this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
2333 points (99.3% liked)

Privacy

32003 readers
929 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

And since you won't be able to modify web pages, it will also mean the end of customization, either for looks (ie. DarkReader, Stylus), conveniance (ie. Tampermonkey) or accessibility.

The community feedback is... interesting to say the least.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] SinAdjetivos@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It doesn't aim to destroy extensions but point #1 within the problem statement:

Users like visiting websites that are expensive to create and maintain, but they often want or need to do it without paying directly. These websites fund themselves with ads, but the advertisers can only afford to pay for humans to see the ads, rather than robots. This creates a need for human users to prove to websites that they're human, sometimes through tasks like challenges or logins.

[โ€“] eth0p@iusearchlinux.fyi 2 points 1 year ago

Oh, for sure. When bullet point number one involves advertising, they don't make it hard to see that the underlying motivation is to assist advertising platforms somehow.

I think this is an extremely slippery and dangerous slope to go down, and I've commented as such and explained how this sort of thing could end up harming users directly as well as providing ways to shut out users with adblocking software.

But, that doesn't change my opinion that the original post is framed in a sensationalized manner and comes across as ragebaiting and misinforming. The proposal doesn't directly endorse or enable DRMing of web pages and their contents, and the post text does not explain how the conclusion of adblockers being killed follows from the premise of the proposal being implemented. To understand how OP came to that conclusion, I had to read the full document, read the feedback on the GitHub issues, and put myself in the shoes of someone trying to abuse it. Unfortunately, not everyone will take the time to do that.

As an open community, we need to do better than incite anger and lead others into jumping to conclusions. Teach and explain. Help readers understand what this is all about, and then show them how these changes would negatively impact them.