Firefox removes "do not track" feature support

Removing this feature harms user agency. This will result in Firefox users having to deal with more annoying consent prompts.

Transcend Consent Management's default configuration opts users out of every unessential tracking purpose (and suppresses automatic consent prompts) whenever DNT is enabled, but only opts users out of "Sale/sharing of info" when only GPC is enabled.

Removing this centralized privacy signal means some users cannot express full opt outs to Transcend Consent Management by default without having to interact with annoying banners.

I believe this change was steamrolled without taking in proper consideration and feedback from the web community. Mozilla made this change so fast that barely anyone noticed the issue before it got closed[1]. To add insult to injury, they've configured their Bugzilla to disallow further comments from non-Mozilla employees after issues are closed.

I shared similar feedback with the Chrome team in 2023 when they were proposing to remove DNT[2]. They considered my feedback and currently DNT is still in Chrome, with its removal indefinitely postponed.

1. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1928087

2. https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41440843#comment12

> Although, anti-tracking in general is basically fighting a losing battle. Go to https://amiunique.org/ and you'll see why.

The goal shouldn't be to appear non-unique. There are too many little things that will out you. Even if you somehow account for every single one of them today your next browser update could enable more and you can't trust that amiunique.org is looking at every identifying data point either. It's an arms race you're going to lose.

What you want is to be differently unique for each website you visit. Even better if you have JS disabled by default and sites can't collect 90% of the data points your browser exposes at all. The best protection you could get would be to change up IP addresses via VPN and randomize your user-agent and other tells.

GPC is also a narrower signal implying a smaller subset of privacy choices.

I was at Mozilla when this was implemented.

It was completely optional for websites to support this. A few did at first.

A lot of people internally wanted it to be on-by-default, but the argument was that if it was, nobody would respect it – after all, what tracking platform would willingly only track the 0.1% of people who went into the settings to enable it? (Internet Explorer did eventually enable it by default, which got them good press but ultimately killed the feature since everyone stopped respecting it.)

Overall, I'm happy to see this sunsetted. I don't think it actually did anything – in fact, I think it implies that it did way more than it did, so it was just a faux feeling of security.

(All that being said, I would love if the cookie modals on each site became browser-level, but I'm sure there's many reasons that hasn't happened yet. And I suspect a bit reason starts with a G and ends with an Oogle.)

That already exists in forms of privacy protection settings on browsers. DNT was a very specific feature. Privacy protections were not removed, DNT was removed.