> then murdered it with endless bureaucracy that went nowhere.

That's why a solution needs to be imposed on the industry. They won't agree to anything in good faith.

This is being imposed on end users as well. The majority of people didn't care about being tracked when they joined Facebook.

The majority of people didn't know that they were tracked either, nor what that would actually involve.

Tracking was imposed on end-users, not the tools/legislation that have had to emerge because of that.

what level of awareness do you think the "majority of people" have about the implications of online tracking, of detailed behavioral profiling, of biased algorithmic influences on all online information experience etc.

somehow this particular industry can get away with standards and regulations that for any other industry would be the wildest dream of deregulatory heist

the "innovation" shtick has worn thin, its time to clean up the mess

I joined Facebook when I was 16 and at the time neither Facebook or Google was exposed as creepy spyware companies.

Browser developers explicitly stated the DNT would not work due to it being purely a method to fingerprint users.

That was exactly what they were used for.

> making the "Do Not Track" header have legal weight

And then DNT was used to fingerprint users :(

Default it to on.

Apple did that with their tracking preventer and something like 96% of people left it that way.

Off would be rare, and those people would be the ones who wanted to be tracked anyways.

Apple's App Tracking Transparency (if that's what you're referring to, as opposed to Intelligent Tracking Prevention) doesn't even default to anything. It asks you and gives you two equally-prominent options, but indeed even in that case the acceptance rate is still just 4% which I assume is either misclicks or ad-tech people.

I use TextNow sometimes and it asks me to allow tracking so it can remain free. It asked nicely so I allowed tracking.

MS defaulting it to on is pretty much what killed the whole thing and everyone started ignoring DNT.

Sure, it only works with corresponding regulation imposing consequences for ignoring it.