> Why are people complaining about WEI and not PATs then?
> Well, Google is simultaneously the owner of the most popular web browser (Chrome) and the most popular mobile operating system (Android) on top of which Chrome runs. WEI is guaranteed to be a recipe for anti-competitive practices.
I don't follow. How is any of this exclusively harmful when WEI does it? Is Apple not also in a position to use PATs for anti-competitive purposes?
At that point, it'll be left as an exercise for the remaining browser makers to slowly enshittify.
What's funny is that this trend could lead to the downfall of Chrome outside of Android and ChromeOS because at the end of the day, attestation is in the control of the OS maker.
Apple PATs in isolation cannot achieve this, while google is making a new web standard that will almost certainly achieve this if it is successfully pushed.
That is, apple-only PATs are compatible with an open web. WEI as a standard is incompatible with an open web.
That said, PATs become dangerous in a world where WEI is being pushed - to that end I’ve recently disabled PATs on my iDevice.
If you think the John Deer tractor maintenance thing is terrible and disgusting ...
The author of WEI acknowledges this risk but the only mitigation is a suggestion that maybe browsers can occasionally hold off on attesting - basically, letting market share of attestation hold just shy of 100% in hopes that it doesn’t dominate the web.
I’m sure the future google engineer who removes this restriction and saves 10% of chrome sessions from captchas will also get a promotion.
"find a way" because it won't be hard.
This sentence pretty much summarise everything that is wrong with Tech or Silicon Valley in the past 15+ years.
Part of the problem is that “worst case” is “ideal outcome” to some, and those “some” have a disproportionate level of influence.
