Rinse repeat.
A lot of that has been happening for a long time now.
> Same thing for a lot of sites, probably the vast majority of them.
Once Google gets this in place, it can then perform these checks through their ads SDK and demonetize traffic from visitors that don't pass the check. This will create an incentive for any site owner that wants to make money through ads to enforce that visitors must use an approved browser. Basically the DRM equivalent of 'Please disable your ad blocker'.
Some of us called that out as a slippery slope leading to ubiquitous gatekeeping, but we were shouted down in the name of (as usual) "security."
The bigger concern for me like you call out - major institutions like banks enforcing a separate company's requirements on me in order to interface with them.
And, locally, there have been two ISPs set up (one by me and my friends) that aren't meant for public use, but to supply service to smaller groups. The one I set up was to supply internet service to a remote neighborhood that isn't likely to get reasonable commercial internet in the near or medium future.
Those two ISPs supply internet access, but they also operate an intranet that is mostly decoupled from the public internet.
All baby steps, and nobody is 100% "off the grid", so to speak, but it's a trend that started long ago and seems to be gaining a bit of momentum.
My prediction is that the web will ultimately be just for commercial use (it's already 90% there), and there will be a whole bunch of tiny networks -- that may or may not portal to the internet -- that will fill the needs that the internet is increasingly unable to fill.
Because of this. If we're at the point where you need to get permisssion and approval to verify that the platform you're using is acceptable, then the gates are up and the free web is no longer free at all.
Faced with a choice between a vague future threat that might happen (an adversarial ISP or other MIM attack) and a certain future threat that will happen if we let it (incumbent gatekeepers locking down the Web), I'll take my chances with the former, and opt for less gatekeeping rather than more.
We're not in a movie. When they close the open internet, there will be no reason for them to open it back up. Everybody's Playstation will still work. Facebook will still work. Twitter will still work, but it will be all blue checks.
In the future they may not even sell general purpose computers to the public that can access the internet. The network will kick them off as unsigned machines. Maybe they won't let anything on the internet that is capable of running illegal or unlicensed encryption.
The open systems will have to be physical places where we go meet each other, and don't bring our phones. Of course, they could make you carry your ID in your phone (for a few years, there'd just be a $100 charge for a physical ID until they eventually just phased them out), or make you carry cash in your phone, so how could you meet up in person if they didn't want you to?
If we're writing stories.
edit: I'm studying ways to facilitate decentralized decisionmaking in small permissioned networks.
Although in this grim future where all communication is monitored and censored, people like you and I will probably be up in the hills in the rebel camps, and open networking protocols might be low on our list of priorities.
I guess it has been the case from the good old CGI era? I do remember all those private forums that required me to wait for several days until they can "verify" my identity and "approve" my registration. The control always has been at the hand of platform. The difference is that now attacks are much more sophisticated (GPT-4 powered!), while defense line is left at a pretty miserable state.
"That is because without Web Integrity, there is no guarantee that the site requested is being delivered as the site intends. For example, a browser extension could remove ads or modify content on the page."
See where this slippery slope is heading? We DO NOT want what "the site intends". We want to be in control of the content we consume.
…and they will make us use lead free solder.
Fun fact: You can no longer do such a project in software on stock Android. They locked down the voice audio API.