Slashdot Mirror
Think Tank's Website Rejects Browser Do-Not-Track Requests
alphadogg writes "The website for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) now tells visitors it will not honor their browsers' do-not-track requests as a form of protest against the technology pushed by privacy groups and parts of the U.S. government. The tech-focused think tank on Friday implemented a new website feature that detects whether visitors have do-not-track features enabled in their browsers and tells them their request has been denied. 'Do Not Track is a detrimental policy that undermines the economic foundation of the Internet,' Daniel Castro, senior analyst at the ITIF wrote in a blog post. 'Advertising revenue supports most of the free content, services, and apps available on the Internet.'"
Not a bad example, though. All they do is approving the submissions of some other people that don't get a single dollar from what they send to the site.
So they make money of other people's work. True or false?
Absolutely. I would argue against any attempt to prevent someone from running AdBlock Plus or the like — filtering what you allow onto your computer (whether filtering what you ask for from someone else or, less usefully, asking for it and then not displaying it) is absolutely your prerogative too.
DNT is a slightly challenging use case, to my mind. As I understand it, it means that I request everything on a page, but also send an additional request that some things do not happen with my data. I'm not actually filtering anything, or not requesting certain parts of the page — I'm relying, even trusting, the content owner to behave in accordance with my wishes. Which is partly why I'm not giving up ABP any time soon, just as a promise from everyone on the Internet not to do something I don't want them to do in terms of accessing my server would not lead me to dropping my firewall.
"Remember adblock users, disable adblock on web sites that rely on ad revenue to operate, and aren't greedy commercial goblins!"
I don't use AdBlock. I use NoScript and Flashblock, disable 3rd party cookies, and have my browser and global Flash preferences both set to "Never Allow Local Storage".
That way, ads from sites that AREN'T tracking me show up just fine.