cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/6738148
The much maligned “Trusted Computing” idea requires that the party you are supposed to trust deserves to be trusted, and Google is DEFINITELY NOT worthy of being trusted, this is a naked power grab to destroy the open web for Google’s ad profits no matter the consequences, this would put heavy surveillance in Google’s hands, this would eliminate ad-blocking, this would break any and all accessibility features, this would obliterate any competing platform, this is very much opposed to what the web is.
Yeah, DRM has always scared away all the users. That’s why nobody adopted DVDs, that “Netflix” company failed to create a video streaming service, Steam never became a dominant game distributor, etc.
Most people won’t notice or care. Most companies’ customers will buy what’s advertized to them. It’s very dangerous to assume consumers want freedom, we need to fight for it, not ignore the threat due to naïve idealism.
I once worked at a software company where it took the frontend guys like a month to finally notice that common adblockers broke one of their sites (which didn’t actually have ads on it, funnily enough). None of them noticed because none of them used adblockers on any of their machines. When people like that don’t run adblockers, it’s not realistic at all to expect the average user to do it.
As a full stack guy that has done his fair share of front end work, I use an adblocker on the devices that I use in my personal realm. I don’t have them in my development area because most people don’t use them. I want what I test on to be as stock as possible. I’ve observed that most people go with what “comes out of the box.” That said, I get to look at my efforts on my personal devices. If something is off, I’ll see it. If I had to code to every popular extension, it would be hard to get anything done.