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Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

arstechnica.com Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

It's just a "proposal," but it's also being prototyped inside Chrome right now.

Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web
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  • Part of me wants to believe that this won’t be abused and it’ll actually make the web better. The other part of me knows better.

    They could, theoretically, implement this on a way that just changes the pay structure for ad impressions but I think that all that will do is incentivize website owners using Google ads to block or nag “non-compliant” users… but here’s hoping they don’t abuse it I guess because there’s basically nothing we can do to change it once it’s out there. Genies out and all that

    • They outright said in their own press release it's primarily to increase ad visibility by breaking ad blockers.

      There's no scenario where this makes the web better

      • The irony is that I wasn't that against ads until they got super intrusive and started causing performance issues and breaking web pages. And of course the privacy problems with tracking cookies. But yeah, fuck all ads now, and fuck Google for trying to wring as much ad revenue out of me as possible. I switched to Firefox with uBlock.

      • Yup. This won't be used just to serve up unblocksble ads. If you're signed in to Google, this DRM will be used to track you, as well. VPNs will be useless because the tracking won't be done through your IP address, but through your browser, identified by DRM and tied to your Google account.

        That's what this is really about. Knowing who you are, where you are, where you go, what you see, what you buy, who you associate with. Forcing you to watch ads is just the icing on the cake.

    • We have to see if its even fully implement and pushed in the end.

42 comments