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."

Comments

Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't RTFA, but the point alluded to in TFS is a very important one I think people lose sight of.
Everybody pays for their own Internet access. There's no reason I should pay for yours.
If your reasons for having me read your webpage don't justify your costs, you're doing it wrong.
Adding some advertising on top of the reason I want to be there isn't going to work.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[ByOhTek]

WTF?

SO, people publishing things on the internet should do it out of charity and the good of their hearts? They should put huge amounts of work in to provide you with information/news/services, for the warm squishy feeling it provides them.

In some cases, that works, in most, not so much, they need some kind of financial compensation to keep their sites up.

That being said, as someone put it, not everyone will use adblockers. Also, as not state, some people will only use them to block the more intrusive/offensive ads.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[jythie]

Well, there is 'should' (which I disagree with) and 'could' (which is, of course, an option).

In the OP's rather apocalyptic take on things, there seems to be the idea that if content providers can not run ads, then they can not provide content, so he kinda denies the 'could' part.

I suspect that if 'do not track' became so common that it actually effected ad dollars to any measurable degree (which I doubt unless FF/Chrome/IE all bundle it by default), we would probably see a rise of people providing content for other reasons, reasons that do not require ad-type dollars. This would probably be sad since it could potentially result in a less rich internet... though I question that, since I think there are more people who want the attention then get it, so there would probably be no shortage of people willing to move into that vacuum for their own reasons (fun, status, attention, etc.. just look at OSS)..

Which actually kinda makes me see the OP in a similar light to those who claim OSS (or freeware before that) will destroy commercial software or something.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[poetmatt]

If you put something on the net, you're already paying for it.

If you want people to pay for access - whether asinine, contrived, or legitimate - require them to pay for access.

If you try to make money off people by putting ads on the site, you have zero right to bitch about people saying "no thanks" to those ads. If that's a problem? find a way to make money. It's 2012. If you aren't giving people a reason to want to support your site, then you don't deserve to be on the net.

I will use adblockers on every site, because I don't need that shit.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[jank1887]

You are suggesting that ads should act as a paywall. I should not be able to view your work without seeing the ads. This demonstrates a lack of understanding of the technology you're using to showcase your work. You are also acting like you are entitled to commercial reimbursement. You are not.

You putting ads on your website is a request for me to view those ads alongside your work. You provide a framework by which I may look at those ads along with your work. Those ads may or may not be of value to me. I may decide in advance that I don't think they're of value to me. I'm perfectly allowed to not download those advertisements. And, it's 2012. You are also allowed to refuse my access to your content if I don't view your ads. But you have to choose to either request or require my viewing of those advertisements. You can't require it and then be upset when lot's of people choose not to view your work, or request it and be upset when people say, "no, thanks."

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I block ads not because I want to deny webpages money.

I block them because ad rotator "services" are the primary infection vector out there. Even "top tier" sites like CNN have been bitten by ad services that either are too leniant on who they let advertise, or even "wink wink, nudge, nudge" condone blackhat activity, because in all likelihood, they won't get caught.

Want to know how I know? There were good /. articles about this, and I personally have run clean VMs on a popular site (not a pr0n site), and the VM got stung by adware.

So, until the advertisers stop allowing blackhats to send their crap, I will use Adblock and Flash blocking technologies.

Another datum, although anecdotal: I use a VM to browse, and have been for a couple years now, using AdBlock and NoScript. It has no AV protection. Just yesterday, I decided to power the VM off and mount its VHD onto another VM to run 2-3 antivirus scanners on it. All came up clean.

So, until the advertisers start cleaning up their game, I refuse them entry, just like I refuse entry to people in my house who might try to set it on fire, or pour plaster of Paris down the toilet.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[justforgetme]

Well, the best way out of sponsor supported content creation is either micro payments or just removing the economic factor and doing it for the thrills (which in part has helped a lot of the FOSS world and the Internet). So content creation has the options to continue without selling tracking data.
But content isn't the problem, the problem is free services.

People don't like to pay for something they have grown accustomed to have for free. So even if they knew the about "do not track" feature they probably wouldn't choose it out of cheapskateness

IMHO the "do not track" is very much needed but in the long run will only end up dividing the privacy geeks from the joes since no one is going to opt for it if it has a free alternative. Tough this might have already happened since I tend to meet more and more people that have degooglified their lives to various extents. So either way, no do not track will not "kill the free Internet" it won;t even make a difference and even if it does, the Internet is bigger than that, it will evolve with the change.

That's just my opinion though.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[TheDarkMaster]

Nobody takes seriously ads because 95% of the products advertised this way are junk or are advertised in such a way that comes to undermine the operation of your computer (flash ads on loop, for example). Why, for all that is holy, I would accept an ad "scan your PC NOW!!!"?

They want people to accept ads? Stop advertise malwares, scams, junkware and maybe people will begin to accept ads.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[omnichad]

Think about your IQ for a moment. Then realize that half the people in the world have an IQ below 100. They make plenty of money on those ads.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[icebike]

I suspect that if 'do not track' became so common that it actually effected ad dollars to any measurable degree (which I doubt unless FF/Chrome/IE all bundle it by default), we would probably see a rise of people providing content for other reasons, reasons that do not require ad-type dollars

Wait, weren't ads present and effective in the past, prior to tracking?

I mean, if you went to a site about computers, they carried ads from computer manufacturers, etc.
The audience was already "targeted" by the mere fact that they arrived on that particular site. They selected themselves, and the ads were timely and focused.

Now with tracking, if search for bicycles, and for the next few days you get bicycle ads on sites dealing with Smartphones, Baseball, Rose Bushes. ?!??
This detracts from every web site's focus. I'm looking for a Catcher's mitt and they want to sell me a bike?

And all it does is rub it in your face that you are being tracked. It sure doesn't endear me to that particular bicycle company.

"Do not track" might even prove to earn more money for the advertisers, because the various web sites will (probably) fall back on focused advertising.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[Brannoncyll]

Wait, weren't ads present and effective in the past, prior to tracking?

Someone mod this guy up. Television, radio, print magazines and free papers as well as traditional websites have been doing well for years without the need to invade people's privacy in order to aggressively target advertising.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[Ihmhi]

Yeah, and one of the features they touted when cable TV first came out was that it was completely commercial free. How did that work out for us again?

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

However if you are going to go overboard and use Add Block to keep your browsing ad free you are going to be spending a fair amount of time just blocking adds in that process you will be looking at the adds before you block them.

I think perhaps you don't have a clear understanding of how adblock plus works.

It blocks ads. That's what it does. You don't have to right-click every single advertisement on every single page individually and tell it to block. It just. blocks. ads. Was there an ad on that webpage I went to? I dunno, because adblock plus BLOCKED it. It does not require action on your part. It just does it.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[AK Marc]

SO, people publishing things on the internet should do it out of charity and the good of their hearts?

People selling magazines have long since learned that some people watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. Magazine articles are fluff to justify the ads. People buy the magazines, in some cases, just for the ads. For some, Vogue, Cosmo, Motor Trend, the ads and the content are indistinguishable.

If they are wanting an audience, they need to make sure they keep the audience. Some have figured it out. Others, like you, seem to insinuate that there is some "duty" to look at adds as an exchange for the service provided. The same arguments used when trying to ban commercial skippers for TV recorders.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[cas2000]

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.

Sentence much?

at least the OP actually posted a reasonably well-formed sentence that conveyed some meaning.

you just posted a fuckwitted meme.

WTF does adding " much?" to a word mean anyway? AFAICT, it's invariably an attempt to make some un-specified criticism or counterpoint without actually making any effort to, you know, make a criticism or counterpoint.

is it a method for those with Irony Deficit Disorder or Sarcasm Deficit Disorder (AKA "Americans") to make some lame substitute attempt at irony or sarcasm?

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[HapSlappy_2222]

Well said. I don't care if there's advertising on a site. Sometimes I even use it, though it's rare. Still, that's why it's there.

What I care about is when there's a site that uses obtrusive advertising, which forces itself on me. Yeah, I know you have a banner ad in the lower right. I see it, trust me. There's no reason to force it to the foreground of my browser in a flash animation, hiding the close button in one pixel with multiple pop-up buttons surrounding said pixel. Even sites like cnn.com do this, and its plain uncalled for, and detracts completely from the reason I went to the site in the first place, which is to find information. If that happens enough to piss me off (which could be ONE time, if I'm having an annoyed day) I stop going to the site, meaning all those fancy annoyance ads are worth one less person.

By all means, advertise, but do us both a favor and don't try to piss me off. Marketing and web presence departments should really know this by now.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[Culture20]

Wait, weren't ads present and effective in the past, prior to tracking?

I mean, if you went to a site about computers, they carried ads from computer manufacturers, etc. The audience was already "targeted" by the mere fact that they arrived on that particular site. They selected themselves, and the ads were timely and focused.

Now with tracking, if search for bicycles, and for the next few days you get bicycle ads on sites dealing with Smartphones, Baseball, Rose Bushes. ?!?? This detracts from every web site's focus. I'm looking for a Catcher's mitt and they want to sell me a bike?

And all it does is rub it in your face that you are being tracked. It sure doesn't endear me to that particular bicycle company.

As with a lot of things, let's take this into meat-space to see if it's okay:

Chain store salesman: "Hello! I recognize you from this morning's sales briefing! Jim, right? I heard you bought a tub of salsa yesterday. Here for some antacids?"
Jim: "Go away and leave me alone."
"Sure thing pal!" *over walkie talkie* "Attention Sales staff. Jim is not looking for antacids. Must be anti-diarrheal. Someone bring some to the front STAT."
"&#$ you. I'm leaving."
"Your prerogative! Have a great day!" *dials a phone number* "Hi, Quik-e-mart? We just had an unsatisfied customer leave. Name's Jim. He's wearing blue jeans and a red shirt. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Yeah, that Jim. Well, I bet he's headed your way. He probably wants anti-diarrheal medicine, although the camera eye-focus heat-map suggests he was looking a lot at Cindy's cleavage. Maybe he wants milk. Got anyone you've pissed off?"

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[peragrin]

Just remember 95% of all advertising is designed to fail. Advertising has a lower success rate than weathermen(people)

a 5% return for advertising is considered a major success. The reason? because it is most likely 5% that wouldn't have come to you before.

Scammers and advertisers both operate on the principal for out of every million people you are bound to find 1,000 suckers to give you their money.

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[rtb61]

Do you know the real reason why adds are targeted at people and not at content?

Well marketing companies do not really market to people buying products and services they market to people selling products and services. So in a big PR move they started going on about being able to target adds at people. Now quite correctly that means aligning adds with content, right add at the right time but this is very expensive, content has to be reviewed and valued for very add placement.

So the cheap automated solution was marketed, target adds at people. Not review of content required, all they had to do was scam people who sell products and services and get them to believe in would work in order to get them to pay for it.

Reality is, it doesn't really work, it if often off putting and annoying and they might as well put up those full page adds that people truly hate and learn to loathe the product and company advertised.

The far more beneficial align adds to content is very expensive and required skilled people for both the company selling advertising space and the company buying advertising space and in many instances the middle man company cut be cut out of the arrangement (another reason they so vociferously promote their services).

Re:Did AdBlock kill the free internet?

[icebike]

The far more beneficial align adds to content is very expensive and required skilled people for both the company selling advertising space and the company buying advertising space

This is what Google Ad-Words is all about.
It figures out the content of a page with no human ever looking at anything. Then is slips in appropriate ads.
This has been going on for a long time. Ad words keeps the ads on the page targeted at the page content, with no human intervention.

Doesn't Block Ads

[Aladrin]

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.

Re:Doesn't Block Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it *tells* the company to please don't track me. Next i'm writing a plugin that tell's the IRS to please don't tax me.

Re:Doesn't Block Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure where you've been the last decade or so but print media is dying. As for TV, there's a few major differences. First off, even with the current, greatly expanded channel lineups on cable, a given TV channel has a much larger audience than most websites. 250 channels is nothing compared to a few billion websites. Second, cable TV channels get paid by the cable providers that carry them. Obviously, nobody wants this concept getting carried over to the Internet, where your choice of ISPs determines what websites you can view. And finally, there's a big difference in the ratio of content to advertisements on TV versus the internet. As much as we complain about obnoxious flash ads and the like, it's pretty rare to see a website where made up of more than 25% advertisements. And if you saw one, you probably wouldn't be very inclined to go back. Yet the typical TV show has about 8 minutes worth of advertisements for 22 minutes of content. And then they shove more ads on top of the content (those stupid banners for other shows that run in the corner of the screen) and even more ads into the content (product placement).

I would disagree with the statement that Do Not Track would kill the Free Internet, but it's foolish to think it wouldn't dramatically alter the landscape. The simple fact is, non targeted advertising is worth less money, so websites will have to make that up somewhere. Some sites might go pay, others might just put in more ads, others might cut content or go bankrupt. And maybe, if we're lucky, some will come up with alternative business plans that people hate less, but everyone does need to remember what was once common sense, prior to the arrival of the internet: there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Re:Doesn't Block Ads

[Pope]

Don't tax me, bro!

Ads can still be relavent

[similar_name]

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.

Re:Ads can still be relavent

[Penguinisto]

True, and it's not like they can't get a rough geographical location from your IP address to add to the relevance. They can also add server-side data for regular/frequent visitors if the site has multiple topics, so as to fine-tune which topic is the most relevant.

Re:Ads can still be relavent

[drinkypoo]

If a site wants to track me all they need to do is offer me a compelling feature that requires that I sign in. Many sites are allowed to track me while I use their site, including Amazon, DealExtreme, Microsoft (hey, I still use Windows, I need their site) and so on. I have google analytics blocked because I don't want to be tracked across unrelated sites, though.

On the other hand, nobody who can not offer me a compelling reason to form an actual business relationship with me should be tracking me, and if their business model can't sustain that, then the world will be a better place if they go out of business.

Re:Ads can still be relavent

[Anrego]

I actually thing this will be better.. much better.

There once was a time, when a company would see a website, think "hey, a lot of my potential customers probably use this site", then contact and arrange advertising. I think this worked better than the current algorithms with all their user data.

More importantly, users of that site would see the same hand-targetted ads, for days or weeks on end. Ads are more effective in my opinion over time. The few web ads I've actually gone for have been ads that I saw over and over, until curiosity finally got me.

Re:Ads can still be relavent

[brainzach]

What percentage of ads on TV are relevant to you?

On TV, shows can get away with multiple commercials back to back, so there is a greater chance of an advertisement being relevant. With online video, viewers will tolerate much fewer commercials so it is more critical to make sure that they are relevant.

Re:Ads can still be relavent

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If a site wants to track me all they need to do is offer me a compelling feature that requires that I sign in.

Be careful, that sort of thing can lead to websites deliberately suckifying their non-logged in version.

For example, a few years ago IMDB dumbed down the way people can read their discussion forums. If you don't log in, all you can do is see the posts linearly. Log in and now you can see them in other formats, like threaded. The exact same URL for threaded mode goes to linear mode if you don't log in. It used to be that anyone could read the discussions in threaded mode, but IMDB arbitrarily took that away in (which I presume) was an attempt to convince people to log in.

To a marketing sycophant, arbitrarily holding back functionality is the same thing as providing extra features to "members" no matter how petty it appears to regular people. I wouldn't want to see the web in general go the way of IMDB's pettiness.

Re:Ads can still be relavent

[ceoyoyo]

Yes, but then we'll lose the delicious irony of things like Slashdot ads for Go Daddy above stories about how Wikipedia is going to dump them because they supported SOPA.

A "privacy blogger" and ... car wash attendant?

[ScentCone]

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.

What is the flag?

[MyLongNickName]

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.

Re:What is the flag?

[Soulskill]

Hitting the flag icon will bring that comment to the editors' attention. Nothing is automated. (For example, several comments in this thread were flagged.) When we look at it, we'll downmod it if it's spam, or something like the racist copypastas.

It's basically just an avenue for people without mod points to get the worst comments downmodded more quickly.

scare tactics

[RichMan]

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.

Re:scare tactics

[drinkypoo]

Lovely thought, but all these magical screens that come up when you type in URLs cost real money.

As someone who was creating those magical screens before there were ad networks on the internet, I say unto thee: *snore*

Servers cost money. Hardware, software, maintenance, and electricity just off the top of my head to say nothing of the MUCH higher costs to them of commercial bandwidth. And the big sites? Multiply that by about 100x for re-hosting providers. And that's just the physical capability to put a "hello world" on your screen when you type in catlolzmemes.com.

I'm paying something like $24 a year for hosting now, and that includes me using up a whole bunch of memory because I run Drupal, and "unlimited" disk space and bandwidth use until you actually use a lot on a regular basis. That includes my domain registration and fees. So that "hello world" costs jack diddly shit when served through a "re-hosting provider" (no "re-" is necessary) because of volume.

Then there's the people who design professional sites, who think up and write content like the article you may have read that led you to "collaborate" with us.

Most of those sites suck hairy donkey balls through a glass pipette while singing "O Come all ye Faithful". And the content is mostly written by people trolling the blogosphere for information these days, although there are actual humans on the street now and then too. The photography, anyway, is real.

Just because you don't pay the bills personally doesn't mean they don't get paid by someone. And that someone makes their money back off ads.

And if they can't find meaningful ways to monetize their content then they deserve to cease to exist. I produce very little content, but I produce it free and I don't even have ads. Hell, I don't even have referral bonuses right now unless you count my hosting provider, and I don't exactly stress that, I just made another cute little banner to go at the bottom of the page along with the ones that say I use linux and php and so on. (whoops, fixed the firefox affiliate link there, heh heh.) If lots of people produce a little content there will be a lot of content out there. Meanwhile, I don't know about you, but I pay actual money to have content delivered via the internet, indeed, via the WWW. Not only do I pay my service provider, but I also pay Netflix a recurring subscription. Many such services exist and they do not depend on advertising, aside from attracting visitors. This proves that if you have compelling content, the world really will pay for it.

The days of the internet being only "a collaborative medium" are long past.

It was never only a collaborative medium and nobody said it was. On the other hand, it was designed to be peer to peer. If it were designed to be centralized, it would look very different down to the underlying protocol.

Now it is how we all communicate globally. And one of the most basic reasons to foster communication in any civilizations is trade. Hence, advertising.

Uh no. Advertising is not necessary for trade. There are other means of dissemination of that information. Besides sneakiness, there are also trade catalogs, that people acquire intentionally as a directory of those who might serve their requests.

Time to grow up a bit and realize that just because YOU didn't pay for it directly, doesn't mean that it's all just free.

I *am* paying for it directly, both with dollars and by producing content that people want to consume. What are you doing besides spouting a group of falsehoods?

Re:scare tactics

[martin-boundary]

Altruism works fine and it is not the problem the AC hinted at. The real problem is control. The owners of the highly popular website don't want to lose control of their content by allowing it to be mirrored indiscriminately around the web. Control translates into the mathematical requirement that a node on the web graph receives too many inbound links, and too outbound content transfers.

Take CNN. If they allowed their content to be copied and reposted by anyone on the net on any website, you would see lots of clone sites popping up with CNN content, and the traffic to the original CNN would drop. However, CNN don't want that, so instead they complain about bandwidth bills and CDN bills and you get the meme that a web presence is expensive.

It's all about control. If you want to control tightly your content on the web, then you're shooting yourself in the foot. The web isn't designed for tight content control, it's designed for the opposite: free content distribution and redundancy. Anyone who understands that can use the web at practically no cost.

Take for example the linux distros. They understand perfectly well the advantage of letting mirrors distribute their software. They don't need advertising, or multimillion dollar budgets just to put up a handful of web pages on a server. Same with USENET, which was designed to mirror messages and news stories on local servers for the entire net. The same with wikipedia, if they agreed to allow others to mirror their content, they wouldn't need to ask for donations. In a distributed system, the traffic is spread out and the cost is minimized - and since the backbones have peering agreements, it costs nothing to propagate.

So in the end, if you've got a website idea, think carefully about what you want. If you want control, then you'll have to pay for it. But if you're happy to relax that requirement, then you can make it happen for (essentially) free. The whole making money on the internet thing is quite unnecessary and certainly not important for the internet's survival.

Doesn't mater

[na1led]

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.

let it die

[AntEater]

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.

It will CLEAN the Internet

[erroneus]

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.

Re:It will CLEAN the Internet

[drinkypoo]

Are you sure about that? How many people will cancel their net connections when facebook, google, and other ad supported sites shutdown.

Mu.

You have to log in to use Facebook, and by its nature facebook tracks your activities because that's what it's for, and since the users deliberately create the information used to track them facebook won't have to change its behavior at all. Google tracks many users because they log in because they want google to save their settings, among other reasons, and as history is a key part of google's functionality, they won't have to change either.

Any good examples for us?

It *might* kill web sites ...

[aix tom]

... 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.

In a word?

[eternaldoctorwho]

No. Whenever a headline on Slashdot asks a question, the answer is No.

Re:In a word?

[godrik]

No. Whenever a headline on Slashdot asks a question, the answer is No.

Tomorrow on slashdot: Won't "Do Not Track" Kill the Free Internet?

Standard Advertiser FUD

[JeanCroix]

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.

Re:He hit the nail on the head

[olsmeister]

No, it's like making your car payment so you can get to the grocery store and *gasp* finding that they expect you to pay for the food as well!

Re:Google

[afidel]

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.

The Internet could survive with far fewer ads

[Animats]

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.

Targeted ads built the Internet

[maple_shaft]

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.

Re:Slashdot censors posts

[poetmatt]

uh, preventing spam and flood prevention is not censorship. it's preventing spam.

let's not lump that crap together.

The full list

[SmallFurryCreature]

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!

Re:Slashdot censors posts

[Qzukk]

flagged comments are listed on a page for the editors to individually review. Once there, we have two options: downmodding the comment or ignoring the report.

You're welcome to try it out, if you'd like. It's basically just around for downmodding spam and things like the racist copypastas. So far, probably 95% of the reports have been for perfectly normal comments, on which we've taken no action.

-- Soulskill

Feel free to believe it or not.

Re:I don't see the problem

[viperidaenz]

Doesn't mean they're not tracking you to build their models for advertising. They just don't have a name to go with your data. I've never been to Facebook.com on this PC but firefox has a facebook.com cookie.

Re:A Compromise For You

[Brannoncyll]

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

Considering the amount of companies that have not even been given a slap on the wrist for allowing hackers to compromise their databases and steal people's credit card numbers and personal information, I don't see this kind of thing happening. Also, I'm not sure I agree that a website owner should be forced to vet every ad they allow on their site. Even an expert in computer security is unlikely to be able to identify all malicious software, so making it a website owners responsibility to guarantee the safety of the ads will simply mean that all the small websites will have to shut down or find an alternate source of funding.

My personal objection to tracking is not that it is a malware vector (although it certainly can be), but that I don't want my personal data to be collected without my knowledge and consent in order to generate profit. I don't object to an opt-in, I use gmail all the time with full knowledge that it targets advertising. However I also want to be able to control what they do with my data, for example I don't want them to sell it to some shady third-person or continue to hold my information after I delete my account. Thankfully these feelings appear to be shared by European lawmakers.

Re:Micropayments

[TaoPhoenix]

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.