Apple Removes Useless 'Do Not Track' Feature From Latest Beta Versions of Safari (macrumors.com)

In the release notes for Safari 12.1, the new version of Apple's browser installed in iOS 12.2, Apple says that it is removing support for the "Do Not Track" feature, which is now outdated. From a news writeup: "Removed support for the expired Do Not Track standard to prevent potential use as a fingerprinting variable," the release note reads. The same feature was also removed from Safari Technology Preview today, Apple's experimental macOS browser, and it is not present in the macOS 10.14.4 betas. According to Apple, Do Not Track is "expired" and support is being eliminated to prevent its use as, ironically, a fingerprinting variable for tracking purposes. It is entirely up to the advertising companies to comply with the "Do Not Track" messaging, and it has no actual function beyond broadcasting a user preference.

Comments

Naive

[orev]

It was always a naive solution put forth by idealistic technologists. Did we really expect the ad companies who are already abusing data collection to the fullest extent possible to stop doing it (and go out of business) simply because you asked them nicely using an obscure setting in the browser?

Re:Naive

[Sneftel]

Only by default. If someone wanted to be tracked, they could easily turn the flag off. And if you had to guess, would you say a given user would want to be tracked or not?

Advertisers aren't automatically entitled to benefit from a user's apathy.

Re:Naive

[orev]

I see we have found one of the aforementioned idealists. It's extremely naive to think that any ad company whose entire business model is suck up as much data as possible is going to honor the user's preference to "please don't track me". It's like asking a hungry bear "please don't eat me". This approach was doomed to failure from the beginning without some very heavy handed regulation and penalties enforced by governments (like DMCA), which of course was never going to happen. As usual in a tech discussion, the focus here is on some completely irrelevant technical detail of some software setting, instead of the actually real causes of the issue, which are the market forces and business realities. Whatever Microsoft set the default to is completely irrelevant; their browser market share is tiny anyway.

Re:Naive

[Sneftel]

No idea what MS's intent was, but what makes the feature completely useless is that it relies on advertisers' cooperation. Are you seriously suggesting that if it had been an opt-out rather than an opt-in, advertisers would have obeyed it? That they would have foregone tracking those people who really really didn't want to be tracked?

Definitely Naive

[sjbe]

No it wasn't. It was a reasonable solution that was intentionally sabotaged by Microsoft.

I'm certainly no fan of Microsoft but come on... It was an absurd and naive idea that never had a prayer of working. WAY too much money at stake and too little oversight for it to ever have had a prayer of working. It could not possibly have worked without being supported by pretty strict laws in the US and EU.

"Do Not Track" was supposed to represent an affirmative request by the user to not be tracked.

Are you seriously arguing that it was supposed to be opt-in and that somehow that would have been a good thing? So people who aren't aware of the option should be screwed by default?

They turned the flag on for everyone, so that it meant nothing. They intentionally poisoned the concept.

It SHOULD be on by default. But even if it wasn't, it still would be roundly ignored by pretty much every company interested in tracking you. As requests go it was pretty much the equivalent of asking a shark to not eat you while you are bleeding in the water. It was a request and it was entirely predictable it was going to be ignored right from the start.