6 ms·

>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

by nvy 3y ago

>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.

riku_iki 3y ago
large properties are interested to keep their content locked from scrapping, so they will for sure be interested to implement this.
- nvy 3y ago
  Yes. My point is that Google's done an excellent job stacking incentives against the user, here.
- realusername 3y ago
  >large properties are interested to keep their content locked from scrapping Except Google of course, the only allowed scrapper.
pptr 3y ago
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.
- nvy 3y ago
  >Why would Google not monetize unattested traffic? I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown. It's very simple. Google has concerns of click/impression fraud. Unattested traffic would be more likely to be fraudulent. Not paying for unattested impressions/clicks is therefore an easy way to cut costs and combat fraud.
  - bagacrap 3y ago
    But the usual HN paranoid anti-Google retort is that Google happily charges advertisers for fake ad impressions. Now if Google cares about real impressions it's still terrible no good very bad evil.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Are you usually this unreasonably dismissive of people? It's good for google to care, it's not good for them to do this.
      - bagacrap 3y ago
        I don't even know who you think I'm dismissing. Mine is more of a generalized ennui directed at HN as a whole. I don't think Google has actually done anything. The bar for experimenting with new code in Chromium is pretty low. This Chicken Little reaction to a non-starter is just a result of developing in the open.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        Your post implies that anyone against this attestation is just going "Google terrible no good very bad evil", because Google "caring about real impressions" is what they said they wanted. But you can "care" about something in good and bad ways, and the criticism is not "Google bad".
- colonelpopcorn 3y ago
  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.
  - pyrale 3y ago
    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.
- judge2020 3y ago
  > I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown. Chrome will happily block a Google ad if it uses too much resources, I experience this a lot with a few sites that do ad replacements in the background.
- nprateem 3y ago
  > Why would Google not monetize unattested traffic? I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown Because this is an incredible way of exerting their total control over the web across all browsers. If they don't like a feature, they get to downgrade the user's attestation or fail it. If it costs them some unattested traffic in order to create a permanently unassailable market position, it's worth the money. It'll block all other search engines by preventing web scraping except those blessed by Google. For this reason alone many websites will adopt it. This will impact competition, research and freedom. After this, all user choice is gone, and it'll only be governments who can break the racket. If the CCP don't already do this, I expect they'll quickly implement something similar.
wbobeirne 3y ago
I think this is a little reductive. WEI is likely what some people at Google felt was best for AdSense's customers, i.e. advertisers. It just so happens that Google has a whole other set of customers who this is not best for, e.g. Chrome users, YouTube users. The problem is that it's all coming from one company, and AdSense is where the money is at, so I don't trust Google to make the best decisions for their secondary customers. I definitely agree that AdSense blocking clients that don't implement WEI seems likely. At that point, it will be up to websites that rely on AdSense revenue to decide what to do with customers they aren't monetizing. That's already a question they have from users with ad blockers, although that is a little bit more challenging to detect. My hope is that the majority of sites accept that they can't rely on ad revenue, and instead resort to directly monetizing users as a way to make ends meet. IMO that's a better relationship than indirectly selling their data and attention.
- Xenoamorphous 3y ago
  > At that point, it will be up to websites that rely on AdSense revenue to decide what to do with customers they aren't monetizing. Isn’t this a no brainer? Ad funded websites have zero incentive to serve pages to ad blocker users. Not only they don’t make any money from them, they cost them money.
  - wbobeirne 3y ago
    I run an ad blocker on all of my devices (mix of uBlock or Brave browser) and I'm pretty surprised how infrequently sites ask me to disable it to access content. Not sure if your experience is different.
    - vbezhenar 3y ago
      Probably because ublock deletes those “disable Adblock“ screens.
      - wbobeirne 3y ago
        Any proper gate for a user to access content should be managed by a server, not on the client side. It would have to be the same for WEI. If they can detect that I'm using an adblocker, there's no reason they couldn't prevent me from accessing content by not even serving the content in the first place.
lnxg33k1 3y ago
Are you sure about that? I am quite optimistic, it's not the first dominant-position abusing crap from Google, they also tried to impose AMP and to rank sites without it at lower positions, but AMP was ultimately fined out of existence. I am all for regulations and fining google out of existence, but I am thinking that maybe this is another product that serves to make shareholders sleep well and will not really see any significant adoption
- simbolit 3y ago
  AMP is gone? Wow, good news is rare these days, so thank you very much for the update.
  - lnxg33k1 3y ago
    Ok I’m in Europe, and haven’t met a Amp link for something like a year, maybe in other places it’s different

by nvy 3y ago

riku_iki 3y ago

large properties are interested to keep their content locked from scrapping, so they will for sure be interested to implement this.

nvy 3y ago
Yes. My point is that Google's done an excellent job stacking incentives against the user, here.
realusername 3y ago
>large properties are interested to keep their content locked from scrapping Except Google of course, the only allowed scrapper.

pptr 3y ago

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.

nvy 3y ago
>Why would Google not monetize unattested traffic? I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown. It's very simple. Google has concerns of click/impression fraud. Unattested traffic would be more likely to be fraudulent. Not paying for unattested impressions/clicks is therefore an easy way to cut costs and combat fraud.
- bagacrap 3y ago
  But the usual HN paranoid anti-Google retort is that Google happily charges advertisers for fake ad impressions. Now if Google cares about real impressions it's still terrible no good very bad evil.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Are you usually this unreasonably dismissive of people? It's good for google to care, it's not good for them to do this.
    - bagacrap 3y ago
      I don't even know who you think I'm dismissing. Mine is more of a generalized ennui directed at HN as a whole. I don't think Google has actually done anything. The bar for experimenting with new code in Chromium is pretty low. This Chicken Little reaction to a non-starter is just a result of developing in the open.
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        Your post implies that anyone against this attestation is just going "Google terrible no good very bad evil", because Google "caring about real impressions" is what they said they wanted. But you can "care" about something in good and bad ways, and the criticism is not "Google bad".
colonelpopcorn 3y ago
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.
- pyrale 3y ago
  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.
judge2020 3y ago
> I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown. Chrome will happily block a Google ad if it uses too much resources, I experience this a lot with a few sites that do ad replacements in the background.
nprateem 3y ago
> Why would Google not monetize unattested traffic? I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown Because this is an incredible way of exerting their total control over the web across all browsers. If they don't like a feature, they get to downgrade the user's attestation or fail it. If it costs them some unattested traffic in order to create a permanently unassailable market position, it's worth the money. It'll block all other search engines by preventing web scraping except those blessed by Google. For this reason alone many websites will adopt it. This will impact competition, research and freedom. After this, all user choice is gone, and it'll only be governments who can break the racket. If the CCP don't already do this, I expect they'll quickly implement something similar.

wbobeirne 3y ago

I think this is a little reductive. WEI is likely what some people at Google felt was best for AdSense's customers, i.e. advertisers. It just so happens that Google has a whole other set of customers who this is not best for, e.g. Chrome users, YouTube users. The problem is that it's all coming from one company, and AdSense is where the money is at, so I don't trust Google to make the best decisions for their secondary customers. I definitely agree that AdSense blocking clients that don't implement WEI seems likely. At that point, it will be up to websites that rely on AdSense revenue to decide what to do with customers they aren't monetizing. That's already a question they have from users with ad blockers, although that is a little bit more challenging to detect. My hope is that the majority of sites accept that they can't rely on ad revenue, and instead resort to directly monetizing users as a way to make ends meet. IMO that's a better relationship than indirectly selling their data and attention.

Xenoamorphous 3y ago
> At that point, it will be up to websites that rely on AdSense revenue to decide what to do with customers they aren't monetizing. Isn’t this a no brainer? Ad funded websites have zero incentive to serve pages to ad blocker users. Not only they don’t make any money from them, they cost them money.
- wbobeirne 3y ago
  I run an ad blocker on all of my devices (mix of uBlock or Brave browser) and I'm pretty surprised how infrequently sites ask me to disable it to access content. Not sure if your experience is different.
  - vbezhenar 3y ago
    Probably because ublock deletes those “disable Adblock“ screens.
    - wbobeirne 3y ago
      Any proper gate for a user to access content should be managed by a server, not on the client side. It would have to be the same for WEI. If they can detect that I'm using an adblocker, there's no reason they couldn't prevent me from accessing content by not even serving the content in the first place.

lnxg33k1 3y ago

Are you sure about that? I am quite optimistic, it's not the first dominant-position abusing crap from Google, they also tried to impose AMP and to rank sites without it at lower positions, but AMP was ultimately fined out of existence. I am all for regulations and fining google out of existence, but I am thinking that maybe this is another product that serves to make shareholders sleep well and will not really see any significant adoption

simbolit 3y ago
AMP is gone? Wow, good news is rare these days, so thank you very much for the update.
- lnxg33k1 3y ago
  Ok I’m in Europe, and haven’t met a Amp link for something like a year, maybe in other places it’s different