This flag is sent by my browser when I connect to SOMEONE ELSE’s SERVER.
The internet only took off because the primary business model which ran on ads and derivative information that servers do to their users.
It’s not fun. It’s not private or secure. It’s not illegal (in most jurisdictions for most industries). The flag exists as a response to the de facto and de jure state of the world, not some fairytale scenario.
No? It took off before advertising was widespread as a primary or sole funding business model? Also there's literally nothing about advertising that requires data collection about users. Sure they love to do it, and they might even believe that it helps their profits in some way. But it's not inherent, they got along just fine with billboards and newspaper classifieds. TV ads never required personal information. Not did pre roll cinema ads, or radio adverts. Nobody was bemoaning in the streets that they couldn't possibly find anything to buy
quite the opposite I would argue:
https://nickyreinert.de/2020/2020-10-24-marketing-killed-the...
...and promptly, thoroughly ignored.
Get off your high horse.
Arguable, on the other hand it did kill the internet. (or, almost so far, we'll see whether we rebound after decades of enshittification)
Perhaps the "DO NOT TRACK" name is somewhat of an established term, though.
*:analytics=1:google_analytics=0,syncthing:upgrade=1
Though if you just want a simple ENV var that handles this WHILE honoring the specification on this page: https://github.com/alloydwhitlock/do-not-track-cli
Plenty of people seem to genuinely believe that “personalized ads” are good for them.
Depending on the study, 0.16% to 7% want to get tracked.
https://noyb.eu/sites/default/files/2025-07/Pay_or_Okay_Repo...
No, in not making excuses for tracking and I do lots of stuff myself of avoid being tracked
I’m only responding to the false premise that there are no benefits. There are. You can just choose to believe they aren’t worth the cost. I believe they aren’t but I have friends who opt into all tracking and even register their presence with multiple apps. They believe they’ll make more positive connections
Exactly. From my experience: the times I've found an ad relevant and worth clicking is about one-to-a-gazillion. Maybe relevance is higher for others but that still doesn't necessarily translate to real value. (ie. your life was improved in any way)
Also, this all presumes the targeting actually works and the current sea ads for shoes I just bought disagree with that. It's all just spam.
The biggest failure of DNT was browser makers - including Mozilla - removing it. It has zero performance impact (1 bit?) or development cost. As long as it was out there, when there was momentum against tracking, advocates had evidence of both demand for privacy and of trackers ignoring user wishes.
This evidence both still exists and is also completely useless for anything. The more important consideration, by far, is that the DNT flag was actively harmful to users in the real world because, if it was acknowledged at all, it was used maliciously to help fingerprint and track users. There is no reason for browsers to continue providing to their users a toggle that not only misleads them about what will happen with the setting enabled, but actively contributes to the opposite outcome because we live in a world where being evil is the norm.
But isn't DNT deprecated in most browsers? Maybe I misremember.
I wouldn't have realized this was happening at all if it weren't for the obnoxious HF_TOKEN warning.
Example: the software crashes, and there is a crash handler that asks you if you want to send a crash dump. With DO_NOT_TRACK, the crash handler is disabled entirely, no question, no dump.
If it gets some adoption, that's probably how it will work. Those who have an financial interest in using tracking (ex: ads) probably won't support such an option.
Everyone proclaiming a "standard" is just adding to the long list of (unofficial) alternatives.
Any of those are using a dark pattern and before exploring new ways to opt out you should look for and spend your energy on an alternative which respects your freedoms upfront.