> That's already true of the web without this API. It doesn't change anything in regards to that.
I fully disagree, I don't see how anyone could credibly make this claim. The web is open and customizable and neutral in a way that native platforms are not. Part of that is full device and OS neutrality where customizations and forks of browser engines do not generally[0] signal untrustworthiness to website operators. And true neutrality for the OS and hardware and browser is incompatible with this kind of full-stack attestation.
[0]: with the exception of a few minor features like web video DRM, which... surprise. It's almost like DRM is bad for the web, and it's almost like all of the licensing and access guarantees given by Google and Microsoft were nonsense and didn't prevent web video DRM from being a giant problem.
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> Please read the proposal. It has nothing to do with preventing adblocking or detecting people with adblockers.
I have read the proposal all the way through, and I fully disagree, regardless of the "we don't want to restrict things" asides the authors have added. It is impossible to give website operators tools that can prevent automated actions in a browser that can not also be used to prevent accessibility APIs. There is no way to guarantee to a website operator that they are in a "trusted" environment where their code is not being manipulated while still allowing an extension to manipulate that code. And adblockers are only one category of extension that would be hampered by those restrictions, but they would be hampered.
There is a zero percent chance that detecting bot traffic for advertisers will not turn into adblocking/automation restrictions over time, and for Google employees to say that this will not happen means nothing given Google's history around adblockers. We are far, far past the point where Google deserves the benefit of the doubt on this. Chromium devs have been spending that goodwill for years, and they've run out.
Chromium is already less effective at adblocking than Firefox is today, and Manifest V3 is still set to make adblocking worse -- despite employee claims that these efforts were not intended to harm adblockers. Surprise, adblockers still got harmed. And this is a trend; at this point it is not goodwill or good faith to assume that Chrome proposals are neutral towards adblocking, it is burying one's head in the sand.
This proposal has a clear end point and the most charitable thing I can say about the people behind it is that maybe they're not malicious, maybe they're just hopelessly naive. Maybe they're not trying to harm the web, maybe they've just never actually thought about the industry they're in or what the motivations are of the companies in that industry.
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I'll add to this that "people just don't understand, please read the proposal" is not a new response to Google controversies. It gets pulled out literally every time that Google makes a controversial decision: FLOC, web audio, Manifest V3, Web DRM, the list goes on and on. It is deflection; a suggestion that people pointing out criticisms must just not be informed because otherwise they wouldn't have those criticisms. It's not that Google ever does anything bad, it's just bad at communicating or people are jumping to conclusions.
We're not jumping to conclusions, the first thing I did when learning about this was read through the entire proposal. We understand the proposal, the proposal is just bad.