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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

#151

Post by EpicEng »

Skunkleton wrote: post #83
EpicEng wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"probably" doesn't lead to "yes, it works". What's the tradeoff? How many good actors does "probably" imply?

Ok, say you are tracked by google, facebook, adzerk, and twitter. If you set DNT, you are now only tracked by google, facebook, and twitter. Yeah, it was pretty much pointless, but you are being tracked by one less network, so it worked to some extent. It is trash, but at least it is something.

>"...pointless", "it's trash..."

Compelling arguments in favor.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#152

Post by xg15 »

Omniusaspirer wrote: post #82
Chaebixi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep seeing this recently and this time I can't even imagine how it could be relevant. In this case, it sounds like it's mocking the idea that the market-based voluntary agreements could solve this problem. Lots of people seem to think you can solve any problem by just "letting the market work."

The market is working very well on advertisements. They grow increasingly obnoxious, and the adblockers keep getting better and more prevalent in response. The end result is either reasonable ads (probably too late for this) or the death of this particular flavor of the ad-driven revenue model. I fully expect we'll look back on Internet advertising as a bootstrapper for the early Internet economy as opposed to a last…

Cue the rise of ad-blocker-blockers where you're faced with a) allow a possible vector of malware or b) don 't consume the site et all.

Of course at some point there might be ad-blocker-blocker-blockers which will postpone the problem to another round. But do we really want an economy based on an arms race?

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#153

Post by xg15 »

ilogik wrote: post #45
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 work in advertising,and we do respect dnt

Kudos to you. (Though I'd like to ask, do you respect it in the common sense way by not storing any information about a DNT user or in the DAA sense - i.e. "we understand 'do not track' as 'do track but only show untargeted advertising'"?)

However, I'm more concerned about the hundreds of other services that might not. My point was that DNT requires cooperation from a huge number of actors to be effective, with the actors having no incentive to play along and nothing to fear if they don't.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#154

Post by taejo »

djrogers wrote: post #116
jasonkostempski wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Since more people have it off than on, the information content of leaving it off is much less than turning it on.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#155

Post by DashRattlesnake »

xg15 wrote: post #152
Omniusaspirer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is working very well on advertisements. They grow increasingly obnoxious, and the adblockers keep getting better and more prevalent in response. The end result is either reasonable ads (probably too late for this) or the death of this particular flavor of the ad-driven revenue model. I fully expect we'll look back on Internet advertising as a bootstrapper for the early Internet economy as opposed to a last…

Cue the rise of ad-blocker-blockers where you're faced with a) allow a possible vector of malware or b) don 't consume the site et all. Of course at some point there might be ad-blocker-blocker-blockers which will postpone the problem to another round. But do we really want an economy based on an arms race?

> ad-blocker-blocker-blockers

An ad-blocker-blocker-blocker is just an ad-blocker.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#156

Post by xg15 »

DashRattlesnake wrote: post #155
xg15 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cue the rise of ad-blocker-blockers where you're faced with a) allow a possible vector of malware or b) don 't consume the site et all. Of course at some point there might be ad-blocker-blocker-blockers which will postpone the problem to another round. But do we really want an economy based on an arms race?

> ad-blocker-blocker-blockers An ad-blocker-blocker-blocker is just an ad-blocker.

Not quite.

An ad-blocker removes ads.

An ad-blocker-blocker detects ad-blockers and refuses to serve content if one is detected. (Instead a "disable your ad-blocker if you want to use this site" message is shown)

An ad-blocker-blocker-blocker masks the ad-blocker against detection, so content can still be consumed.

Etc...

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#157

Post by jasonkostempski »

djrogers wrote: post #116
jasonkostempski wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know that :) I was saying there's now a new standard who's only useful functionality is to increase finger printing data points.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#158

Post by theprop »

Chaebixi wrote: post #72
theprop wrote: post #58

I always suspected Mozilla pushed Do Not Track to undermine online privacy. It was a doomed idea from the start -- all DNT does is politely ask a website not to track you. Setting their browser to DNT on did give tens of millions of Firefox users the illusion they were getting a high level of privacy (so they presumably would stick to Firefox) even though it didn't actually do very much.

> I always suspected Mozilla pushed Do Not Track to undermine online privacy. What motivation does Mozilla have to want to "undermine online privacy?" Of all the major browser vendors, they seem the least coupled to the privacy-invading ad ecosystem.

The Mozilla that was using your browsing history to target new tab page ads to you? That's "least" coupled to the privacy-invading ecosystem?

That gets hundreds of millions of dollars a year from Google & Yahoo/Microsoft in search revenues without pushing them to provide a genuine private search?

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#159

Post by Chaebixi »

theprop wrote: post #158
Chaebixi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always suspected Mozilla pushed Do Not Track to undermine online privacy. What motivation does Mozilla have to want to "undermine online privacy?" Of all the major browser vendors, they seem the least coupled to the privacy-invading ad ecosystem.

The Mozilla that was using your browsing history to target new tab page ads to you? That's "least" coupled to the privacy-invading ecosystem? That gets hundreds of millions of dollars a year from Google & Yahoo/Microsoft in search revenues without pushing them to provide a genuine private search?

> The Mozilla that was using your browsing history to target new tab page ads to you? That's "least" coupled to the privacy-invading ecosystem?

Yeah it's the least coupled, because the major alternatives (e.g. Google) literally run the privacy-invading ad networks.

Mozilla walked back from the tab-page ads more than a year ago.

> without pushing them to provide a genuine private search?

How much leverage do you think Mozilla has with the search engines? Google canceled their deal with them because they are so dominant and Chrome has been so successful. Mozilla needs revenue to keep the lights on, and the search engines are the source of it.

Re: Twitter abandons 'Do Not Track' privacy protection

#160

Post by shawnee_ »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #88
shawnee_ wrote: post #11

Online privacy remains an issue that upsets people, but at day's end, neither companies nor the Trump administration have any real interest in protecting privacy. Does not surprise me at all. As a very early adopter of Twitter, I have to say I thought this platform had a lot of promise at one time. Unfortunately, it's becoming a textbook case of how massive ego corrupts and destroys a product, a company, and now even…

> As a very early adopter of Twitter, I have to say I thought this platform had a lot of promise at one time. Given that is was a centralized, proprietary service from day one, so it necessarily would follow the interests of the owners, and that also has a strong network effect that locks people in ... how did you come to that wild conclusion?

There was a (brief) period of time many years ago when Twitter was more friendly to developers; that is what I was referring to.

What followed was a series of terribly bad decisions to turn it into a marketing platform, rather than what it what it was organically becoming, which was a real-time market research tool + analytics API.

As a result of bad direction and big ego, today it is just an extremely noisy, mostly irrelevant, echo chamber.

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