[JadeNB]

We've already encountered that with "Do Not Track"—as soon as you have anything that doesn't require user intervention, websites start arguing that it doesn't reflect the users' intention, and so they have to protect us from the nasty browsers by tracking us.

[guiambros]

To be fair, the DNT launch was botched from the beginning, starting more as hack than an industry-wide consensus [1]. While it eventually got implemented by browsers, it lacked adoption, and had risks with fingerprinting [2]. The nail in the coffin was when Internet Explorer 10 decided to enable it by default [3], completely disregarding user intent.

[1] http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2011/01/history-of-do-not-track-...

[2] https://www.macworld.com/article/232426/apple-safari-removin...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track#Internet_Explorer...

[nfoz]

"Do not track me" IS the reasonable default expectation of user intent, to be fair.

[Macha]

And is what the GDPR is trying to establish as the legal baseline, though things are moving slowly (this article is showing they _are_ moving though)

[ahtihn]

> The nail in the coffin was when Internet Explorer 10 decided to enable it by default [3], completely disregarding user intent.

User intent? Really? Because user intent is to allow tracking by default?

[Sargos]

Certainly not at the near 100% level that the default setting suggests. Microsoft poisoned the well with DNT and worsened privacy on the web for everyone.

[JadeNB]

I can believe that there are some people who don't care if they're tracked, but do you believe that there's anyone who wants to be tracked?

Maybe someone out there somewhere does, but surely such people, who actively want to be tracked, are in the distinctly small minority. In that case, why should the onus be on everyone else to communicate their intent, rather than on the few users affected to communicate their intent?

[Sargos]

>why should the onus be on everyone else to communicate their intent, rather than on the few users affected to communicate their intent?

Because this effectively bans any kind of tracking cookies which, while most are kind of awful, there are legitimate reasons for their existence. Shifting the conversation from a user choice to an effective ban is a completely different conversation with pros and cons that must be considered separately.

[JadeNB]

> Because this effectively bans any kind of tracking cookies which, while most are kind of awful, there are legitimate reasons for their existence. Shifting the conversation from a user choice to an effective ban is a completely different conversation with pros and cons that must be considered separately.

It doesn't at all ban them—it just makes them only effective for users who explicitly opt in. And if that's too much of a burden to impose on those very few users, then why is it reasonable to impose the burden on the vast majority of users who don't want to be tracked?

[ahtihn]

I still don't understand how this has anything to do with "user intent". What makes you think that the default user intent is to allow tracking? Would it have been better if the browser asked the user to choose? Do you think user intent would have been respected if it was presented as an opt-in setting? (ie. 99% of user would just click ok without opting in)

The reason why this flag doesn't work has nothing to do with user intent. We wouldn't see all these GDPR banners that make it difficult to opt out if anyone actually cared about user intent.