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> "DNT seemed like a good idea. By setting DNT on in your web browser, websites that supported DNT could neither place nor read advertising cookies on your devi
by Analemma_ 9y ago
> "DNT seemed like a good idea. By setting DNT on in your web browser, websites that supported DNT could neither place nor read advertising cookies on your device. Well, that was the idea anyway."
No, DNT seemed like a stupid idea right from the beginning. It's nothing but an "evil bit" that websites were always free to ignore (and what's more, ignore silently). I never understood the outrage when Microsoft had IE set DNT to True as default, all they were doing was making explicit what a useless, feel-good piece of nonsense it was while everyone else was just ignoring the elephant in the room out of motivated self-interest.
So, good riddance. DNT was always an attempt by advertisers to distract people from the fact that the only real solutions to privacy problems are legislative, and they don't want that. Twitter abandoning it might be one tiny step closer to broad awareness of that.
- tehabe 9y agoQuite the opposite, that is the reason why websites like Twitter should honour DNT.
- fintler 9y ago> Quite the opposite What do you mean by this? The "opposite" of what you're replying to isn't really obvious to me. :)
- tehabe 9y agoI understood that DNT is pointless because no one is respecting the setting, if sites like Twitter would do it reliable, it would be better for others to do the same.
- yborg 9y agoAnother example of the fallacy of suggesting a 'free market' will lead to desirable outcomes for society at large when those outcomes are counter to the goal of maximizing profit for individual players. I believe the idea was well-intentioned, but as noted had no chance from the start without some kind of regulatory enforcement behind it.
- sambe 9y agoNot really. You could easily argue (and I would) that people simply don't value it highly, on average. You are free not to visit websites that track you, or use various other technological solutions (Tor, private browsing, ad blockers). There's not a great deal to learn about the "free market" here.