Long before "agentic AI," we had the idea that software was your agent on the internet.
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Long before "agentic AI," we had the idea that software was your agent on the internet. That's why the technical term for a browser is a "user agent." Your browser acts on your behalf to retrieve information and then show it to you, in the format you choose. It's your agent:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/12/compelled-speech/#quishing
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This is a powerful and profound idea. It is because browsers are our "agents" that we expect them to accept our directives, say, by blocking pop-ups, or by turning off autoplay sound, or by blocking commercial surveillance trackers:
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This is a powerful and profound idea. It is because browsers are our "agents" that we expect them to accept our directives, say, by blocking pop-ups, or by turning off autoplay sound, or by blocking commercial surveillance trackers:
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Your browser does all that because your browser works for *you*. The reason your browser *can* work for you is that the web is an open, standardized technology. In theory, anyone who follows the standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) can make a browser, and that web browser can connect to *any* web server. Browsers and servers are *interoperable*.
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Your browser does all that because your browser works for *you*. The reason your browser *can* work for you is that the web is an open, standardized technology. In theory, anyone who follows the standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) can make a browser, and that web browser can connect to *any* web server. Browsers and servers are *interoperable*.
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It's the same force that means you can put anyone's gas in your gas-tank, or anyone's shoelaces in your shoes, or anyone's milk on your cereal.
But what if manufacturers could dictate those choices to you? What if your light socket refused to use a lightbulb unless it was officially blessed by the socket's manufacturer? What if your dishwasher refused to wash your dishes unless you bought them from one of the manufacturer's "dish partners"?
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It's the same force that means you can put anyone's gas in your gas-tank, or anyone's shoelaces in your shoes, or anyone's milk on your cereal.
But what if manufacturers could dictate those choices to you? What if your light socket refused to use a lightbulb unless it was officially blessed by the socket's manufacturer? What if your dishwasher refused to wash your dishes unless you bought them from one of the manufacturer's "dish partners"?
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What if your toaster refused to toast "unauthorized bread"?
It's hard to see how a company could win its market with this strategy. After all, if the dishes are really better than the competition's, you'd buy them voluntarily, without any need for law or technology to force the matter. The only reason to make a dishwasher that refuses a rival's dishes is if the manufacturer's own dishes are ugly, expensive, and/or badly made.
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What if your toaster refused to toast "unauthorized bread"?
It's hard to see how a company could win its market with this strategy. After all, if the dishes are really better than the competition's, you'd buy them voluntarily, without any need for law or technology to force the matter. The only reason to make a dishwasher that refuses a rival's dishes is if the manufacturer's own dishes are ugly, expensive, and/or badly made.
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But once a company owns the market - once they've achieved dominance by buying out their rivals; by bribing potential competitors to stay out of their lane; and by engaging in deceptive conduct to trap key suppliers and customers - they could cement their dominance by blocking interoperability, keeping out rival dishes, milk, gas, lightbulbs, shoelaces and bread, capturing their whole market and *squeezing* it.
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But once a company owns the market - once they've achieved dominance by buying out their rivals; by bribing potential competitors to stay out of their lane; and by engaging in deceptive conduct to trap key suppliers and customers - they could cement their dominance by blocking interoperability, keeping out rival dishes, milk, gas, lightbulbs, shoelaces and bread, capturing their whole market and *squeezing* it.
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That's what Google has done, and that's what Google wants to do more of. Google's commercial behavior has been so unethical, deceptive and abusive that the company just lost *three* federal antitrust cases:
https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/google-loses-the-adtech-monopolization
This thrice-convicted monopolist bribed Apple - more than $20b/year - to stay out of the search market:
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That's what Google has done, and that's what Google wants to do more of. Google's commercial behavior has been so unethical, deceptive and abusive that the company just lost *three* federal antitrust cases:
https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/google-loses-the-adtech-monopolization
This thrice-convicted monopolist bribed Apple - more than $20b/year - to stay out of the search market:
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They cheated app vendors, ripping them off with sky-high junk fees and onerous conditions that raised prices while lowering the share of your spending going to the companies whose products you were paying for:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-google-loses-antitrust-case
They cheated advertisers, rigging the ad market to gouge businesses on ad prices and underinvesting to fight rampant ad-fraud, sucking hundreds of billions out of the productive economy for overpriced ads that no one saw:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-prevails-landmark-antitrust-case-against-google
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They cheated app vendors, ripping them off with sky-high junk fees and onerous conditions that raised prices while lowering the share of your spending going to the companies whose products you were paying for:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-google-loses-antitrust-case
They cheated advertisers, rigging the ad market to gouge businesses on ad prices and underinvesting to fight rampant ad-fraud, sucking hundreds of billions out of the productive economy for overpriced ads that no one saw:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-prevails-landmark-antitrust-case-against-google
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Google wasn't always this way. The "don't be evil" company owes its very existence to the open web ecosystem. When the company started to index the web in 1998, it was playing on an open field, where any web server could talk to any "user agent," even one whose user was a startup like Google, that was making a copy of every page on the server.
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Google wasn't always this way. The "don't be evil" company owes its very existence to the open web ecosystem. When the company started to index the web in 1998, it was playing on an open field, where any web server could talk to any "user agent," even one whose user was a startup like Google, that was making a copy of every page on the server.
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For years, Google thrived on the open web, and built open technologies. Android - the mobile operating system that Google bought in 2005 - was presented as an "open" alternative to existing mobile offerings, and as the mobile market collapsed into two companies - Google and Apple - Google always presented Android as the open alternative to Apple's "walled garden."
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For years, Google thrived on the open web, and built open technologies. Android - the mobile operating system that Google bought in 2005 - was presented as an "open" alternative to existing mobile offerings, and as the mobile market collapsed into two companies - Google and Apple - Google always presented Android as the open alternative to Apple's "walled garden."
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There were always ways in which Google's "open" Android wasn't *exactly* open. The company engaged in illegal "tying" arrangements that forced hardware vendors and carriers to lock out versions of Android that were created by Google's competitors:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_18_4581
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There were always ways in which Google's "open" Android wasn't *exactly* open. The company engaged in illegal "tying" arrangements that forced hardware vendors and carriers to lock out versions of Android that were created by Google's competitors:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_18_4581
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In other words, even though Google offered a mobile platform that was (mostly) *technically* open, they used *commercial* and *legal* strategies to choke off the market oxygen for alternative Android versions that tried to capitalize on that technical openness.
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In other words, even though Google offered a mobile platform that was (mostly) *technically* open, they used *commercial* and *legal* strategies to choke off the market oxygen for alternative Android versions that tried to capitalize on that technical openness.
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But life finds a way. The existence of an open, modifiable, tinkerer-friendly mobile operating system meant Android hackers could create alternatives to Google's (de facto) walled garden, which thrived in the cracks in that garden wall. Operating systems like CalyxOS, PureOS and Graphene offered a more private, more secure Android experience, one that was largely "de-Googled," blocking Google's relentless acquisition of your private data:
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But life finds a way. The existence of an open, modifiable, tinkerer-friendly mobile operating system meant Android hackers could create alternatives to Google's (de facto) walled garden, which thrived in the cracks in that garden wall. Operating systems like CalyxOS, PureOS and Graphene offered a more private, more secure Android experience, one that was largely "de-Googled," blocking Google's relentless acquisition of your private data:
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And Google's data-hunger is *relentless*. Android exfiltrates a chunk of your personal and behavioral data *every five minutes*. The "resting heartbeat" of Android surveillance pulses and pulses, irrespective of whether you're using your device, and the instant you unlock your screen, that heartbeat quickens, sending even more data to the company:
https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2018/08/21/google-data-collection-research/
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Long before "agentic AI," we had the idea that software was your agent on the internet. That's why the technical term for a browser is a "user agent." Your browser acts on your behalf to retrieve information and then show it to you, in the format you choose. It's your agent:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/12/compelled-speech/#quishing
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@pluralistic Oh how I cried when I finally found out what REST had been supposed to be and how Fielding would beat most current 'REST' API authors with blunt objects if he hadn't apparently let go a long time ago.
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And Google's data-hunger is *relentless*. Android exfiltrates a chunk of your personal and behavioral data *every five minutes*. The "resting heartbeat" of Android surveillance pulses and pulses, irrespective of whether you're using your device, and the instant you unlock your screen, that heartbeat quickens, sending even more data to the company:
https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2018/08/21/google-data-collection-research/
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All that data has proved irresistible to authoritarian governments. Donald Trump's enforcers have seized on Google data as a vital source of information about the identity of protesters and the location of migrants hunted by ICE:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/google-broke-its-promise-me-now-ice-has-my-data
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All that data has proved irresistible to authoritarian governments. Donald Trump's enforcers have seized on Google data as a vital source of information about the identity of protesters and the location of migrants hunted by ICE:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/google-broke-its-promise-me-now-ice-has-my-data
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There are many reasons why users would seek out these de-Googled alternatives to Android, finding them in spite of Google's illegal commercial tactics to block access to competing technologies. The worse it got, the better those alternatives looked.
Perhaps this explains Google's years-long effort to increase the *technical* barriers to using modified versions of Android, beefing these up to match the commercial restrictions that stand in the way of a de-Googled existence.
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There are many reasons why users would seek out these de-Googled alternatives to Android, finding them in spite of Google's illegal commercial tactics to block access to competing technologies. The worse it got, the better those alternatives looked.
Perhaps this explains Google's years-long effort to increase the *technical* barriers to using modified versions of Android, beefing these up to match the commercial restrictions that stand in the way of a de-Googled existence.
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Back in 2023, Google floated the idea of "Web Environment Integrity" (WEI), a set of modifications to web standards that would force your computer to disclose its operating environment to the web servers it connected to, *even if you objected to this disclosure*:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai
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Back in 2023, Google floated the idea of "Web Environment Integrity" (WEI), a set of modifications to web standards that would force your computer to disclose its operating environment to the web servers it connected to, *even if you objected to this disclosure*:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai
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WEI was a form of "remote attestation." That's when your device uses a sub-processor (sometimes called a "Technical Protection Module" or "TPM") or a walled off part of its main processor (sometimes called a "secure enclave") to produce a cryptographically signed description of your device and its configuration: which hardware, software, plug-ins and settings you're running.
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WEI was a form of "remote attestation." That's when your device uses a sub-processor (sometimes called a "Technical Protection Module" or "TPM") or a walled off part of its main processor (sometimes called a "secure enclave") to produce a cryptographically signed description of your device and its configuration: which hardware, software, plug-ins and settings you're running.
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When you connect to a server, it demands that your device send this "attestation" before it handles your request. If your device won't provide this data, or if the server doesn't like (or recognize) your device and its details, it can refuse to deal with you. And because the attestation is prepared by a TPM or a secure enclave that you can't modify or override, you don't get to decide which facts about your device it's allowed to see.
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When you connect to a server, it demands that your device send this "attestation" before it handles your request. If your device won't provide this data, or if the server doesn't like (or recognize) your device and its details, it can refuse to deal with you. And because the attestation is prepared by a TPM or a secure enclave that you can't modify or override, you don't get to decide which facts about your device it's allowed to see.
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Practically speaking, this means that remote attestation lets a server refuse to deal with you until you turn off your ad-blocker and your tracker-blocker. It means that the server can discriminate against users who block auto-play sound and video, who block pop-ups, who put the tab in the background when it's playing a mandatory pre-roll ad.
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