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Legislation doesn't stop criminals. But these are incorporated entities. If proper privacy laws are/were put in place and enforced, they would have to honor DN

Legislation doesn't stop criminals. But these are incorporated entities. If proper privacy laws are/were put in place and enforced, they would have to honor DNT. This is as much a failing of these companies to respect privacy as it was the failing of governments to protect privacy of their citizens. Besides violating privacy, ad networks have also been a proxy for malware. They should have been sued into oblivion for that as well. I agree that since the proper means have failed, blocking is the best solution. Do people who are not computer savvy a favor and install a proper ad blocker for them. We can do much better than 26%.

danShumway 7y ago
It's a matter of what order you want to tackle things in. I'm not interested in only stopping the worst actors. I want to stop all tracking, and if I can't, I'll settle for stopping some of the worst actors through solutions like legislation. I understand that some people come from the opposite direction -- they try to stop the obvious bad actors with laws, and if those laws fail, then they'll look for solutions that put control in the hands of individuals. I don't dislike those people, but my perspective is that people who focus on tracking by corporations don't have a good perspective of the entire problem. > Do people who are not computer savvy a favor and install a proper ad blocker for them. We can do much better than 26%. Amen on that. I'd like to see the ad industry collapse, but that's a separate conversation. I'm not convinced that pervasive advertising to the degree we currently see is good for society as a whole. I would encourage people to block ads even if they didn't include any trackers at all. I would even block ads off of one-way mediums like the radio if I could.