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i’m sure that someone’s already posted this but this part of google’s proposal to add drm to websites is a hell of a tell in terms of how they see users
source: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md
watching google reinvent RFC 3514 in real time
One sentence in, and I already find issue with it.
Do users really like to visit sites that are expensive to create or maintain, or have truly massive tech companies - who, by virtue of tying their very existence to the ability to continually find and serve ever larger markets, have locked themselves into designing sites that are expensive to create and maintain - so thoroughly monopolized the Internet that those are the only kinds of sites left for anyone to visit?
Yes exactly!
But also... one word in, and I find issue with it. Hate how the software industry insists on "users" instead of "people". I assume because "people" have humanity, but "users" are a blank canvas for them to project their capitalist tech fantasies onto.
i'm not sure i agree with this,
i just say "users" because i don't want to make a statement about all people, only the ones who choose to use something.
to me, "people" reads as like "i believe everyone should use this"
(also i think this statement was meant to be read like: "[Internet] users (ie a shorter way to say 'people who use the internet') like visiting websites that ..."
(of course, i do agree that it's blatantly untrue, regardless)
To clarify, I'm not suggesting that "people" works as a general drop-in replacement for "users". I do however think nearly all sentences that use the word "user" could be improved with a different word choice (e.g. visitors, readers, clients) or another way of qualifying your audience (e.g. people who use the internet).
Idk, maybe the word "user" just bugs me personally.
it's to distinguish the people actually using the software from other groups of people relevant to the software business, such as "customers" (who pay for the software but aren't necessarily the ones using it) and "potential users"
"Users" isn't a synonym for "people". It refers to the people who are actively using your software. It's a reminder that you should be taking the people actually using the software into account when designing the software, rather than letting sales reps and middle managers decide how things should work
Yes, I agree that "people" is not a valid drop-in replacement for the word "users" (a point which admittedly, I didn't express clearly in my earlier comment).
My objection to "user" is that there's often a gap between what the word is, and what it does. Sure, it's a way to refer to a particular subgroup of people, but another effect it often has is reducing that group to a single dimension. (Idk, language is messy and imperfect)
Credit where it's due, this idea came to me via the book "We Are Not Users" by Eswaran Subrahmanian, Yoram Reich and Sruthi Krishnan https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262043366/we-are-not-users/. If it's an idea that resonates with you even a little, then thanks for giving it some consideration. I highly recommend the book, which argues the point better than I can.
Final note: "user" is a word that I'm personally trying to reduce in my own thoughts and writing because I don't think it serves my purposes well. On the other hand, if it fits your purposes, by all means keep saying it. Language policing isn't really my end goal (although I do find it fun when I get to snark at Google)
can you post a link to the article? was struggling to search it up, curious to read it!
yes sorry! i actually meant to link to it in the post, i’ll update that https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md
Google has famously not ever been able to make a profit from advertising on the open web (/s)
one part about this that’s incredible to me is, having heard about how fragile the online ads economy is due to everyone fucking lying and using bots to juice numbers, how quickly this could actually cause HUGE short term problems for that particular revenue stream
i'm almost laughing at the implicit assertion throughout this entire thing that disruptive activity only comes from bots. though i mean if google hasn't figured that one out yet maybe it does explain some things
What's really interesting about this pull quote is one of the Google project contributors separately posted a subtweet-y blog post where he urged people not to "assume secret agendas". See, this quote appears to be stating an open agenda by Google to prevent ad blocking, but in fact they never say Google wants to prevent ad blocking, they say "Websites" want to prevent ad blocking. "Websites" could be anyone! Certainly "Websites" is not Google and it is intellectually dishonest to simply assume that "Websites" is secretly Google
i’m honestly surprised they didn’t get at least ONE independent contractor to be on the project for plausible deniability, but maybe it’s such a bad idea they couldnt find anyone
i have issues with this proposal (unsurprisingly!!), but i don't read this quote as being concerned about ad blocking. this is concerned about click farming, it's about ads being shown to robots, rather than people failing to see ads.
Of course, even at that end you can't really prevent bots without in the processing preventing legitimate data scraping methods (think researchers, open government advocates trying to extract data from databases only presented as html, social media users trying to exfiltrate archives without permission…)
oh for sure, and the nightmare of only being able to eg use your bank's website if you're using one of three browsers on one of 4 operating systems, and god forbid you don't keep up to date with all the automatic updates. or Google receiving a stream of browsing data from Android as part of their attestation service, and then years down the line it turns out that they were exploiting that data for targeting purposes. or... all the click farms that will continue to run, unaffected, because they just buy old phones & spoof the inputs on them. like i said, i have issues with it!
it's probably one of those websites that is currently doing an experiment where they threaten to ban you for using an ad blocker. off the top of my head the full list is
so it might be any of those
for those that haven't seen it, the blog post in question: So, you don't like a web platform proposal. it's undated in the post but the date on the front page makes it fairly obvious what this is about
i have uh... opinions about it. i'd go in depth but somehow i feel like everyone on this website can smell techbro "good vibes only please do not tell us not to build the torment nexus that is mean :(" bullshit from a mile away.
Please only engage me (and the 350 billion dollar technology company I am acting as a representative of) with benign language that's easier to disregard.
We're all humans here.
... holy shit. this really is just a gussied up junk laden version of the evil bit isnt it. google is reinventing the evil bit.
