Write to your country’s anti-trust body if you feel Google is unilaterally going after the open web with WEI (content below taken from HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36880390).
US:
EU:
UK:
India:
Example email:
Google has proposed a new Web Environment Integrity standard, outlined here: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/…
This standard would allow Google applications to block users who are not using Google products like Chrome or Android, and encourages other web developers to do the same, with the goal of eliminating ad blockers and competing web browsers.
Google has already begun implementing this in their browser here: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/6f47a22906b28994…
Basic facts:
- Google is a developer of popular websites such as google.com and youtube.com (currently the two most popular websites in the world according to SimilarWeb)
- Google is the developer of the most popular browser in the world, Chrome, with around 65% of market share. Most other popular browsers are based on Chromium, also developed primarily by Google.
- Google is the developer of the most popular mobile operating system in the world, Android, with around 70% of market share.
Currently, Google’s websites can be viewed on any web-standards-compliant browser on a device made by any manufacturer. This WEI proposal would allow Google websites to reject users that are not running a Google-approved browser on a Google-approved device. For example, Google could require that Youtube or Google Search can only be viewed using an official Android app or the Chrome browser, thereby noncompetitively locking consumers into using Google products while providing no benefit to those consumers.
Google is also primarily an ad company, with the majority of its revenue coming from ads. Google’s business model is challenged by browsers that do not show ads the way Google intends. This proposal would encourage any web developer using Google’s ad services to reject users that are not running a verified Google-approved version of Chrome, to ensure ads are viewed the way the advertiser wishes. This is not a hypothetical hidden agenda, it is explicitly stated in the proposal:
“Users like visiting websites that are expensive to create and maintain, but they often want or need to do it without paying directly. These websites fund themselves with ads, but the advertisers can only afford to pay for humans to see the ads, rather than robots. This creates a need for human users to prove to websites that they’re human, sometimes through tasks like challenges or logins.”
The proposed solution here is to allow web developers to reject any user that cannot prove they have viewed Google-served ads with their own human eyes.
It is essential to combat this proposal now, while it is still in an early stage. Once this is rolled out into Chrome and deployed around the world, it will be extremely difficult to rollback. It may be impossible to prevent this proposal if Google is allowed to continue owning the entire stack of website, browser, operating system, and hardware.
Thank you for your consideration of this important issue.
This is a well written. Thanks. Anyone who needs persuading should read the above.
Thanks. If enough people make a fuss like this, WEI will go away.
It’s not by chance that the worst dystopias of science fiction never quite come true. It’s because the optimists and the do-somethings outnumbered the cynics and the do-nothings.
I didn’t even know India had an anti trust org. Thanks for sharing this.
Thank you so much for making this an easy action.
The github links are broken.
These links? They work for me.
Thanks, jerboa must be glitching out today
Do you happen to know where the one for Canada is?
the open web isn’t as profitable as the walled garden where we can shovel ads and algorithms at unwitting consumers to extract money from them.
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Am I allowed to add WebKit to your list of engines ?
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5% of the time it won’t send the attestation data, and that’s supposed to prevent this from being used to gatekeep the entire web.
What a fucking joke. That approach will never work and they know it. Attestation will become fully mandatory if integrated into Chromium.
How the turntables something something: https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/12/22327306/google-microsoft-attack-open-web-online-news-australia-laws
(Translation: you can’t do that before we do it that’s not fair!)
Already started moving my shit off Google. Been with them since 2004 and have nearly my entire post-high school life in there. I won’t ever watch their ads, I’ll stop going to YouTube the day my ad-blocker stops working.
This is likely going to be the dumbest question of the year, but Why can’t we do our own federated web standards?
The web is already federated. Anyone can start their own web server and compete with everyone.
The problem is WEI will prevent you from using unauthorized browsers with, for example, Netflix or YouTube or your bank, if those services decide to force WEI.
Federating those services is near to impossible for various reasons. People could make competing services that don’t enforce WEI, and some people have.
Dang you’re right. I didn’t think of that.
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