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Unpacking Google’s Web Environment Integrity specification

(vivaldi.com)
756 points dagurp | 1 comments | 26 Jul 23 11:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.223s | source
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wbobeirne ◴[26 Jul 23 17:56 UTC] No.36881997[source]▶

    > Can we just refuse to implement it?
    > Unfortunately, it’s not that simple this time. Any browser choosing not to implement this would not be trusted and any website choosing to use this API could therefore reject users from those browsers. Google also has ways to drive adoptions by websites themselves.
This is true of any contentious browser feature. Choosing not to implement it means your users will sometimes be presented with a worse UX if a website's developers decide to require that feature.

But as a software creator, it's up to you to determine what is best for your customers. If your only hope of not going along with this is having the EU come in and slapping Google's wrist, I'm concerned that you aren't willing to take a hard stance on your own.

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nvy ◴[26 Jul 23 18:15 UTC] No.36882333[source]▶
>But as a software creator, it's up to you to determine what is best for your customers.

Absolutely zero large web properties do anything based on what's best for users. If this gains traction, Google will simply deny adsense payments for impressions from an "untrusted" page, and thus all the large players that show ads for revenue will immediately implement WEI without giving a single flying shit about the users, as they always have and always will.

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pptr ◴[26 Jul 23 19:29 UTC] No.36883544[source]▶
Why would Google not monetize unattested traffic? I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown.

I don't know much about the online ad market. I assume advertisers will pay more for attested impressions than for unattested ones. But unattested impressions will still be worth something.

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colonelpopcorn ◴[26 Jul 23 19:42 UTC] No.36883732[source]▶
Because it makes payouts from advertisers more likely. If I'm advertising on Google's platform I don't want to pay for a web-scraping robot to see my ad.
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1. pyrale ◴[26 Jul 23 20:40 UTC] No.36884672[source]▶
Rather than not selling that space, google would later let ad buyers be aware of the parameter, and bid less for unattested views. Therefore, Google would reward sites less for such pages, and the sites would be incentivized to block you.