Google Boots Open Source Anti-Censorship Tool From Chrome Store (torrentfreak.com) 95
Google has removed the open-source Ahoy! extension from the Chrome store with little explanation. The tool facilitated access to more than 1,700 blocked sites in Portugal by routing traffic through its own proxies. TorrentFreak reports: After servicing 100,000 users last December, Ahoy! grew to almost 185,000 users this year. However, progress and indeed the project itself is now under threat after arbitrary action by Google. "Google decided to remove us from Chrome's Web Store without any justification," team member Henrique Mouta informs TF. "We always make sure our code is high quality, secure and 100% free (as in beer and as in freedom). All the source code is open source. And we're pretty sure we never broke any of the Google's marketplace rules."
Henrique says he's tried to reach out to Google but finding someone to help has proven impossible. Even re-submitting Ahoy! to Google from scratch hasn't helped the situation. "I tried and resubmitted the plugin but it was refused after a few hours and without any justification," Henrique says. "Google never reached us or notified us about the removal from Chrome Web Store. We never got a single email justifying what happened, why have we been removed from the store, or/and what are we breaching and how can we fix it." TorrentFreak reached out to Google asking why this anti-censorship tool has been removed from its Chrome store. Despite multiple requests, the search giant failed to respond to us or the Ahoy! team. Thankfully, the Ahoy! extension is still available on Firefox.
Henrique says he's tried to reach out to Google but finding someone to help has proven impossible. Even re-submitting Ahoy! to Google from scratch hasn't helped the situation. "I tried and resubmitted the plugin but it was refused after a few hours and without any justification," Henrique says. "Google never reached us or notified us about the removal from Chrome Web Store. We never got a single email justifying what happened, why have we been removed from the store, or/and what are we breaching and how can we fix it." TorrentFreak reached out to Google asking why this anti-censorship tool has been removed from its Chrome store. Despite multiple requests, the search giant failed to respond to us or the Ahoy! team. Thankfully, the Ahoy! extension is still available on Firefox.
What happened to "Don't be evil" (Score:5, Insightful)
They've gone to full-on evil
Re:What happened to "Don't be evil" (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they just redefined what "evil" is to "anything against Google's corporate goals".
Re:What happened to "Don't be evil" (Score:4)
No, they really did drop their own rule to not be evil.
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Ehhh they are going to switch over to the other great corporate lie
Google the company that cares more about people than profits.
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Anything against the cult is evil. Anything inside the cult is holy.
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What happened to "Don't be evil"
That was never a legal-binding motto. Still funny how many people fell for that nonsense.
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It does seem odd because there are lots of other VPN/proxy extensions available for Chrome, so there must be some reason why they removed this one.
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As best I can tell, Google rejected this privacy enhancing application to cooperate with the Chinese government, and to help protect the gathering of client data by online businesses. Other governments also object to privacy applications, but China is the largest growing market. Google has to compete with companies like Baidu who are far more cooperative with the Chinese government to grow in Asia, especially in China.
Re: What happened to "Don't be evil" (Score:2)
I don't think it's about China per se. Big Brother Google just really loves censorship.
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If I may disagree, Google has very little commercial reason to love censorship. Their business is based on a very wide ranging consumption of eveyr type of data possible, so that Google can monitor _that_ and assemble the most desired information to provide people. Their popular services are based on being able to handle any question for anyone at all. They're been forced to put some limits on that information, by copyright and security laws, but they seem compelled to do this, not _eager_ to do this.
Googl
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Re:No shit, Sherlock (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone wanted a walled garden cause it was "easier"
This was entirely predictable and dismissed by those who said things like this would never happen.
i want to download it and use it for a test (Score:2)
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Re:i want to download it and use it for a test (Score:4, Informative)
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Chrome auto-disables extensions that don't come from the chrome store, and Opera does the same. It's not developer friendly, because you need to track down that special build of Chrome that believes you know what you're doing and allows you to develop extensions without interference.
Vivaldi still accepts unpacked extensions.
Google is pro censorship (Score:1)
Google conspired with Apple and Facebook to silence Alex Jones. Google is pushing https everywhere to eliminate anonymous publishing. Why are you surprised.
Re:Google is pro censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
"Don't be evil" was the young Google. Their new motto is "power corrupts".
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Google is pushing https everywhere to eliminate anonymous publishing.
What are you talking about?
HTTPS everywhere stops ISPs and governments from casually snooping on everything I do online. And it doesn't prevent anonymous publishing.
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Gotta toe the line for China (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't have the Chinese government thinking Google supports routing around censorship, now can we?
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Re: Gotta toe the line for China (Score:1)
That is a good point. Anyone else remember when people said that the internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it? Well, for-profit corporations see routing around censorship as causing damage to their bottom line, and are routing around THAT.
Google is fully in thrall to their corporate masters. I say we kill it.
Step 1: stop using google as a verb.
Step 2: stop using google at all. That means finding and using alternatives (that do not themselves use google,) for any and all services google provi
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So, use DuckDuckGo in Opera through AVG VPN. And don't live in a totalitarian state. I guess that means don't live on Planet Earth.
Preaching to the choir (Score:2)
Didn't work for Facebook; won't work for Google.
Both companies have been doing wrong, and lots of of it, for a long time. There's absolutely no sign that the general run of users of either one care even a little bit.
A few people shouting here on /. mean nothing.
All of which I am very sorry to observe, but there it is.
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Opera turbo mode, VPNs and Tor could all effectively be said to do the same thing. What's not legit about it? Are you saying we should never try to route around censorship?
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its open source, you can check what it does
from what i read, it will detect the block page, redirects the request to one proxy and send to their servers the url of the blocked page (to detect new blocked domains)
A more simple alternative is just use google, cloudflare or other external DNS, as this block is done in the dns
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No blocking approved ads?
No blocking ads?
No blocking approved ad services and sites?
The user will soon have no control over their own browser on their own computer.
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Re:Likely to appease a foreign authoritarian regim (Score:5, Insightful)
Lately Google has been actively courting regimes who are heavy on censorship.
"Foreign authoritarian regimes"?
Maybe, at least partially.
Have you heard what the US FBI, for instance, has been saying lately about things like the widespread use of strong encryption? I don't think it would be a stretch to assume US TLAs would frown upon this type of anonymizing tool for the same sort of reasons they currently object to the widespread use of strong encryption.
When you start talking about authoritarian regimes, don't leave out the US government which is one of the largest and most intrusive.
Big Brother insists you not obstruct your Telescreen, Comrade!
Strat
Play Stores, App Stores (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why these things were an awful idea. We knew this would happen, platforms kicking off people for.. no reason at all.
Boycott this garbage, App Store, Play Store, Microsoft Store, it's all bullshit. Don't support it, don't publish to it, don't buy from it. The only thing these corporate entities understand is profit/loss. So seriously, vote with your wallet, don't buy anything from any of these sites.
Only a united front vs. these abominations will yield results. We all have to take a stand and say 'no.' Even you folks publishing and making money, stop, for the greater good. Go back to the old school software distribution, do it yourself. Building a website to host your app is cheap and easy, there's no excuse. If you can develop an app, you're definitely smart enough to set up a cloud based server.
Re: Play Stores, App Stores (Score:1)
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Much of the services that allow for the internet to function are privately owned and are *not* common carriers.
I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but here goes!
It's true, all of the internet is pretty much in private hands. But if you're trying to convince me that a site like Daily Stormer can't find a single bent provider to host their pages.. it's not going to happen, not when there's still hosting for Westboro Baptist Church, don't they run the 'godhatefags.com' site, or something similar? If that trash can find hosting, Daily Stormer just isn't trying hard enough. Not buying it.
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A billion people should get viruses on their phones because 1 app gets booted from 1 online store?
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I boycotted this stuff for years. But then Blackberry failed because...wait for it...there weren't enough apps.
Altername search engine? (Score:5, Informative)
Bing?
Run by Microsoft, which is just as evil and anti-free speech as Google
Baidu?
The definition of censorship -- might as well use Google.
Yandex?
If you like your search results slanted to Russia's ideology. Like Baidu, it is alright for the comrades but not for lovers of freedom.
Ecosia?
Powered by Bing, claims to be CO2 neutral, but Bing is powered by oil so not really CO2 neutral.
DuckDuckGo or StartPage?
For those not wanting to run Bing or Google these two are everyone's favorite. However, they are merely front ends for Google, but they do not let your queries become linked to your IP address or personal info.
Twitter?
Surely you jest. The master of double standards and censorship. Besides, like FB, they are dying because people are getting tired of their heavy handed and biased ways.
CCSearch?
Just another layer of snooping and 3rd party sales of your info. Logs on your searches kept for a period of time. Just use Google if you don't mind being spied upon.
Wiki.com?
A search engine which searches only Wiki's. Wikis themselves are heavily slanted and filtered to fit a certain political slant. Again, comrades should have no problem using them.
Boardreader? :(
If you’re searching for content written by everyday users about a topic this is your tool. Will the "everyday user" know what they are talking about? Too many seem to think that perpetual energy devices are real, and that Planet Nibiru is about to strike.
Slideshare?
Sponsored by LinkedIn, a comrade to Google, Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft, it links to videos, slides, pdf's and other educational material. Many are dated. Not the site to use if you want up to date information without a slant.
So, what to use?
What ever you want. Just know what using your choice can cost you more than you may realize.
Re:Altername search engine? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Altername search engine? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, for traditional search results they source from Bing; https://duck.co/help/results/sources
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Duckduckgo stopped being a front end for Google a long time ago. They actually federate searches from several search engines as well as their own sources to produce results. Not that that is really relevant. Most people don't complain about the quality of Google's search results, just all the other practices of the company.
Re: Altername search engine? (Score:1)
Qwant.
Why chrome? (Score:3)
for those not paying attention: (Score:1)
Big Tech has gone all-in on fascism (NOT Trumpism which many hate but is NOT fascism, but ACTUAL fascism where government and corporations unite hand-in-glove to oppress). Big Tech is enabling all the oppression demanded by each national or local government. China wants the keys to Apple servers and - shazam! - China gets them. China wants to censor speech and - zap! - Google is all on-board. Democrat lawmakers demand the suppression of a tawdry guy like Alex Jones, who for some reason they seem to think ha
Another justification for the EU fine (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's hope the EU keeps extracting money from Google till they get the message.
Same old Corporate Outlook (Score:2)
In the 1930's, the US was the only nation to increase investment in Nazi Germany because it was a strong government of "people we can work with".
In the 2010's, Google sees Fascist China as "people we can work with" too, and so do many others. This time, the wilful blindness to the consequences is not restricted to the US, however.
So, yeah, can't allow anyone to get around censorship - someone's got to think about the money, you know.