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Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

zdnet.com

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Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#111

Post by Eldarrion »

slau wrote: post #85
lloeki wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever seen those "here we'll be setting cookies because we're going to track you if you agree (agree/fuck off)" in Europe? A EU directive or something of the best intent mandates that when you're tracking someone beyond technical needs this boilerplate is required before setting a cookie. Guess what if you disagree there's no way to store the user's answer, so the box keeps popping up, forever nagging the privacy cons…

As far as I recall, the EU cookie law is a bit more global than that: a website needs to get permission/consent whenever it wants to store/retrieve information from the visitor's browser---this isn't just limited to tracking. This means that every single website hosted in Europe/targeted at a European audience need to request the authorisation to use the user's browser storage. A number of websites formulate this as…

> You are, however, completely right that it is stupid beyond ridicule that you technically can't store the fact that a user doesn't want cookies on the browser.

Yes you can, it's pretty simple to do. Add a timestamped entry into your database to not show that notification to the IP address the user comes from, then run a script every minute that clears out entries older than an hour. Granted, if you go back to the website an hour later, it would still pop up the request to access cookies but it certainly beats having it pop up on every page load.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#112

Post by dredmorbius »

specialist wrote: post #109
_delirium wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this has much to do with Reddit. "Randroid" and similar terms as a derogatory way of describing a certain cluster of ultra-free-market views has been common on every online discussion service I've been on, dating back to Usenet. Although this may be partly because actual, honest-to-god Ayn Rand fans are also surprisingly common on online discussion forums (and were especially common on Usenet).

It predates even usenet, eg FidoNet, BIX, CompuServe. My gamer and geek friends have been spewing libertarian flavored Randian nonsense since middle school, circa 1983. I never imagined that worldview would prevail. It was just so puerile. Not so different than the tortured coming of age fantasies embraced by the other subcultures (stoners, metalheads, preppies). Though maybe the nerds were more aggrieved, seeing the…

Downvotes for truth, here, I suppose.

You could add in the Mont Pelerin Society,Foundation for Economic Freedom, Atlas Network, and Cato Institute, Mercatus Center, Adam Smith Institute, Mercatus Center.

And personnel: Ludwig von Mises, Leonard Read, Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, the Kochs (Fred, Charles, David), for completeness.

Mark Ames has an excellent general summary: http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Pelerin_Society

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Network

https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners/global-directory

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Economic_Educ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercatus_Center

See, e.g., Philip Mirowski's The Road From Mont Pelerin:

http://www.worldcat.org/title/road-from-mont-pelerin-the-mak...

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#113

Post by greglindahl »

malikNF wrote: post #9

DNT made sense only in a world where there would be some sort of law to back it up. I actually had my adblocker turned off on websites I knew at least tried to respect DNT (reddit, medium and twitter), guess twitter's getting completely adblocked now.

There is a law that backs up DNT -- if a website's privacy policy says they respect DNT, and they don't, and it's discovered, it's the same as any other privacy policy problem. You can read in the news about fines, consent decrees, etc related to privacy policy violations.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#116

Post by djrogers »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #50
xg15 wrote: post #13

Ok, honestly, was DNT ever more than a smoke grenade for muddying the privacy discussion? The standard always relied on every single shady data collector out there to act against their core interest, facing not even the risk of detection (let alone punishment) if they don't comply, all just because you asked them nicely. You might as well carry a "do not rob me" card in your wallet. Was there ever a honest belief by…

I'm very conscious of tracking and I've never bothered to check that box. It doesn't do what it's supposed to and adds another data point for fingerprinting. This and that cookie notification thing should just go away.

It's a data point for fingerprinting wether you have it on or not. The only way to avoid that would be to randomize it's value.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#117

Post by djrogers »

greglindahl wrote: post #105
staticassertion wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're putting too much blame on Microsoft here. DNT was always garbage, the fact that as soon as anyone used it (it becoming default for IE being the push in this case) it would fall apart just shows that it was always doomed. Shouldn't not being tracked be the default? Shouldn't we be opting into targeted ads, not out of them? Seems reasonable, if DNT weren't garbage, to have it be on by default. But it was…

There's no way to overblame Microsoft: There was an industry agreement that involved the compromise of DNT not being the default. Microsoft destroyed the entire agreement, which doesn't benefit consumers at all. Worked out great for the advertising and data-collection industries, though.

There was no 'Industry agreement' or compromise - the whole DNT thing was a slice of cake thrown to us by the advertising industry to keep us quiet for a while.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#118

Post by djrogers »

mdpopescu wrote: post #51
awinter-py wrote: post #35

what if instead of using ad blockers we use ad amplifiers that downloaded 10 or 100 copies of video ads to make sure we got the data correct? Serving video is pretty expensive. How big are the ad networks' margins? Let's see who blinks first.

I think the internet is bad (and metered) in a lot of places in North America, so this would be counterproductive. However, it might work in Europe.

Very little of the internet in North America is 'bad', and in the US very little is metered beyond mobile. There are ISPs who technically have data caps, but very few people ever come close to them.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#119

Post by specialist »

dredmorbius wrote: post #112
specialist wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It predates even usenet, eg FidoNet, BIX, CompuServe. My gamer and geek friends have been spewing libertarian flavored Randian nonsense since middle school, circa 1983. I never imagined that worldview would prevail. It was just so puerile. Not so different than the tortured coming of age fantasies embraced by the other subcultures (stoners, metalheads, preppies). Though maybe the nerds were more aggrieved, seeing the…

Downvotes for truth, here, I suppose. You could add in the Mont Pelerin Society,Foundation for Economic Freedom, Atlas Network, and Cato Institute, Mercatus Center, Adam Smith Institute, Mercatus Center. And personnel: Ludwig von Mises, Leonard Read, Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, the Kochs (Fred, Charles, David), for completeness. Mark Ames has an excellent general summary: http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-hi…

Thanks for Mark Ames link. TL;DR: They were always hucksters for hire.

I recently read a magazine article that covers same history as Mirowski's book. Hayek's motivations and strategy for pushing his ideas (take over economics depts in higher ed) are fascinating, instructive. Sadly, I can't imagine how the left could replicate that effort for reality-based polcies.

On mobile, sorry no link handy. I'll edit if I can find it.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#120

Post by nilved »

nikcub wrote: post #106
xg15 wrote: post #13

Ok, honestly, was DNT ever more than a smoke grenade for muddying the privacy discussion? The standard always relied on every single shady data collector out there to act against their core interest, facing not even the risk of detection (let alone punishment) if they don't comply, all just because you asked them nicely. You might as well carry a "do not rob me" card in your wallet. Was there ever a honest belief by…

> Was there ever a honest belief by anyone (except the Ayn Rand fanboys) this could work? On the contrary, it was (generally) those in favor of government-mandated privacy and security who heavily supported the DNT efforts. The "Ayn Rand fanboys" just told people to install uBlock Origin

Am anarchist, can agree
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