I have a weak grasp of this, but a developer working on this responded to some criticism.
If the developers working to implement this are to be believed, they are intentionally setting it up so that websites would have an incentive to still allow untrusted (for lack of a better term) clients to access their sites. They do this by intentionally ignoring any trust check request 5% - 10% of the time, to behave as if the client is untrusted, even when it is. This means that if a website decides to only allow trusted clients, they will also be refusing trusted clients 5% - 10% of the time.
The relevant part of the response is quoted here:
WEI prevents ecosystem lock-in through hold-backs We had proposed a hold-back to prevent lock-in at the platform level. Essentially, some percentage of the time, say 5% or 10%, the WEI attestation would intentionally be omitted, and would look the same as if the user opted-out of WEI or the device is not supported.
This is designed to prevent WEI from becoming “DRM for the web”. Any sites that attempted to restrict browser access based on WEI signals alone would have also restricted access to a significant enough proportion of attestable devices to disincentivize this behavior.
Additionally, and this could be clarified in the explainer more, WEI is an opportunity for developers to use hardware-backed attestation as alternatives to captchas and other privacy-invasive integrity checks.
ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s weird. The internet really seems to be pushing me not to use it these days.
empireOfLove@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Welcome to late stage capitalism. The free Fed money train is over, time to squeeze the plebians to death.
opt9@feddit.ch 1 year ago
Not the Internet, that is neutral. It is only one large corp that is trying to control the Internet. If everyone boycotts them, then they will fail.
gothicdecadence@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Nah not just one company. Reddit, Twitter, basically every social media, streaming services, every site adding stupid ads and auto playing videos, etc. It all adds up
opt9@feddit.ch 1 year ago
Fully agree, I was just trying to keep it relevant to Google. All that shit needs to be dropped. As people realize that rather than free, all that shit is really expensive, maybe they’ll make a move.
kava@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The vast majority of internet traffic these days goes through a few different portals. Pretty much the few biggest sites. Google/YouTube, Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp, Tiktok, Reddit, Twitter(“x”)
Most people connect through these through some type of application on a mobile device. Most of these users couldn’t tell you what DRM was or what web standards are. They don’t care, they just wanna look at funny videos and get updates through clickbait headlines.
These people aren’t going to boycott anything. The same thing that reddit is in the process of doing - killing off the old users and considering their power over the average apathetic user - Google is essentially going to try and do.
It’s a scary time. The internet we all grew up with it irreversibly changing.
opt9@feddit.ch 1 year ago
The asleep will continue to feed those big corps with their blood. The rest of us will move to other solutions. That is life.
over_clox@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Where did you get this idea that the internet is neutral?
en.wikipedia.org/…/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S…
opt9@feddit.ch 1 year ago
Neutral like electricity. It is a force that can be used for good or bad. Google is trying to harness that energy for its own profit and control. I wasn’t referring to the structures created to administer it. That is another can of worms.