7 ms·

The decision of the Internet advertising industry to ignore the original Do Not Track setting is a landmark in the cynicism of the industry. I mean users made a

The decision of the Internet advertising industry to ignore the original Do Not Track setting is a landmark in the cynicism of the industry. I mean users made an explicit request to not be tracked and companies like Google and Facebook were all "lol, no, we'll track you anyway". It's one of the reasons I feel no remorse running an ad blocker.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
In fairness, a leading cause of DNT's failure is that Microsoft, for marketing purposes, chose to set DNT by default for a while. While I applaud the goal of assuming people don't want tracking, it gave ad companies an excuse to dismiss DNT: Because many users showing DNT settings had not explicitly meant to do so.
- lostmsu 9y ago
  Right, blame Facebook and Google's tracking on Microsoft's attempt to do what's better for their users privacy.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    It's funny because most of my comments are negative on Google (to the extent that it's been suggested before I am only here to take shots at Google), and largely pro-Microsoft (I carry a Windows phone for heaven's sake), but a shocking amount of people were upset at this comment. :/
    - lostmsu 9y ago
      Well, the comment is really bad. PR or no PR Microsoft did what users would have really wanted if it worked. You can blame Microsoft for it, but they were not the ones, who ignored users best interests here.
- ABCLAW 9y ago
  I don't believe this is fair - user consent is clearly marked by the standard as an alleviating requirement. Without any user input, one must believe consent is imputed upon all users absent a statement to the contrary to justify a 'please track me' default. It was the refusal of ad networks to justify why people should consent to their surveillance which torpedoed the initiative. They could have. They didn't. If they believed users wouldn't like their argument, all they had to do was sweeten the pot until people jumped on board. It remains to be seen whether or not avoiding the discussion was ultimately in their best interest - the political power-play has already started to bear poisonous fruit for the industry.
- robin_reala 9y ago
  GDPR is explicit opt-in as well, but the good thing is that that unlike DNT has some teeth.
  - loooooooooooool 9y ago
    Maybe the same people who gave GDPR teeth can give some teeth to the DNT as well...
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Indeed. I am super pro-GDPR. I wish the United States had such a strong desire to protect its citizens.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  Comments like this make me angry. Blaming Microsoft for the failure of DNT is ridiculous, because DNT was a sham from Day 1: it was nothing but an "evil bit" that advertisers pretty-promised they'd honor, with nothing whatsoever to hold them to that promise. On a long enough time scale, promises from online advertisers are always lies. Remember when Google said they weren't going to tie anonymous browsing activity to your real identity, and then did? Remember when Facebook totally promised that they wouldn't tie WhatsApp data to Facebook data, and then did? "We'll totally obey DNT, honest" was an equally worthless promise. And it was a promise made in bad faith too. The only reason DNT gained traction was as an attempt to "self-regulate" and avoid the (desperately needed) government regulation of the advertising industry - and there is quite a bit of history showing that self regulation is no regulation. DNT was only ever going to last until turning it on became widespread. Don't blame Microsoft for being the kid who pointed out that the emperor had no clothes.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    When did Google tie anonymous browsing data to your real identity?
- xg15 9y ago
  However, users did not give any indication they had explicitly meant to be tracked either. I think this just highlights the cynism of the ad industry and the whole compromise that was DNT. If they were genuinely concerned about user preferences, opt-in vs opt-out shouldn't make a difference. But opt-out being so important is a hint to me that the ad industry was mostly agreeing because they assumed that most users wouldn't activate DNT because they didn't even know about it. (Which was probably correct)
  - prepend 9y ago
    This is an opt in feature, not opt out. In this situation you should either go with opt in or perhaps try to proxy for user desire. Every single person I talked with who wasn’t in the add industry prefers do not track. It seems strange to argue that a standard that protects users should require informed consent to turn on do not track. But use the same logic to say it’s ok to track users without their explicit consent.
    - eli 9y ago
      People want Do Not Track, but also hate paywalls and irrelevant ads.
      - ethbro 9y ago
        > People want Do Not Track, but also hate paywalls and irrelevant ads. Do people really hate irrelevant ads?
        electrograv 9y ago
        Users hate irrelevant ads slightly more than they hate relevant ads -- much like how I hate being punched more than I hate being slapped. I'd much rather avoid being in an abusive relationship to begin with: Hence, installing browsers like Brave and using search engines like DuckDuckGo -- where you can opt into breaches of privacy and advertising, rather than hoping for the slim chance of an opt-out at the benevolence of the site/ad company.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  > Microsoft, for marketing purposes If Microsoft does something in the interest of their users it is suddenly "for marketing purposes"? > While I applaud the goal of assuming people don't want tracking Of course people don't want tracking. I'm not going to argue everyone agrees with GDPR, but that sets the trend further. > Because many users showing DNT settings had not explicitly meant to do so. Just because someone doesn't explicitly agree with something, doesn't mean they disagree with that.
  - manigandham 9y ago
    The correct answer is giving the user choice and education. Unilaterally choosing for them (either pro or con) by any large company is almost always worse.
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      Who wants to get asked a bunch of annoying questions every time they fire up an OS or piece of software? Nobody. Software should pick sane default settings which are in the interest of its users. Not everyone is informed well enough to make an informed choice, and tracking is not in the interest of the user anyway, so the default being blocking (DNT) is sane. Obviously it isn't in the interest of Google, and Chrome serves Google first, and its users secondary. Education is the long term solution to just about anything and I'm all for that (I can recommend a visit to Berlin-Hohenschoenhausen Memorial [1]) but the truth is that some people are just not going to be interested in certain topics. Case in point: back in the days, everyone received snail mail spam. At some point, civilians were able to put a standardized sticker on their postbox saying yes/no or no/no (one being more strict than the other). They'd need to pick such sticker up at the city council. Just now in start of 2018, if you live in Amsterdam, you need a yes/yes sticker to receive spam. Is that wrong as well? Even though the spam is bad for the environment (goes to bin right away), we're living in a digital age, and postboxes in flats and such pile up gigantically? Should we've educated people better instead of making this the default? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin-Hohensch%C3%B6nhausen_Memorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin-Hohensch%C3%B6nhausen_M...
    - quadrangle 9y ago
- aplorbust 9y ago
  Would this logic be applicable in reverse? For example, do users explicitly consent to myriad shady practices by advertisers and others when using the www simply because they use the www? Do they "explicitly consent" to all these practices by not objecting? Can a user "consent" to some practice without knowing it exists? How can she object to it without knowing what "it" is? Terms of Use only covers the actions of one party. It does not provide assurances that those terms will be upheld by all the third parties that the website is profiting from when it gives those third parties access to the websites visitors. Opinion: To be adequately informed in order to give "explicit consent", the user would need to see the terms of all the third party ad networks and others who are contracting with the website. Those companies are largely hidden from users. The easiest thing for the user is to just ask not to be subjected to the actions of these third parties. Every website that opens its users up to an astounding number of third party servers1 can and likely will disclaim any liability from the actions of third parties.2 As others have stated, dealing with this problem on the client side is the viable alternative.3 1 Others have posted casual studies to HN of developers/users observing how many DNS requests or connections are made to third party servers for the "average" website by users with the popular browsers that automatically request resources. I leave it to the astute HN reader to find the web citations. 2 Random example of website terms: "FACEBOOK IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS, CONTENT, INFORMATION, OR DATA OF THIRD PARTIES, AND YOU RELEASE US, OUR DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS FROM ANY CLAIMS AND DAMAGES, KNOWN AND UNKNOWN, ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH ANY CLAIM YOU HAVE AGAINST ANY SUCH THIRD PARTIES." 3 Block access of third parties via client software. The counteraction by the advertisers will be to try to control the client software. Choice of software is important. If the authors of the software earn their quid from advertisers, then what happens? Users may succeed in stopping websites from selling them out, but they also muct succeed in stopping the software they use from selling them out in less obvious ways.
- drb91 9y ago
  I don’t think you can blame Microsoft for the advertisers building their own grave. I think it’s just as valid (...if not obvious) to assume that users do not want to be tracked. However, from what I understand Microsoft is also the absolute worst in terms of lowering ads to the window manager level, which is beyond disgusting for a company selling a tool.
- ozi 9y ago
  Do you think any board member gives a flying fuck about what users want if it cuts into revenue? "Sorry, we couldn't hit our numbers this quarter because we honored DNT and ran out of money for 'respectable' lead gen," said no executive ever. LOL.
- dozzie 9y ago
  If Microsoft had kept the DNT setting off by default, advertising industry would ignore DNT for any other reason, like "very little users set it, so we won't implement this feature for just a small fraction of audience".
throwaway011018 9y ago
Agreed. Surprised this version isn't called Do Not Track RMT (Really Mean it This time)

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

In fairness, a leading cause of DNT's failure is that Microsoft, for marketing purposes, chose to set DNT by default for a while. While I applaud the goal of assuming people don't want tracking, it gave ad companies an excuse to dismiss DNT: Because many users showing DNT settings had not explicitly meant to do so.

lostmsu 9y ago
Right, blame Facebook and Google's tracking on Microsoft's attempt to do what's better for their users privacy.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  It's funny because most of my comments are negative on Google (to the extent that it's been suggested before I am only here to take shots at Google), and largely pro-Microsoft (I carry a Windows phone for heaven's sake), but a shocking amount of people were upset at this comment. :/
  - lostmsu 9y ago
    Well, the comment is really bad. PR or no PR Microsoft did what users would have really wanted if it worked. You can blame Microsoft for it, but they were not the ones, who ignored users best interests here.
ABCLAW 9y ago
I don't believe this is fair - user consent is clearly marked by the standard as an alleviating requirement. Without any user input, one must believe consent is imputed upon all users absent a statement to the contrary to justify a 'please track me' default. It was the refusal of ad networks to justify why people should consent to their surveillance which torpedoed the initiative. They could have. They didn't. If they believed users wouldn't like their argument, all they had to do was sweeten the pot until people jumped on board. It remains to be seen whether or not avoiding the discussion was ultimately in their best interest - the political power-play has already started to bear poisonous fruit for the industry.
robin_reala 9y ago
GDPR is explicit opt-in as well, but the good thing is that that unlike DNT has some teeth.
- loooooooooooool 9y ago
  Maybe the same people who gave GDPR teeth can give some teeth to the DNT as well...
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Indeed. I am super pro-GDPR. I wish the United States had such a strong desire to protect its citizens.
Analemma_ 9y ago
Comments like this make me angry. Blaming Microsoft for the failure of DNT is ridiculous, because DNT was a sham from Day 1: it was nothing but an "evil bit" that advertisers pretty-promised they'd honor, with nothing whatsoever to hold them to that promise. On a long enough time scale, promises from online advertisers are always lies. Remember when Google said they weren't going to tie anonymous browsing activity to your real identity, and then did? Remember when Facebook totally promised that they wouldn't tie WhatsApp data to Facebook data, and then did? "We'll totally obey DNT, honest" was an equally worthless promise. And it was a promise made in bad faith too. The only reason DNT gained traction was as an attempt to "self-regulate" and avoid the (desperately needed) government regulation of the advertising industry - and there is quite a bit of history showing that self regulation is no regulation. DNT was only ever going to last until turning it on became widespread. Don't blame Microsoft for being the kid who pointed out that the emperor had no clothes.
- fixermark 9y ago
  When did Google tie anonymous browsing data to your real identity?
xg15 9y ago
However, users did not give any indication they had explicitly meant to be tracked either. I think this just highlights the cynism of the ad industry and the whole compromise that was DNT. If they were genuinely concerned about user preferences, opt-in vs opt-out shouldn't make a difference. But opt-out being so important is a hint to me that the ad industry was mostly agreeing because they assumed that most users wouldn't activate DNT because they didn't even know about it. (Which was probably correct)
- prepend 9y ago
  This is an opt in feature, not opt out. In this situation you should either go with opt in or perhaps try to proxy for user desire. Every single person I talked with who wasn’t in the add industry prefers do not track. It seems strange to argue that a standard that protects users should require informed consent to turn on do not track. But use the same logic to say it’s ok to track users without their explicit consent.
  - eli 9y ago
    People want Do Not Track, but also hate paywalls and irrelevant ads.
    - ethbro 9y ago
      > People want Do Not Track, but also hate paywalls and irrelevant ads. Do people really hate irrelevant ads?
      - electrograv 9y ago
        Users hate irrelevant ads slightly more than they hate relevant ads -- much like how I hate being punched more than I hate being slapped. I'd much rather avoid being in an abusive relationship to begin with: Hence, installing browsers like Brave and using search engines like DuckDuckGo -- where you can opt into breaches of privacy and advertising, rather than hoping for the slim chance of an opt-out at the benevolence of the site/ad company.
Fnoord 9y ago
> Microsoft, for marketing purposes If Microsoft does something in the interest of their users it is suddenly "for marketing purposes"? > While I applaud the goal of assuming people don't want tracking Of course people don't want tracking. I'm not going to argue everyone agrees with GDPR, but that sets the trend further. > Because many users showing DNT settings had not explicitly meant to do so. Just because someone doesn't explicitly agree with something, doesn't mean they disagree with that.
- manigandham 9y ago
  The correct answer is giving the user choice and education. Unilaterally choosing for them (either pro or con) by any large company is almost always worse.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    Who wants to get asked a bunch of annoying questions every time they fire up an OS or piece of software? Nobody. Software should pick sane default settings which are in the interest of its users. Not everyone is informed well enough to make an informed choice, and tracking is not in the interest of the user anyway, so the default being blocking (DNT) is sane. Obviously it isn't in the interest of Google, and Chrome serves Google first, and its users secondary. Education is the long term solution to just about anything and I'm all for that (I can recommend a visit to Berlin-Hohenschoenhausen Memorial [1]) but the truth is that some people are just not going to be interested in certain topics. Case in point: back in the days, everyone received snail mail spam. At some point, civilians were able to put a standardized sticker on their postbox saying yes/no or no/no (one being more strict than the other). They'd need to pick such sticker up at the city council. Just now in start of 2018, if you live in Amsterdam, you need a yes/yes sticker to receive spam. Is that wrong as well? Even though the spam is bad for the environment (goes to bin right away), we're living in a digital age, and postboxes in flats and such pile up gigantically? Should we've educated people better instead of making this the default? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin-Hohensch%C3%B6nhausen_Memorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin-Hohensch%C3%B6nhausen_M...
  - quadrangle 9y ago
aplorbust 9y ago
Would this logic be applicable in reverse? For example, do users explicitly consent to myriad shady practices by advertisers and others when using the www simply because they use the www? Do they "explicitly consent" to all these practices by not objecting? Can a user "consent" to some practice without knowing it exists? How can she object to it without knowing what "it" is? Terms of Use only covers the actions of one party. It does not provide assurances that those terms will be upheld by all the third parties that the website is profiting from when it gives those third parties access to the websites visitors. Opinion: To be adequately informed in order to give "explicit consent", the user would need to see the terms of all the third party ad networks and others who are contracting with the website. Those companies are largely hidden from users. The easiest thing for the user is to just ask not to be subjected to the actions of these third parties. Every website that opens its users up to an astounding number of third party servers1 can and likely will disclaim any liability from the actions of third parties.2 As others have stated, dealing with this problem on the client side is the viable alternative.3 1 Others have posted casual studies to HN of developers/users observing how many DNS requests or connections are made to third party servers for the "average" website by users with the popular browsers that automatically request resources. I leave it to the astute HN reader to find the web citations. 2 Random example of website terms: "FACEBOOK IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS, CONTENT, INFORMATION, OR DATA OF THIRD PARTIES, AND YOU RELEASE US, OUR DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS FROM ANY CLAIMS AND DAMAGES, KNOWN AND UNKNOWN, ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH ANY CLAIM YOU HAVE AGAINST ANY SUCH THIRD PARTIES." 3 Block access of third parties via client software. The counteraction by the advertisers will be to try to control the client software. Choice of software is important. If the authors of the software earn their quid from advertisers, then what happens? Users may succeed in stopping websites from selling them out, but they also muct succeed in stopping the software they use from selling them out in less obvious ways.
drb91 9y ago
I don’t think you can blame Microsoft for the advertisers building their own grave. I think it’s just as valid (...if not obvious) to assume that users do not want to be tracked. However, from what I understand Microsoft is also the absolute worst in terms of lowering ads to the window manager level, which is beyond disgusting for a company selling a tool.
ozi 9y ago
Do you think any board member gives a flying fuck about what users want if it cuts into revenue? "Sorry, we couldn't hit our numbers this quarter because we honored DNT and ran out of money for 'respectable' lead gen," said no executive ever. LOL.
dozzie 9y ago
If Microsoft had kept the DNT setting off by default, advertising industry would ignore DNT for any other reason, like "very little users set it, so we won't implement this feature for just a small fraction of audience".

throwaway011018 9y ago

Agreed. Surprised this version isn't called Do Not Track RMT (Really Mean it This time)