Why is this forum using fonts.gstatic.com to display post buttons?

[RejZoR]

I have all the Google junk blocked on a router level (similar to Pi-hole) and I've noticed that this forum has forum post buttons (Quote, multi-quote, report etc) messed up. After looking through block logs I've pinpointed the source. For some reason you're parsing forum post control buttons from fonts.gstatic.com. Why? Why would you parse post control buttons from Google's font server?! Why webpages parse fonts from another server is the weird mystery anyway, but I'll leave that rant for some other time...

 

See lower left corner in both examples.

 

NORMAL

 

BUGGED

[WereCatf]

12 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

After looking through block logs I've pinpointed the source. For some reason you're parsing forum post control buttons from fonts.gstatic.com. Why? Why would you parse post control buttons from Google's font server?!

It's an icon-font. The benefit is that there are a shitton of icons in that font, so they can just pick and use more icons from it in the future, should they come up with something that requires more icons. Also, those fonts are scalable.

 

Sure, they could use e.g. SVGs, but SVGs could carry malicious payloads and therefore they are sometimes blocked at e.g. company-firewalls and some antivirus-packages by default. Fonts rarely get blocked and I'm not aware of any fonts carrying malicious payloads. Also, if they went with SVGs, they'd have to either someone providing those SVGs or make their own. Secondly, there'd be a whole bunch of HTTP-connections to download all of them, whereas with a font you only need to download one file to get them all.

[RejZoR]

But I don't want shit being parsed from Google servers. This is why it's impossible to ditch Google even when you actually ditch ALL its "products". Coz of crap like this that's embedded in half of the internet...

[WereCatf]

4 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

But I don't want shit being parsed from Google servers. This is why it's impossible to ditch Google even when you actually ditch ALL its "products". Coz of crap like this that's embedded in half of the internet...

Download the font and install it in your system. Or redirect the URL to your own webserver.

[kirashi]

6 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

But I don't want shit being parsed from Google servers. This is why it's impossible to ditch Google even when you actually ditch ALL its "products". Coz of crap like this that's embedded in half of the internet...

1 minute ago, WereCatf said:

Download the font and install it in your system. Or redirect the URL to your own webserver.

Do what @WereCatf mentioned above, or opt to not use the forums? Totally respect your decision to attempt to block Google from your life, but there comes a point where you have to compromise, or actively choose to not use certain websites and/or products.

 

[RejZoR]

17 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Do what @WereCatf mentioned above, or opt to not use the forums? Totally respect your decision to attempt to block Google from your life, but there comes a point where you have to compromise, or actively choose to not use certain websites and/or products.

 

Or you just load some stupid tiny icons from the same server forum is hosted on? You know, like 99,99% of other forums I visit do?

[WereCatf]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Or you just load some stupid tiny icons from the same server forum is hosted on? You know, like 99,99% of other forums I visit do?

Pretty much every forums and website I visit does the same thing nowadays. We must be visiting different sites.

[RejZoR]

21 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Pretty much every forums and website I visit does the same thing nowadays. We must be visiting different sites.

I don't know a single one doing this thing with buttons. Actual fonts, yes, they do change on various sites, but I don't care about that. It's still readable, just in different font. Here, instead of neat buttons I get massive text buttons.

[colonel_mortis]

On 8/31/2019 at 10:16 AM, RejZoR said:

Or you just load some stupid tiny icons from the same server forum is hosted on? You know, like 99,99% of other forums I visit do?

By using a CDN, in this case Google's, the fonts are cached not just for ltt but for all sites using the CDN. That means that it's faster in many cases than serving it locally (it's more likely to already be in your cache). 

 

Per Google's fonts FAQ, they don't track you through your font requests, aside from generating aggregate statistics about which fonts are used most. 

 

I have considered switching it to be hosted locally in the past, and am not set on doing it like this, but there are pros and cons to switching it. 

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, colonel_mortis said:

By using a CDN, in this case Google's, the fonts are cached not just for ltt but for all sites using the CDN. That means that it's faster in many cases than serving it locally (it's more likely to already be in your cache). 

 

Per Google's fonts FAQ, they don't track you through your font requests, aside from generating aggregate statistics about which fonts are used most. 

 

I have considered switching it to be hosted locally in the past, and am not set on doing it like this, but there are pros and cons to switching it. 

When Google says "we don't track you" I believe it as much as trusting my jewelry to a thief...

[LogicalDrm]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

When Google says "we don't track you" I believe it as much as trusting my jewelry to a thief...

Everybody in the internet tracks you. If you aren't fine with that, remove internet connector.

[lewdicrous]

5 hours ago, RejZoR said:

When Google says "we don't track you" I believe it as much as trusting my jewelry to a thief...

As Logical mentioned, every site you go to will track you in one way or another, if you don't like it then block trackers through your browser or don't visit the internet unless you absolutely have to. 

[RejZoR]

20 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

As Logical mentioned, every site you go to will track you in one way or another, if you don't like it then block trackers through your browser or don't visit the internet unless you absolutely have to. 

There is a difference between blocking trackers and analytics no one gives a shit or misses if they are blocked and losing parts of webpage because you need to parse fonts and buttons... from some creepy as mega corporation for some reason. That's the main reason I'm even posting this here.

 

Those tiny buttons would get cached by browser anyway, you're not really saving bandwidth, but you're making my experience miserable because I'm literally having huge ass text in place of 5x5mm buttons because I don't want to have anything to do with Google. And that thing is parsed directly from Google.

[colonel_mortis]

On 9/1/2019 at 5:31 PM, RejZoR said:

There is a difference between blocking trackers and analytics no one gives a shit or misses if they are blocked and losing parts of webpage because you need to parse fonts and buttons... from some creepy as mega corporation for some reason. That's the main reason I'm even posting this here.

 

Those tiny buttons would get cached by browser anyway, you're not really saving bandwidth, but you're making my experience miserable because I'm literally having huge ass text in place of 5x5mm buttons because I don't want to have anything to do with Google. And that thing is parsed directly from Google.

Your feedback is being taken into account, but it's not something that will be changed immediately.

[RejZoR]

33 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

Your feedback is being taken into account, but it's not something that will be changed immediately.

Of course I'm not expecting immediate action as it requires time and resources to address this. But would greatly appreciate if you'll be able to roll this out in relatively near future.

[hojnikb]

You can always go batshit crazy and wget all your webpages, just like Stallman does. Otherwise, Google is just part of the internet at this point along with all the tracking and profiling. Love or leave it.

[RejZoR]

13 minutes ago, hojnikb said:

You can always go batshit crazy and wget all your webpages, just like Stallman does. Otherwise, Google is just part of the internet at this point along with all the tracking and profiling. Love or leave it.

Just because Google is part of the internet, that doesn't mean it has to be part of my life. Or yours for that matter. There is no need to help them be this invasive annoyance by parsing stuff from their servers, giving them even more resources to track people (I don't care how much they say they aren't doing that with googleapis.com, I don't really believe anything that comes from "Google's mouth". And for most things, blocking it entirely affects nothing or minor things. But when things break like this, it's super annoying. I've removed Google entirely from my life and I'm doing just fine. This is the last really stupid annoying thing I'm dealing with. I don't mind different fonts, it just looks slightly different but is perfectly usable. Having things missing entirely and being replaced by oversized code text, that's very annoying.

[hojnikb]

9 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I've removed Google entirely from my life and I'm doing just fine.

 

Oh, you're so cute, thinking you removed google

[RejZoR]

16 minutes ago, hojnikb said:

 

Oh, you're so cute, thinking you removed google

And what makes you believe I haven't?

[kirashi]

23 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

And what makes you believe I haven't?

Google indexes this forum, so your comments are being indexed by Google. The only way this could be stopped is if the forum were paywalled or password protected, which isn't the case so... you actually haven't removed Google from your life. Anyway, as you noted about Google not needing to be part of your life, and as I've mentioned above, you can certain opt not to use any services or websites that rely on any specific companies if you desire. Might make browsing the web a bit more difficult, but that's certainly within the realm of you choosing.

[RejZoR]

38 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Google indexes this forum, so your comments are being indexed by Google. The only way this could be stopped is if the forum were paywalled or password protected, which isn't the case so... you actually haven't removed Google from your life. Anyway, as you noted about Google not needing to be part of your life, and as I've mentioned above, you can certain opt not to use any services or websites that rely on any specific companies if you desire. Might make browsing the web a bit more difficult, but that's certainly within the realm of you choosing.

The info I post publicly I already consider anonymized or willing to make it public. I don't give a damn if Google indexes it, EVERYONE can read it anyway. Everyone CANNOT see what webpages I'm visiting, however, Google can with all their crap attached to most webpages. So, that's a bit weird logic on your end...

[hojnikb]

Things go deeper than that. Chrome and Chromium based browser are another leak to google. So is Android. And youtube being another big one. 

 

Also all the companies using Google's Cloud infrastructure. Twitter, Paypal and ebay among one of the big ones.

[RejZoR]

10 minutes ago, hojnikb said:

Things go deeper than that. Chrome and Chromium based browser are another leak to google. So is Android. And youtube being another big one. 

 

Also all the companies using Google's Cloud infrastructure. Twitter, Paypal and ebay among one of the big ones.

Not using any of it pretty much even at such extended reach. I even disabled Google's SafeBrowsing garbage in Firefox.

[AlTech]

On 9/1/2019 at 3:02 PM, LogicalDrm said:

Everybody in the internet tracks you.

Not everybody imo.

Quote

If you aren't fine with that, remove internet connector.

And I respectfully disagree, people should have the right to use the internet without having their privacy destroyed or compromised by using Google or Facebook or any company which doesn't respect user privacy.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

In all fairness the "bugged" interface doesn't really bother me that much.  I keep all of Google's stuff blocked so I also have the text instead of the icons. 

You get used to it pretty quickly.

 

I also have Discord and Facebook blocked, which means I don't see the avatars of all people who use those services for theirs either.  But that's probably a good thing.