> Can we just refuse to implement it?
> Unfortunately, it’s not that simple this time. Any browser choosing not to implement this would not be trusted and any website choosing to use this API could therefore reject users from those browsers. Google also has ways to drive adoptions by websites themselves.
But as a software creator, it's up to you to determine what is best for your customers. If your only hope of not going along with this is having the EU come in and slapping Google's wrist, I'm concerned that you aren't willing to take a hard stance on your own.
Absolutely zero large web properties do anything based on what's best for users. If this gains traction, Google will simply deny adsense payments for impressions from an "untrusted" page, and thus all the large players that show ads for revenue will immediately implement WEI without giving a single flying shit about the users, as they always have and always will.
I definitely agree that AdSense blocking clients that don't implement WEI seems likely. At that point, it will be up to websites that rely on AdSense revenue to decide what to do with customers they aren't monetizing. That's already a question they have from users with ad blockers, although that is a little bit more challenging to detect.
My hope is that the majority of sites accept that they can't rely on ad revenue, and instead resort to directly monetizing users as a way to make ends meet. IMO that's a better relationship than indirectly selling their data and attention.
How?
You see, this is the problem I have with all these debates where advertising is declared the villain. "Directly monetising" usually means subscriptions and logins, which means you lose all anonymity, not just gradually like under an ad targeting regime, but definitively and completely. Now payment processors and banks also get a share of the surveillance cake.
The greatest irony is that you may not even get rid of advertising. Advertising only becomes more valuable and more effective. All the newspaper subscriptions I have run ads.
The second issue is that advertising is paid for by consumers in proportion to their spending power, because a certain share of every £$€ spent is used to buy ads. Therefore, rich people fund more of our free at the point of use online services than poor people do.
If rich people move to subscriptions, this subsidy ends. Poor people will either be cut off from high quality services and relegated to their own low quality information and services (as is already the case with newspapers) or they will have to suffer through even more advertising.