[danShumway]

Obligatory "Microsoft Did Nothing Wrong" post:

Too busy to do a long post in detail, but short version is that advertiser's acceptance of DNT was entirely dependent on people not using it. If Microsoft had left it as opt-in but the majority of consumers had turned it on, we would have seen the same result.

You can see the same principle to explain the response to iOS's privacy changes, which are not opt-in or opt-out; they force the user to make a choice. The ad industry is still furious about this.

DNT could have only worked if no one used it, and that is not a privacy outcome that is worth pursuing or advocating for. It's not Microsoft's fault that DNT went away, Microsoft was just the excuse the advertising industry needed to avoid it. I don't think that DNT was ever anything other than an excuse the industry could use to keep tracking people and avoid legislation without changing anything. Microsoft didn't take it away from you, they just pulled back the curtain and showed you the truth about it.

A privacy standard that fails as soon as it's turned on by default is almost worthless and it really shouldn't be advocated for in the first place.

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26821972

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24294280

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24289186

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19483149

[mavhc]

Microsoft has 57 screens about turning tracking on/off for Microsoft things when you install Windows, they're not against asking the user, except in that one case...

[danShumway]

Doesn't matter, changes nothing.

It is a waste of time and energy to advocate for a privacy standard that can only ever be opt-in. Doesn't matter what Microsoft's motivations are, doesn't matter what they're doing elsewhere. A privacy standard that gets abandoned if it's ever defaulted to "on" for new users is worthless.

It's not Microsoft's fault that DNT went away, DNT was always going to go away the moment a sizable portion of the population started using it.

If Microsoft had asked users when starting up their computers whether they wanted to turn on DNT, and if a majority of users had turned it on, the advertising industry would still have had a meltdown and rejected the standard. We know this because that's exactly their reaction to iOS's changes, which are not turned on by default but force the user to make a deliberate choice when opening the app.

[mavhc]

Changes a few things, you don't "know" the result of something that never happened, you suspect.

Also changes the perception that Microsoft were doing it to attack Google.

Once it's a standard you'd get it enacted in law that companies have to respect the setting.

[danShumway]

> you don't "know" the result of something that never happened, you suspect.

I don't know that an asteroid isn't going to kill me in the next 3 minutes, but I can make some educated guesses about the world. My read of the situation is consistent with the way that the advertising industry has reacted in every single similar situation. It's consistent with the way that they're acting right now with tracking restrictions that require affirmative consent. There's a pattern here.

> Also changes the perception that Microsoft were doing it to attack Google.

Who cares?

> Once it's a standard you'd get it enacted in law that companies have to respect the setting.

If we're going to talk about suspicions, I have seen zero evidence that a DNT standard would have actually helped get legislation passed. Generally speaking, that theory does not line up with my experience of how lawmaking works.

Nor does getting it passed into law mean that advertisers wouldn't immediately lobby for it to be revoked as soon as any company turned it on by default. Heck, they'd try to force it to be opt-in instead of opt-out in the law itself if given half a chance. They would argue that Microsoft was being anti-competitive (exactly as you're arguing right now). Facebook is currently arguing that Apple's privacy controls are anti-competitive, there's no reason to believe they wouldn't make the same argument about Microsoft if DNT was turned on by default, regardless of what the law said.

A privacy standard that can not be turned on by default is not worth fighting for.