[bouke]

Maybe someday this can be added to browsers, and the browsers can advertise the users’s preference to the server. Maybe even have a special request header for it. We could call it “Do-Not-Track”. A value of “1” would opt-out of all tracking (cookies).

[dessant]

Global Privacy Control [1] is a new specification that is backed by an increasing number of browser vendors and publishers.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/coming-to-a-brow...

[sjroot]

This...this was Do Not Track..

[ben509]

It's so strange that, when dealing with an industry that thought pop-unders were a great idea, asking nicely didn't work. I can't fathom why.

[esperent]

The article is literally about how this is similar/different from Do Not Track and how new laws such as GDPR give it a chance to work where the former didn't.

[edoceo]

This one right? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/DN...

[recursive]

There's no need to notify the server that your user-agent is opting out of cookies. Cookies only work because your user agent remembers them. You can opt out of cookies today by turning off cookies in your user agent. As a bonus, this even works for shady servers that don't respect earnest requests.

[Semaphor]

All the tracking is far more involved than cookies though.

[deepstack]

Canvas GPU finger print, network analysis, you get tracked one way or another. Surf web with lynx or lynx2 only!

[recursive]

Yes. The comment I referred to specifically referred to cookies. Also, if you're being tracked by canvas fingerprinting and font enumeration, I doubt asking nicely will have any effect.

[jayess]

I turned on the anti-cookie alert option in ublock.

[GuillaumeHr]

Blocking cookie banner is a solution. We (Ninja Cookie) believe you have to say that you don't want to be tracked.

We like to take the example of democracy and elections as a way of explaining our stance: many people complain that their opinion is never heard, or even that their voice cannot change the final outcome. But how can anyone expect an opinion to be heard, and taken into account, if it is not stated?

[eznzt]

Many webpages break with this. It's really annoying.

[ffpip]

Can you link some? i've never faced issues

[Buchstabensalat]

Great from a user perspective - but wouldn't this mean the end of online advertising? I imagine conversion tracking, or even sending requests to external servers wouldn't be okay with this setting.

[egypturnash]

People would still be perfectly capable of selling advertisements that worked similarly to the way ads worked before everything was online - a magazine/newspaper/tv show/etc says "our audience size is roughly X, our audience demographics are Y, here's what our ad rates are".

Modern hyper-invasive ads that follow you around the net, build up a profile based on everywhere you go, and occasionally try to install unpleasant software payloads, would have trouble surviving. Can you truly make a case that this would be a bad thing?

[wruza]

I would actually like site-related ads rather than a stupid version of mini-me chasing me around and suggesting crap I don't need.

Targeted ads are dead-end, because they inhibit exploration. They act on assumption that a person is fixed and cannot change or want to change. Before adtech I actually liked ads on paper, because it was shiny and showed things I maybe wanted to want. E.g. watch, suits, travel, home utility. I have read ads out of curiosity. Now it is an idiotic AI that thinks I need items that I bought a week ago, single women near me, and nothing more. I have some money but I don't have any watch, suits and I barely travel, partially because no one suggested that it is cool and I'm too lazy to do full-time research myself. Where are your really targeted ads, adtech industry? Can you do your job and empty my pockets? You're too dumb for that.

Based on a description of powerful datasets they have, they should show me:

  - rtx 3080 with discount (free shipping!)
  - compare se 2020 and 12 mini at coolstore.com
  - stop walking and get a scooter!

All three are at least $800+ to spend at my location. Instead it shows:

  - cheap mobile op that sucks and will never regain me a visit cost
  - Xiaomi phone that I both have and hate
  - python courses (I helped someone with script deployment at my linux box an hour ago)

It is like a psycho that follows you all the time and just repeats every action or mistake you do; every time you kick a stone on a road, they bring it back and pull your arm.

[ben509]

Where are your really targeted ads, adtech industry?

I think the lack of innovation is due to several problems:

1. the constant barrage of ads hurts their reputation making recruiting hard

Wherever you land on the ethics of it, it's a bit like porn: you may not disagree with it in principle, but in practice it seems skeezy enough you don't want to tell your friends that's what you do.

Or it could be some group has genuinely new ideas, but there is so much competition they can't demonstrate why their technology is better.

2. their data sucks

On a lark, I went to Walmart (they're more vertical than Amazon) and I searched for men's belts. When I filtered for "yellow" most of the belts were, indeed bright yellow. (Seriously, Walmart sells a lot of bright yellow men's belts.) Except, of course, for the ones that were black or brown.

And if you search for "t-shirts" and filter by fabrics, Walmart thinks reasonable t-shirt fabrics include acrylic, canvas, chiffon, corduroy, down and vinyl.

So, retailers don't even know what's in their inventory, because they don't know what "yellow" means or what a t-shirt is made of.

3. they have too much data

You point out, "they act on assumption that a person is fixed and cannot change or want to change." I'm pretty sure they're studying the data longitudinally.

The trouble is that they're hoping that magic algorithms can somehow purify petabytes of raw sewage into a clear description of consumer behavior. That's led them to invest in these big data money sinks.

And it's not just a sunk cost fallacy at work, I think they do get some apparent financial returns from the weird and inexplicable inferences those algorithms generate.

So they keep going down this rabbit hole while consumers, regulators and advertisers are steadily getting fed up with them.

[eli]

This works great for a media organization like ours. It's not hard to convince a company that sells power plant control software that anyone who reads utilitydive.com is a good candidate for their ad.

But it's gonna be tough for sites that are "general interest" or even very specific but on a topic that just doesn't have big ad budgets behind it. Our approach also depends on building a recognizable brand in the industry and having a robust in-house ad sales and operations people.

I'm not here to defend programmatic advertising, but I think if/when it goes away it's gonna suck for a lot of small indie sites.

[egypturnash]

I sure do miss having Project Wonderful ads against my comics. Moderately targeted to my audience, no flash/javascript/etc bullshit. Worked real well for my solo-creator stuff.

Honestly though once Patreon came along I had a goal of "turn off ads" and I'm pretty happy with that, too. "Everything on the Internet will be free forever, supported solely by ads!" was a terrible idea.

[quest88]

I've bought a lot of useful things through instagram ads. TBH their targeting is really good and I in-fact do like the ads because they're so relevant.

[MereInterest]

I don't see an issue with that. If your business model depends on stalking people, it isn't a good business model.

[GuillaumeHr]

I think you are absolutely right. And that's why I think cookies are definitely not dead yet :) Cookie warnings are designed to be hard to opt-out in order to increase tracking opt-in... So that's why Ninja Cookie is good for user's privacy and web experience.

[na85]

>but wouldn't this mean the end of online advertising?

Sounds wonderful.

[manicdee]

The only thing online advertising does for me is deliver malware.

The sooner it reverts back to simply delivering GIF or JPEG banners with a URL (without a few thousand lines of JavaScript) the happier I will be.

[Dirlewanger]

These modals being everywhere is 100% a failure of lawmakers being technically inept (again) and being vague with execution. Did EU lawmakers not have anyone providing them advice when writing GDPR?

[xyzzy_plugh]

I almost wonder if there was some lobbying done pro-banner because it probably results in higher engagement (I'm guessing most people click accept blindly) versus disabling cookies.

I'm sure Google likes the current state better than if they had to change their browser to encourage folks to disable cookies.

[est31]

Yeah the banners are annoying and in fact may make it more likely for people to keep cookies. I have my browser set to clear all cookies on close, but that also deletes my "I accept" clicks, so every time I start a new browser session, and this is multiple times per day, my cookies reset. Result before: my cookies would all reset multiple times per day, all nice. Result after: I have to click stupid banners about cookies that I'm deleting soon thereafter anyways.

[jerome-jh]

Oh man that's annoying! The funny part is that it annoys especially those who are careful about their data. So it is basically an incentive for being loose with privacy. Long ago I used set this setting in my parent's browser but they simply could not stand it.

[noir_lord]

Ublock origin has additional off by default lists.

One of those is called annoyances, it gets rid of a lot of that noise ime.

[mitjam]

I dom‘t think so, it can even backfire big time since when data is collected based on consent the user can always retract their consent and demand all data tracked under consent to be deleted. I bet every single company would struggle to meet users´ rights under GDPR if they would be enacted more commonly or even on a regular basis.