And, IE11? 12? My point is that yes, we can go about writing a lot of
exceptions for specific use cases, and coming up with solutions for
each browser's DNT idiosyncracies, but the costs of that trade-off
increase the more we have to support.
I'd much rather we built a uniform system that asked users to
explicitly opt-out, and made clear what they were opting out of: it's
quite clear from both the public and private discussions around DNT
that there is a big detachment between user expectations of DNT and
what the protocol actually does, and so we should probably avoid
treating that protocol as a flag.
On 14 January 2015 at 13:45, Nuria Ruiz <nuria(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
For
example, not collecting usage data about certain sections of our
population (e.g. IE10 users where DNT is set by default) >means that we
don't know if our software works for them. This isn't free, and in the
long-term, it can have substantial negative >effects. If DNT was
always
disabled by default in major browsers, I would expect such biases to be
minimal.
IE faulty support, downright wrong support or no support of many of the
web
apis is no news to anyone doing web development in the last 10 years and
nothing to write your mom about, really.
IE is treated it specially in many areas and we might do so in this one
too
if it turns out that:
- No service pack install has corrected the DNT default (sounds like no,
this did not happen)
- IE10 traffic is significant. I will get those numbers as I checked
browsers stats more than 6 months ago and things might have
changed significantly. Last time I checked I *believe* (going from
memory)
we had quite a bit less traffic from ie10 than ie8.
Thanks,
Nuria
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Aaron Halfaker
<ahalfaker(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Ori, I don't think you addressed the point I made about that study.
They
didn't ask users what they thought *their* browser setting meant and
what
they expected. They asked what they thought a big red button with "DO
NOT
TRACK" on it meant -- and the most common answer had to do with their
local
browser history!
Regardless, I think you make a good point. The cost of getting
something
wrong here may not be symmetrical, but it's not clear to me that erring
on
collecting absolutely no data is less costly.
For example, not collecting usage data about certain sections of our
population (e.g. IE10 users where DNT is set by default) means that we
don't
know if our software works for them. This isn't free, and in the
long-term,
it can have substantial negative effects. If DNT was always disabled
by
default in major browsers, I would expect such biases to be minimal.
Also, I think that if a user sets DNT and expects it to do something it
isn't supposed to do, we can always point them to the spec. It's a
sad
fact that, if you want to remain private on the web, you're going to
need to
inform yourself about how such things work. Just because we adopt an
extreme/overly-simplistic doesn't mean that the people you really don't
want
to have your behavioral data will to -- but it certainly has the
potential
to make research & product's job much more difficult.
Really, what I'm trying to say is that if I "decline to collect data
about
[you]", you shouldn't say, "meh". You should be concerned about how
we're
not considering what works and does not work for people like you when
we
design, test and deploy software changes. In a way, it's like taking
away
your vote. And if you don't believe that, I'd like to suggest that the
only
alternative is that the work that I do does not bring value to our
users --
and I'd beg to differ.
-Aaron
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 11:40 AM, Ori Livneh <ori(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Aaron Halfaker
> <ahalfaker(a)wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> They're really only asking what people think of when they read the
>> words
>> "Do Not Track". I'd be more interested in knowing what people
expect
>> when
>> then look at their particular browser setting and what it is they
>> actually
>> hope it will accomplish.
>
>
> While it's true that there is ambiguity about what users are objecting
> to
> when they turn on DNT (3rd party tracking? behavioral tracking? all
> data
> collection?), the costs of getting it wrong not symmetrical. If I
> object to
> all forms of data collection, and you collect data about me anyway,
> I'd be
> pretty upset. But if I'm OK with certain forms of data collection, and
> you
> decline to collect data about me.. meh.
>
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