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.'"
Here I thought awesome people were responsible for most of the finest free offerings of the internet, turns out it was just penis enlargement all along.
Can't the browser just give bogus data on request?
I'll just keep using AdBlock Plus, NoScript, etc. and they won't get me to see any ads at all. If on the other hand they respected my desire not to be tracked, I'd have given some simple unobtrusive ads a chance. They're only shooting themselves in the foot.
So they're afraid they aren't going to make all the money they have been making with advertisements.
My take on this: go get a real job.
Joke's on them. I run NoScript.
We don't deny the right for any site owner to do advertising. If we don't want to see the adds, we can stop going on the site. But what's not normal is tracking visitors across multiple sites and without their consent or knowledge. I recommend everyone to install the ghostery pluggin, just to see how far this has gone (eg: so many sites are displaying trackers from 3rd parties).
Okay, two questions:
Does anyone really give a shit what this particular group has to say?
It is possible to advertise online without tracking users. It may not be quite as profitable, but it served the Internet well in the early days.
Besides, you don't need tracking to know that Slashdot's audience is full of nerds who will buy open their wallets to companies like ThinkGeek, NewEgg, etc.
Given that the message depends on JS, most people who set DNT are either incredibly naive, or block JS too.
The internet (spelled with a small 'i' despite my spell checker) worked just fine before the economic discount-superstore model was imposed upon it in the mid 90s.so if you don't mind ITIF, I'm gonna go start my own internet... with star trek and porn.
or how about pay for your own fucking bandwidth? I pay for mine.. You pay for yours. You don't have the right to throw up a pile of shit with ads and expect me to hobble my computer and experience to make you money. It's not cable tv.
Do Not Track does not mean Do Not Advertise. It just means don't collect my personal data from every site I visit and form a profile of my habits.
Honestly, from the way these people are talking you'd think advertising never worked in the past when it wasn't possible to do that.
Do Not Track essentially enables people who are concerned about privacy to support the web page owners by still being targets of advertising. To reject their request means "we don't want you looking at our ads" and pushes these people to simply use adblock. Mind that people who are already blocking ads have no use from DNT.
There was one crucial piece of information missing from TFA: exactly why would a non-insignificant fraction of the population in large would even care that this particular think-tank's piddly web site exists? It would be news if say, some major national bank's web site blocked visitors who've enabled the do-not-track header. That, I can understand, would be news. But...
1) Who is ITIF, and
2) Who cares about their web site?
As soon as someone explains that, we can move ahead to the next step.
The economic foundation of the internet has nothing to do with advertising. The current state of the world wide web does, but they're different things. For a supposedly technology-focused think-tank, I'd expect them to understand that difference.
The economic foundation of the internet is the advantage gained from interconnecting networks. You care for your bit of network, yet have access to everyone else's too. In return you carry other networks' traffic just as they carry yours. As such, the internet's foundations are those of "being a cooperative".
The world wide web, now, that's something different. It's the conceptual web made out of various parties' "content" linked together. Since it can be used to show pictures and text from elsewhere, advertising is easily added to many a page. Advertising is used to fund large parts of that, and it's an interesting exercise to imagine what the www would be like without the advertising income. There'd be many fewer websites, especially since many of them currently survive by the grace of advertising income, even exist for the sole purpose of attracting "clicks" to be sold to advertisers. Those would go away right quick.
What would be left? Discuss.
The internet is already paid for. Every home user and business pays their ISP, every small ISP pays their upstream, every large ISP pays to run their lines and to peer, etc.
Advertising on the internet is a huge assumption. It is assumed that people will:
1. See the ads.
2. Click on them if they're interested.
3. Buy product if they're interested.
There is no obligation for anyone to do any of these. No contract, written, social, or otherwise, requires people to even see the ads, and as this failed business model dwindles, companies have started tracking users and harvesting information as a business model, simply because they can.
Where do these overblown assholes get off telling us it's the Economic Foundation of the Internet?
in their tank.
Do these people really believe that advertising only works without tracking ?
Most of the things they do now, they can do without tracking:
https://air.mozilla.org/tracking-not-required/
New things are always on the horizon
From the link:
However, privacy advocates do not like this so they have been pushing for the creation and implementation of a Do Not Track standard. The problem is that if users are not tracked, then websites cannot deliver targeted advertising. Instead, websites would only be able to use non-targeted advertising which does not generate as much revenue.
Well... yeah. That's the whole point.
If your business idea needs the revenue from targeted advertising and the revenue from NON-targeted advertising would mean you'd have to close down, then your business idea is not good enough. It does NOT mean that everybody else has to endure being tracked so that you can make more money. Of course, you're free to prevent whoever you do not like from visiting your website. But your sense of entitlement ("we cannot have user privacy because *I* deserve more money!") is wrong.
Not that I think those "do not track" settings ever will work, because they rely on the bad guys cooperating, and advertisers clearly have shown over the years that they will do ANYTHING to get around advertising restrictions. But the general idea (users should be able to decline targeted advertising) is good.
Think-tank known for its strong stance on turning the Internet in to a locked-down shopping mall takes strong stance against technology designed to protect users. No-one notices.
In other news, the KKK blocks users from predominantly black/latino areas, leaving them with on average 1600 hits per month (down from 1617 hits per month).
-- Using the preview button since 2005
I can understand why this sort of activity is disliked — I don't browse without AdBlock Plus, and now will investigate Ghostery too — but, I would have thought that, within the bounds of the law, their webserver, it's their prerogative to host what they want / construct their site how they want?
If I want to put up a whole load of flashing banners when you visit my site (I don't, but, if I did...), and that clogs up your bandwidth, that's my prerogative, just as it is your prerogative not to visit the site?
For the site at question here, it's simple — I'm not going to be visiting. But I do think it's their prerogative to serve up poor content with ads, if that's what they choose to put on their webserver.
Once a site delivering free content is popular enough to have significant operating overhead, it's probably worth the effort and money to formally organize the content provider as a for-profit or non-profit entity.
The local newspaper in my town of approximately 100 thousand sells subscriptions to readers who want more than a fixed quota of articles per month.
Wikipedia has fundraisers.
Both of these free content providers have found ways to fund their efforts without using targeted ads.
Suggesting that ad revenue will disappear without personalized ads seems to overlook the fact that many people are willing to pay a fair price for content instead of expecting ads to support their mooching.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
That's true.. but that right ends when the data from that server enters the NIC of someone else's computer.. Just as they control their hardware, I control mine and they have no right to dictate there.
Advertising is supporting the TV show I'm watching right now, and the newspaper I read this morning ...
Neither of them were tracking me.
Browsing http://www.itif.org/ with noscript installed or javascript disabled, I don't even see their rejection of my DNT header unless and until I enable javascript for the site.
. . . from a site that goes out of its way to block adblocking users that I couldn't live without. It seems to me that those running sites who do this sort of thing vastly overestimate the value of their "content."
'Do Not Track is a detrimental policy that undermines the economic foundation of the Internet,' Daniel Castro
Maybe if that 'economic foundation' were undermined, the Internet would, once again, become a useful tool. I remember, all too well, the day that AOL opened the floodgates. The ads back then where simple, to the point and less obtrusive.
Okay, I'll say it first.... "Get off my lawn."
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.
Indeed we have a digital economy, and, as has been shown again and again, those that hold their IP too close to their chests not only damage innovation and economy, but also themselves. Look at Google who has expanded the smart phone industry exponentially by using open source. Look at HP who has open sourced WebOS. Much of Apples fortunes has been built on open source. Local governments has released that the closed source textbook is bleeding the taxpayers dry, so has gone for open source textbook. Firms that open clearly have a competitive advantage. Users that are closed and do not share personal data clearly damage the web.
ITIF, you are obviously very wise people who know better than we do. You obviously have big penises and big breasts and are therefore best suited to tell us, the lower 99% of the consuming proletariat, what to do. So I encourage you to continue to show you superiority by further courageous moves in the progress of unbounded innovation. Make your books all digital and allow all of us the opportunity to read your wisdom, not just those who are old and have money or go to the library. The old are not going to be the innovators, and the young only know how to download free stuff. So make you wisdom accessible to all, as you want to make our personal details accesible to all. Do not just publish chapter 1, but all of your incredible mind changing orgasmic words from on high so we can all know you infinite enlightenment and become person who know our place in your perfect world.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This is one area where we are not given enough credit, but the Internet as we know is here thanks to Free Software.
Sure, most people doesn't realize this, and of those that do, most won't accept it, but it's still the truth. What allowed the internet to grow so big? Do you think Google would exist if they had to pay an expensive Unix license for every machine they own? Sure, they might be able to afford it now, but they didn't years ago, and they would have never gotten this far. Even now it would be a huge hit on their wallet. Take the Internet as it exists right now. Remove GNU/Linux and *BSD, Bind, Apache, SSH, MySQL/PostgreSQL, PHP, Perl, Python, nginx, squid, rsync. I can go on and on. Now remove 90% of all web apps out there. Remove Wordpress, Joomla, and just about every other CMS. Now take the client side. Remove KHTML (And with that webkit, and therefore Safari and Chrome), remove Firefox. Remove Android. What are we left with? I think if you remove all Free Software from the Internet, aside from the fact that there would be no root DNS servers and most of the routers would be down, and what servers are still intact? microsoft.com? I'm pretty sure even they relay on Free Software.
So, Fuck off ITIF. It's not advertisement. Many people think content should be pay for, that content couldn't exist without advertisement, well,you are using the most advanced infrastructure ever created to create and serve your content, and the infrastructure was created for free. Certainly we can create some GPL'd cat pictures, porn and tech articles to replace your stupid content. Please go away.
All the pro-advertisement self-entitled idiots are using trillions of dollars of infrastructure the community created for free, and they go "But our dong jokes are priceless. We need money!". Well fuck you.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
If the argument is that tracking users furthers commerce and getting in the way of it is Luddite, shouldn't they start by railing against the evils of cash?
Bull.. Everything, including(especially) Slashdot is is much faster when their ad servers are blocked. It's actually very dramatic. Sorry Slashdot, you gotta fix that if you want me to see your ads.
Browsers need to fix tracking, like they did for popups and malware sites. Aggressive technical measures can bring tracking networks in line. Tracking networks pay popular websites to include their crap and then sell the data they collect. Make it a pain for websites that include 300 tracking networks and we'll be attacking the money.
At the very least browsers should:
* Lockdown the user-agent string
* Force plugins (like flash) to either not have cookies (or storage), or let the browser control any tracking
* Raise awareness by warning users when they are obviously being tracked
* Limit the number of cookies generated by visiting a single web page -- don't let one page lead to 300 cookies from hundreds of domains
Here's an idea: the browser won't download anything from any 3rd party domain, unless the primary website asserts responsibility for the 3rd party domain (either in source or headers). No website would want to take responsibility for an advertising network, much less a tracking network. Advertisers would be under enormous scrutiny to not track people, because their clients would be the ones getting sued.
Here's another idea: Mozilla runs it's own adblock-style blocking list. Companies would have to convince Mozilla they're not tracking people, and possible sign legal agreements to enforce it. Mozilla could simply block any site they don't think is acting honorably. If they collected info on 0 byte images they'd know most of the worst players right away.
Another idea: browsers could auto-change identities every 10 minutes; like switching to a new profile. If cookies from active tabs were saved it would eliminate 80% of the problems without the user having to do anything.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Run Noscript and Better Privacy. Set cookies to be accepted and then deleted when the browser closes. Set Better Privacy to delete flash and other more persistent tracking tags when the browser closes. Only enable javascript temporarily on pages you really want to see -- most of the time I'll see the page is not usable without javascript and just close that window. Want to serve me a click through ad? Fine, I'll just close that window. There isn't a page on the internet that I need to see, and I certainly don't care to visit one that wants to jam adverts down my throat. And yet I just bought some more stuff from a Google-served unobtrusive text ad the other day. If Google can appeal to someone as ad-hostile as I am, is it any wonder they're doing so well when everyone else is apparently circling the drain?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Just set your browser to only have session cookies. Why this big DNT thing?
Or do people think even that is too much? How will you even log in?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
What's funny is that DNT doesn't say "Don't send me advertisements.". They're just throwing a tantrum, threatening to take all their toys and go home if they can't do absolutely anything they want any time they want. I say treat 'em like you'd treat the other 2-year-old on the playground who does that: shrug and go play with everybody else and their toys. Ain't worth puttin' up with the brat's drama.
Do we live in a free society or what?
If you are vegetarians, don't eat in a restaurant that doesn't serve vegetarian dishes.
Some non-vegetarian restaurants may indulge your preference and prepare a special dish for you, but don't think you are entitled to this favor.
The same goes for privacy preferences, and preferences for other features (more security, more storage, more content, etc.).
I think it is great that browsers (and apps and OSes) are adding capabilities to communicate user preferences (I just wish the DNT flag's meaning would actually be defined before it is implemented). But it is silly and destructive to want to force service providers to abide by them.
If lots of users have a given preference, services will seek ways of serving that need economically and competitively.
One proposal that I think would work for many websites would be to charge people for removing ads or removing tracking or removing data collection. Ads are the source of revenue for many free (0 dollars) services that we enjoy, and targeted ads command a premium, the service provider has to find a way to offset the revenue loss if the service is to remain available.
Do you see other workable proposals?
Anyways, it's great that some websites choose to stand their ground and make the deal clear to their users. We don't give you our content unless you agree to this deal.
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
From the ITIF website... "It is my hope that with this alert ITIF will be able to remind people how easy it would be for sites to block users who enable Do Not Track..." I really can't see any website that makes direct revenue from users would block access. Would Amazon block me if I have DNT enabled? Would they risk losing a sale on that new plasma TV over $0.03 of indirect revenue. Sure, the Amazon example is a bit extreme but seriously. I can't see any legitimate website blocking a user, and possible direct revenue stream (subscribing to, or buying from, etc) just because they are running plugins. Is the corporate world really that insane? Have they totally forgot in the long run we are the customer and ultimately the revenue stream. Can't they see that now matter how many ads they force on us if no one is looking THERE'S NO MONEY?!?!
Well, adblock OTOH can work way more fine tuned, e.g. it can block only specific url pattern, as sites have started to offer unwanted content on the same hostname that the wanted content is hosted.
My personal combination is NoScript, Adblock+ and Ghostery.
Btw, Windows 8 hosts file are automatically reseted by the system, and using some binary that I would have to run in wine to edit /etc/hosts sounds fishy to me.
You switch from Free (as in speech) to free (as in beer) halfway through your post, greatly weakening your point. The creation of all of that software was not free. It was, in fact, very expensive. People paid for it for various reasons: altruism, idealism, and, yes, to make a profit. Not to mention that the physical infrastructure, without which none of that software would matter, was (and is) very, very costly.
That's not to say I agree with ITIF's statement regarding DNT. DNT requests should be honored (although I don't think sites should be forced to serve those who select DNT). But I have no problem with sites advertising. In fact, I'm glad of it, because it means I've got access to Google, Slashdot, the Washington Post, many webcomics, and hundreds of other sites that probably would not exist otherwise.
I'm glad other sites can get by without advertising. Wikipedia survives on donations and not advertising (except for the self-advertising on the site), and so do a couple of my other daily-read sites. But I'd lose access to a lot of information without web ads.
And this is me adding them to my hosts file:
0.0.0.0 [tab] www.itif.org [enter]
Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.itif.org.
Other sites similarly "standing on principle" in regards to this in a similar way will also be added and I encourage everyone to deep-six in whatever means seems convenient.
It's as if there was nobody making money through advertising before tracking.
--
BMO
Use TOR.... NOW!
I'll feel as bad as I did for SCO or whOracle.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Thats like requiring coffee cups to be labeled with: caution hot.
Anyone, who has a brain knows that coffee that just came out of the machine is hot.
It just seems that in the US, you cannot expect common sense.
DNT is just another similar thing.
US made standard: "i just sent you data, but you may not use it".
US folks will follow it and sue each other for ignoring this header.
The rest of the world is sitting, watching, eating popcorn and laughting their asses off on how there seems to be no common sense at all in the US.
Maybe we can start a blackhole list for domains that don't honor DNT the way it was designed? Maybe in the form of an addition list for AdBlock?
Screw the ITIF. You can advertise on the internet without tracking users and milking them for information and statistics. How can they claim it will hurt the economic foundation of something that isn't a business in the first place (the internet)? They're missing the forest though. Revenue comes from clicks, not from tracking users. I don't know of anybody who clicks on web site ads anyway- I use the goog if I want to find information on something, buy something, whatever. I'm not going to click on a web site ad. That's like trusting the adverts in the back pages of a tabloid magazine to "increase your sexual potency", let you "lose weight overnight" or "how to tell which Nigerian emails aren't fake".
Lol. Sounds like someone has entitlement issues.
You have no right to anything from any website. If they choose to only allow people who are willing to put up with ads to help defer some of the cost of running their website, that is their choice. Your choices are to:
A) Put up with the ads and get the content.
B) Go somewhere else.
C) Try and block the content and hope the website isn't smart enough to detect it.
D) Whine with your self-entitlement buddies.
or some combination of the above.
I'm a bit torn on this, actually.
Without a doubt, the guy is wrong on multiple levels.
First, advertisement is not the foundation of the Internet, there are plenty of sites that are ad-free. I run a few. They are either commercial according to a non-ad model, or they are done by people who simply love doing them, or they are supported by donations, or, or, or... there are lots of models and that's one of the beauties of it all. He is diminishing the variety and creativity of the Internet by claiming everything needs ads.
Two, it's Do Not TRACK, it is not Do Not Advertise. People who have DNT enabled can still be shown ads, you just can't treat them like cattle and mark every step they take. You could still run ads on them, just not the ones you so desperately want (because they pay the best).
However, denying service with a message is actually the right step to take. It is much, much better than silently ignoring the DNT flag. I applaud him for having the balls to stand up for his opinion instead of doing the sleazy thing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Who pays for the local connection to the Internet? The users, though their ISP, telco, or cable bill.
Who pays for the backbone? The users, through their ISP's payments to the backbone companies?
Who pays for hosting? Every business with a web site of their own. Most ISP customers even get a free web site with their account. Commercial hosting services start at $4 per month.
Who pays for online shopping? The people who buy from the sellers? Amazon doesn't really need to run ads outside Amazon.
Who pays for eBay? The buyers?
Who pays for Netflix? The subscribers.
Who pays for search? AltaVista was originally a demo for DEC Alpha computers. DuckDuckGo and Bleeko cost about $30 million to $50 million to run. Most Google employees are ad sales reps. It really only takes about 100 people to run a search engine company. Add search to your ISP account for $2 a month? That was Google's original business plan.
Without ads, we'd lose Facebook. No great loss. Myspace, which is mostly paid for by bands, would still be around. Twitter would be replaced by IRC or something like it. Social services would be handled by some peer to peer system. You'd host your photos on your ISP-provided web site.
It should be a prominent enable button. However, AdBlockPlus has the right idea: let the users decide if they want advertising, and let them decide if they want to allow tracking.
It is telling, though, that when I install ABP on a less-technical user's computer, I hear no complaints -- nobody seems to miss all that advertising. Perhaps website operators should take a hint.
Palm trees and 8
Another piss weak right wing dummy spit.
The world does not exist purely for your profit, douchebag.
A "Do not track" flag on a browser is like putting top-secret info on a billboard with a "do not read" banner above it. You must deny them the information but that makes the browsing experience much more difficult.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
When I see an ad on TV or hear one on radio, or even read one in print media, the advertiser has no idea who I am.
You do not need to TRACK someone to display ads. Do Not Track does not mean Do Not Advertise.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I think you each have valid views, but the issue as I see it, isn't quite what either of your points are about.
It's the sense of entitlement.
Some folks seem to think that because they create content, or enable others to create content, on the internet, that they are entitled to make money.
(Sounds like some people from the music industry.)
You can try to make money, or don't try to make money. But if you are trying, and fail, don't blame anyone else, and don't bitch and moan that we're a bunch of no-gooders ruining your fun because we don't want you looking over our shoulders and following us around recording what we do.
Not sure who decided the internet population is there to provide income. It's not.
I'm pretty sure if I was standing following one of these people around all day in 'the real world' taking video and notes of everything they did, they would be pretty upset. And when I said "You have to let me, I am making money doing this," I doubt that would make them okay with it.
At least in the real world, when someone is peeking in your windows, or reading over your shoulder, sooner or later you'll notice them, and possibly have them charged. Why is it different on the internet? Because most people can't see you snooping around, it's okay?
You may joke about Slashdot editors, but actually, editing user-submitted articles is not necessarily something people need to be paid to do. Many scientific journals are edited by volunteers, and really, why shouldn't a website that people read for the user comments (like Slashdot) be run by volunteers? Users are already moderators on Slashdot, and we have metamoderation to help cope with the miscreants who manage to get mod points.
Palm trees and 8
Just destroying the ad-funded free content sites.
Sorry, if your site needs to track me without permission, consume all my CPU time with ads, and annoy the hell out of me, all just to stay afloat, then you are doing things wrong. If those ad funded sites do not respect their users, then why should their users respect them?
You see, the point of DNT was to give those poor, ad-funded websites a chance to redeem themselves, a chance to respect their users. The other option is to just have ad blocking enabled by default, just like popup blocking is enabled by default. Should DNT fail, should it not be respected by the advertisers, then the browser makers have only one choice, if they do actually care about their users: including ad blocking as a feature, not an add-on, and let users opt-in to advertising if they want it.
Of course, there are plenty of other reasons to install ABP, like the fact that advertisers like to place hover ads over the text you are trying to read, or the fact that modern web ads have this tendency to spin your CPU for no apparent reason. Again, if website operators respected their users, this would not be happening and nobody would have bothered with ABP.
The ball is in the advertisers court; they can decide if they want to respect us, or if they want to face a world of ad blocking and technological arms race.
Palm trees and 8
No, his argument holds completely if you only take 'free' to mean 'free as in beer'.
That much of the free stuff is also free is just a bonus.
I would rather not give any money to people driving this type of frame of ideology for the internet.
That's one more site I need to stay away from, I'm glad that they are self-flagging.
I hope that all similar sites follow their awesome lead, it provides a wonderful signalling mechanism.
I hardly need to do any work at all if they would all just do that.
It would be like the 'evil bit" made manifest.
I wish that were the case...
I get exactly the same effect with my Hosts file and for those that don't understand how they work, it's pretty god damn simple. I never make the connection to the god damn server - no ad/malware or other crap to see. As to updating the damn thing every week? I don't do that. That's why I also use Noscript and I look at what scripts are being blocked. If any ads make it through, I'll cut and paste into my plain text editor the obnoxious site. Works quite well for me. Yes I do see the random ad but now that my hosts file is configured, I rarely see them as I'm not surfing all over the net anymore and into the god damn underbelly.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Often there's only room for one community in a particular space
Indeed; sci.crypt on Usenet comes to mind. Funny how nobody can "lose interest" in "running" sci.crypt, because no single person is responsible for running it.
Maybe the model of the web is just not the right model for an online community. Maybe a peer-to-peer model is better. We could build it right into web browsers if we were willing to, and create a better way to run obscure, low-budget blogs and forums. Of course, we would first need to convince browser makers that the only people whose interests matter is their users, which seems like an uphill battle (after all, if browser makers cared about user interests, DNT would not have been created; we would have just made ABP a standard feature).
Palm trees and 8
If you are only going to allow people to visit your website when it turns a profit for you, why not skip the technological arms race entirely and just use this "new" idea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paywall
Oh, what, you are worried that all those people who run blogs at no cost to their users and without advertising might run you out of business? Sounds like you are the one with an entitlement problem in that case...
Palm trees and 8
Mr. Kowalski (APK),
Your insistent and frequent posts urging people to use your program come across creepy. Please reconsider your method.
That said, I'm interested in learning more about whether hosts file manipulation is a good way to address (if only in part) web malware, ads, tracking, and botnet C&Cs. It's an intriguing idea, but my intuition balks at it. I'm trying to figure out why. Could be that what feels wrong is that it feels like a "dysemantism", a utilization at odds with the purpose of the file. Do you have any comment on this idea?
since i really do not want Any Co tracking my every movement online if you as a company do not honor a Do Not Track request then i will block every ad i can (which btw also includes blocking tracking servers).
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
would I even be visiting TIF's website anyway?
I would have thought that, within the bounds of the law, their webserver, it's their prerogative to host what they want / construct their site how they want?
They can structure the files on their webserver however they want, but once they send those files to me, it's my prerogative to decide how (or if) I wish to render those files for display. If I hate your color scheme and want to replace it with a custom style sheet, I won't use your style sheet. If I use a text-only browser, because I'm blind or because I'm on a terminal, I may not even request the images that your HTML file links to. If I'm running a spider program that trawls the web collecting statistics on web design trends, your page might never be rendered for human viewing at all.
Fuck You.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Do you think Google would exist if they had to pay an expensive Unix license for every machine they own?
Do you think Google would exist without the revenue from delivering highly targeted eyeballs to advertisers?
It's important to avoid false dichotomy here. It's not Free Software or Ad Revenue. It's both. Both are necessary to produce the kind of Internet we have now. Granted if there were no ad revenue, but free software, there'd be an Internet, but not like the one we have now. It might be a *better* Internet, but it's safe to say most of us enjoy sites and services which wouldn't exist without ads.
Now as to ad revenue vs do not track, that's another false dichotomy, but not quite a black-and-white one. Clearly there would be ad revenue if all sites were mandated to honor Do Not Track, but it wouldn't be as much. That means less of some ad supported services many of us use. On the other hand, there are very good reasons for some (although not necessarily all) people not to want to be tracked.
It seems to me that websites should honor Do Not Track. But Will Not Serve *does* honor Do Not Track. Although the site in question doesn't actually see it this way, I actually believe Will Not Serve is the right way to handle Do Not Track. It forces both the user and the site administrator to think about the costs and benefits of their policy. The user loses access to some services, but he gains privacy. If the loss is too much, he can change his mind. Likewise the site owners lose users and revenue when they kick people out. I doubt site owners will find it more profitable to turn away customers, but it's their right to do so if the decision is made on the basis of some customers being unprofitable to serve.
I like handling it this way because it makes people *think* about their knee-jerk reactions. In the end though I think ITIF is tilting at windmills. The Internet works on the financial equivalent of the Law of Large Numbers; call it the Law of Many Users. If you have a large enough user base, you can always find a way to monetize that. It's like copy protection in the late 80s. Yes, it stopped *some* piracy, possibly even *most* of the piracy that *might* have occurred. But it alienated paying, legitimate customers and most firms found they could grow *that* group faster by serving them better.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Your complaint about parasite is like complaining that the farmers are using CO2 YOU breathed out to make money growing plants.
Who, precisely, is demanding you make content available over the internet? Nobody.
If you wish to monetise your work, don't give it away free. Ask for subscriptions and make a login page for subscribers.
Well, actually I can either tell /. not to serve me ads, or Adblock blocks them for me, ...
I've been looking for a way to automatically screen out sites overdependent on advertising revenue, this looks like a perfect method to do so-- turn on do-not-track and they won't do business with me-- what more could I ask for?
I haven't downmodded you. I don't have points at the moment, and I'm posting in this forum, which means the system would deny me mods of any kind.
I don't contest the "FACTS" of what you're posting. It's how you're posting that concerns me.
A hosts file solution may be a good idea or it may not be. I haven't decided (so don't tell me others disagree). I can't get to discussing the particulars of the technique to make a case either way because your behavior — not your arguments — your behavior is making me concerned.
How about this? How about I try using hosts, but I'll do so in trade with you. If you take fish oil (or vegetarian omega-3 supplement), I'll try hosts.
You might consider cutting back on the fish. Contaminants are a concern, things like PCBs, dioxins, and mercury. I recommend omega-3 supplements for brain health.
(Disclaimer: I used to work for a large newspaper in the online advertising department)
The cost to advertisers for running a print ad depends upon a number of things (day-of-week, ad size, section, placement [above/below the fold], etc.), but also the perceived value. One of the numbers papers live and die by are the audited circulation numbers. This is what they then turn around and say to the advertisers: run a full-page in the A section on Sunday, and you'll get your ad in front of ___ (1,000s) of people!
Advertisers believed they were getting value for the money, and all was good. Until the interwebs did two things:
Suddenly, online advertising didn't look like such a great deal at all. And as the print circulation numbers went into their death-spiral, the papers had nowhere to turn. Their revenues from online aren't enough to keep just the online part running, let alone the rest of the deal.
Partially to blame is the calcified mentality that Print Is King and online is "for kids." The other thing is the executives refused to believe their business model was dead, that their news distribution model was dead (who wants to read yesterday's news today?) and their management style (top-down) was dead.
They thought the iPad would save them (that's why newspaper apps require a 'subscription' -- they're still in that mentality).
They look on with envy at Huffington Post (ugh) and Daily Beast (puke) -- two successful online "news" organizations that are doing what they can't: make sufficient money on line.
Basically, they're dead dinos. It will take nothing short of a complete reboot (i.e., fire everyone VP/General Manager or above) to get them going again, maybe.
Yeah, right.
Like I said, it was quite a few years ago. I was using Firefox like I do now. I tend to avoid IE vehemently. I also may have been doing it on a Debian system back then. In fact, I am pretty certain it was Debian and not some sort of Windows, as I had never got around to figuring out where a hosts file would be back then on Windows.
Now that I think about it, it was back when I used only Debian, which was at the tail end of my 98SE usage, and the system I had built at the time had stability issues with 98, so I switched fully to Debian for a while).
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'Advertising revenue supports most of the free content, services, and apps available on the Internet.'
False dichotomy/strawman. Who is saying 'don't advertise'? TV was/is supported by advertising, and all without creepy snooping. Is he deliberately doing this or is he really that stupid?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.