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Regarding VNC, Mighty was trying to do this but couldn't make it work. As for the DRM, an open web is clearly important, but we already have plenty of DRM on t

Regarding VNC, Mighty was trying to do this but couldn't make it work. As for the DRM, an open web is clearly important, but we already have plenty of DRM on the web for content – Netflix/Prime/etc won't stream you video unless you're a trusted player, right down to the screen you're viewing it on. This is a business model problem, not a technical or moral one at its root. If the business model didn't require exclusive distribution of expensive to produce content, or if it didn't require viewing of ads to pay for the content, then these wouldn't be issues. Until those business models change, an open standard for how browsers proved they are operating in a trusted way seems reasonable, and would have many security benefits outside of DRM/ads that would benefit users. It's already hard enough to build a browser that there are only ~3, so let's not pretend that adding more browser API surface is suddenly going to make it impossible for an indie browser to exist, they functionally don't already.

AlexandrB 3y ago
Given how much malware and phishing slips through into ads, ad-blocking is a security measure on the users part. The benefit of WEI to ad and media companies is obvious, but I'm not sure this is a net security benefit for users.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  I don't have any insider info here, but I've worked in companies doing a lot of marketing on Google/FB/Twitter/etc, and they have pretty robust ad marketplaces. There are layers of review, ads are fairly limited in what they can do, security is high. However these are only a small slice of the market, there's then a very long tail of ad networks that have much less concern for the user, these are where most of the issues are. I once refused to integrate with one (still a major network) because it required allowing them to slurp up all text entered on your site (hell no). They thought it was strange that I pushed back on this. This is post GDPR, in the UK. These are not the companies that will be implementing WEI. They might, but it's probably beyond them technically, and even if not they'll happily just fingerprint as much as they can instead. On the flip side, if you're a content creator making money from content you publish online, it would be nice to know scraping is much harder. If you're an online banking user it would be nice to know that bots will have a much harder time automating the stealing of accounts, and so on.

AlexandrB 3y ago

Given how much malware and phishing slips through into ads, ad-blocking is a security measure on the users part. The benefit of WEI to ad and media companies is obvious, but I'm not sure this is a net security benefit for users.

danpalmer 3y ago
I don't have any insider info here, but I've worked in companies doing a lot of marketing on Google/FB/Twitter/etc, and they have pretty robust ad marketplaces. There are layers of review, ads are fairly limited in what they can do, security is high. However these are only a small slice of the market, there's then a very long tail of ad networks that have much less concern for the user, these are where most of the issues are. I once refused to integrate with one (still a major network) because it required allowing them to slurp up all text entered on your site (hell no). They thought it was strange that I pushed back on this. This is post GDPR, in the UK. These are not the companies that will be implementing WEI. They might, but it's probably beyond them technically, and even if not they'll happily just fingerprint as much as they can instead. On the flip side, if you're a content creator making money from content you publish online, it would be nice to know scraping is much harder. If you're an online banking user it would be nice to know that bots will have a much harder time automating the stealing of accounts, and so on.