Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by outside1234 4102 days ago
Really? Its Microsoft's fault? I totally agree that "Don't Track" should be the default. I get the new proposal as well - but to say that they somehow set it back is BS.

What is holding it back is that there are no teeth to it - no laws that you must respect it - and lots of rewards for ignoring it. That's what needs to change.
2 comments
air 4102 days ago
It's politics. If the default is "don't track", advertisers have a case that the user has not explicitly asked to disable tracking.
link
BinaryIdiot 4102 days ago
> advertisers have a case that the user has not explicitly asked to disable tracking.

Advertisers don't need a case. They don't need to ever care about this bit.

link
dudus 4102 days ago
DNT is not a technology that will automatically restrict people from tracking you like adBlock for instance. The idea is that good citizens will honor your choice of not be tracked.

It needs buy in from both users, advertisers and publishers. If you make it so that you only get approval from users, advertisers and publishers will ignore it and the whole thing collapses. They already have very little incentive to honor it.

We could have seen laws, in the future, requiring business to honor it. But this move by Microsoft gave publishers/advertisers all the weapons they would need to fight those bills. It no longer express the choice of the users, and that was the key of DNT.

Microsoft move completely removed any possibility that publishers or advertisers could support it, basically killing the proposal. It is their fault. Do not expect to see anyone honoring it anytime soon.

link
BinaryIdiot 4102 days ago
> Microsoft move completely removed any possibility that publishers or advertisers could support it, basically killing the proposal. It is their fault. Do not expect to see anyone honoring it anytime soon.

Most advertisers that I read about who were also vocal against DNT said they would not honor it before Microsoft even made it a default. Quit kidding yourself that Microsoft's decision did anything but hasten its irrelevance.

link
dudus 4102 days ago
It certainly didn't help either
link
mynameisvlad 4102 days ago
It didn't really do jack squat. People weren't going to respect it anyway, so what Microsoft did couldn't possibly have changed their mind.
link
anonymousab 4102 days ago
At the very worst, it should have only been an unselected, mandatory radio button at install or first run. "Do you want IE to ask websites to stop tracking you?"

>DNT is not a technology that will automatically restrict people from tracking you like adBlock for instance.

But turning the browser-side setting into that? Now there's an idea.

link