didn't listen, or perhaps were never introduced to his ideas. Software grew faster than the idea of free software (on some level this was inevitable, since the latter is by definition a subset of the former).
And so, the noose tightened a little more every year.
The remedy has never changed: you must explain to people why freedom is important, and what the terrible consequences are of non-freedom. Refer them to the free software ecosystem, Linux and the FSF. Many will not listen. But whether they listen is to some extent irrelevant. Life is more fulfilling when it is lived ethically. By doing your part to advocate for freedom and against its enemies, you are at least making your own welfare better, and hopefully someone else's too.
Lots of comments here remind me of another rms quote: "They seem to have learned the habit of cowering before authority even when
not actually threatened. How very nice for authority. I decided not to
learn this particular lesson."
You must have missed the other news this week. Linux has joined the dark side too. Banning people based on nationality is certainly against freedom and any kind of ethics worthy of being called that.
> Linux has joined the dark side too. Banning people based on nationality
"Linux" is not banning anybody. They must comply with the sanctions against Putin regime that many governments in the world raised, in response to insane Putin's behavior.
Linux is not banning people based on nationality, is banning people based on their employers that is a different question. Linux has every right to ban somebody that would be working for a cartel, for example. This is a win-win for the people banned also, because protects them to be targeted and forced by the Russian regime to participate on war crimes.
Calling about "mafreedom!" and "your lack of ethics" just looks deranged and out of the reality. "mafreedom to kill you (and you must help me to build the bombs or are a very bad guy)" is preschool level material. Not even funny as a joke. They really think that we are so stupid?
> Linux lacks ethics
Since 2022 the Russian president is sending 1000 Russians a day to a sure death, could stop the carnage at any time, and couldn't care less about it. Most Russians support him and don't care also. I will not accept any lesson on ethics.
Maybe you should be banned from this discussion forum? After all, you are from the same country that dropped atomic bombs on civilians and remains the only country in history to have done so. Any lesson on ethics from an American is by definition facetious, right?
> Since 2022 the Russian president is sending 1000 Russians a day to a sure death, could stop the carnage at any time, and couldn't care less about it. Most Russians support him and don't care also. I will not accept any lesson on ethics.
Could you spell out the exact relevant conditions that you believe disqualify someone from delivering a "lesson on ethics"? It seems a priori unlikely that you could find criteria that are not obviously tortured and self-serving while also granting this qualification to a typical US citizen, especially one who has worked for any major tech company (as is the case for many posters here).
> This is a win-win for the people banned also, because they are in a vulnerable position to be forced by the Russian regime to commit crimes.
Nonsense.
If your concern is that a maintainer might be strongarmed into getting surreptitious changes in the linux kernel, that's a misplaced concern because:
1- the maintainer in question didn't have access to approve changes across the whole linux kernel, but only on the drivers that they were maintaining (mainly Baikal electronics hardware, I assume. I.e. the Russian government could sabotage the drivers for hardware developed inside Russia itself, not exactly something that we'd truly have to worry about)
2- just because an individual, working in the open and with a clear/known identity (and association with a bankrupt Russian hardware design firm) has been excluded, it doesn't mean that a government might give up trying to sneak in changes. They can just create new personas (just like with "Jia Tan" of xz fame)
I understand that the Linux kernel got their hand forced, but this is just stopping a volunteer from contributing (and feeling welcome), in an open source project in which they had been involved for several years. It's a win for the Linux kernel (because they are not going to get a slap on their wrists), but it's not a win for the affected individuals
They banned people employed by sanctioned organisations from being maintainers. This one worked for a company making hardware for the Russian military.
I'm not arguing for/against the exclusions due to sanctions. I think the benefit of banning people who used to work for a banned entity is minimal, but after all, if they are still using an email address provided by that sanctioned entity (alumni access?) of course they haven't disentangled themselves fully from that entity
This is obviously unfortunate but I think the issue is a lot bigger than Linux. It should serve as a reminder that there are no liberals in war.
The civil liberties you take for granted, in a major war, they will be gone. They will die in one day and it will take decades to get them back if ever. Remember that in WW2 America was throwing Japanese citizens into internment camps and the other side was doing far worse. Things that are unfathomable today but in a war with sufficiently high stakes they will happen again and more.
Even at war, the USA was still much more "liberal" than Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan: for starters, they didn't put any German citizens / German descendants in a concentration camp.
The Japanese descendants/citizens living in the USA were treated different because of racism. You can argue that having a racist government isn't compatible with being "liberal", but it's a matter of degree. Having a democracy that doesn't allow non whites to vote is still more "liberal" than having a monarchy / dictatorship
If you mean "a place where many of a certain category of people are held", then yes, we did. If you mean "place where many of a certain category of people are held and killed", then no, we didn't.
Technically, the first definition is at least as correct as the second one. But colloquially, the second one is what many people understand.
You cannot compare the camps that German citizens were held in by the US to Dachau.
I actually agree with you that the term “concentration camp” is inflammatory and misleading when applied to the internment camps used to hold Axis citizens and Japanese-Americans. But the comment I was replying to was attempting to draw a contrast between the Japanese internment and the treatment of German citizens, when in fact German and Italian citizens were interned during the war. In fact I’ve actually visited one of the internment camps, in Montana.
This is not true and you know it. Re-read Linus' comment if you think this is about sanctioned organizations.
And in any case, the leader of an open project should do everything to keep the project open, including defying an immoral and unjust law, or at the very least doing bare minimum compliance. They certainly shouldn't happily jump on the bandwagon.
I, for example , i'm scared of using YouTube alternative clients like re(vanced) et simila, i'm personality scared to have my youtube/gmail account banned.
In case you watch on an Android phone: Newpipe doesn't even use your account, so the possibility of getting banned for it is much smaller.
You can make playlists in it and track your history (locally), so I don't think it's inferior to the official app. On the contrary.
Also, these new Android phones have the option to modify which app opens youtube links by default, so it's easy to just list Newpipe instead of the official app.
The only downside are downtimes a few times per year when YT changes something and Newpipe devs are making a fix, which never took more than a few days.
If you make a new account, they'll only ban that one.
I've been permanently banned from Reddit for really dumb reasons more times than I can count. The first time, I was sad. Now, I know it's a war between users and admins, and an individual account isn't worth very much.
Reddit bans are one thing, but your Gmail/Google Drive account getting banned? Not worth it, not over fucking Youtube ads. Remember, you don't have any recourse against Google bans.
Seems like the better solution would be to get off Gmail and Google Drive if you are otherwise unable to manage that risk. Having your digital life depend on the whims of some company with a TOS that boils down to "we can do whatever we want and you have no recourse" is irresponsible. Watching youtube without ads is hardly the biggest risk factor here.
Mac apps have never bern restricted to the App Store, so I’m not sure the idea of “sideloading” makes sense to apply there. I still know what you mean though.
They really aren't. Anything signed will load, whether you download it from the App Store or not.
Yes, there are some extra steps involved in loading unsigned programs, and the process is designed to make it sound a bit scary. I think that's the right tradeoff, reasonable people may differ.
But we're talking about the App Store vs. not-the-App-Store, and again, there is nothing which could reasonably be described as a restriction involved in installing the same binary from either of those sources. The only difference is the details of where it comes from and how to install it, and clicking on a dmg or pkg is still a fully-supported workflow with no warnings or other interference.
Normies were an adaptation for social cohesion of followers of chieftain, it wasn't supposed to scale beyond, say, thousand people, MSM just parasitize on this instinct.
Do you really think it mattered whether the people in Jonestown drank Kool Aid or Flavour Aid? What matters is the poison and both Apple and Google ship plenty of it.
a department of the Indian political party BJP that manages social media campaigns for the party and its members.
According to Washington Post, 150,000 social media workers spread posts aimed at exploiting the fears of India’s Hindu majority across a vast network of WhatsApp groups.
BJP orchestrates online campaigns through its social media cell to intimidate perceived government critics. Sadhavi Khosla, a BJP cyber-volunteer in the BJP IT Cell said that the organisation disseminated misogyny, Islamophobia and hatred.
That's a hell of a propaganda machine you're dealing with there.
i.... am not dealing with it. i threw in the towel when it became unsustainable emotionally and physically.
edit:
i had a relative who was borrowing a photographer friends camera and taking those news worthy shots for lulz and out of sheer boredom. next thing we know, he is on twitter doing some discussion and the was doxed, threatened with calling the cops and his past dug up just because he used a handle that had links to his afk name. it was terrible for him. and i would say it was all state sponsored.
he had to nuke a lot of his online presence and this was around 4years ago when he was around 20. you can imagine.
this was all thanks to that BJP it cell. these minions even say as much because they literally are the law. Paid for by the state so they do represent the power of the state in covering their asses and decimating their virtual opponents.
with regard to our local much smaller propaganda machines, I think (by the fact that I can't reply there) you implicitly received an answer on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41953841
Without the full details of the edit war you were involved in, the scenario seems to be clash between your "world view" and those who reversed your edits. From your username, being from a region where a successful genocide/ethnic cleansing of a minority religious group was conducted by the majority local population only a couple of decades back, the possibility of your edits being controversial to others not necessarily the alleged "BJP it cell" is there.
>genocide/ethnic cleansing of a minority religious group
200 people of that minority were killed.
I do not deny there was a mass exodus but to say a minority was ethnic cleansing is disengenous.
Again, my comment was not about the exodus but regarding the politics regarding the last 500 years and more specifically the last 70-90 odd years of history. That has nothing minority-majority issue you are claiming it out to be.
On the topic of exodus, you know it was the governor who ordered that the minority to be removed from their homes ? I know because I was there. You might not.
Let us put this way. There were a particular group in a region which comprised around 5% of the population. In a year or two, it dropped to effectively 0%. Now the exact terminology to use for this can be taken as genocide or ethnic cleansing or the somewhat passive "mass exodus".
Regarding the edits, I wont attempt to assume that the other side are right. But there is a sensitivity around the politics and history there, with the backdrop of the secessionist movement and the genocide/ethnic cleansing. So can see possibility of differing views there, with conflicting narratives being pushed.
> On the topic of exodus, you know it was the governor who ordered that the minority to be removed from their homes ? I know because I was there. You might not.
Really! A whole population just packed their bags and left their livelihoods, homes and properties to go and live in refugee camps, just because a governor asked them to. And not because gun toting terrorists supported by the local population where roaming around targeting them for rape and murder ? I will take the words of the people who had to flee, rather than those who were complicit in the genocide/ethnic cleansing.
You take the struggle of a region and turn it into a religious struggle (The indigenous movement in the 90's was your username.substring(2) movement), smartly the "majority" there drives out the "minority" and enjoys capture of their properties (oh just a few hundred people who moved out you know, they will not return.). Sadly, you also have the audacity to say only 200 of that minority
Blame it on the Governor (look ma..., a central government appointee did it, was not us). Super convenient. We were just informing peace loving friends from across the border where our neighbours lived. I was there and so I know
As Mahatma Gandhi said, the progress of a state is how it treats its minorities. Guess you made good "progress" treating them "....well...."
Wikipedia lost many good editors over a user named BrownHairedGirl. She single handedly removed extraordinary valuable editors and left a bunch of simps in her wake. The site has never recovered.
Some users even support this these days. From "the law is the law" and "you shouldn't be in business if you can't follow the laws" to "serves them right for having X opinion!"
Dividing the world into normies and others is a very odd way to characterise widespread adoption of anything. I hesitate to use the neckbeard word, but it's got overtones.
There are as many usefully curated sites, as sites where state actors curate content to hide the reptile led barcode truth from the normies.
If you want to split the categories between normies and neckbeards that's good enough a model of the world to understand the issue.
The part that I miss is we had things in public, collaborations between everyone who was interested in spending the time to access the space. This barrier was enough to keep things feeling like a community, with most of the things like this that came up being able to be addressed by internal arguments.
Now everything has to be robust to the idea that you will have neckbeards and normies interacting, and that curation is required. You have passive users, who's eyes are valuable... contributors, with divergent motivation, some pure for the joy of the project, some who want to put their agenda in front of the first group... And even external state actors pushing things at a scale that's hard to understand.
I am probably not part of the "we" you are talking about, but I had no idea "normie" means that, and I couldn't infer it from the comment. In fact I inferred a completely wrong meaning from that comment (something like "unenlightened").
Isn't "normie" a pejorative word (genuine question)?
This was the basis of my response too. It's almost never said by people in contexts where it's not pejorative, to my understanding. It's a staple of incels and the elite Mensa types. It dismisses the average lived experience because iamveryspecial.
It generally refers to a group of “normal” people. E.g in some context they are an “out” group that does not have some specialized knowledge or understanding that the “in” group would have. So it can be negative, but it generally just means someone inexperienced with the given topic area. There is an implication of otherness to using the term “normie” for the group using it but it is generally a pretty common term now. For example, imagine a bunch of policy wonks debating something in highly specific language and then someone asks “how would the normies react?” They mean, “how would people unfamiliar with the inner workings of political policy react?” Stuff like that.
It does have a negative connotation for that group in some contexts, but the usage is pretty common and softened now.
Why? It’s a salient distinction when talking about mass-adoption of technology. Social dynamics change dramatically when the ratio of neckbeards to normies is upset. I don’t like these terms either, but “neckbeards and normies” has a nice alliterative quality.
In the early days there was less gain from authoritarian actions, because you are more likely to be resisted by the users of any service.
The current users don't know how to bypass restrictions, and are generally more numerous. Making authoritarian actions more valuable.
Unfortunately this leads to previously useful sites declining.