4 ms·

Legally compel websites to respect the DNT header. Bam, done. This is a simple problem, and should be solved in a simple way.

PlotCitizen 1y ago
This is the best suggestion here with the least friction in my opinion
bradleyy 1y ago
Companies ARE legally compelled to comply with the GPC header.
jeroenhd 1y ago
DNT doesn't solve all problems, though. Not only is DNT being deprecated, it also lacks the proper customisability the law actually prescribes for data processing. There's no value you can give DNT that says "you can do your own on-site tracking and telemetry and I accept sharing my data with Sendgrid for your newsletter, but I do not want third-party trackers". As a practical example: there are news sites that will not play videos if you hit "deny all" because their video host does some viewership analytics. I'm fine with that, but not the 750 other advertisers the news site tries to have me track. Of course, "deny all" should be an option, "accept all or deny all" isn't control. For the longest time we had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P as a basis to build on, but that officially died the day Edge became Chromium-based.
- AlexandrB 1y ago
  > you can do your own on-site tracking and telemetry and I accept sharing my data with Sendgrid for your newsletter, but I do not want third-party trackers I'm sorry, but does a user who would want this actually exist? This seems like a hypothetical dreamed up by the marketing team to avoid having to accept that a large group of users hate all their tracking shit.
  - jabroni_salad 1y ago
    At my first job I took phone calls for an insurance carrier and agents definitely didn't like finding out that all the unhandled exception screens the rater had simply disappeared into the abyss.
    - mrguyorama 1y ago
      Microsoft solved this decades ago. You download a specific tool which only has the purpose of collecting your local error reports and sending them to Microsoft". Later on that tool became just a button in your control panel that submitted all your local errors and told you if those errors had an already developed solution. That's how they did all their error telemetry until like late XP era, and it worked just fine. All the people insisting that they need* this telemetry is also horse shit. Companies are demonstrably not producing better and more bug fixed software, and demonstrably are not using that data to make serious improvements, but demonstrably ARE using that data to choose where to focus dark pattern and other sales funnel based efforts. If Unity and Unreal and GPU drivers can ask me "Do you want to send this error report" with a default no, nobody else has any excuse. Even now, a significant amount of companies use the system of "Please upload your error log and the output of this command to this forum" as their bug report solution and it works just fine if that company actually intends to fix bugs. The solution is not to turn your software into spyware. Stop being entitled. You don't have a right for me to QA your software for you, that's your job. Even with all this telemetry, companies only fix the most common and most obvious bugs anyway, so the perfect telemetry is utterly useless. Those bugs would have surfaced anyway. Developers in the 80s did not need telemetry to get bug reports and fix things and release patches. Learn some history of your profession people. Has throwing a hundred thousand bugs onto your sprint backlog actually helped anyone develop better software? No. Meanwhile it has exposed all your customers and users to predatory bullshit from your marketing and sales departments, and enabled your worst product managers to optimize hostility and extraction.
  - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
    Yes, it's quite common for users to want this. I think a lot of people don't realize functionality like "remember I want dark mode every time I visit" or "keep me logged in when I reopen my browser tomorrow" constitutes first-party tracking and requires consent under EU law.
- ryukoposting 1y ago
  If a tree falls down in the forest and nobody is around to hear it... If you deprecate a feature nobody ever implemented in the first place...
noirscape 1y ago
It's already seen as a valid opt-out signal against this sort of thing in Germany. LinkedIn got in trouble and lost a court case for not respecting the DNT header if memory serves me right.

PlotCitizen 1y ago

This is the best suggestion here with the least friction in my opinion

bradleyy 1y ago

Companies ARE legally compelled to comply with the GPC header.

jeroenhd 1y ago

DNT doesn't solve all problems, though. Not only is DNT being deprecated, it also lacks the proper customisability the law actually prescribes for data processing. There's no value you can give DNT that says "you can do your own on-site tracking and telemetry and I accept sharing my data with Sendgrid for your newsletter, but I do not want third-party trackers". As a practical example: there are news sites that will not play videos if you hit "deny all" because their video host does some viewership analytics. I'm fine with that, but not the 750 other advertisers the news site tries to have me track. Of course, "deny all" should be an option, "accept all or deny all" isn't control. For the longest time we had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P as a basis to build on, but that officially died the day Edge became Chromium-based.

AlexandrB 1y ago
> you can do your own on-site tracking and telemetry and I accept sharing my data with Sendgrid for your newsletter, but I do not want third-party trackers I'm sorry, but does a user who would want this actually exist? This seems like a hypothetical dreamed up by the marketing team to avoid having to accept that a large group of users hate all their tracking shit.
- jabroni_salad 1y ago
  At my first job I took phone calls for an insurance carrier and agents definitely didn't like finding out that all the unhandled exception screens the rater had simply disappeared into the abyss.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    Microsoft solved this decades ago. You download a specific tool which only has the purpose of collecting your local error reports and sending them to Microsoft". Later on that tool became just a button in your control panel that submitted all your local errors and told you if those errors had an already developed solution. That's how they did all their error telemetry until like late XP era, and it worked just fine. All the people insisting that they need* this telemetry is also horse shit. Companies are demonstrably not producing better and more bug fixed software, and demonstrably are not using that data to make serious improvements, but demonstrably ARE using that data to choose where to focus dark pattern and other sales funnel based efforts. If Unity and Unreal and GPU drivers can ask me "Do you want to send this error report" with a default no, nobody else has any excuse. Even now, a significant amount of companies use the system of "Please upload your error log and the output of this command to this forum" as their bug report solution and it works just fine if that company actually intends to fix bugs. The solution is not to turn your software into spyware. Stop being entitled. You don't have a right for me to QA your software for you, that's your job. Even with all this telemetry, companies only fix the most common and most obvious bugs anyway, so the perfect telemetry is utterly useless. Those bugs would have surfaced anyway. Developers in the 80s did not need telemetry to get bug reports and fix things and release patches. Learn some history of your profession people. Has throwing a hundred thousand bugs onto your sprint backlog actually helped anyone develop better software? No. Meanwhile it has exposed all your customers and users to predatory bullshit from your marketing and sales departments, and enabled your worst product managers to optimize hostility and extraction.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
  Yes, it's quite common for users to want this. I think a lot of people don't realize functionality like "remember I want dark mode every time I visit" or "keep me logged in when I reopen my browser tomorrow" constitutes first-party tracking and requires consent under EU law.
ryukoposting 1y ago
If a tree falls down in the forest and nobody is around to hear it... If you deprecate a feature nobody ever implemented in the first place...

noirscape 1y ago

It's already seen as a valid opt-out signal against this sort of thing in Germany. LinkedIn got in trouble and lost a court case for not respecting the DNT header if memory serves me right.