> Huh, funny that being equally outraged about both isn't an option for you...
Yes, funny that my response is directly proportional to the actual threat posed by both actions, rather than pretending that they're an equivalent risk.
> If there had been this kind of backlash (rather than universally positive press) when Apple did it more than a year ago, maybe it would have sent a message.
There is a limited amount of bandwidth the general public can devote to being outraged. Apple does a lot of stuff that's worth being outraged about. Our job as activists is to draw attention to the biggest threats where public outrage will do the most good. That means prioritizing issues based on the markets in which those issues appear and based on which actors in those markets are most likely to do harm. Of course that doesn't mean only paying attention to Google -- like I said above if this was a conversation about mobile platforms and user choice more generally, I would be speaking much more critically about Apple's lock-in and app-store restrictions than I would be when talking about Google's similar violations. But it does mean paying attention to situations where whataboutism serves to dilute public attention rather than reinforce it or expand awareness.
A reminder that at no point during this entire conversation have I given Apple a free pass; at no point during this entire conversation have I even said a single positive word about Apple. Literally every single comment on Apple I've made during this conversation has been negative.
But no, I'm not equally outraged about both, because they're simply not equivalent threats to the web, and you seem determined to ignore the practical realities of the current browser market in defense of some kind of "fairness", as if amoral structurally anti-consumer companies were somehow humans on trial who deserve equal rights. They're not. You don't have to be fair to them, Google and Apple are not people, they are large corporate systems.
> and this is now de facto a reasonable feature for a browser to implement.
The fact that there is near-universal outrage over Google's position from basically every non-Google source covering it proves that this hasn't turned out the way you're worried. I've seen no one (other than people who would already be defending Google anyway) point at Apple's implementation as if it's a justification for Google's behavior. The statements from press have also been strong and straightforward and haven't tried to excuse the policy with Apple's attestation efforts.
It turns out that focusing outrage intelligently on areas where it will do the most good is actually better practical strategy for consumer rights advocacy than being equally outraged at everything in every situation and pretending that the market is something that it's not.
It is weird to me that condemning Apple isn't enough for you. For some reason it's not enough for you that I say that Apple's actions are bad, I need to be exactly as vehement about drawing attention to Apple as I would be for any other company and I need to expend the exact same resources and need to be pushing for the exact same press coverage. For some reason I need to pretend that Google isn't a unique threat to the web. But... it is.
It is weird to me that you seem to think that user advocacy is about fairness rather than about about achieving a concrete goal and protecting user rights. If you are an activist you are not under an obligation to fight "fair" for user rights, you don't have an obligation to be fair or equitable to companies. You have an obligation to be honest and moral and upfront with users (and I believe that I am, I'm not lying and saying that Apple's implementation isn't bad, I've condemned it in every single comment I've posted in this conversation). But where companies themselves are concerned your only obligation is to make sure that user rights win.
I really don't understand how your comments help with that fight. If anything, focusing attention on Google is a valuable tool for generally educating normal people (and tech-communities) about the dangers of attestation. I think it is unlikely you could have mustered nearly as much public criticism of Apple's actions before news of Google's spec proposal broke.
Holding one company's feet to the fire with more force than you hold another company's is perfectly acceptable, and in fact in many situations is strategically advisable (and I think the current reaction to Google demonstrates that very well). Pretending that every single company is the exact same threat is way more dishonest than saying upfront "both of these examples are bad, but this particular example is dangerous." And Chrome's attestation is more dangerous than Safari's. If you think my behavior is weird, I would counter by saying it's also very strange to me that you seem determined not to acknowledge that fact.
Yes, funny that my response is directly proportional to the actual threat posed by both actions, rather than pretending that they're an equivalent risk.
> If there had been this kind of backlash (rather than universally positive press) when Apple did it more than a year ago, maybe it would have sent a message.
There is a limited amount of bandwidth the general public can devote to being outraged. Apple does a lot of stuff that's worth being outraged about. Our job as activists is to draw attention to the biggest threats where public outrage will do the most good. That means prioritizing issues based on the markets in which those issues appear and based on which actors in those markets are most likely to do harm. Of course that doesn't mean only paying attention to Google -- like I said above if this was a conversation about mobile platforms and user choice more generally, I would be speaking much more critically about Apple's lock-in and app-store restrictions than I would be when talking about Google's similar violations. But it does mean paying attention to situations where whataboutism serves to dilute public attention rather than reinforce it or expand awareness.
A reminder that at no point during this entire conversation have I given Apple a free pass; at no point during this entire conversation have I even said a single positive word about Apple. Literally every single comment on Apple I've made during this conversation has been negative.
But no, I'm not equally outraged about both, because they're simply not equivalent threats to the web, and you seem determined to ignore the practical realities of the current browser market in defense of some kind of "fairness", as if amoral structurally anti-consumer companies were somehow humans on trial who deserve equal rights. They're not. You don't have to be fair to them, Google and Apple are not people, they are large corporate systems.
> and this is now de facto a reasonable feature for a browser to implement.
The fact that there is near-universal outrage over Google's position from basically every non-Google source covering it proves that this hasn't turned out the way you're worried. I've seen no one (other than people who would already be defending Google anyway) point at Apple's implementation as if it's a justification for Google's behavior. The statements from press have also been strong and straightforward and haven't tried to excuse the policy with Apple's attestation efforts.
It turns out that focusing outrage intelligently on areas where it will do the most good is actually better practical strategy for consumer rights advocacy than being equally outraged at everything in every situation and pretending that the market is something that it's not.
It is weird to me that condemning Apple isn't enough for you. For some reason it's not enough for you that I say that Apple's actions are bad, I need to be exactly as vehement about drawing attention to Apple as I would be for any other company and I need to expend the exact same resources and need to be pushing for the exact same press coverage. For some reason I need to pretend that Google isn't a unique threat to the web. But... it is.
It is weird to me that you seem to think that user advocacy is about fairness rather than about about achieving a concrete goal and protecting user rights. If you are an activist you are not under an obligation to fight "fair" for user rights, you don't have an obligation to be fair or equitable to companies. You have an obligation to be honest and moral and upfront with users (and I believe that I am, I'm not lying and saying that Apple's implementation isn't bad, I've condemned it in every single comment I've posted in this conversation). But where companies themselves are concerned your only obligation is to make sure that user rights win.
I really don't understand how your comments help with that fight. If anything, focusing attention on Google is a valuable tool for generally educating normal people (and tech-communities) about the dangers of attestation. I think it is unlikely you could have mustered nearly as much public criticism of Apple's actions before news of Google's spec proposal broke.
Holding one company's feet to the fire with more force than you hold another company's is perfectly acceptable, and in fact in many situations is strategically advisable (and I think the current reaction to Google demonstrates that very well). Pretending that every single company is the exact same threat is way more dishonest than saying upfront "both of these examples are bad, but this particular example is dangerous." And Chrome's attestation is more dangerous than Safari's. If you think my behavior is weird, I would counter by saying it's also very strange to me that you seem determined not to acknowledge that fact.