It depends.
The basic idea is provenance i.e. where did some media object come from.
The problems could be many:
- if the browser is updated to check provenance for any media item that it is displaying to you then you could be telling Microsoft about everything you are reading / viewing / …
- as with Secure Boot, having Microsoft in charge of the show always leaves open source platforms a little concerned
- if browsers, apps or social media platforms start to suppress or deprioritise media that has no provenance then that is a good tool for control over what you see and what you don’t see
The project itself observes that provenance doesn’t tell you anything about whether you should trust the content or its source, only what the source is. It is in part motivated by “deep fakes” or other fakes that are purporting to come from one “trusted” source but are actually fake and come from some other source. (In other words, to some extent, if some “alternative” source wants to put out “fake news” then that is fine provided that they either put it out legitimately under their own name or they intentionally put it out anonymously.)
I would start with a default position of distrust over any initiative like this. While they may be able to mouth words about what problem they are trying to solve and why they are doing it, I wouldn’t necessarily take that at face value and I wouldn’t assume that it can’t be repurposed.
Regarding the first item above, straight away I would disable this functionality in the browser - if given the choice.
There are two cases regarding checking provenance though. a) The provenance is ‘in situ’. No check on the internet is needed. b) The provenance is external to the media object. A check on the internet is needed in order to establish its provenance.