Supporting the open web requires saying no to WEI, and having Google say no as well. It’s not a good policy. It’s not a good idea. It’s a terrible idea that takes Google that much further down the enshittification curve. Even if you can think of good reasons to try to set up such a system, there is way too much danger that comes along with it, undermining the very principles of the open web.
It’s no surprise, of course, that Google would do this, but that doesn’t mean the internet-loving public should let them get away with it.
Fin.
From the article quoting Cory Doctorow:
Funny how Windows 11 requires a TPM module to install (supported) nowadays, huh?
I agree with this. If this succeeds, the web will no longer be open. Owners will only be allowed to run approved browsers in approved configurations. WEI and APIs like it take control away from owners and hands it to advertisers, service providers, hollywood studios and even governments using this DRM to enforce compliance.
Trouble is, the public are ignorant. By the time it’s switched on, it will be too late. People like us will complain about our modded browsers being blocked, but we’ll be a tiny minority and it could become the new norm despite our protests. Browser makers will say “you can’t blame us, we’re not blocking you, the websites are”, never mind the fact that browsers implemented the DRM to do it.
Alfman,
Yes, we just talked about that.
It started with “Tivoization” of streaming platforms. Netflix might have been the one leading the charge. They initially required Silverlight on Windows (hence did not run on Linux, but I think had a Mac version). And later used the DRM inside Javascript as Silverlight fade away.
The irony is, web was supposed to be rendering agnostic. Even CSS supports alternative representations, including speech: https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/aural.html
Which means it was supposed to be handled by “robots” as our “agents”.
I remember when Google was fighting against a closed web ecosystem, specifically in the news domain.
Back in those days, it was impossible to browse a mobile news site without major loading delays, broken rendering, sprinkled with several pages of ads, which are then replaced by full page ones, and possibly hidden popups. That almost led to everyone moving to a closed ecosystem.
Our sister teams then build a standard, and its public implementation: AMP, accelerated mobile pages. (Of course it has its own controversies). Along with the push to rank faster pages higher, this more or less fixed the mobile web, which makes about half(?) of the Internet ecosystem.
I still have my t-shirt and the hat celebrating those.
The internet-loving public has no say in this mess. Google knows it cannot win the anti-adblocker war alone and that’s why they’re trying to set up a backround system that would let them and other big companies conspire against their customers in an unnoticeable way — until it’s too late to fix it.
The saddest part is that virtually all of the browser market share is controlled by Google, Apple and Microsoft who (based on statistics) are the three biggest browser vendors. Now they just need a few big media companies to be willing to adopt this technology on their websites and we’re screwed forever.
After they kill Mozilla / Firefox, they will change the WEI rules so that none of the browsers based on Google’s engine can allow adblockers or other privacy plugins anymore, or they’d be blacklisted as untrusted agents.
sj87.
That’s the same way I feel.
They don’t have to kill mozilla/firefox. For antitrust purposes a weak mozilla may be better for google than a dead one. Besides I think we’ve already seen exactly how this plays out….
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/drm-and-the-challenge-of-serving-users/
Mozilla wrote this in 2014 in response to the industry promoting DRM for streaming codecs, but you could copy these words to what google are doing now in 2023 and it would make sense. Realistically Mozilla doesn’t have the clout to change the industry, so once again they’d have to implement it so that users don’t end up outside of the DRM wall. They’ll give users the option to “disable” it, but that’s of little consolation when major websites require a WEI enabled browser to proceed.
I think all website owners should come together and “nudge” Chrome users to switch to a less evil browser. Maybe a pop-up like this one: https://github.com/eylenburg/wei_warning/