Contra Chrome [pdf]

https://contrachrome.com/ContraChrome_en.pdf

by rapnie • 4 years ago

106 95 4 years ago

contrachrome.com

bloopernova• 4 years ago

"Error establishing a database connection".

yashwastaken2• 4 years ago

https://contrachrome.com/ContraChrome_en.pdf here pdf version.

dorianmariefr• 4 years ago

Seems like even the page 2 didn't have the time to get archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220402201945/https://contrachr...

jitl• 4 years ago

PDF version that doesn’t need to connect to any databases: https://contrachrome.com/ContraChrome_en.pdf

mastazi3• 4 years ago

and if like me you're getting a DNS error, try https://web.archive.org/web/20220401202242/https://contrachr...

ghusto2• 4 years ago

For some reason quad9 DNS servers don't resolve the domain (I'm guessing you're using those, like me?). No idea why.

dang2• 4 years ago

Changed from https://contrachrome.com/ above. Thanks!

throwmeariver1• 4 years ago

Why would I need to make a comic if I spent 80% of the comic close up in someone's face with text all around him.

adenozine• 4 years ago

Well, I sure was hoping this was a good excuse to play some SuperC in the browser this morning...

yashwastaken2• 4 years ago

lol, same here lad

mda7• 4 years ago

I find it quite tasteless honestly.

infp_arborist3• 4 years ago

What, Google's behaviour? Or the fact that this is the society we currently live in?

mda7• 4 years ago

The comic. It was something to convey technical aspects of Chrome, now it is defiled by someones personal rants put into mouths of engineers who created it. I find it disgusting actually.

dessant2• 4 years ago

Why are many of you still working for Meta and Google? I imagine you're well aware of all the harm they've been causing to society.

We may never be able to counter or reverse the effects of their relentless efforts to normalize corporate surveillance.

I'm sure you haven't ended up working for Meta just because you couldn't find a job at a less destructive company.

You have a leverage, you could refuse to participate in this, so why are you still writing code that harms people?

zerr• 4 years ago

Mid/high six-figures (sometimes low seven ones as well).

southerntofu• 4 years ago

Not that i disagree with your argument, but given the very competitive nature of corporate culture and the high rate of burnout, most people may feel better working for lower pay for less-sociopathic organizations (say, local non-profits or public IT services).

Also, i find it interesting to note how tech salaries have climbed in the past two decades, precisely as IT was more and more employed as a means of ruining peoples' lives (micro-management based on metrics, surveillance industry, IoT and other scams, centralized monopolies like Amazon, etc).

The price of keeping IT people complicit/quiet in the scheme has risen, but we as a privileged class of IT people should understand that we're precisely being paid for silence about the atrocities we help build. We are collaborators to an oppressive system, and if that's something that bothers you maybe you should consider alternatives.

Throwawayaerlei2• 4 years ago

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

Believer or not, there's a lot of wisdom in the Bible.

charcircuit• 4 years ago

I imagine you're well aware of all the harm they've been causing to society.

Not everyone shares your viewpoint and values. If you think everyone thinks Google and Meta, or even the idea of personalization as being harmful to society, you have found yourself in a bubble.

kmlx• 4 years ago

I imagine you're well aware of all the harm they've been causing to society.

what harm to society? from where i’m standing they’re a huge net positive, they’ve enabled huge advances in society, they’ve enabled great collaboration across the whole planet and enabled us all to benefit from the one of the greatest inventions of humankind: the internet.

could they do better? sure. are they past their peak? maybe. but their past contributions are immense.

amelius2• 4 years ago

Can you prove that without Google we wouldn't have seen more advances in society? Perhaps people just jumped on the wrong bandwagon because they didn't know any better? Perhaps Google got big for the wrong reasons?

FinNerd• 4 years ago

So much of the Meta hate in tech circles comes from same cope psychology of engineers thinking “if you build it they’ll come” and failing at acquisition.

Ads help SMBs and larger ones so much. Sure there’s issues here and there but meta has probably pushed GDP forward pretty hard and enabled awesome amounts of product discovery, and this is just on the ads side. Think of everything people have learned on FB/IG. I’ve met so many valuable people.

prmoustache2• 4 years ago

You make it sounds like google and meta invented the internet or made it so much better by itself. Sure they open sourced a few technologies and steered some evolutions but I don't see anything immensely relevant.

cmrdporcupine• 4 years ago

I rage-quit Google recently -- and my job search involves looking for places that are "doing good for the world", and there's lots of things I dislike about the company -- but this is just a bit hyperbolic.

There are far worse companies for the world than Google -- in the grand scheme of "harm done to humanity", Google pales in comparison to Exxon or BP or Phillip Morris or Lockheed-Martin or Dupont etc.

Facebook/Meta, that's potentially a separate discussion.

In any case if you feel like companies like Google are causing serious harm to the world then you need to have a deeper conversation about capitalism generally [which I encourage you to do]. Is it possible that the whole model of profit incentives as we have them now inevitably creates the things you're complaining about? Why attack engineers personally when in the end it's just "rational actors" acting like mice following the cheese?

PS totally aside from what harm Google might be doing to the world (again mild compared to the above named corporations), we probably should talk about what harm Google is doing to our industry.

esrauch3• 4 years ago

It doesn't seem very obvious that any of GrubHub, Ticketmaster, Yelp, eBay, Microsoft, Tesla, AirBnb, Amazon, Oracle are "morally superior" to work at than Google.

I think Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, Palantir, Comcast, Juul, Uber, any defense contractor, Nestle, Philip Morris, etc are at least arguably less ethical work than even Meta, and get less flak just by being behind slightly less visible to users.

While there's many legitimate serious criticisms of both Meta and Google, I think many of the concerns are misdirected or overexaggerated. The omnibox thing mentioned in the comic is a pretty concrete example to me of a false criticism: the Chrome feature is that it fetches query suggestions for what you've typed so far, which means it's going to be sending what you've typed to a server. Firefox also does exactly same thing and continuously sends what you are typing to Google or Bing to fetch query suggestions, and I don't see people writing this same comic about how Firefox is somehow evil to implement such a feature.

cma3• 4 years ago

Chrome really does have the file scanner they mention that you can't turn off.

On android, try turning off search suggestions, it is a literal maze as depicted:

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/106230?hl=en&co=...

In firefox android it is a simple toggle button under settings->search.

the_other3• 4 years ago

the Chrome feature is that it fetches query suggestions for what you've typed so far, which means it's going to be sending what you've typed to a server.

Sure, but it’s not just querying based on what you type in. It takes what you typed, adds it to the model of you built from your past searches and web history and tailors the results to match a mixture of

A) what it thinks today-you wants based on yesterday-you

B) what someone else is willing to pay to inset above the results of a)

It’s way less benign than you make out.

They also aggregate all the similar searches and correlate that over geography and demographics, and probably sell that. They can predict infection progress through a population from search terms.

Admittedly, that’s useful… but it also feels “underhand” in a way that simpler “product->fee->customer” relationships used to work.

RuggedPineapple• 4 years ago

I really don't see how you can argue with a straight face that Google is a net negative for society. There's more of an argument for Meta, but even then its mostly about social media in general then Facebook in particular.

wepple• 4 years ago

I see you’re building software which entirely relies on the major tech companies search engines. If people didn’t work there, you couldn’t do what you’re doing. Can these companies (like most companies) do better? Of course. Perhaps by working there, people believe they can be that change?

Edit: your/you’re

dessant2• 4 years ago

The aim is not for everyone to quit these companies, but for enough people to refuse to build and maintain the harmful components of their systems so that these companies are forced to change. Regarding my projects, they'd be just as useful if Google and Meta would cease to exist tomorrow, but again, that isn't the point.

Perhaps by working there, people believe they can be that change?

We're talking about highly intelligent people, at least some of them understand that the code they maintain sometimes performs actions that are illegal. They could lift their fingers from the keyboard when they recognize that something is not right. They could choose to not be complicit.

ghusto2• 4 years ago

I think the replies answer your question well enough, though likely not in the way you were hoping.

The rationalisations and denials point strongly to the answer being: Because we're bad people.

I was hoping for better, but live and be disappointed, I guess.

c0l0• 4 years ago

Feels like the right time to repost this aperiodic reminder: https://coloss.us.to/chrome_truth.png

cpeterso• 4 years ago

So Google Chrome is Roko's Basilisk? https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk

amelius2• 4 years ago

Can tech companies please return to building ... tech?

Leave behind all the peeking at user data and dark business models, and just do and sell what you're good at? Make hardware and software that users (and companies) can trust and build on? Products that are not tethered by the manufacturer for business strategic reasons? Thanks.

If not, perhaps there should be laws. Because if the market starts working against the interest of the consumer, then we have a problem.

antihero• 4 years ago

Well if they don't chase getting as much money as possible they won't be able to pay people mid six (and sometimes low seven) figure salaries to developers. Or afford to become "philanthropic" billionaires.

infp_arborist3• 4 years ago

Actually we have solved nearly all technical problems. Just look at how the HN content has (not) changed over the last 10 years and how many times you have read: "... is a solved problem"?

From the elite's point of view, the function of big tech companies nowadays is to keep the consuming masses in check. It doesn't matter if this means not executing anti-cartel laws.

mixedCase• 4 years ago

People at large don't want to pay for software and would much rather take ads instead. Not a lot of people care that much about privacy either, so unless data collection has a direct consequence --that they are made aware of-- on something impactful like being rejected when trying to take out a loan or insurance because of it, they don't mind either.

So yes, you would have to look at laws to "fix" this, but you will find out that there is no way you will be able to get it passed in a democracy because almost no one wants to have to pay for social media, a web browser, search engines or other such commodity software.

the_other3• 4 years ago

People at large don't want to pay for software and would much rather take ads instead.

But that’s not been the deal since the mid ‘00s. The deal is “ads, plus we build a model of you and rent access to that model for anyone who’ll pay, allowing them to manipulate your politics and world-view”.

That’s the deal. But they just call it “ads”.

but you will find out that there is no way you will be able to get it passed in a democracy because almost no one wants to have to pay for social media, a web browser, search engines or other such commodity software.

I suspect that people do care about their data, their privacy and such. But tech is so hard, the effects so distant and the public’s ability to affect change so minimal that people guve in to the privacy breach. That’s quite different from “not caring”.

I admit, this is a hunch.

zozbot2343• 4 years ago

People at large don't want to pay for software and would much rather take ads instead.

What the point of paying, when even a retail copy of the most common commercial OS still has ads for frickin' Candy Crush in the start menu? Not to mention an amount of telemetry that dwarfs what's described in OP's comic by multiple orders of magnitude? The best software is for free these days, any paid support is completely voluntary. Commercial software should be treated as abusive spyware unless it can prove otherwise.

nine_k2• 4 years ago

Paying for software used to be high-friction 20 years ago. By now, I can pay for software in multiple ways, with near-zero friction. Equally easily I can pay (and do pay) for software-based services, like Youtube, and a number of others.

But of course an ad-supported "free tier" is an easy way to try a service with zero obligations, and it will remain popular. Also, if for me $10/mo is not a big deal, for other folks this may be not so. Those who can't pay with money pay with what they've got, with attention and privacy. They might like to pay with money, but sometimes can't afford that. Count all the ad-supported free services you likely use (e.g. Google search, Twitter, Facebook,..), and at the rate at $10/mo they'd add up to a noticeable sum.

iamstupidsimple• 4 years ago

Software engineering is one of the few middle class jobs available these days. Understandably it's now packed with people desperately trying to live a specific lifestyle, buy a house, etc... rather than a passion for tech for tech's sake. (Not placing blame.)

That fact along with the average piece of consumer software having such low perceived value (try getting people to spend 99p on the app store) and consumer software has become this awful race to the bottom of lock-in and advertising. I suspect business software is much healthier for this reason.

Economic pressures are why we've arrived here.

lynguist• 4 years ago

Is Chromium OK to use though?

zozbot2343• 4 years ago

Chromium should be OK if you use either the Ungoogled-Chromium build or Iridium Browser. Both of these aim to clean up all dependencies on Google services from vanilla Chromium.

bigpeopleareold• 4 years ago

I used these and I think they are OK, but I'd still just go with Firefox as the simplest solution, particularly if you want to convince others (particularly those close to you) whether to switch browsers.

I dealt with multi-containers, didn't like it, and then I found this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switc.... There is no reason to go back to Chrom(e|ium) with this.

agumonkey• 4 years ago

Makes using firefox+ddg tastes slightly better. That said the whole web is becoming swampy :) alas.. swings and roundabouts.

armitron• 4 years ago

If you read DDG TOS (1) you'll see that they save your queries and are being somewhat disengunous about doing so (half-buried half-way down the page there's this gem):

"We also save searches, but again, not in a personally identifiable way, as we do not store IP addresses or unique User agent strings. We use aggregate, non-personal search data to improve things like misspellings."

I wonder how many folks that use DDG know this is taking place (or even bothered to read that far down the TOS).

(1) https://duckduckgo.com/privacy

richardsocher• 4 years ago

+1 to this. If you search for your name or IP address etc. they will save that query forever and there's no way you can delete this.

When we founded https://you.com we read other search engines' TOS and decided to give users a choice: to have some personalization or be completely private. In private mode, we do not store any queries or anything else about the user. You can find details about our privacy policy here: https://youdotcom.notion.site/Privacy-and-Data-Protection-at...

Would love your feedback also.

jefftk3• 4 years ago

From the first page it reads like this is Scott McCloud writing an update, but this "remix" is actually by Leah Elliot.

There's more context in the introduction pages of the PDF, but the website skips them: https://contrachrome.com/ContraChrome_en.pdf

(Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)

smitty1e2• 4 years ago

As a Google employee, do you think the content accurate?

jefftk3• 4 years ago

This is an area that I have a decent amount of experience with, because I've been working in Ads on the response to third-party cookies going away, and giving public feedback on various proposals to build new privacy-preserving APIs to support advertising. I don't think the comic is very accurate, and I'd be happy to talk about specific points you're interested in?

(Speaking only for myself)

shaolinspirit2• 4 years ago

hard problem. people want to make money -> unethical decisions on a mass scale -> people want to build ethical stuff -> get no reward for that. the incentive mechanism is broken in the world. I'm not completely anti-capitalist as it can be used for good, but the incentive mechanism is definitely one of the hardest problems I can think of.

shaolinspirit2• 4 years ago

or it is actually right, it's just when VC's are investing they expect huge returns from investments and start to squeeze all of the juice on max levels. So moderate capitalism works, but massive growth and unnatural world scale corporations are always evil?

JasonFruit• 4 years ago

This is a good message to get out, and I wish it were more likely to make it into the hands of people who wouldn't otherwise get the message. I applaud the effort.

I'm disappointed with a few things about it, though, because:

- It makes it sound like Scott McCloud did this, but he didn't

- It unfortunately includes a political viewpoint that is irrelevant to the message

- It omits context on a few points to make them sound worse than they are, which is completely unnecessary, because the message is devastating without them

When you're speaking truth about a powerful and deceptive entity, you have to be absolutely factual and focused, and this isn't quite there.

Ourgon• 4 years ago

The first three sections are worth showing to those who stubbornly insist on either trusting that these companies (all of them) will not abuse their access to their data or insisting they don't care about what those companies know about them. Section four - the 'social psychologist' starts the introduction of some political slant ('muslim, LGBTQIA+, democrat' portrayed as 'vulnerable' who might not get a job/credit card/health insurance policy, terms like 'fat shaming'), section five is just littered with 'progressive' tropes where Trump == evil and BLM == good. This is both a shame as well as stupid, it severely limits the credibility and potential reach of what would otherwise be a non-partisan description of the practices of that data-hog farm named Alphabet.

Scrap those sections and re-publish I'd say. If not, this is a lost cause, just more 'progressive' propaganda.

maverick74• 4 years ago

I was not aware of this comic.

Everytime I read something new about this subject I realize things are always worst than I though.

I really don't see why people keep using this thing...

It's really amazing!!!

Still the comic misses to mention the funny "I've got nothing to hide" argument

Yawnzy• 4 years ago

The target audience for this doc seems to be people whose world view was shaped by the last two years of political messaging. Maybe the authors assume that most people working in tech fall into that category?

nunez2• 4 years ago

This is quite dishonest. I thought this was from people that used to be on the Chrome team that have defected, but it's just an adaptation from a third party. This is explained in the PDF but not on the slides.

dang2• 4 years ago

Yes, that's bad. We've changed the URL from https://contrachrome.com/ to the pdf which makes this clearer.

nunez2• 4 years ago

thanks, dang; you rock!

kkfx• 4 years ago

Very, very nice, but to be more clear: it's not just Chrome.

The modern web is the surveillance web because the modern web is "an endpoint" for users (witch means a new mainframe dumb terminal, at a far higher price and complexity than the old ones) and someone else service, typically run on giants cloud datacenters.

To avoid that, and still have the modern level of life PLUS MANY MORE, we already have had a solution: the desktop computing. The first one on record the modern way AFAIK was the Xerox Star Office System, but even the older NLS (1968!!!) have networking, videoconferencing and screen sharing. YES, you read correctly. Dates are not wrong.

So what? So it's a real mess because since Xerox except for LispM and Plan 9 we do not have developed desktop computing anymore, so the old model might still be rediscovered, at least it still exists, but on actual iron, very badly designed even if far more powerful in mere horsepower terms, and with essentially no modern software. The last living vestige is Emacs, witch is VERY good but not enough evolved for actual end-users, so we need:

- public universities, paid enough by the government and government only, with a very effective separation from the private sector, to create a new old classic research not for short term business but for the society;

- enough years to write a modern desktop, which means around a decade because it's not just a matter of code, it's a matter to learn how classic systems works and design a new one, a thing most today devs do not know and have issue imaging, than time to develop it, to spread it etc.

The other option? Well... A small Canadian TV series (Continuum) recently gives a nice idea, perhaps mixed with a small French movie (Virtual Revolution) to see a more realistic one. Be prepared to a future where you will have to eat only if some IT giants gives food to you. Be prepared to live to work instead of working to live because yes, I'm not joking nor exaggerating, it's just a matter of observing the world today.

Contra Chrome [pdf]

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