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I had a misconception that “hackers” had an out-sized influence in tech standards. But the case of ad cookies / tracking is a nice sort of counter example to b

I had a misconception that “hackers” had an out-sized influence in tech standards. But the case of ad cookies / tracking is a nice sort of counter example to balance that notion. Looking through these replies, it seems the overwhelming feeling is that good solutions have been proposed and anti-user policy was adopted anyways for profit motives. Thank you for all the kind and thoughtful replies. I could have done a much better job in informing myself - though I hope this collection of replies serves to spark interest in others like myself that wasn’t aware of “do not track” efforts. My naive first instinct is that if you want to win, you have to speak the language companies speak - by a stick like jeopardizing their profits, or a carrot like rewarding compliance with new customers. IE- a browser extension that automatically composes a negative review for websites that do not respect do not track and are worth more than 10 million (no need to start by punishing smaller companies.) If you visit Nike, and they do not respect do not track requests, it also suggests Sauccony and Addidas if they do respect it.

sagebird 4y ago
On second thought… not evough people would install that sort of extension, on enough devices, for long enough to make an impact. It would only have an effect if an employee at these companies mistakenly took it to be a big deal and was able to spread unfounded fear. Kind of like an employee that hyperventilates if their company does not send out plain text versions of emails. Yes- you are supposed to do that but no — one graybeard Unix admin customer complaining that they can’t read an email sent to a million people doesn’t really matter.