<story><title>Coalition Announces New ‘Do Not Track’ Standard for Web Browsing (2015)</title><url>https://www.eff.org/press/releases/coalition-announces-new-do-not-track-standard-web-browsing</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>treve</author><text>Even though it might in theory have been the best default for end-users, in practice they made DNT fail as a result because advertisers wanted users to make an explicit choice instead of getting opted out by default. It&amp;#x27;s easy to blame the advertisers here, and sure.. you can argue that in this scenario they were the &amp;#x27;more evil&amp;#x27; ones, but had Microsoft not made this choice, we ultimately could have ended up with a respected DNT header, which later on could have become a default anyway.&lt;p&gt;So I don&amp;#x27;t disagree that the decision might have come from a good place, but the end-result was not hard to predict and was ultimately not in the interest of users. It was incredibly dumb.</text></item><item><author>Fnoord</author><text>&amp;gt; Microsoft, for marketing purposes&lt;p&gt;If Microsoft does something in the interest of their users it is suddenly &amp;quot;for marketing purposes&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; While I applaud the goal of assuming people don&amp;#x27;t want tracking&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Of course&lt;/i&gt; people don&amp;#x27;t want tracking. I&amp;#x27;m not going to argue everyone agrees with GDPR, but that sets the trend further.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Because many users showing DNT settings had not explicitly meant to do so.&lt;p&gt;Just because someone doesn&amp;#x27;t explicitly agree with something, doesn&amp;#x27;t mean they disagree with that.</text></item><item><author>ocdtrekkie</author><text>In fairness, a leading cause of DNT&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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.</text></item><item><author>NelsonMinar</author><text>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 &amp;quot;lol, no, we&amp;#x27;ll track you anyway&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s one of the reasons I feel no remorse running an ad blocker.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>belorn</author><text>The advertisers chosen to ignore DNT. It don&amp;#x27;t matter if they decided to do so because they disliked the concept of DNT or if they did so because the OS manufactorers decided to change the opt-in to opt-out. The decision was made solely by the advertisers, and there the blame resides.&lt;p&gt;If Microsoft had not made this choice then the advertisers could still have made the same decision. We will never know, and it doesn&amp;#x27;t really matter. Its a &amp;quot;what if&amp;quot; situation, and like many such &amp;quot;what if&amp;quot;s we are simply speculating about motives while not looking at the billions of dollar worth of obvious reasons why the advertisers wanted to ignore DNT.</text></comment>
<story><title>Coalition Announces New ‘Do Not Track’ Standard for Web Browsing (2015)</title><url>https://www.eff.org/press/releases/coalition-announces-new-do-not-track-standard-web-browsing</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>treve</author><text>Even though it might in theory have been the best default for end-users, in practice they made DNT fail as a result because advertisers wanted users to make an explicit choice instead of getting opted out by default. It&amp;#x27;s easy to blame the advertisers here, and sure.. you can argue that in this scenario they were the &amp;#x27;more evil&amp;#x27; ones, but had Microsoft not made this choice, we ultimately could have ended up with a respected DNT header, which later on could have become a default anyway.&lt;p&gt;So I don&amp;#x27;t disagree that the decision might have come from a good place, but the end-result was not hard to predict and was ultimately not in the interest of users. It was incredibly dumb.</text></item><item><author>Fnoord</author><text>&amp;gt; Microsoft, for marketing purposes&lt;p&gt;If Microsoft does something in the interest of their users it is suddenly &amp;quot;for marketing purposes&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; While I applaud the goal of assuming people don&amp;#x27;t want tracking&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Of course&lt;/i&gt; people don&amp;#x27;t want tracking. I&amp;#x27;m not going to argue everyone agrees with GDPR, but that sets the trend further.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Because many users showing DNT settings had not explicitly meant to do so.&lt;p&gt;Just because someone doesn&amp;#x27;t explicitly agree with something, doesn&amp;#x27;t mean they disagree with that.</text></item><item><author>ocdtrekkie</author><text>In fairness, a leading cause of DNT&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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.</text></item><item><author>NelsonMinar</author><text>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 &amp;quot;lol, no, we&amp;#x27;ll track you anyway&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s one of the reasons I feel no remorse running an ad blocker.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Fnoord</author><text>I put my money on that being an excuse and ultimately a fallacy by the advertisers. There are a lot of things in life which you don&amp;#x27;t get to choose, and only get informed about when you look into them. There&amp;#x27;s much worse examples which are far more nefarious for end users. EULAs come to mind!! Contracts in general as well because they&amp;#x27;re so complex, you need a lawyer(bot) to understand.</text></comment>