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[-] Whirlybird@aussie.zone -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For a tech community there are a lot of uninformed and fear mongering posts in here. From the article:

What About Browser Modifications and Extensions?

Google's proposal remains ambiguous about its impact on browser modifications and extensions. It attests to the legitimacy of the underlying hardware and software stack without restricting the application’s functionality. However, how this plays out with browsers that allow extensions or are modified remains a grey area. As the proposal vaguely mentions, "Web Environment Integrity attests the legitimacy of the underlying hardware and software stack, it does not restrict the indicated application’s functionality."

Basically it can be summed up as “nothing in the new thing actually says it will make blocking ads impossible or even harder, but who knows right? So just trust that it will based on nothing other than fear mongering”

Sites have been detecting ad blockers and refusing to show you content unless you disable them for years. Sites already have paywalls as drm to restrict what you can see. This really isn’t bringing the ability do any of these DRM things since those already exist.

Having said all that - is there much of a reason for this new thing to exist? Debatable at this stage. The only benefit I can see to users is it could eliminate captchas and other “are you human?” checks, as well as maybe reduce cheaters in browser based games (which tbh I don’t even know if that’s a thing).

[-] eth0p@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In other posts, I've tried to point out how some of the articles and comments around WEI are more speculative than factual and received downvotes and accusations of boot-licking for it. Welcome to the club, I guess.

The speculation isn't baseless, but I'm concerned about the lack of accurate information about WEI in its current form. If the majority of people believe WEI is immediately capable of enforcing web page integrity, share that incorrect fact around, and incite others, it's going to create a very good excuse for dismissing all dissenting feedback of WEI as FUD. The first post linking to the GitHub repository brought in so many pissed off/uninformed people that the authors of the proposal actually locked the repo issues, preventing anyone else from voicing their concerns or providing examples of how implementing the specification could have unintended or negative consequences.

Furthermore, by highlighting the DRM and anti-adblock aspect of WEI, it's failing to give proper attention to many of the other valid concerns like:

  • Discrimination against older hardware/software that doesn't support system-level environment integrity enforcement (i.e. Secure Boot)
  • The ability for WEI to be used to discriminate between browsers and provide poor (or no) service to browsers not created by specific corporations.
  • The possibility of WEI being used in a way to force usage of browsers provided by hostile vendors
  • The ability for it to be used to lock out self-built browsers or forked browsers.
  • The potential for a lack in diversity of attesters allowing for a cartel of attesters to refuse validation for browsers they dislike.

I very well could be wrong, but I think our (the public) opinions would have held more weight if they were presented in a rational, informed, and objective manner. Talking to software engineers as people generally goes down better than treating them like emotionless cogs in the corporate machine, you know?

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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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