Chromium Community Leader Calls WEI Critics “Bullies and Criminals”(groups.google.com)
groups.google.com
Chromium Community Leader Calls WEI Critics “Bullies and Criminals”
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/Ux5h_kGO22g/m/XCAIgPtxAQAJ
18 comments
One of my closest friends is working on this proposal.
The personal safety fears are unfortunately real, which is absurd. However you feel about the internet, people shouldn't be physically threatened for having ideas about how to try to make it better.
On an unrelated but otherwise relevant note: he's also one of the most thoughtful and intelligent people I know, who has spent the majority of his career becoming a domain expert in internet abuse. He's also a true hacker and tinkerer who fully embodies the same free-as-in-freedom ethos that a lot of the dissenters do.
I haven't had a chance to talk to him about this proposal yet, but I'm really curious to hear his take. I'm sure it's thoughtful, nuanced, and well-intentioned. He'll be honest about what criticism is valid and what needs more work. He's the kind of person you want working on something this sensitive.
Those of you piling on about how this is Google being boldly evil or the death of the internet or whatever, kindly shut the fuck up. These are well-intentioned people presenting ideas to make the web a better place for everyone. (Abuse is unfortunately a very real thing that has real consequences; see also, global politics in the last decade.)
Your hyperbole is putting real people in danger, and that is not okay.
The personal safety fears are unfortunately real, which is absurd. However you feel about the internet, people shouldn't be physically threatened for having ideas about how to try to make it better.
On an unrelated but otherwise relevant note: he's also one of the most thoughtful and intelligent people I know, who has spent the majority of his career becoming a domain expert in internet abuse. He's also a true hacker and tinkerer who fully embodies the same free-as-in-freedom ethos that a lot of the dissenters do.
I haven't had a chance to talk to him about this proposal yet, but I'm really curious to hear his take. I'm sure it's thoughtful, nuanced, and well-intentioned. He'll be honest about what criticism is valid and what needs more work. He's the kind of person you want working on something this sensitive.
Those of you piling on about how this is Google being boldly evil or the death of the internet or whatever, kindly shut the fuck up. These are well-intentioned people presenting ideas to make the web a better place for everyone. (Abuse is unfortunately a very real thing that has real consequences; see also, global politics in the last decade.)
Your hyperbole is putting real people in danger, and that is not okay.
Putting aside the obvious about death threats: you seem to think that being thoughtful and well-intentioned is disjoint from making the world a worse place. There are plenty of very passionate, smart people working in CSAM detection who propose variations of banning E2E every year. We don’t do that because the harm it causes would be incredibly high, even though CSAM is horrible and we should continue to work to stop it from being a thing.
Fraud is very similar. I’ve interacted with another of the proposal’s authors and they came off as smart and reasonable too. The problem, of course, is that if you focus in one area it is easy to become blind to what the other effects of your work can be, and weigh them appropriately. There are lots of things introduced with good intentions that end up going sour because they either don’t work or people with bad intentions abuse it. Or, even more often, people with neutral intentions but misaligned incentives end up making things that suck. Google has done this often in the past and they will continue to do that in the future because they’re a big company with various goals that do not always align with what’s good for society.
Fraud is very similar. I’ve interacted with another of the proposal’s authors and they came off as smart and reasonable too. The problem, of course, is that if you focus in one area it is easy to become blind to what the other effects of your work can be, and weigh them appropriately. There are lots of things introduced with good intentions that end up going sour because they either don’t work or people with bad intentions abuse it. Or, even more often, people with neutral intentions but misaligned incentives end up making things that suck. Google has done this often in the past and they will continue to do that in the future because they’re a big company with various goals that do not always align with what’s good for society.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Your friend is now facing the consequences of their professional choices. Their well-intentioned ideas are not simply presented and discussed, but instead forcefully shoved down our throat from a position of power. Such a behaviour nullifies any claim to working from a well intentioned position. If your friend wishes to serve their master, however they decide to rationalize their behavior, the fact remains that they are endangering society and as such should not be able to do this without personal consequences.
> Those of you piling on about how this is Google being boldly evil or the death of the internet or whatever, kindly shut the fuck up. These are well-intentioned people…
Note, nobody should harass anybody…
People get pretty bent out of shape when a company with a history of unethical behavior that constantly walks back promises suggest something like this.
If your friend was well intentioned there are a lot of things they can go work on that don’t include drafting proposals that will one day potentially end the open internet as we know it today. We don’t need something like WEI. Full stop.
Note, nobody should harass anybody…
People get pretty bent out of shape when a company with a history of unethical behavior that constantly walks back promises suggest something like this.
If your friend was well intentioned there are a lot of things they can go work on that don’t include drafting proposals that will one day potentially end the open internet as we know it today. We don’t need something like WEI. Full stop.
I sincerely hope that your friends and all other people involved in WEI, and their families remain safe from harm and harassment. I'm completely opposed to any sort of violence in this matter.
Having read WEI in the current form (several times), I'm convinced that it presents a serious threat to the open web. It's no hyperbole and it doesn't take a genius to understand it. (One of its creators concurred too).
The above two are not mutually exclusive. And it's possible to oppose a bad idea without resorting to violence. Please stop using some people's bad behavior to attack the entire opposition. That's a bad faith argument.
Having read WEI in the current form (several times), I'm convinced that it presents a serious threat to the open web. It's no hyperbole and it doesn't take a genius to understand it. (One of its creators concurred too).
The above two are not mutually exclusive. And it's possible to oppose a bad idea without resorting to violence. Please stop using some people's bad behavior to attack the entire opposition. That's a bad faith argument.
Good intentions does not excuse abhorrent behavior. Nor is "I was just following orders" a defense against unethical behavior. Many of the worst human rights abuses in history were committed by well intentioned people trying to make the world a better place.
Anyone have the pre-edited version? It’s showing up in my Ctrl-F but I don’t see it on the page.
The full quote:
> Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don't give in to criminals or bullies.
> Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don't give in to criminals or bullies.
From the same person, further down in the thread:
> It's been pointed out to me that my wording could be taken to suggest that I think folks who oppose WEI are criminals. That was absolutely not my intent and I apologize for not being more careful in my wording. I'm also the kind of person who likes to run rooted devices (used to compile my own NetBSD kernel from scratch weekly), custom browser builds, etc. and so I sympathize heavily with that use case myself and don't see how I could support a proposal which seriously risked the outcome you describe - users of such devices / niche browsers being locked out of important parts ot the web. AFAIK there is no serious debate as to whether such an outcome would be acceptable for the web (it's not), the debate is whether this proposal could possibly achieve it's aims without causing such an outcome. There's been lots of strong words saying it's impossible to reduce fraud risk without threatening the openness of the web and perhaps that's right, but I, for one, am always willing to be shown that something I thought was impossible was in fact doable with sufficient ingenuity and care. If I've learned anything from my tiny forays into the W3C anti-fraud community group it's that there's a lot of complexity and expertise in this space of which I know almost nothing, so I'm open to new ideas. I'm thrilled to see anti-fraud experts actually collaborating openly and publicly for, perhaps, the first time in Internet history.
> It's been pointed out to me that my wording could be taken to suggest that I think folks who oppose WEI are criminals. That was absolutely not my intent and I apologize for not being more careful in my wording. I'm also the kind of person who likes to run rooted devices (used to compile my own NetBSD kernel from scratch weekly), custom browser builds, etc. and so I sympathize heavily with that use case myself and don't see how I could support a proposal which seriously risked the outcome you describe - users of such devices / niche browsers being locked out of important parts ot the web. AFAIK there is no serious debate as to whether such an outcome would be acceptable for the web (it's not), the debate is whether this proposal could possibly achieve it's aims without causing such an outcome. There's been lots of strong words saying it's impossible to reduce fraud risk without threatening the openness of the web and perhaps that's right, but I, for one, am always willing to be shown that something I thought was impossible was in fact doable with sufficient ingenuity and care. If I've learned anything from my tiny forays into the W3C anti-fraud community group it's that there's a lot of complexity and expertise in this space of which I know almost nothing, so I'm open to new ideas. I'm thrilled to see anti-fraud experts actually collaborating openly and publicly for, perhaps, the first time in Internet history.
Link to the passage in question:
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/Ux5h_...
It mentions threats of physical violence, which gives a different context than what the post's title suggests.
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/Ux5h_...
It mentions threats of physical violence, which gives a different context than what the post's title suggests.
You are right... Flagging this because it's unnecessary ragebait and op is deliberately trying to fuel the flames. This is in extremely poor taste and malicious too.
Yet another reason to support and use Firefox and forks.
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I am very anti WEI but I can still have sympathy for anyone who is doxxed or has death threats sent to them. It's a bad proposal and it should be argued on its merits and resisted in its implementation. But even in HN threads I saw commentary on how it wasn't enough to just oppose this civilly, and that people needed to do more. I don't like the idea of people thinking that actions that threaten someone's physical safety is fair game, just because it's a terrible feature.
It's not fair game to go after random employees but this change is an extremely severe attack on all human freedom on the internet. If you are surprised by that kind of response when it's this severe, and it's an authoritarian government making the change (google, large enough corporations are governments) it should not be surprising at all.
I also implore the regular critics to consider that WEI is a symptom of a systemic problem. If these individuals don't do it, someone else will. Attacking them personally diverts our attention from the underlying issue.