I'm currently at a small ad tech firm and while I can't speak for other outfits, we definitely are extra careful about respecting user consent indicators. Because we are small, it's not easy to do this, because there are many possible ways for users to "reject". This includes situations that merely imply non-consent due to inaction, rather than active non-consent like a reject cookie indicator, or living in a jurisdiction that makes non-consent automatic (as it should be!). Many of the "reject cookies" tools are especially useful because even if a website doesn't respect your choice (and therefore tries to send data to us) your browser can still tell us if you are non-consenting. This means it's easier for us to notice non-consent and drop the data as soon as possible, before any logging or analysis can occur.
We do not materially benefit from this in any way, nor do we market it. I am not a spokesperson for my company nor do I want to be publicly identified with it. I'm advocating here because you said "not a chance" but there is a chance.
It's not just that we are worried about some sort of regulatory enforcement, either, although existence of such regulations does help convince the less scrupulous people from pursuing a bad path.
The free internet is built on ads. I still believe in the free internet. I still think we can make it work. I welcome regulation and regulatory enforcement even though it's hard for a small outfit like us, because it reduces the chances that our ad tech has to compete with less scrupulous people. I think we've survived as a small outfit since roughly the dotcom era because we've tried to be good stewards. People wouldn't need uBlock if there was better regulation/enforcement, and companies like mine, who are trying to do the right thing (even as we operate in the loathed ad space), would benefit.
I'm worried about AI on this front because it means in the future your ads will be served up to you out of a black box instead of out in the open where we can all inspect who is trying to get what from us (and block bad parties via eg uBlock), and, to a degree, who is trying to shove what down our throats.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. The industry made us all believe they do, in what began as a differentiator from offline ads, that quickly spiraled into the current day insanity. Browsers have been playing cat and mouse to a degree, but except for the annoying cookie banners that everybody hates, regulation like GDPR is the thing that has restored some small piece of sanity. There should be more and better regulation + enforcement to better align ad tech with the interests of the public.
Just curious, but it sounds like this is the ideal use case for Do Not Track. Do you all use that as a signal to not track/remove nonessential cookies?
Yes, we do treat that as a valid signal. But users still shouldn't use it today anyway, since it has no teeth and many companies will use it as part of a composite identifier. If Do Not Track had more regulatory teeth, I think it might have gone somewhere.
Global Privacy Control (GPC) is the modern alternative, and the mechanism by which California's privacy legislation / CCPA is largely handled from a technical perspective. Unfortunately it is not available by default in Chrome, but it is in eg Firefox / DuckDuckGo browser. Because it has legal teeth, it has more power to give you a tracking free experience even if a company had the technical capability to track you.
It can still help you even if you're not in California because geolocation is not perfect, but it does provide the ability to monetize ads that are tracking free. The threat of enforcement has to be real and continue to be demonstrated, though, or it won't last.
iCloud Private Relay also causes tracking companies a lot of real pain (sort of a mini-Tor where Apple and CloudFlare each have only half of your unlock key), but it's a technical bandaid with a variety of flaws that can break many legitimate things.
Ultimately each situation is one that requires judgement, which is why I think a legislative/judicial answer is the only one that ultimately holds up. GPC allows for a little more nuance than DNT. People care about the intent of respecting "Do Not Track." It some cases it may requirement a judgement about whether or not a company violated that request, not whether it was "technically impossible for the company to violate that request (we thought) but oh oops it was possible...I guess that just means we need to make it harder, the company doing the violating was okay because they worked within the bounds of what was technically possible."
A company that violates this privacy, especially when you've indicated that you do no consent, should have to face penalties. And because we expect some companies to go out of business for violating these rules, we should also make sure that their "data assets" aren't simply transferred to some new company in bankruptcy court when an adverse ruling comes down.
Check your internet bill, it might not be free after all.
I'd very much rather get back to the internet being about connectivity and nothing else. The internet would survive just fine by providing a means to contact authorities, companies and each other, without any of the "content" for which we supposedly need ads to produce
> The free internet is built on ads. I still believe in the free internet.
The internet I remember had free content because mostly individuals wanted to share something. Commercial offers were rare. I would be very happy to go back to that network, with 90% content gone and the remaining 10% provided without an ads driven model. In fact, if it was for me, one could widely ban most advertising also off-net. It is manipulative cancer. At least ban any sort of user tracking and analysis. Yes, this will kill a wide spectrum of offers. I am totally fine with that trade-off. We don’t need it for a well-functioning society. And yeah, look around, we do all sorts of interference with so-called free markets, because history has shown time and time again how horrible it gets when you allow capitalism to roam freely.
We do not materially benefit from this in any way, nor do we market it. I am not a spokesperson for my company nor do I want to be publicly identified with it. I'm advocating here because you said "not a chance" but there is a chance.
It's not just that we are worried about some sort of regulatory enforcement, either, although existence of such regulations does help convince the less scrupulous people from pursuing a bad path.
The free internet is built on ads. I still believe in the free internet. I still think we can make it work. I welcome regulation and regulatory enforcement even though it's hard for a small outfit like us, because it reduces the chances that our ad tech has to compete with less scrupulous people. I think we've survived as a small outfit since roughly the dotcom era because we've tried to be good stewards. People wouldn't need uBlock if there was better regulation/enforcement, and companies like mine, who are trying to do the right thing (even as we operate in the loathed ad space), would benefit.
I'm worried about AI on this front because it means in the future your ads will be served up to you out of a black box instead of out in the open where we can all inspect who is trying to get what from us (and block bad parties via eg uBlock), and, to a degree, who is trying to shove what down our throats.