Slashdot Mirror
Will "Do Not Track" Kill the Free Internet?
jfruh writes "Dan Tynan is a privacy blogger and longtime proponent of the use of browser plug-ins and other technologies that block advertisers from tracking your web browsing habits. He's also a professional tech writer who makes his living writing articles for free, ad-supported sites. But he doesn't feel those two facts are in conflict, and points out that users pay good money to ISPs for those 'free' sites."
No, and this won't either. Some users will use it, but most probably won't, either because they don't care or they don't know.
This doesn't block ads, it just protects people's privacy from being abused by them. The companies will still be able to show ads. For targetted ads, they'll have to use the same techniques they use for TV and print media, and those things haven't died yet.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Just because a site can't track you doesn't mean they can't advertise to you. The content of the page you are viewing should provide enough context to provide an appropriate ad. Will it be less relevant to you? Possibly, but TV stations don't need to know everybody's individual viewing habits to know that Comedy Central should have ads aimed at young males while Lifetime shows ads for women.
and points out that users pay good money to ISPs for those 'free' sites
Could he possibly have pointed out anything less informed, causality-related, and meaningful in the context of the topic at hand? Unless he's suggesting the introduction of some insanely complex madness that involves your local ISP somehow distributing part of their operational revenue to the owners of web sites that their clients visit, what the hell is he talking about? I thought the "I pay for internet access, so anything I can find a way to grab online for free is really paid for" meme was limited to 12 year olds using Napster for the first time back in the days when people could almost play that dumb and pretend to mean it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
People pay good money to ISPs, ergo they don't want to pay more to make any proper use of the service, it's like buying food and then needing to pay to eat it as well.
I log into my Slashdot account today and notice flags on each post (bottom right, near the social networking icons). Any clue what this is about? Is Slashdot suddenly going to allow us to censor posts? I won't jump to conclusions yet, but this is the typical use of flags in a forum.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Some people make a lot of money from ads. The net was here and functioning perfectly with lots of people. Then the advertisers showed up to make money. The people making money want to scare people into thinking it will all go away if they lose the money making machine. It will work just fine.
The net was meant to be a collaborative medium. It was not meant to fuel profit into someones pocket as a distribution system. The net will function just fine if it is not leveraged into a money making distribution system.
Internet was much more free in the early stages, and ads were much more prominent then. By then, this array and wealth of tracking mechanisms and options werent even there. When something came to your site, you assumed that it was a visitor.
Read radical news here
The ISP will track your every move. The private browsing option is just in case your Wife finds out where you've been on the Internet.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
If tracking is the only way the "free" internet can survive then it deserves to die. I think you'd find the creativity of people will work around such a limitation.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
The parties who get on the internet to conduct legitimate business and to share information and to collaborate will continue doing so JUST FINE.
To parallel a little... badly... did the "Do Not Call" registry kill collections and telemarketing activities? Nope.
Do Not Track might kill the free internet if sites had any intention of not tracking users. They don't. Whatever you do, they'll try to track you and market that info to advertisers.
bah.
... where the primary purpose is user habit tracking. Perhaps for a get-as-much-users-as-possible web site with no real content that has no other purpose than to attract ad clicks it is important to target different ads to different users.
But all cases I can think of where REAL websites have REAL content, it is trivial to display ads that are aligned with the content of the site. If I look at science fiction movies at a movie web site, they just have to show me other science fiction movies. If I look at car parts at a car site, they just have to show me ads for car parts. If I look at a blog post about storage technology they just have to show me ads for hard drives. Then the ads would already be pretty much aligned with what I'm interested in at the moment, without any need to really "track" me.
No. Whenever a headline on Slashdot asks a question, the answer is No.
Just like VCRs and DVRs were supposed to have killed 'free' television programming...
Just as AdBlock was supposed to have already killed 'free' internet...
Next up: the shills shouting how using such tools "breaks the implied social contract" of viewing free content.
The 'Internet', like everything, is not a set system.. it 'evolves'.. This is like saying 'will DHTML kill the internet'? 'Will the end of Flash(tm) kill the internet'?
No. none of that will kill the internet.. It might cause some people to rethink their revenue models for their websites, etc.. but the internet will go on.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
Due to some bug on my Linksys WRT120N wireless router, having the DNT header in your HTTP requests screws up basic-auth and there's no way I can log in.
The problem is that the DNT flag (at least in Firefox) is not only enabled in "Options" -> "Privacy" -> "Tell websites I do not want to be tracked", but may be also enabled by AdBlock itself with this hacky rule I found in the EasyPrivacy filters list: *$donottrack,image,~image
Not sure what web server is running on the router, but I'm having this header disabled for now...
For what it's worth, you can get it now: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/epanfjkfahimkgomnigadpkobaefekcd
(though I wouldn't be surprised if there was a default exception in place for you-know-who...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I find it funny that they'd even care, if the information they give on the "what we know about you" page is an accurate portrayal of what they actually know about people then their classification system is really no better than Nielson 18-25 male type categories. Fark had a fun thread about this when Google changed their privacy policy and people were laughing about how off Google was. In my case despite the fact that Google's archives probably have my exact DOB they were off by one major category in age and their listed interests were pretty far off.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
"points out that users pay good money to ISPs for those 'free' sites.""
Since when is paying the ISP equivalent to paying a website for its free content?
He does realise the these ISPs do not give a royalty of these funds to all free sites, right?
Just because I pay my taxes does not mean that I am in my rights to steal stuff.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
"I don’t give a damn about how CNN or AMC or MSNBC make their money, their business models, who pays how much to whom for what, yadda yadda; all I care about is what my cable bill costs each month."
Of course you give a damn, Dan, you are a writer in the entertainment and news industry, and it's your job to give a damn. That's why you have now written not one, but two articles on the topic. Duuh.
And since you can't even figure that out for your own case, maybe assuming that consumers don't care where their entertainment dollar is going would be a tech-snob, elitist assumption, as well...
Suppose commercial web tracking was absolutely prohibited unless you were explicitly using a single company's site. Third party ads could not be personalized. What would the Web look like?
Many of the useful sites on the Internet are actual stores, from Amazon to Grainger to Digi-Key. Their revenue doesn't come from advertising. It comes from selling real stuff. They'd barely notice. There are major paid services like Netflix. They provide a service for money. No problem there.
Google was profitable before they had ad personalization. Search ads don't need to be "personalized" - the user tells you what they're looking for, so it's straightforward to present relevant ads. Running a search engine isn't that expensive. AltaVista was a demo for DEC Alpha computers, not a business. Cuil was a flop, but demonstrated that you could do a search engine for about $25 million. Blekko and DuckDuckGo are funded at about that level.
The only business that desperately needs the anal-probe level of intrusive personal monitoring is Facebook.
Sure, Do Not track could mess up the ad hits statistics. There will have to be some alternative method of ensuring that each hit comes from a unique user. But I think that the advertisers will come up with new methods of counting hits.
I'd be happy with some sort of proxy system, where a trusted intermediary would handle the cookies (or whatever) and forward a unique but untraceable token to legit ad sites to track counts. If the ad interests me and I visit the site, odds are I'll identify myself. But mining free sites for data from involuntary users is going to be a thing of the past.
Have gnu, will travel.
The internet did quite well without all this tracking horseshit. And it did quite well without all this Javascript shit that drives me apeshit. And it also did very well without all these little icons to Facebook, and whatever all those other dipshit things are to post on your narcissistic website.
An Anonymous Coward baby! Because I ain't got noth'in to proove!
I don't see a problem here. Do Not Track requires websites to implement it and users to turn it on. Even if it becomes default in browsers, every website on the Internet has to be changed to use it. I don't see that happening overnight. Sure, browser vendors could block sites not using it, but I don't think that can happen either. It just takes a few big holdouts like Facebook or google to keep it from becoming a reality.
I don't even like the implementation right now. I want to be able to turn it on, but exclude some sites that I'm ok with tracking data or that I don't want to have to login to constantly.
It's a good idea, but I don't think it's going to take down the Internet. We don't even have sites using SSL standard yet and that's been suggested for years.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
In more than anyway imaginable, advertisements and targeted advertisements helped to fund and thus build the internet as we know it today. Taking targeted ads out as a possible revenue stream will lead to a string of bankruptcies and site shutdowns across the Internet. It will stifle new innovation and content that can't get adequate funding.
Startups will struggle and fail too. Ultimately, the only content generators that will matter at that point will be hobbyists who spend their own time and money to partake in the internet just to be noticed.
I don't think people truly realize how much money will dry up without targeted advertising.
uh, preventing spam and flood prevention is not censorship. it's preventing spam.
let's not lump that crap together.
Adhere
Demandbase
Dynamic Logic
Facebook Connect
Facebook Social Plugins
Google +1
Google Analytics
Google FriendConnect
ShareThis
Twitter Button
I have ghostery installed,a plugin for all browsers that blocks not ads themselves so much as all these trackers.
This particular site isn't even that bad, mostly all the social crap that tends to get everywhere like the scum it is. But there are worse sites.
Do I mind being tracked? Not really no... the main reason I installed ghostery was to get rid of all those annoying scripts that make the net just a little bit slower with each and everyone of them.
But what about the free content I consume? Once the internet was a non-profit area and frankly I think it was better for it. Using google becomes more and more a pain as companies that try to sell something I don't want outrank information sites. I feel like I finally got rid of the deluge of paper ads on my doormat everyday and now it insteads gets delivered by the truck load through the wires in my home. I do not have an answer as to how sites like Slashdot would survive without advertising but frankly, I don't care. The internet would adapt, go back to privately run sites on private funds for the hell of it and only post articles that are intresting, not just to attract the most eyeballs.
Advertisers keep pushing the limits and users are pushing back. If one day we users push back so hard that advertisers starve to dead (preverably a miserable and painful one) then... MISSION FUCKING ACCOMPLISHED!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
-- Soulskill
Feel free to believe it or not.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Why? Because most of the planet still use IE6 that's why. The option "do not track" in Firefox is also off by default; 'preferences' a place where 80% of the internet see as the nerdy underworld. This suits advertisers because most people are of the opinion - "I just don't have time to sit down all day and learn these things". Let them do such, it keeps it free for the rest of us.
I don't know about you, but I pay around $20 a month for my internet. I also pay for hosting on the websites I host. What is this "free internet" you speak of?
Oh you mean all those people who manage to convince other people to pay extra for internet delivered services, or to put pixels on their virtual real estate? Well tbh we can all do without that self-inflating self-promoting bullshit industry called "advertising", and nothing of value would be lost.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
All the websites will just put Facebook 'like' buttons on their pages and since everyone already allows Facebook to ram their privacy up their pooper tracking will continue.
Hang on, that's already happened on Slashdot. Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
I liked the internet better before it was a huge corporate gang-bang, so I'd be fine to go back to the way it was when only nerds used it. I'm sure I'm in a tiny minority though.
I think "Do Not Track" will only stop (or slow down) the war of escalation between advertisers. With Do Not Track, Google et al can sell 'more targeted ads' to advertisers that are willing to pay more for that level of targeting. If we assume that the average user/consumer is only going to click on some maximum number of ads per day then the advertising business on the internet is basically a zero-sum game (which I think is pretty close to true at this point). So if we continue to allow tracking, those advertisers benefit at the expense of those who don't spend the extra money.
So with tracking, Google makes more money, advertisers spend more for the same aggregate sales, users lose privacy. Google makes plenty of money without tracking.
Therefore IMHO tracking has no net benefit to anyone but Google.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
...if the information they give on the "what we know about you" page is an accurate portrayal of what they actually know about people...In my case despite the fact that Google's archives probably have my exact DOB they were off by one major category in age and their listed interests were pretty far off.
Hmmm...I hadn't heard about that feature on Google, so I had to check it out. Seems like they were a bit more accurate with me:
They left off a few other interests that I'm surprised they didn't pick up on like motorcycling, aviation, and astronomy, but hey, what they got was pretty accurate.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Then why is yours still here?
The free internet existed before client tracking. It can survive "do not track", especially since it's just a gentlemen's agreement.
Just track users anonymously. The problem isn't that your online activities are tracked, it's that you are tracked.
If they anonymized the data, then they could target their services and your privacy would be safe. The advertisers have a simple solution, they just don't want to do it. Note how motivated Google and Facebook are to know your real identity.
Okay lets say we let them track us on the web (those of us that don't ad/trackblock as a policy).
Fine then they get to be personally liable for any harm that comes to us/our computers from the ads they send us.
Tracking goes wrong and we get hit by ads for Tween Lingerie? they go down for it
They start serving an ad that is a malware payload? they do the time for Computer Crimes.
Your site Your Ads YOUR PROBLEM
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
is that free as in speech or free as in beer?
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
I'm generally in favor of Micropayments on the order of pennies per article. $3 will buy you a week's reading. Currently I don't trust the processors - I would want a double-encryption system so that my general Credit Card doesn't get hacked. Something like a prepaid gift card then buys the credits.
Then it needs to be either "Rich man plan" "Every article you read costs 3 cents" or "Poor Man Plan" "Do you want to spend 3 cents to read this".
Paypal is scary and no one else has gained traction.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I hate it when these marketing zombies go about claiming how they built everything and nothing would exist if they weren't around to leech on it.
People, the Internet was built and only after it had grown fairly large came the advertisers. There are enough people here on /. who still remember times when you didn't need AdBlock or spam filters, because there was little to no advertisement.
The free Internet doesn't have ads. It is free. Anything with ads is not free, it is merely shifting the paying to someone else. It is "free" only in the same sense that food at home was "free" because your parents paid for it. But that also meant they got to choose what's for dinner. Maybe it's time to grow up.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying everything should be free and without ads. I pay for stuff in real life, I don't see why I couldn't pay for stuff online. I do say we need a new word for ad-supported crap, because it is conceptually different from actually free stuff. Ad support means your business and mental model changes. Your visitors are no longer your guests, they are your product that you sell to your advertisers. A new word would make that clear to the visitors, which is why we need to come up with it, because it is not in the interest of anyone else.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Because the groupthink does not want you to know it exists, let alone that it controls /. with an iron fist. Surely the groupthink can't exist if it leaves posts like this? No! Don't be fooled by its wily doubletalk! It's just trying to confuse you, so you slip further under its control.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the groupthink wrote that post itself. Hmm...
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Paypal is scary and no one else has gained traction.
That's a very insightful observation... I wanted to mention it but forgot.
-- no sig today
Dang groupthink, stealing my carrots! What do they think this is, a private business?
this seems more like ghostery than like DNT, doesn't it?
You... you're turning me on....
What... the... hell? Who ARE you, you glorious indecency?
"cower in my shadow some more you pathetic feeb" I believe that about sums it up