NyTimes put up an article about the ongoing attempts to improve online privacy.
Welp. While in principle I think that privacy is important, and people have a right to it, I don't think people are going to like the alternative.
Google, yahoo, facebook, all those service people use for free and love, are supported by advertising. Targeted advertising even. And that only works because of some amount of user tracking.
So, what will happen if/when tracking becomes impossible thanks to mandatory "do not track" buttons? These companies providing the services need to switch to another revenue model. With tracking out of the window, monetising data is out of the question. As is targetted advertising... So we're left with primitive advertising(and more ad coverage on pages to cover for lower rates!?), or for pay services.
Is this helping anyone? I don't think so.
There are already ways to disable tracking. Disable your cookies, disable flash cookies/datastore. But this isn't really a place government should in any way be getting involved with. Increased consumer awareness could be good. Allow them to choose. People who are comfortable with being tracked in exchange for a service can continue, and people who would prefer to pay for the service can go ahead in peace. Simply removing tracking as an option altogether is just a good way to kill off free services.
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