I know it has to do with not allowing ad blockers on chrome, but I’ve seen a lot of posts and memes on this recently and honestly don’t know what it even is. What is Web Environment Integrity?
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In theory, Web Environment Integrity is a way for a web browser – on its own – to prove to a web site that it is a legit web browser with a human at the console… as opposed to a robot, script or other non-human automation. Doing this without prompting the user to select all pictures that contain traffic lights or whatever. Again, in theory… it’s not a thing people are actually running (yet?).
The big corporations are for this, but all the human rights groups are against it. Big companies want to make sure their visitors are only human and are looking at the ads they serve them. Everyone else says that the only way this could possibly work is if browsers get secret code built into them that allows them to “prove” they are legit by knowing the secrets. This means lesser-known browsers, custom browser builds and unique mods to browsers are just incapable of visiting web sites that demand a Web Environment Integrity check that passes inspection.
Bots aren’t a bad thing. Google, the designers of the Web Environment Integrity protocol, depends extensively on bots for their search function… something has to go visit every web site on the internet to build that search data. So… how’s that going to work? Or does googlebot get an exception somehow?
There’s also been some questions about what would cause a legit browser to fail. Does installing an adblock or other extension cause some tests to fail? Will it check your PC for signs of tampering/weird programs running? As I understand it, the statement is extensions are all fair game in a browser since what they can do is already limited and controlled by said browser.
In the end, it’s a variant of DRM applied to the general web. Nobody likes that, and I hope it fails miserably, either by being rejected by the community or someone cracks the code and renders a “PASS” result as worthless.
Web Environment Integrity is a proposed standard by Google. It would allow websites to “evaluate the authenticity” of browsers. Some of the examples they give for why this might be useful is verifying that ad views or social media interactions come from real people instead of bots. Google insists that it won’t affect browser extensions. It does seem like it would have to, though; it’s pretty useless if an “authentic” browser can have a bot extension. Unfortunately, after receiving negative feedback, Google locked down the Github project, which was being used as a discussion forum, and has refused to respond since then.
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