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Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

However, users did not give any indication they had explicitly meant to be tracked either.

I think this just highlights the cynism of the ad industry and the whole compromise that was DNT.

If they were genuinely concerned about user preferences, opt-in vs opt-out shouldn't make a difference. But opt-out being so important is a hint to me that the ad industry was mostly agreeing because they assumed that most users wouldn't activate DNT because they didn't even know about it. (Which was probably correct)

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This is an opt in feature, not opt out.

In this situation you should either go with opt in or perhaps try to proxy for user desire. Every single person I talked with who wasn’t in the add industry prefers do not track.

It seems strange to argue that a standard that protects users should require informed consent to turn on do not track. But use the same logic to say it’s ok to track users without their explicit consent.

People want Do Not Track, but also hate paywalls and irrelevant ads.

> People want Do Not Track, but also hate paywalls and irrelevant ads.

Do people really hate irrelevant ads?

Users hate irrelevant ads slightly more than they hate relevant ads -- much like how I hate being punched more than I hate being slapped.

I'd much rather avoid being in an abusive relationship to begin with: Hence, installing browsers like Brave and using search engines like DuckDuckGo -- where you can opt into breaches of privacy and advertising, rather than hoping for the slim chance of an opt-out at the benevolence of the site/ad company.

I think so, though they might not always verbalize it that way.

Consider that without any sort of tracking, ads are almost necessarily ones that appeal to the lowest common denominator of the audience, because there's nothing else to go on.

More than relevant ads?

doubt it.

I hate all ads. The ads I get are irrelevant anyway.

There’s this funny PR line like I like relevant ads. I don’t like ads. I don’t like the same add 10 times in one hour.

Also it’s possible to hate all three at the same time.

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