What else is messed up, is how so many just don't seem to care. That they are basically treated as a comodoty to USE, and that its ok as long as they cant feel the blood being drained from their body. (figurative yes, but how is it that far removed from the reality)
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Apple Adds 'Do Not Track' Tool to Safari in Mac OS X Lion
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coder12
macrumors 6502a
Goooo capitalism!! Lower prices, higher production efficiency! Thanks Adam Smith!
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)
Is it possible for the browser to query the website, request an agreement not to track and report the answer to the user before connecting?
Is it possible for the browser to query the website, request an agreement not to track and report the answer to the user before connecting?
bobob
macrumors 68040
Wow, it's been a few years since I've posted on Macrumors, can't even remember my old username, so going with this bad boy 🙂
But this topic was just too good to miss.
First, I work as an SEO and web designer and can see the benefits of completely trackable users to companies who want to sell stuff.
Second, as a user I don't really like it when I "feel" I've been tracked and served an ad they think I'll like, which I typically don't - apart from that damned Zaggmate iPad keyboard which is really tempting!
However, blocking all forms of tracking could lead to a very different web experience. Think of where the press are going with subscription based content (NY Times in the USA, Times Online in the UK) and that is where the majority of information based sites could end up without revenue from advertising to pay for their servers, staff, web development etc.
So let's say you agree not to perform user tracking, what could this do?
You charge less for advertising, because it's not as trackable to the ad provider, they can effectively knock you down on price.
So, how do you make up that lost revenue?
Provide a subscription model and block most of your content. But whoa there mister, Google likes my content and it seems the more I have the more I rank, the more people find me in search, the more visitor data I have to say to advertisers "use my site". If I put in place a subs model, my content disappears, I drop in the search engines and bang goes my visitors, which means I lose more ad revenue, which means I need to charge even more for subscriptions. Get the idea?
It also then fundamentally changes the open nature of the web, something that is generally seen as a good thing. So many people have complained about the wall garden nature of Facebook, App Store, Twitter etc and that is exactly what will happen to the web if advertising is restricted, websites will be self contained islands, paid for like a magazine subscription, with little to no interaction with other sites. That sort of web future fills me with more dread than the idea of someone trying to sell me a keyboard for my iPad... right Zaggmate come 'ere.
But this topic was just too good to miss.
First, I work as an SEO and web designer and can see the benefits of completely trackable users to companies who want to sell stuff.
Second, as a user I don't really like it when I "feel" I've been tracked and served an ad they think I'll like, which I typically don't - apart from that damned Zaggmate iPad keyboard which is really tempting!
However, blocking all forms of tracking could lead to a very different web experience. Think of where the press are going with subscription based content (NY Times in the USA, Times Online in the UK) and that is where the majority of information based sites could end up without revenue from advertising to pay for their servers, staff, web development etc.
So let's say you agree not to perform user tracking, what could this do?
You charge less for advertising, because it's not as trackable to the ad provider, they can effectively knock you down on price.
So, how do you make up that lost revenue?
Provide a subscription model and block most of your content. But whoa there mister, Google likes my content and it seems the more I have the more I rank, the more people find me in search, the more visitor data I have to say to advertisers "use my site". If I put in place a subs model, my content disappears, I drop in the search engines and bang goes my visitors, which means I lose more ad revenue, which means I need to charge even more for subscriptions. Get the idea?
It also then fundamentally changes the open nature of the web, something that is generally seen as a good thing. So many people have complained about the wall garden nature of Facebook, App Store, Twitter etc and that is exactly what will happen to the web if advertising is restricted, websites will be self contained islands, paid for like a magazine subscription, with little to no interaction with other sites. That sort of web future fills me with more dread than the idea of someone trying to sell me a keyboard for my iPad... right Zaggmate come 'ere.
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moderately
macrumors 6502
It is true that if goverment did not exist business would have no need to control it.
thelonelylimo
macrumors 6502
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8G4)
...of course. Eric Schmidt will be thee last.
...of course. Eric Schmidt will be thee last.
While I agree that the situation you mentioned is annoying, I believe that we must respect property rights. You voluntarily agreed to visit the website in question, in the same way that you would visit a store or something. The owner might remember you and then if he sees you later, could bother you about buying something from his store. No one's rights are being violated in this situation. Curtailing free speech because it's "annoying" is a slippery slope, my friend. Annoying to who? Who decides? How annoying must it be before government gets involved? Don't you think that corporations and lobbyists will have something to say about what is considered annoying and should be prevented? You're just asking for corruption.
I'm not a fan of your last idea because campaign contributions are speech and should be protected under the First Amendment. Also, assuming you support enforcing property rights, people (and companies) own their money and should be able to do what they wish with it, including donating it to whomever they wish.
1) I didn't say all regulation is bad or that there should be no government. I fully agree that government should enforce the rules of the game, and not get involved in the game. The problem is that when you have government in control of an industry, it is getting involved in the game, and can therefore pick winners and losers, and therefore whoever has the deepest pockets or most friends in Washington wins, rather than whoever can most satisfy consumers' demands.
2) Why let government decide what is "fair"? How does government decide? Don't you think corporations and lobbyists will influence that (corruption)? Why not let consumers freely decide? No company can force anyone to do business with it. Government can only use force. Sounds a little "unfair" to me.
3) The internet is not an example in which the free market has failed. In fact, I believe it is just the opposite. The internet is an industry in which there is very little regulation and look at how it is flourishing, even with all those "greedy" companies you mentioned. Imagine that. Perhaps it's because government isn't able to choose winners and losers through excessive regulation.
4) Yes, I believe the bad guy in most instances of corruption is government. The businessman is just trying to do is job, and the politician is sitting in his office with, for example, a permit or license asking "how much is it worth to you?" So companies end up spending lots of time and money complying with silly government regulations (notice I didn't say ALL regulations), rather than using those resources to develop better products for consumers.
5) As I said in a different post, I'm not a fan of curtailing campaign contributions because campaign contributions are speech and should be protected under the First Amendment. Also, assuming you support enforcing property rights, people (and companies) own their money and should be able to do what they wish with it, including donating it to whomever they wish.
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bobob
macrumors 68040
benthewraith
macrumors 68040
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has added a "do-not-track" privacy tool to the latest test version of their web browser Safari found in Mac OS X Lion. Mac OS X Lion is currently in private developer seeding and is due to the public later this summer.
This "do-not-track" feature was originally proposed by the FTC and is a voluntary system in which web browsers broadcast this "do-not-track" preference but its up to advertising companies to actually comply with the request.According to the WSJ, major online ad networks have yet to agree on how to honor the system.
Apple's Safari is the 3rd major browser to support this initiative, following Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox. Google's Chrome has yet to commit support to the feature.
Article Link: Apple Adds 'Do Not Track' Tool to Safari in Mac OS X Lion
Oh hey Apple, that's all great, and I'ma let you finish, but a fix for Safari resurrecting cookies would be the best of all time.
Seriously, Safari's mismanagement of cookies is the worst.
toddybody
Guest
+1 for greater browsing privacy...it gets creepy when I hop on New Egg for like 2 min looking at SB mobos...then the rest of the day every stinking page is populated with similar advertisements. Ha ha! I know alot of people who say, "gee thats so weird...I was just looking for those".
Hardly. This is a straw-man analogy. A better analogy or this new technology is the store owner takes your picture when you don't notice, asks your first name in casual conversation and then silently records every item you looked at. When you leave the store he/she emails it out to this large list of store owners in on the scheme.
Then at every new store you go to the store owner there recognizes you from that email then follow you around the store suggesting items for you to buy and placing things in your cart when you back is turned (you know helping you make smart purchase decisions!).
This has nothing to do with free speech, but a "liberalization" of human privacy onto the holy alter of the free market.
If I may be so bold as to generalize. It has been my experience America is burdened with bipolar politics, and a lot of regulatory cruft. Do you need to thin out regulation and rebuild? YES. Should you throw away all regulation and future regulation because some does not work? No.
America actually does a lot of things right and a lot wrong. Right now the wrong gets all the attention.
I think ensuring future privacy would fall into the category of YES.
Pay for MacRumors?
I would personally pay a small fee to for macrumors if I got no advertising && I didn't have to read posts from users such as yourself.
I would personally pay a small fee to for macrumors if I got no advertising && I didn't have to read posts from users such as yourself.
If macRumors wants to? Yes.
This can be done in a number of ways; not just charging users on forums.
louis Fashion
macrumors 6502a
Rose Royce
Each time I log on I go to the Rolls Royce web site. To this day, I have never received a targeted ad concerning Rolls Royce. I wonder why they refuse to track me? Because I don't have any money?
Each time I log on I go to the Rolls Royce web site. To this day, I have never received a targeted ad concerning Rolls Royce. I wonder why they refuse to track me? Because I don't have any money?
NightFox
macrumors 68040
That's fine, if you only want to hear opinions that support your own instead of challenging them, just add me and anyone else who doesn't agree with you to the ignore list that you'll find on most forums, no fee necessary and it won't bother me.
Oh, and also you might like to read this:
https://macrumors.zendesk.com/hc/en-us#What_do_I_do_about_annoying_ads.3F
See, all your wishes just came true.
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Gasu E.
macrumors 603
"But-but corporations are just people like you and me! "
--Justices Roberts, Scalia, et al
marksman
macrumors 603
Yeah it does because most ads require tracking from the display all the way through the final process. It is an essential part of the value for online advertising.
I spend large sums of money on online advertising, I know how it works intimately. This is a bad thing.
Perhaps it will force people who choose to use such a feature to have to pay a monthly fee for access to websites who are otherwise ad-driven say like Mac Rumors.
If enough people use something like this, especially since most people don't even understand it or why they would need it, it will cause sites like this very site to seriously alter their business model.
QUOTE=redkamel;12389113]Cutting off my nose to spite my face? What is my loss if I am not tracked? I do not want to be tracked. I can still get advertiser supported content, just not with targeted ads. And if I have to choose between free with ads, or pay, I choose pay. Or nothing, if its too many ads.[/QUOTE]
No you will not. All advertising requires tracking in order to handle the process. If you click on an ad on this site tracking begins with it. You will end up having to pay, because advertisers are not going to pay for people whom they can't track for the purpose of managing the actual process.
Personally I don't care about the tracking, but I actually understand how it works and what it does, and I would prefer that sites like this and others like it can just go about being succesful and not be forced to come up with a hybrid or pay only model because people ignorantly think "tracking bad".
TuffLuffJimmy
macrumors G3
This is completely wrong. There has been advertising well before the Internet and well before advertisers tracked the users.
Chip NoVaMac
macrumors G3
+1
Well said....
I bristle at the notion of the argument of free speech being tied to business purposes. Freedom of speech is seen as basic human right to share their feelings/thoughts/ideas; not IMO of companies to try to sell me something. Now if that company wanted to send me an email stating their position on a topic concerns us as a nation that is fine - and protected IMO.
I don't think it is too much of a generalization that we are bipolar in our politics; in particular since the 1980's, and seems to have gotten worse as the years pass by. The shame of it is that we can't seem to have civil discussion of matters of the nation any more. The one with the most money seems to win the battles in politics now.
Can we do with less regulation, sure. And like you, regulation to protect our privacy is a YES. Less we come closer to the likes of Minority Report...
Chip NoVaMac
macrumors G3
One of the prices we pay as a free nation, and our Constitution. Roberts, Scalia, et al maybe right as strict "Constitutionalists". For it was property owners that had the right to vote back then.
Porco
macrumors 68040
I've been watching Mad Men recently. It's good, but really unrealistic though, I mean how could advertising possibly exist in the days when individuals' every choice and action couldn't be tracked to the nth degree! 🙄
More seriously, if users go so far as specifically trying to avoid being tracked, or advertised to, those users are probably not going to be good data points in terms of gathering stats etc. What is the point of trying to market to potential customers who are actively trying to avoid you?! Concentrate on those who don't mind.
More seriously, if users go so far as specifically trying to avoid being tracked, or advertised to, those users are probably not going to be good data points in terms of gathering stats etc. What is the point of trying to market to potential customers who are actively trying to avoid you?! Concentrate on those who don't mind.
Chip NoVaMac
macrumors G3
The point being is that in the "old days" advertisers had to spend money to gain our attention. Now with the NET they can just use cookies at no cost to them.
As much as some hate government regulations, we need a regulation that allows us to "opt-in" as to opposed to "opt-out". Bravo to Apple requiring an "opt-in"....