@lawlznet @lina I was thinking something similar to this. I had a few ideas as to how this could work, actually.

Here are a few of my theories.

The internet kinda splits up, alternative web browsers are made to disable this feature, and only websites with this stupid tech turned off are accessible. This would be small self-hosted sites, sites that care about privacy, and I’d assume most E-commerce platforms or anything that has a paid for product which is how it monetizes itself.

This leads into my other theory as to why I feel this will not be implemented at scale. Let’s assume for a minute you own a huge e-commerce platform, whether this be an actual storefront Amazon or a subscription service such as Netflix. I sit here, and I think about the general population, especially older people. These individuals would rather not upgrade their hardware and barely know how to use the computer for browsing, shopping, and email checking. These are people who use Netflix, Amazon and similar. Now, let’s say we just flipped this switch. This isn’t a “switch to chrome because we don’t like Firefox users, lol. :P” message, this is a “go out and buy this specific type of hardware to access this website that you spend good money on.” That’s not going to go by well, especially for some individuals who don’t know what hardware to buy, can’t afford it, or barely want to use the internet as is. I genuinely do not see companies, especially ones who make money by actual purchases/subscriptions, wanting to actively exclude this section of their audience. An audience who frequently has a just works mentality. An audience where, if something doesn’t work with their computers or phones, just drops it and goes and does something different for the day in hopes it will work tomorrow.

I think this would actually be who these companies would be negatively effecting the most. Tech-savvy privacy-minded people are likely to just go without these websites or find smart ways around it via compartmentalization or other methods if they, absolutely must use them. But would probably be fine with the smaller sites which did not have this sort of hardware authentication enabled. I honestly don’t see this as a huge issue for those who are tech literate. It’s those who are most likely to be using FAGMAN services, those most likely to prefer the “convenience” and those most likely to go “well my friends use it” or “it just works” who will be negatively impacted.

That’s my thoughts on this, what I think would happen if it did get implemented on a mass scale and why I do not think it will, or if it does don’t think it will last.