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Do_not_track

donottrack.sh

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Re: Do_not_track

#141

Post by dahart »

andybak wrote: post #136

My projects could genuinely benefit from telemetry as I have no idea about usage patterns and my community (mainly artists) is not famous for maintaining a close dialogue with software developers. I haven't bothered because a) opt-out risks a backlash and b) opt-in affects the data so much it becomes useless (much smaller sample and probably self-selecting a certain type of user) Skimming the comments here, it seems…

I’m sympathetic to both the default distrust and to devs like you who want telemetry to improve their software and won’t use the data for anything else, but it is because of bad actors and enough dark ad patterns that we just can’t trust companies to play nice, and it’s too difficult to expect people to scrutinize each and every app or site individually. So I get why the default assumption is nefarious behavior.

But you’re totally right - telemetry & crash dumps & analytics are helpful & great for devs who care about the customer UX and don’t use the data for advertising or anything other than fixing & writing good software, so it’s a real kind of tragedy of the commons that we can’t have safe, trustworthy, and pro-consumer telemetry.

I went from building a web app that used Google Analytics and some other kinds of anonymous telemetry (and using that data only for identifying functional software & site issues), to building driver software that absolutely cannot send data out, and I wish for telemetry all the time. Not only is it difficult to understand what users are doing, they usually don’t even know themselves and can’t tell me what happened when things crash. The result is that turnaround times for critical issues are in months, when it could be days or hours if we had crash dumps and analytics, the lack of automated reporting hurts users.

I’m not sure there’s a way to separate the good from the bad, to designate some kinds of telemetry as safe and to be able to trust it while disallowing the stuff we don’t want. If that were somehow possible, if anyone has ideas, I would love to help figure out how to make it a reality.

Re: Do_not_track

#142

Post by [deleted] »

andybak wrote: post #136

My projects could genuinely benefit from telemetry as I have no idea about usage patterns and my community (mainly artists) is not famous for maintaining a close dialogue with software developers. I haven't bothered because a) opt-out risks a backlash and b) opt-in affects the data so much it becomes useless (much smaller sample and probably self-selecting a certain type of user) Skimming the comments here, it seems…

[deleted]

Re: Do_not_track

#143

Post by buzer »

dylan604 wrote: post #79
mmooss wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is too sophisticated to plead ignorance; they are responsible for that outcome and I think we can assume they knowningly chose it. (Though now Microsoft browsers are such a small portion of the market that it doesn't matter.) The biggest failure of DNT was browser makers - including Mozilla - removing it. It has zero performance impact (1 bit?) or development cost. As long as it was out there, when there wa…

Lately, I've come across websites that instead of a cookie banner display a banner that states they recognize and honor my wish to not be tracked. Whether that really do or not is something I did not spend time looking into. The first time I saw it I thought it was a fluke, and then it happened a few more times with in a short time period. Couldn't tell you what sites they were though as it was just something from se…

GPC must be honored in California. https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa/gpc

According to https://www.didomi.io/blog/global-privacy-control-gpc-2026 it must also be honored in 11 other states but I'm not familiar enough with the specifics regarding those.

Re: Do_not_track

#144

Post by 0123456789ABCDE »

wilkystyle wrote: post #129
0123456789ABCDE wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is this relevant?

Not the person you are replying to, but I had the same thought come to mind. Every library and app seems to have its own way of disabling telemetry. In order for a unified way to actually result in unification, everyone has to sign onto it. Otherwise you now have DO_NOT_TRACK=1 for everyone who respects it in addition to all of the existing ways for everyone who does not respect it.

right, thanks

Re: Do_not_track

#145

Post by bstsb »

monk_grilla wrote: post #139

The original creator of this standard has retroactively called it “a mistake” https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/consoledonottrack.com/src/branch/m...

the original creator calls everyone implementing their standard a “scumbag” for having any form of analytics, which seems a bit of an overreaction

Re: Do_not_track

#146

Post by martin-t »

Consent must be explicit, informed and can be revoked at any time.

Tech people could learn a lot from the BDSM community.

Tech companies regularly violate all 3 principles.

1) Opt-out instead of opt-in is an abusive practice, only you're not getting fucked by a strap-on without realizing it, you're getting profiled and manipulated for monetary and political gain.

2) You have no way to find out how your information is used. Ironic in an age where so many decisions affecting you are made by automated systems where the output can be traced back to individual inputs deterministically.

3) Even if you do your research (=spend your limited time alive by playing zero-sum games with no benefit for you) and opt-out, you can't take back what's already circulating out there.

And the solution is not that crazy - change laws so people own all data about them and all results of using said data, except specific well-defined cases.

Then if a company uses your data without your consent, it doesn't pay a probabilistic tax called fines, it is forced to give you a part of its income and a part of its own ownership.

Re: Do_not_track

#147

Post by Einenlum »

I doubt any vendor would apply this. It's not in their interest. Maybe a better solution would be to have a package that's always updated and provides a list of injected env vars for each vendor. One line in zshrc or bash and you're covered (at least for those who offer a way to disable the telemetry through an env var).

Re: Do_not_track

#149

Post by marshray »

andybak wrote: post #136

My projects could genuinely benefit from telemetry as I have no idea about usage patterns and my community (mainly artists) is not famous for maintaining a close dialogue with software developers. I haven't bothered because a) opt-out risks a backlash and b) opt-in affects the data so much it becomes useless (much smaller sample and probably self-selecting a certain type of user) Skimming the comments here, it seems…

I feel that I have been a victim of "good telemetry" too, as when advanced product features were removed which were probably not popular but that I personally relied on.
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