
DuckDuckGo Proposes the “Do-Not-Track Act of 2019” - chdaniel
https://searchengineland.com/duckduckgo-proposes-the-do-not-track-act-of-2019-316258
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bArray
I have DoNotTrack set and my browser blocked several tracking scripts from
their site.

As for the problem, it really comes down to making money: Data is sold to
inform targeted adverts. An additional requirement is that the ad company
needs to know how much to pay the ad host. Also remember that ad blockers came
about mostly as a result of reducing web bloat and reducing the fight for the
users attention.

Nobody in their right mind would agree to this without some sensible solution
in place. Servers cost money to run and content is usually not free to create.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Servers cost money to run and content is usually not free to create.

Yes- and you know who makes a lot of money out of servers and content? ISPs.
If they want to keep making that money, perhaps they can fork out some of it
to cover the costs of running the infrastructure and the content that keeps
them in the money.

~~~
cmpolis
I don't want my ISP determining which content and infrastructure to funded;
that seems like an even more broken model.

~~~
y4mi
At first I agreed, but it might actually be a good idea if the payment is
enforced.

Imagine a scheme in which any traffic has to be bought/paid by the ISP, which
is financed by your monthly subscription. So if you open an url, you're gonna
have to pay a tiny amount for the request.

But it's probably too easy to game. Just write a malware that keeps
downloading from your servers. It would make hijacked chrome extensions
insanely profitable. And just imagine the money Mirai's Creator could've
gotten with this...

It would also make bigger websites more profitable than lean and clean pages.

So I guess you're right. Not a good idea.

It would be cool if it worked though. sometimes I wish capitalism wouldn't
pervert any system at the cost of society. Too bad there aren't any
alternatives that actually seem to work.

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BuckRogers
_> It would be cool if it worked though. sometimes I wish capitalism wouldn't
pervert any system at the cost of society. Too bad there aren't any
alternatives that actually seem to work._

Only if you adopt the mainstream, incorrect definition of what capitalism is.
To put the correct definition into laymen terms, capitalism is essentially
paying someone less than the value that they produce. A privately-held and
operated Ponzi scheme with nearly everyone on the bottom. That's what all the
talk about "mode of production" is about. The term does not hold exclusive
domain on profit or enterprise. There were markets under feudalism.

To address your second point, there are plenty of alternatives that work.
There's even one that's currently showing itself as being outright superior.
Look into worker owned cooperatives such as Mondragon in Spain. Both Microsoft
and GE have sent representatives there to figure out why their quality level
is so high and so consistent.

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smitop
It seems weird that they would ask survey respondents to check their browser
settings to determine if they had Do Not Track enabled. DNT status is
transmitted over HTTP headers, and is available to JavaScript. Couldn't they
have just checked DNT status automatically to get more accurate data?

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threeseed
Pretty much the low hanging fruit of PR efforts.

Propose a legislation that has zero chance of ever coming into effect and then
watch as all of your target audience pat you on the back for all the great
work.

Problem of course is that this isn't how legislation gets passed in the US.
Especially these days when you have Democrats, Republicans and the President
all with completely different stances on privacy. And of course a 2020
election with a President who is relying almost exclusively on digital
marketing and would be hurt by this legislation.

If this was a SuperPAC with a high profile lobbying firm then you could take
all of this a little more seriously.

~~~
rvnx
In the meantime DDG makes almost 100% of its money from tracking users via
revenue sharing agreement with Yahoo/Microsoft and Amazon.

~~~
user17843
Indeed, no one talks about the privacy implications of referral links,
although when it comes to the agreement with Bing, etc., I think everything is
proxied. Not so much with the direct links to Amazon. Amazon knows when you
are a DDG user.

Even though affiliate links are a low hanging fruit in regards to making money
with search engines, it is not made transparent by DuckDuckGo.

They also use all the data they can get, they just tell us they get rid of the
identifying information as fast as possible (IP address). I wouldn't be
surprised if, from a privacy-standpoint, using Google and DDG as a non-logged
in user is basically the same, especially if you use google with an ad
blocker. The process of Google ads is basically to have a profile based on
cookie data, which the user can easily control.

~~~
rvnx
yegg (CEO @ DDG): "We've actually been using Yahoo technology along with our
own and others since the very beginning of DuckDuckGo. Over the past year
though we've been working on a stronger partnership with Yahoo so we can get
access to more features like date filters that everyone has been asking for
(that one in particular is our most requested feature by far).

With regards to the ads, nothing is changing in terms of ad privacy/tracking
or our privacy policy in general. Ads should just become more relevant."

Have you noticed "improving.duckduckgo.com", the analytics service that logs
all requests ?

"To be clear, this means we cannot ever tell what individual people are doing
since everyone is anonymous"

Oh, except the IP address, right. Fun fact (experiment now removed):
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180910042004im_/http://image.b...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180910042004im_/http://image.bayimg.com/oaebkaaed.jpg)

~~~
puzzle
But Yahoo search itself has been, for the past four years, a mishmash of Bing,
Google and Yahoo results. I wonder which mix of the three Yahoo will pass
along when using its API, versus using its search page.

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trpc
They should rename it to "Do-Not-Track-Just-Inject-Ads-Based-On-Keywords" act

~~~
ignoramous
Notably, [https://startpage.com](https://startpage.com) proxies non-
personalized Google results and monetizes using non-tracking keyword-based
ads.

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hkai
Great way to promote themselves. DDG is growing like crazy, although I had to
switch back to Google after half a year with DDG because search quality is
nowhere near that good.

On the other hand, the Democratic Party seems eager to stick it to the Silicon
Valley, so they may at least use a similar proposal as a way to negotiate with
the big tech.

~~~
seba_dos1
FWIW, somewhere in the past year I stopped fallbacking to Google at all. I
can't remember when I used "!g" bang the last time; it has improved a lot.

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user17843
I rather want to see the "Duck-Not-Track Act", as DDG has a complete "data
survaillance" system built into their product.

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oddly
Can you supply some more information on this?

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user17843
It was a cynical way of critizing that they collect so-called anonymized usage
data, for example for people who really need something anonymous they could
start offering a gateway to a search that doesn't collect anything at all.

[https://help.duckduckgo.com/privacy/atb/?redir=1](https://help.duckduckgo.com/privacy/atb/?redir=1)

~~~
doorbellguy
What is your search engine of personal choice?

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jchook
Qwant.com produces far better results than DDG in my experience.

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user17843
and they have a nice lite search:
[https://lite.qwant.com/](https://lite.qwant.com/)

