And since you won’t be able to modify web pages, it will also mean the end of customization, either for looks (ie. DarkReader, Stylus), conveniance (ie. Tampermonkey) or accessibility.
The community feedback is… interesting to say the least.
And since you won’t be able to modify web pages, it will also mean the end of customization, either for looks (ie. DarkReader, Stylus), conveniance (ie. Tampermonkey) or accessibility.
The community feedback is… interesting to say the least.
It doesn’t seem to be targeting ad-blockers in particular (or other page customizing extensions), although that may result eventually. What it does do is let webpages restrict what web browsers and operating systems you are allowed to use, just like how SafetyNet on Android lets apps restrict you to using an OS signed by Google. That could end up with web pages forcing you to use a web browser and OS the big players like Google, Microsoft and Apple, blocking any less restrictive or less used competors like Firefox and Linux, thus creating a cryptographically enforced oligopoly. And even if they signed e.g. Firefox, it would only be certain builds of it. That would make it impossible to make a truly open-source browser that can access pages using this API. Quite concerning.
That’s just because they’ve learned not to say the quiet part out loud.
I mean that’s arguably worse, no?
Yes, I agree
It literally lists countering ad-blocking as a use case.
That section isn’t about ad-blockers, it’s about botnet ad fraud; using bots to inflate ad view counts to make advertisers pay more.
Unfortunately what’s going to happen in reality is that any non-standard ad consumption (including non consumption) will be flagged as fraudulent. “We cannot verify your activity, please disable your add-ons to continue”.
Possibly, it’s quite nebulous at this point