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Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible
(stackdiary.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Can someone shed some light for me? I'm a noob and I'm not sure I understand what is being proposed by google here. From what I can tell, they're proposing a cryptographically signed token that details information about a website user's 'environment', which I take to mean, their device OS and browser information, for the sake of verifying their humanity for website owners and advertisers. Isn't this sort of information already collected when a user visits a webpage, and doesn't google (or whomever) already collect and use this data (and more) for fingerprinting? How is this new proposal different, and something to be specifically concerned about?
I know there are anti-fingerprinting browser privacy addons that spoof this information, or prevent its collection. Is the concern that these tools will become inoperable?
For the record I don't like google or any company collecting any fingerprinting information, but it's already being done widely and in an unregulated manner, isn't it?
The thought here is that, a website could be programmed to, for example, only be accessible to users of chrome (or even an android device), correct? Other than google itself, why would any website want to do such a thing? Is the idea that google is trying to bring users to chrome, by blocking google services on other browsers? That could be really transformative for the web, because then you'd have microsoft doing the same thing with edge, apple doing the same thing with safari, other companies like fb or whatever launching their own bespoke 'browsers' to access their services. Will users actually put up with the degree of fragmentation that this move might bring? Won't it just push users to the 'old internet' where you can simply go to a website and interact with it?
Sorry, I'm kind of talking out loud here trying to wrap my head around this. I see people grousing about DRM and ads, and I'm struggling to connect all the dots.
Sounds like an open and shut anti-trust case if any governments care to pursue it.