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Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

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Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#71

Post by wpietri »

pbiggar wrote: post #63

In all the comments here, I can't find anybody who thinks that Yahoo is doing the right thing here. Well, I do. I think what Yahoo is doing is the right thing for them, for their users, and for the web. If the web is going to be ad supported, then its going to have to be targeted advertising or its going to be both shit and annoying. Remember "punch the monkey", or ads that took over the entire screen? Now, through t…

That ignores that user tracking wasn't possible for the first 150 years of ad-supported publishing.

I also think your slippery-slope argument is excess drama. The notion that untracked users force us to a world of shitty ads is implausible to me. When I saw punch-the-monkey ads disappear, it was because publishers realized that terrible ads destroyed the value of their brand.

I agree that money has shifted toward more tightly tracked ads. But if large portions of the readership are untracked, there's no reason to think that the money won't shift back. Vendors won't stop advertising, and they won't go back to print.

And really, it's not clear that the current model is sustainable anyhow. CPMs have been falling for years. I was just talking with a founder of a (now-sold) ad-supported content company. He said that there's no way he'd do that again; rates are low and are headed lower. And there's much more competition for eyeballs from SEO-optimized, attention-getting bullshit.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#72

Post by csoghoian »

Steko wrote: post #57

Am I mistaken or did the FTC not just fine Google $22.5 million over the exact same behavior for a considerably smaller share of web users. If I'm Microsoft I am making a very public appeal to the FTC over this Monday morning. $22.5 million is a lot more money to Y! than Google. And as wary as consumers are of Microsoft long term they've got to degrade the Google/Firefox brand to start gaining any traction. Why not g…

The FTC reached a settlement with Google this year for a $22 mil fine because Google violated a previous consent order over Buzz.

Yahoo is not under an existing consent order with the FTC. For the most part, the FTC does not get fines unless a company violates an existing consent order.

Furthermore, Google didn't get fined because it circumvented Safari's privacy settings, but rather, because it lied about the extent to which users could opt out of tracking.

I've not seen anything that suggests that Yahoo is lying about the extent to which they will respect or ignore the DNT header.

The FTC's deception powers aren't going to be of much use against Yahoo here.

(Disclosure: I worked at the FTC between 2009-2010, and worked on the investigations of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter).

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#73

Post by wpietri »

geofft wrote: post #69
ben0x539 wrote: post #25

I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume that users intend to not be tracked by the very large number of third parties they are involuntarily exposed to on the web. Yahoo are resorting to this whole buzzword-laden meaningless rhetoric around ~user experience~ and ~value proposition~. That just reinforces the impression that the only reason anyone was prepared to go along with DNT was that they assumed that 99% of…

> the benefits of the DNT scheme The benefit of the DNT scheme was to kill the lie that most users don't care. If 99% of users take positive action to change a default and say "Don't track me", it's believable. If a browser vendor says this, it's not. Bear in mind that Do Not Track has _zero_ technical merit; it's equivalent to the "evil bit" prank RFC. Any merit it has must be political. The value in DNT was going t…

That puts Microsoft in a bind. Sensible defaults are important; if you can guess what users want most of the time, then you should just do that.

In their shoes I would have done some focus groups, spending an afternoon with people and really educating them on the details of tracking, and what the pros and cons are for them. If at the end of it most typical users would have turned it on, then this would have been the right default.

After all, if places like Yahoo don't like it, they could ask people to turn it off. If Yahoo's right, then presumably most people would turn DNT off, or make an exception for them. But I suspect Yahoo knows that people don't want to be tracked, and that a lot of their profit comes from keeping their users in the dark.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#74

Post by wpietri »

w1ntermute wrote: post #35
jlarocco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words meaning they're not going to support it... "We're only going to support it if it's not turned on by default" is not really supporting DNT. It really shows they're business model depends on people being computer illiterate. And now that DNT is on by default they're revolting because they know few people will ever go out of their way to opt-in and get tracked.

Doesn't that make sense? If someone doesn't care enough to go in and turn on DNT, why does it matter if they're tracked? The default should obviously be 'null', that's the most equitable choice for all parties involved.

Because ignorance doesn't equal informed consent.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#75

Post by wpietri »

wonderyak wrote: post #39

> In our view, this degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them. I know Yahoo! has to maintain their business which depends on things like ads and content delivery; but to say it with such sterile marketing jargon just makes me nauseous. How about you guys do what everyone else has had to do since the beginning; create something awesome and let peopl…

The problem is that Yahoo's customers aren't their users. Yahoo's users are the veal calves. They don't seem to understand what to do with businesses where the customers are the users. Flickr, for example.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#76

Post by tvladeck »

ktsmith wrote: post #36
tvladeck wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, fair point - but then by definition the second clause of my statement is correct - the user's wishes are unknown, so any direction taken is then... arbitrary? :) At any rate, you seem well-versed in this area, so let me ask you a question: what is the difference the website's behavior between a "null" and a "track me, please" value in the header?

It's not binary, it's ternary. 1 opt out, 0 opt in, null unknown choice. In practice the difference between null and don't track me please are probably non existent. However, in the future if this were to take off it's possible that someone would come up with creative benefits/uses for tracking that provide incentive for users to be tracked. edit: Don't think I addressed your question. The difference between null or…

This is really helpful - thanks.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#77

Post by ihsw »

pbiggar wrote: post #63

In all the comments here, I can't find anybody who thinks that Yahoo is doing the right thing here. Well, I do. I think what Yahoo is doing is the right thing for them, for their users, and for the web. If the web is going to be ad supported, then its going to have to be targeted advertising or its going to be both shit and annoying. Remember "punch the monkey", or ads that took over the entire screen? Now, through t…

Or we could have non-intrusive ads and non-targeted ads, there's nothing wrong with that.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#78

Post by DufusM »

wpietri wrote: post #66
DufusM wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is reasonable to assume a user's intent, it is also reasonable to assume a content publisher's intent to monetize their content. An advertising-funded web is the reality of today, unless Microsoft is proposing a radical change in this model. The concept of Do Not Track, despite the emotional appeal of the name, essentially seems to be a compromise between privacy and advertising, keeping the advertising-base…

Your theory appears to be that the minority of privacy-focused individuals are weird outliers in preference . but my impression is that they are weird outliers in knowledge . When I talk with non-technical relatives about their internet use, privacy is a major issue for them. They know, for example, that Facebook knows a lot about them, which scares them. They don't know how much ad providers track them, but if you t…

I agree there is a problem with the lack of knowledge, but I wouldn't assume that it is all regarding "shadowy private companies". A number of public privacy scares like the concern of Gmail reading people's email seem to fall into the same category.

Again, there are good and bad players on all sides, but my point was simply that ignoring reality and making a complete swing to no monetization for content seems to assume all players on one side are bad. A more open standard that allows clear knowledge is probably a better direction for Microsoft to pursue.

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#79

Post by pbiggar »

ihsw wrote: post #77
pbiggar wrote: post #63

In all the comments here, I can't find anybody who thinks that Yahoo is doing the right thing here. Well, I do. I think what Yahoo is doing is the right thing for them, for their users, and for the web. If the web is going to be ad supported, then its going to have to be targeted advertising or its going to be both shit and annoying. Remember "punch the monkey", or ads that took over the entire screen? Now, through t…

Or we could have non-intrusive ads and non-targeted ads, there's nothing wrong with that.

Except that no-one would click them. We barely click on ads tailors to our behaviour - we'll never click on ads that aren't (and we never did).

Re: Yahoo to ignore IE10's "Do Not Track"

#80

Post by ihsw »

pbiggar wrote: post #79
ihsw wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could have non-intrusive ads and non-targeted ads, there's nothing wrong with that.

Except that no-one would click them. We barely click on ads tailors to our behaviour - we'll never click on ads that aren't (and we never did).

Personally I'm fine with that.
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