Re: [webrtc-pc] Should garbage collecting RTCPeerConnection be observable? (#3090)

> The fact is that GC is going to be observable for someone determined enough to observe it.

A straw man. JS can detect GC using [WeakRef](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/WeakRef). I think today's design principle is more about keeping implementation-defined behavior out of specs, because it's inherently web incompatible:

A UA that doesn't GC its connection until either the web app explicitly closes it or the web app is unloaded, is a valid implementation. We need to consider compatibility with that.

> the websocket server can definetly observe the garbage collection.

It can observe the connection ending (perhaps prematurely) yes, but don't know for sure it was from GC. 

> The difference here is that WebRTC is running the server in JS.

Aren't most websocket servers echo servers? Echoing back to JS? Doesn't seem fundamentally different.

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Received on Thursday, 26 February 2026 22:37:28 UTC