Web Environment Integrity: Expectations, Reality, and Entitlement

Google’s latest initiative, “Web Environment Integrity”, sounds reasonable if you take the name at face value. Don’t. Look deeper. See the skull beneath the skin.

Remember that Google’s Chrome browser has over 60% of the browser market, and over 70% if you include browsers based on the open source version of Chrome, Chromium. This includes the Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Brave, Arc, and Samsung Internet browsers. Remember also that Google’s share of the digital advertising market is at least 25%.

The Interpeer Project has plenty to say about Google’s Web Environment Initiative, and I don’t want to rehash it all. That this looks like Google trying to make it easier for websites to detect the use of ad blockers and discriminate against people using them is reason enough to oppose WEI.

However, I’d like to get at a deeper principle: do we own our computers and software? Does our technology serve us, or are we supposed to serve technology? I don’t think I need to be a card-carrying member of the Free Software Foundation to think that your computer and the software running on it should serve you exclusively, and that it should be yours to modify as you see fit, to the extent of your ability.

However, the mere existence of Google’s WEI initiative suggests that at least one major corporation thinks otherwise. Not that any of this bullshit is new; WEI’s detractors have been calling it DRM for the web for a reason.

The whole point of “digital rights management” is that businesses think they have the right to tell you what to do with your computer, because you might use your computer to use or redistribute software or media for which you didn’t buy a license. Never mind that the marginal cost of making each additional digital copy once the original digital copy is made is so close to zero as to be irrelevant in most cases.

Likewise, “web environment integrity” is about businesses being terrified that you might modify your software to prevent their websites from running intrusive adtech and collecting personal data that they might use to show you more ads or sell to data brokers.

They think they have the right to make you prove that your computing environment does not contain any modifications that run counter to their interests. They think they have the right to discriminate against you if you aren’t running the “right” software or the “right” device.

One would think that this runs counter to the notion of the web browser as a user agent, but that’s not what “user agent” means. Back in the day, the “user agent” string was just a HTTP header that browsers would send to a server to say, “Hey, I’m IE.” or “Hey, I’m Netscape”. Except that IE would often pretend to be Netscape because many web servers were configured to send data only to browsers identifying as Netscape. Other websites would only serve IE, so if you were using early versions of Firefox or any other browser on GNU/Linux you had to spoof the user agent string and con your banking website into thinking you were using IE on Windows.

It was an aspect of the old Web that should not be resurrected in any form, for any reason. We need a universal understanding that the web browser is the user’s agent, that it serves the user’s interests exclusively, even if they run counter to the interests of website operators or businesses.

Whether your personal computing environment conforms to a business’ expectations is none of their business. For them to think otherwise displays an intolerable level of entitlement. If they’re upset because people are using ad blockers, they have a much bigger problem than the fact that their visitors use ad blockers: their real problem is that their business model is not only unsustainable but odious to their putative customers.

Furthermore, as a website operator it is none of my business what browser you use, what add-ons your browser has installed, or whether you block cookies or JavaScript. My job as a webkeep is to serve everybody equally, without discrimination. My site should be readable whether you use Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera, Brave, lynx, w3m, or NCSA fucking Mosaic¹. If I’m not willing to do that, then I should have enough integrity to make my website accessible to paid subscribers only instead of trying to use your software or device type as a way to determine if you are “worthy” of access to my website. And if you have the sense to use ad blockers or not allow JavaScript except for specific sites where you need it, then I should be congratulating you instead of making your experience of the web unnecessarily miserable.

As for Google and WEI: I hope this bullshit doesn’t get implemented in Firefox, because there’s really nothing wrong with Google that can’t be fixed with the sort of antitrust enforcement not seen since the breakup of AT&T into the Baby Bells. If that seems harsh, I have two words for you, the developers directly responsible for WEI, and Google’s management: rebar suppositories.

Really, there are entirely too many people in the tech industry who are basically anal-retentive authoritarians hellbent on punishing the world because they didn’t get enough pussy in high school. It’s like they all spent prom night² reading Superman comics and deciding they wanted to be Lex Luthor but with better hair.

You think I’m being unfair? Tough shit. Technofascist initiatives like WEI are the reason why, when Stephen King wrote The Stand he decided that most of the techies, would end up working for Randall Flagg. While he was referring to men working for the military-industrial complex at the time, the mentality hasn’t changed all that much in the transition from hardware to software. A Silicon Valley techie’s private motto is still ordnung über alles – order over everything.

Footnotes