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Sure, you can convince people to use Firefox and drop Chrome just like IE was dropped back in the day but back then there wasn't a strong incentive to websites

Sure, you can convince people to use Firefox and drop Chrome just like IE was dropped back in the day but back then there wasn't a strong incentive to websites to prefer one browser over another (other than convenience). Here's what I think is gonna happen: - First the feature is added to Chrome as it is now. As they described they add it with some kind of hold-back or limiting constraint to reduce the outrage until everything is ready. - Then the media people (Netflix, Hulu, Disney, YouTube...), who have long been salivating for something like this, push the other browsers to implement this. You really only need to convince Safari, as Edge has such a low market share in comparison that they will be forced to fold or be irrelevant (and it's not like Microsoft hates this feature anyway). For reference, Chrome, Safari and Edge make up 89% of market share. Edge alone is only 4%. - Once the browsers are on board it's time to get the sites onboard. Really most people tend to visit social media sites more than anything else, so as long as you get them onboard you don't need to do anything else, and WEI serves their interests as well (for example it would stop you from scraping Reddit). - As for the rest of the sites you can just make Adsense not count views or clicks from untrusted users (after all that's the _stated goal_ of this project) and site owners _will_ find ways to get their users to switch to Chrome on their own. You can add a checkbox to Adsense to get it to block your site for untrusted users to make it extra easy if you're feeling lazy. - The final strike will be Cloudflare. Right now they rely on CAPTCHA to block bots but now they can just use WEI instead. Since most of the web uses Cloudflare now you have a gateway between the user and most sites that will tell you to go away or eternally give you endless CAPTCHAS if you are using a "bad browser". - At this point all that is left is getting Google to give Cloudflare an exemption to the hold-back feature "for the greater good" or just kill it off at this point because there's no need to play nice anymore. I'm not optimistic. It was easy to install Firefox and remove the IE icon on your mom's computer back in the day. It's not that easy to tell her to stop watching Netflix, Disney, Reddit, Facebook, her favorite cooking recipe site... The best that can happen is that the internet splits and the free portion of it stays large enough to be useful. (and it doesn't get DDOSed into the ground)

skydhash 3y ago
Bank and government sites can implement it for all I care (I would buy a cheapo device to interact with them). As for my job, the laptop is already theirs. Any sites that try to implement this would be just missing me. The web enabled globalism due to its free aspect. And if they want to restrict it, I'm pretty sure someone will come with an alternate protocol. > Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. Clay Shirky Most people don't care because they view their computing devices as a utility or a tool. I save my breath in these cases because convenience trumps everything for them, including ownership and control. Most of my childhood was without the internet, I'm not unwilling to go back to a mostly offline life.
- gorjusborg 3y ago
  I am surprised that Google seems to underestimate the possibility of this sort of thing actually pushing people outside its reach. I am in the same boat as you, I am not as worried as some of the doomsdayers, I would just opt out of their shitternet entirely and find other ways to live. The web today is not the valued asset it was to me in decades past.
- fsniper 3y ago
  "If I can use a workaround to conform this I would not care if people gets affected" This is not about you or me but Google having a high level of control over www access, and trying to cement it for good. With this proposal if you are not conformant according to a very loosely defined, - heck not defined at all - attestation you will be kept outside of the www. The control will be adopted with big or small parties in time. Consider a scenario where ad-networks not paying participants who does not attest via their selected attestor.. How long would it take the whole service industry to adopt "select" attestors?
  - skydhash 3y ago
    > Consider a scenario where ad-networks not paying participants who does not attest via their selected attestor.. How long would it take the whole service industry to adopt "select" attestors? Anyone showing ads to me instead of taking my money is just fooling themselves. Because I block most of them, and the unskippable ones (twitch), I mute or I move to something else. YouTube does not show ads in my country, and this is the only reason I still use it on my Apple TV. If the whole service adopts it (I don't foresee it), that means they don't want me as a customer. So unless something is essential (government services,...), I wouldn't bother with them, and the list of essential things is very short. But I don't foresee it. Restricting your user base like this by enforcing correct browsers and platforms means doing the work for any competitor that does not.

skydhash 3y ago

Bank and government sites can implement it for all I care (I would buy a cheapo device to interact with them). As for my job, the laptop is already theirs. Any sites that try to implement this would be just missing me. The web enabled globalism due to its free aspect. And if they want to restrict it, I'm pretty sure someone will come with an alternate protocol. > Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. Clay Shirky Most people don't care because they view their computing devices as a utility or a tool. I save my breath in these cases because convenience trumps everything for them, including ownership and control. Most of my childhood was without the internet, I'm not unwilling to go back to a mostly offline life.

gorjusborg 3y ago
I am surprised that Google seems to underestimate the possibility of this sort of thing actually pushing people outside its reach. I am in the same boat as you, I am not as worried as some of the doomsdayers, I would just opt out of their shitternet entirely and find other ways to live. The web today is not the valued asset it was to me in decades past.
fsniper 3y ago
"If I can use a workaround to conform this I would not care if people gets affected" This is not about you or me but Google having a high level of control over www access, and trying to cement it for good. With this proposal if you are not conformant according to a very loosely defined, - heck not defined at all - attestation you will be kept outside of the www. The control will be adopted with big or small parties in time. Consider a scenario where ad-networks not paying participants who does not attest via their selected attestor.. How long would it take the whole service industry to adopt "select" attestors?
- skydhash 3y ago
  > Consider a scenario where ad-networks not paying participants who does not attest via their selected attestor.. How long would it take the whole service industry to adopt "select" attestors? Anyone showing ads to me instead of taking my money is just fooling themselves. Because I block most of them, and the unskippable ones (twitch), I mute or I move to something else. YouTube does not show ads in my country, and this is the only reason I still use it on my Apple TV. If the whole service adopts it (I don't foresee it), that means they don't want me as a customer. So unless something is essential (government services,...), I wouldn't bother with them, and the list of essential things is very short. But I don't foresee it. Restricting your user base like this by enforcing correct browsers and platforms means doing the work for any competitor that does not.