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The FCC Says It Can't Force Google and Facebook To Stop Tracking Their Users (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The FCC announced that it will not prevent Facebook, Google, and other websites from not honoring users' Do Not Track requests that make it difficult for them to track online activities. The Washington Post reports: "The announcement is a blow to privacy advocates who had petitioned the agency for stronger Internet privacy rules. But it's a win for many Silicon Valley companies whose business models rely on monetizing Internet users' personal data. It's also the latest move in an ongoing battle to defend the agency's new net neutrality rules, which opponents warned would result in the regulation of popular Web sites and online services. By rejecting the petition, the FCC likely hopes to defuse that argument. The rules, which took effect this summer, allow the FCC to regulate only providers of Internet access, not individual Web sites, said a senior agency official."
Because it's the FTC's job, not the FCC's.
The Federal Trade Commission regulates things like this -- business interactions with customers -- in the same way it regulates the federal Do Not Call list.
If you are asking the FCC to regulate this, you are asking the wrong regulatory body; you might as well be asking the FDA to regulate it, because you think that being tracked all the time is injurious to people's mental health.
Then:
Users: hey can you please stop tracking us so much?
Social Media: screw you
Now:
Social Media: hey please don't use stuff to block our tracking thanks
Users: screw you
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
And it will always be this way. People will only put up with so much intrusion before creating tools to block it. And those tools will swing way back past the point they would have accepted as reasonable... Go ahead... Kill the goose.
Pretty much this.
We're seeing the same now with ads and ad companies. Ad companies used to pretty much piss on it when their users asked them to maybe tone down the invasiveness of their ads, thinking that there was nothing their users could possibly do to fight back until users did actually start fighting back in masses. Now we see companies actually suing users over using ad blockers, trying to use copyright as a reason (because that ad blocker altered the page and it's no longer how they made it, and they claim copyright does not allow you to alter it. I don't make this up). Mostly out of desperation because people do now use ad blockers in masses, threatening the business model based on ad revenue.
The same can easily happen to invasive tracking if companies that make a living of tracking user habits don't watch out. There is already a movement where people, knowing they cannot avoid leaving footprints, want to poison the data pool by dumping data trash into it to make data indistinguishable from noise, invalidating the data gathered altogether. For now, this is, as it was with ad blockers, a minority of users. Not enough to threaten the tracking business model.
This can stay that way if, and only if, trackers don't go overboard and piss off the average user enough that they start using data poisoners.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah, that must be why Chrome's percentage of the browser market has been tanking... oh wait.
It's pretty simple - if you don't like what a company is doing, don't use their products. But people don't like to do that - they want to have their cake and eat it too. I quit Facebook a couple years ago. Most of my family (including my wife) continues to use it, though; and it's the standard place family photos and family news first get posted. Sometimes you miss out on certain things by making the choice to not participate... and that's the hard part of making that decision.
Not using Chrome, and using an alternative search engine like DuckDuckGo, is an easier choice to make - but it still requires a conscious decision and a change in your personal habits.
Obviously this isn't 100% effective - Facebook and Google have lots of ways to track individuals, including back room deals with companies like Verizon for access to super cookies and whatnot. But it's at least making their records incomplete and harder to tie to you as a specific individual... not to mention the tacit approval people who continue to use their services are providing them.
#DeleteChrome
Privacy Badger doesn't spam me on Slashdot.