WEI’s goal is to make the web more private and safe
Bull. Fucking. Shit. You do not get to pick and choose who you treat differently based on software level indications. You absolutely cannot justify this technology with fraud-prevention; as your fraud prevention should be baked in elsewhere in your logic chain and service delivery anyways. Developers do not need yet another magic number. Your typical fraudster is going to be an Authenticated Human anyways; and will easily bypass this attestation if this is actually implemented as intended. Because of that fact; this will drive desperate developers to implement this in consumer-hostile and privacy-hostile manners. You cannot simply say “That’s not how it’s intended to be used” and expect those devs to play along with it!
TL;DR: We must not give developers tools that can be abused in ways that run counter to the open internet
WEI is not designed to single out browsers or extensions
Wrong!
You absolutely ARE singling out browsers; particularly ones that may be older or “Un-attestable” for other arbitrary reasons. This will impact a large number of people in the disabled community who may use specific, webpage modifying extensions in order to make the web more usable for themselves.
WEI prevents ecosystem lock-in through hold-backs
This won’t work; your devs will just write other server backend code that is forked off of yours that won’t “hold back”. This is a ridiculously tiny band-aid for a gaping wound that needs stitches;
WEI does not disadvantage browsers that spoof their identity
Wrong again! You cannot trust developers and companies with financial motivations and interests to not mark spoofed browsers as fraudulent; nor can you obligate them to treat them exactly the same as a properly attested browser agent.
Let’s work together on finding the right path
This proposal is not working together! This is a blatant attempt by Google and Alphabet to further bully it’s dominance over standards for the financial gain of itself and it’s partners. Please don’t pretend otherwise.