[Y_Y]

While we're at it, it should be noted that Do Not Track was not, apparently, a joke.

It's the same as a noreply email, if you can get away with sticking your fingers in your ears and humming when someone is telling you something you don't want to hear, and you have a computer to hide behind, then it's all good.

[sebstefan]

There should be a law against displaying a cookie consent box to a user who has their Do Not Track header set.

[MaxBarraclough]

Not all that far-fetched, Global Privacy Control is legally binding in California.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Privacy_Control

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43377867

[vbezhenar]

How is "Do Not Track" is a joke, but website presenting a button "Do not use cookies" is not? What's the difference?

[GuB-42]

It is ridiculous, but it is what you get when you have conflicting interests and broken legislation. The rule is that tracking has to be opt-in, so websites do it the way they are more likely to get people to opt in, and it is a cookie banner before you access the content.

Do-not-track is opt-out, not opt-in, and in fact, it is not opt-anything since browsers started to set it to "1" by default without asking. There is no law forcing advertisers to honor that.

I guess it could work the other way: if you set do-not-track to 0 (meaning "do-track"), which no browser does by default, make cookies auto-accept and do not show the banner. But then the law says that it should require no more actions to refuse consent than to consent (to counter those ridiculous "accept or uncheck 100 boxes" popups), so it would mean they would also have to honor do-not-track=1, which they don't want to.

I don't know how legislation could be unbroken. Users don't want ads, don't want tracking, they just want the service they ask for and don't want to pay for it. Service providers want exactly the opposite. Also people need services and services need users. There is no solution that will satisfy everyone.

[runarberg]

Labor laws are not set to satisfy everyone, they are set such that a company cannot use it’s outsized power to exploit their workers, and that workers have fair chance at negotiating a fair deal, despite holding less power.

Similarly consumer protection laws—which the cookie banners are—are not set to satisfy everyone, they are set such that companies cannot use their outsized power to exploit their customers. A good consumer protection law will simply ban harmful behavior regardless of whether companies which engage in said harmful behavior want are satisfied with that ban or not. A good consumer protection law, will satisfy the user (or rather the general public) but it may satisfy the companies.

[AnthonyMouse]

Good consumer protection laws are things like disclosure requirements or anti-tying rules that address information asymmetries or enable rather than restrict customer choice.

Bad consumer protection laws try to pretend that trade offs don't exist. You don't want to see ads, that's fine, but now you either need to self-host that thing or pay someone else money to do it because they're no longer getting money from ads.

There is no point in having an opt in for tracking. If the user can be deprived of something for not opting in (i.e. you can't use the service) then it's useless, and if they can't then the number of people who would purposely opt in is entirely negligible and you ought to stop beating around the bush and do a tracking ban. But don't pretend that's not going to mean less "free stuff".

The problem is legislators are self-serving. They want to be seen doing something without actually forcing the trade off that would annihilate all of these companies, so instead they implement something compromised to claim they've done something even though they haven't actually done any good. Hence obnoxious cookie banners.

[chowells]

That whole argument assumes that you as a consumer can always find a product with exactly the features you want. Because that's a laughable fiction, there need to be laws with teeth to punish bad behaviors that nearly every product would indulge in otherwise. That means things like requiring sites to get permission to track, and punishing those that track users without permission. It's a good policy in theory, but it needs to be paired with good enforcement, and that's where things are currently lacking.

[AnthonyMouse]

> That's whole argument assumes that you as a consumer can always find a product with exactly the features you want. Because that's a laughable fiction

There are very many industries where this is exactly what happens. If you want a stack of lumber or a bag of oranges, it's a fungible commodity and there is no seller who can prevent you from buying the same thing from someone else if you don't like their terms.

If this is ever not the case, the thing you should be addressing is that, instead of trying to coerce an oligopoly that shouldn't exist into behaving under the threat of government penalties rather than competitive pressure. Because an uncompetitive market can screw you in ten thousand different ways regardless of whether you've made a dozen of them illegal.

> That means things like requiring sites to get permission to track, and punishing those that track users without permission. It's a good policy in theory, but it needs to be paired with good enforcement, and that's where things are currently lacking.

It's not a good policy in theory because the theory is ridiculous. If you have to consent to being tracked in exchange for nothing, nobody is going to do that. If you want a ban on tracking then call it what it is instead of trying to pretend that it isn't a ban on the "free services in exchange for tracking data" business model.

[lloeki]

> since browsers started to set it to "1" by default without asking

IIRC IE10 did that, to much outcry because it upended the whole DNT being an explicit choice; no other browser (including Edge) set it as a default.

There have been thoughts about using DNT (the technical communication mechanism about consent/objection) in correlation with GDPR (the legal framework to enforce consent/objection compliance)

https://www.w3.org/blog/2018/do-not-track-and-the-gdpr/

The GDPR explicitly mentions objection via technical means:

> In the context of the use of information society services, and notwithstanding Directive 2002/58/EC, the data subject may exercise his or her right to object by automated means using technical specifications.

https://law.stackexchange.com/a/90002

People like to debate as to whether DNT itself has enough meaning:

> Due to the confusion about this header's meaning, it has effectively failed.

https://law.stackexchange.com/a/90004

I myself consider DNT as what it means at face value: I do not want to be tracked, by anyone, ever. I don't know what's "confusing" about that.

The only ones that are "confused" are the ones it would be detrimental to i.e the ones that perform and extract value from the tracking, and make people run in circles with contrived explanations.

It would be perfectly trivial for a browser to pop up a permission request per website like there is for webcams or microphone or notifications, and show no popup should I elect to blanket deny through global setting.

[anamexis]

For one, Do Not Track is on the client side and you just hope and pray that the server honors it, whereas cookie consent modals are something built by and placed in the website.

I think you can reasonably assume that if a website went through the trouble of making such a modal (for legal compliance reasons), the functionality works (also for legal compliance reasons). And, you as the client can verify whether it works, and can choose not to store them regardless.

[zeroxfe]

> And, you as the client can verify whether it works

How do you do that? Cookies are typically opaque (encrypted or hashed) bags of bits.

[anamexis]

Just the presence or absence of the cookie.

[echoangle]

I would assume most websites would still set cookies even if you reject the consent, because the consent is only about not technically necessary cookies. Just because the website sets cookies doesn't tell you whether it respects you selection. Only if it doesn't set any cookies can you be sure, and I would assume that's a small minority of websites.

[odo1242]

The goal with Do Not Track was legal (get governments to recognize it as the user declining consent for tracking and forbidding additional pop-ups) and not technological.

Unfortunately, the legal part of it failed, even in the EU.

[cma]

Do Not Track had a chance to get into law, which if it did would be good that the code and standard were already in place.