How adtech, not ad blocking, breaks the social contract – Digital Vault – Medium
Let’s get straight what’s going on when you “visit” a Web site or page. Literally, you request it. You don’t go anywhere at all. That request is what the hypertext protocol (http or https) facilitates. (Protocols are ritualized manners, like handshakes, bows and smiles. They also scaffold the social contract.) So, for example, when I go to some-publisher.com, I expect the browser to display that page and its links, and nothing more. Or, when I go to seller.com, I expect the browser to display the index page of the site. And, if I have some kind of relationship with that site, I expect it to recognize that I am a returning visitor or customer. In neither of those cases do I expect tracking files, other than those required to remember state, which was the original purpose of Lou Montuli’s magic cookie, way back in ’94. Now known as just “the cookie,” it is in ubiquitous use today. In Lou’s detailed history of that creation he writes, “The goal was to create a session identifier and general ‘memory’ mechanism for websites that didn’t allow for cross site tracking.” So there’s another broken social contract of sorts.
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