Microsoft is too sophisticated to plead ignorance; they are responsible for that outcome and I think we can assume they knowningly chose it. (Though now Microsoft browsers are such a small portion of the market that it doesn't matter.)
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.
> 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.
Lately, I've come across websites that instead of a cookie banner display a banner that states they recognize and honor my wish to not be tracked. Whether that really do or not is something I did not spend time looking into. The first time I saw it I thought it was a fluke, and then it happened a few more times with in a short time period. Couldn't tell you what sites they were though as it was just something from search results.
Wow. I've never seen that. It would be great if it became more widespread.
But isn't DNT deprecated in most browsers? Maybe I misremember.
::shrug:: I set it a long time ago and never looked back. I never looked into it being deprecated, but I knew that pretty much everyone ignored it for reasons. But by these banners, I'm guessing it still lives on as a setting.
Advertisers ignored it because MS decided to turn it into opt-in instead of opt-out, and advertisers very much hate opt-in. They'd much rather require the most permissive defaults, and put every barrier they can in front of opting out.
Users usually don't know about or change settings, so opt-out often means little. What portion of users knows about DNT? 1% 0.1%
Microsoft knows that; they rendered DNT meaningless:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47990485
Just here to say yeah, I've seen this more of this lately- "The do-not-track signal has been followed" or somesuch.
GPC must be honored in California. https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa/gpc
According to https://www.didomi.io/blog/global-privacy-control-gpc-2026 it must also be honored in 11 other states but I'm not familiar enough with the specifics regarding those.
No, the advertisers were responsible for that outcome, by using that as a flimsy excuse to ignore the setting
Browsers only removed it once it was clear that the advertising industry was going to refuse to honor it
Global Privacy Control replaced Do Not Track.