this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Mozilla's position on WEI is pretty solid.

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[โ€“] CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

So your suggestion is hopefully later, google will allow extensions even though their proposals are against it. This is the company that rolled out web manifest v3, a proposal to limit and remove extensions. Their past actions have demonstrated motives opposite to what you are implying could happen. It's entirely wishful thinking.

Google may want to place themselves judge and jury of what software is allowed on a computer, but anyone of sane mind should not be considering allowing them.

HTTPS already prevents man in the middle attacks and changes to the website content to protect users. This is to protect companies from users. It's horrific and an attack on the web freedoms that have so long been held.

[โ€“] eth0p@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 points 1 year ago

I believe there's a misunderstanding somewhere. I wasn't suggesting anything; I was explaining how Web Environment Integrity could be altered in the future to kill extensions.

The current form of WEI does not have the ability to enforce anything. It isn't itself DRM, and it can't prevent extensions from running on pages. What it can do and the only thing it does, is tell websites about the browser environment.

Right now, the only thing it tells websites is the name of the browser. A website having the browser name can't directly enforce page integrity. It's already possible to find out the browser name through the user agent or by fingerprinting it with JavaScript.

If WEI is approved and implemented, that opens up the possibility for future additions to the specification. Those changes could require that the browser sends more info to websites. I gave the example of a change that would require WEI tells the website that the browser has an extension which could modify the page contents.

A website having that information would turn WEI into DRM. It gives the website the choice to refuse service to any browser that is running an extension that could change what the user sees.

I hope that was more clear. I don't expect Google to make changes that immediately block extensions, and then be kind enough to allow some of them back. I suspect they would make changes that don't prevent extensions, and then revise them to prevent certain types of extensions.