And, IE11? From what I see it is not subjected to the same restrictions that 10, note
that issues with older browsers fade away for browsers with auto-update.
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 11:18 AM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
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@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@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@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Aaron Halfaker <
ahalfaker@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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