Request for Mozilla Position on an Emerging Web Specification Specification Title: Web Environment Integrity API Specification or proposal URL (if available): https://rupertbenwiser.github.io/Web-E...
I may not be 100% right, as I haven’t looked at it in detail, but I think it’s even a bit more than that. Since the way that’s proven is by the browser vendor signing the request (I assume with an HTTP header or something), you could also verify it’s from a specific vendor. So even if Mozilla says, yes, we’ll display your ads, a website could still lock down to Chrome. It would probably also significantly hamper new browsers, and browsers with a security/anti-ad focus, as they won’t be recognised by major websites that use the new protocol until they have market share, which they won’t get if they don’t have access to major websites.
I may not be 100% right, as I haven’t looked at it in detail, but I think it’s even a bit more than that. Since the way that’s proven is by the browser vendor signing the request (I assume with an HTTP header or something), you could also verify it’s from a specific vendor. So even if Mozilla says, yes, we’ll display your ads, a website could still lock down to Chrome. It would probably also significantly hamper new browsers, and browsers with a security/anti-ad focus, as they won’t be recognised by major websites that use the new protocol until they have market share, which they won’t get if they don’t have access to major websites.
I mean, they already do that by filtering out user agents. But this is certainly a step beyond.
Which is why all browsers cross identify as other browsers. This would make it easier for sites to block and harder for browsers to work around.