What is Do Not Track (DNT)? An illustrated guide • Hacker News Board

Re: What is Do Not Track (DNT)? An illustrated guide

#21

Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 8:11 PM UTC

tytso wrote: post #13

dguido wrote: post #3

It seems odd that DNT is a controlled at the browser-level and turning it on instructs every site to "not track me" (whatever that means). There are some sites that I want to be tracked by and DNT is an all-or-nothing control. This seems really poorly thought out. There's a tenuous relationship between DNT and DuckDuckGo too. On one hand you've got a small group of unknowns who profess not to keep logs (but who knows…

I'm not convinced DuckDuckGo is such a great search engine. If I do a search for "Newtown", the first returned item was for the Newtown in New South Wales. A search engine which knows that I live in the US and am interested in things in the US can more easily figure out that the Newtown that I'm interested in is the one in Connecticut in the United States. Everyone tends to talk about the "filter bubble" as if it wer…

Filtering based on location, language, and current time are all very logical. I have no problem with that. The 'bubble' problem is more about personal filtering. Who you are, what you do on the web.

But I object to your middle paragraph. Editorial decisions have nothing at all to do with bubbles. Bubbling is altering results based on the individual user, there is no connection to the results of mass media prioritization.

Basically, what you want isn't bubbling.

Re: What is Do Not Track (DNT)? An illustrated guide

#22

Post by jmillikin » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 8:27 PM UTC

azakai wrote: post #20

jmillikin wrote: post #11

Sending servers a "Do-Not-Track" header is like putting a "please don't look at my house!" sign on your porch. It's a request to forbid a fairly harmless behavior (cross-site cookies) which is potentially a prelude to malicious behavior (robbing your house / mapping a visitor's browser to a person). There's also the problem of how vague the spec is. For example, it states "A first party is a functional entity with wh…

> Sending servers a "Do-Not-Track" header is like putting a "please don't look at my house!" sign on your porch If we must make an analogy, it might be more like, "please don't sell photos of my house without my approval." But even that isn't a good analogy because houses aren't people vising websites.

There are many uses of cross-site cookies that do not involve selling users' personal data. The most obvious one is customized ads (as used by Google et al), but shared logins and hosted commenting systems are also common.

Re: What is Do Not Track (DNT)? An illustrated guide

#23

Post by azakai » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 8:42 PM UTC

jmillikin wrote: post #22

azakai wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sending servers a "Do-Not-Track" header is like putting a "please don't look at my house!" sign on your porch If we must make an analogy, it might be more like, "please don't sell photos of my house without my approval." But even that isn't a good analogy because houses aren't people vising websites.

There are many uses of cross-site cookies that do not involve selling users' personal data. The most obvious one is customized ads (as used by Google et al), but shared logins and hosted commenting systems are also common.

Arguably customized ads is still selling user's personal data, but the other examples are valid, yeah.

Re: What is Do Not Track (DNT)? An illustrated guide

#24

Post by jordo37 » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 8:43 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #18

asadotzler wrote: post #16

Do Not Track was on a much better track when Mozilla, privacy advocates, and major industry advertising groups (and major websites like Twitter) were working together to build a system that would help users express their wishes and advertisers respect those wishes. Things were looking pretty good for the industry embracing self regulation where advertisers would agree to respect the user's wishes and the user's wishe…

>Those are just guesses at their motivation, but I cannot come up with any better explanations. Can you? Think about it from a game theoretical perspective. How can they lose? 1) They get to pretend they're protecting users. Look at us we turned on Do Not Track by default (because you're too stupid to do it yourself, naturally -- wait, sorry, you're not stupid, come back)! 2) It makes their competitors look like they…

Microsoft has substantial investment in advertising solutions and advertising companies of their own so 4) doesn't really work. Appnexus is just one example of an advertising startup that has taken considerable investment from MS in recent years and having DNT on by default would be very bad for their business.

Re: What is Do Not Track (DNT)? An illustrated guide

#25

Post by jordo37 » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 8:45 PM UTC

mirkules wrote: post #19

asadotzler wrote: post #16

Do Not Track was on a much better track when Mozilla, privacy advocates, and major industry advertising groups (and major websites like Twitter) were working together to build a system that would help users express their wishes and advertisers respect those wishes. Things were looking pretty good for the industry embracing self regulation where advertisers would agree to respect the user's wishes and the user's wishe…

From what I understand, your point is that advertisers don't respect the DNT anymore because Microsoft turned it on by default. But would there have been any incentive for advertisers to respect the DNT even before Microsoft got involved? If the answer to that is no, then I don't think we can blame Microsoft for what would have been an inevitable outcome anyway.

Advertisers were the ones building DNT. The incentive was/is to avoid government regulation.

Re: What is Do Not Track (DNT)? An illustrated guide

#26

Post by jordo37 » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 8:51 PM UTC

betterunix wrote: post #14

glenjamin wrote: post #5

Where did do-no-track even come from? If I were to create a browser extension which added a "Do-Not-Charge-Me" header, without input from retailers, would I then be able to get annoyed that I still had to pay for my goods, despite having ticked a little box in the browser settings?

"Where did do-no-track even come from?" Well, the argument from the advertisers is this: they have no idea whether or not people want to be tracked, so they don't know when it is not OK to do so (i.e. they are claiming to be autistic). Maybe some people really do want to be tracked and given advertisements that are more relevant to their interests, according to the advertisers, and so having browsers block tracking s…

I am a little confused about your doubt that advertising funds the web, especially the published web (vs web-apps). Can you expand on this point?

To be transparent, I am the CTO of Perfect Audience, an advertising startup that does retargeting, which does use tracking to show users ads for sites / products they have previously looked for. These ads are worth more than non-data driven ads and make more money for publishers than non-data driven ads bought via bidding, which is where most advertising is moving today.

Re: What is Do Not Track (DNT)? An illustrated guide

#27

Post by jmillikin » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 9:00 PM UTC

azakai wrote: post #23

jmillikin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many uses of cross-site cookies that do not involve selling users' personal data. The most obvious one is customized ads (as used by Google et al), but shared logins and hosted commenting systems are also common.

Arguably customized ads is still selling user's personal data, but the other examples are valid, yeah.

  > Arguably customized ads is still selling user's personal data

I think this is not true, and that it's an important distinction to make.

Selling a user's data means that a site has taken information the user gave them, and sent that data to a third party in some non-anonymous format. It's an unconscionable breach of trust. When there's some service that tells any site a user visits what that visitor's home address is, that's horrifying. It's like having a friend who forwards your private facebook posts to 4chan.

In contrast, when a service uses personal data to change what ads are shown, the data is never sent to a third party. If you tell Google my address so map search gives local results, then they might use that to filter out ads for stores in a different state, but they won't tell those stores where you live.

Re: What is Do Not Track (DNT)? An illustrated guide

#28

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 9:16 PM UTC

jordo37 wrote: post #24

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those are just guesses at their motivation, but I cannot come up with any better explanations. Can you? Think about it from a game theoretical perspective. How can they lose? 1) They get to pretend they're protecting users. Look at us we turned on Do Not Track by default (because you're too stupid to do it yourself, naturally -- wait, sorry, you're not stupid, come back)! 2) It makes their competitors look like they…

Microsoft has substantial investment in advertising solutions and advertising companies of their own so 4) doesn't really work. Appnexus is just one example of an advertising startup that has taken considerable investment from MS in recent years and having DNT on by default would be very bad for their business.

4) is about image rather than reality. Microsoft likes to portray themselves as the people who demand your money instead of your privacy (even though they really take both). And people continue to think of Microsoft as a software company rather than an ad broker notwithstanding their nontrivial advertising interests as you point out.

This leaves them in a position that allows them to paint advertisers as unscrupulous and have the taint stick more to their competitors than to themselves, which they've clearly been taking advantage of.

Moreover, if Microsoft could somehow eliminate all of internet advertising for everyone, I expect they would do it. Because as much as it would hurt Microsoft, it would destroy their most viable competitors. And it's more profitable (at least in the short to medium term) to have a monopoly on a market a fraction of the size than to have your margins and market share continually eroded by vigorous competition.

Re: What is Do Not Track (DNT)? An illustrated guide

#29

Post by azakai » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 10:07 PM UTC

jmillikin wrote: post #27

azakai wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably customized ads is still selling user's personal data, but the other examples are valid, yeah.

> Arguably customized ads is still selling user's personal data I think this is not true, and that it's an important distinction to make. Selling a user's data means that a site has taken information the user gave them, and sent that data to a third party in some non-anonymous format. It's an unconscionable breach of trust. When there's some service that tells any site a user visits what that visitor's home address i…

I definitely see the difference. However, even in the second case, the user's data is being used to make a profit; the company collecting the data and showing the ads is making the ads more valuable - i.e. making more money off of them - with the user's data.

Again, I totally agree that selling the data to a third party is much worse.

Re: What is Do Not Track (DNT)? An illustrated guide

#30

Post by betterunix » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 2:13 PM UTC

jordo37 wrote: post #26

betterunix wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where did do-no-track even come from?" Well, the argument from the advertisers is this: they have no idea whether or not people want to be tracked, so they don't know when it is not OK to do so (i.e. they are claiming to be autistic). Maybe some people really do want to be tracked and given advertisements that are more relevant to their interests, according to the advertisers, and so having browsers block tracking s…

I am a little confused about your doubt that advertising funds the web, especially the published web (vs web-apps). Can you expand on this point? To be transparent, I am the CTO of Perfect Audience, an advertising startup that does retargeting, which does use tracking to show users ads for sites / products they have previously looked for. These ads are worth more than non-data driven ads and make more money for publi…

Well, I won't deny that some websites are funded by advertising (Google comes to mind). On the other hand, there are a large number of websites that are ad-free, ranging from small personal blogs (which have low hosting fees; I know people who pay a tiny amount for EC2 to host their blog) to websites with millions of pageviews per day (e.g. Wikipedia). We had a world wide web before we had web advertising; somehow, people were able to pay for things back then.

Really though, my word choice was poor. What I should have said is that I doubt the necessity of advertising to fund the web, citing the examples above.

Also, sorry if I am attacking your company. It's nothing personal.