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As long as the ads & analytics industries continue to see the options as "meaningful Do Not Track" or "indiscriminately grab all the data you can", then I agree

As long as the ads & analytics industries continue to see the options as "meaningful Do Not Track" or "indiscriminately grab all the data you can", then I agree. However, as the article suggests: If [the industry refuses a meaningful Do Not Track], Internet users who do not want their online reading habits recorded by invisible tracking companies will have only one choice: use ad blocking tools to stop online tracking code themselves. In order for this to work, they will have to block a huge portion of the advertising on the Web, too. If indiscriminate tracking keeps becoming increasingly obnoxious and/or insidious, it will eventually overcome the users' apathy, and they'll fight indiscriminate tracking with indiscriminate blocking. Users have the power to kill the internet tracking industries, they just don't have the will (yet). A meaningful Do Not Track option would show that the industries were willing to compromise with the users, which would go a long way to defuse the growing will to do away with them. Refusing to compromise with the people who have the power to destroy you is never a good plan in the long term. Ask Louis XVI, or the Tsars.

gyardley 15y ago
If enough people use ad blocking technologies, the ads and analytics industries will simply switch to server-side / invisible-to-the-end-user options. The only reason why tracking and ad serving isn't done like this today is because it's a pain in the ass and there's high switching costs. Make current practices unprofitable, and switching suddenly looks appealing. A lot of previously theoretical workarounds are being quietly turned into commercial products these days. As a consequence of all the privacy fuss, there's a good chance you'll end up with less privacy than before.
- EvilTerran 15y ago
  Eh, it's an arms-race, if the tracking systems move on-server, then adblock et al will adapt to still block them, or be replaced by something that does. I could see either the trackers or the anonymisers coming out on top. Or we could end up with single-user:single-identity type walled gardens and darknets running side-by-side.

gyardley 15y ago

If enough people use ad blocking technologies, the ads and analytics industries will simply switch to server-side / invisible-to-the-end-user options. The only reason why tracking and ad serving isn't done like this today is because it's a pain in the ass and there's high switching costs. Make current practices unprofitable, and switching suddenly looks appealing. A lot of previously theoretical workarounds are being quietly turned into commercial products these days. As a consequence of all the privacy fuss, there's a good chance you'll end up with less privacy than before.

EvilTerran 15y ago
Eh, it's an arms-race, if the tracking systems move on-server, then adblock et al will adapt to still block them, or be replaced by something that does. I could see either the trackers or the anonymisers coming out on top. Or we could end up with single-user:single-identity type walled gardens and darknets running side-by-side.