Buried in a
post about greater, coming personalization on Pinterest is a statement that says if consumers don’t want the tracking they can opt-out. The company supports Do-Not-Track (DNT):
We’re excited to give everyone a more personalized experience, but we also understand if you’re not interested! We support Do Not Track, and you can change your account settings anytime.
The New York Times points out that after Twitter (in May 2012), Pinterest is the next major player on a very short list of Internet brands to support DNT. Microsoft (with IE 10), Chrome and Mozilla are all supporters of the standard.
Do-Not-Track has proven extremely controversial and scary to the large ad trade groups and some major publishers (e.g., Yahoo), which have largely refused to honor IE’s default DNT browser settings. Recent WC3 discussions over DNT also broke down without agreement.
Consumer surveys have indicated wide support for the DNT standard — or at least giving consumers a choice.
By taking this “more transparent” position, Pinterest is showing a bit of enlightened self interest. Most people won’t opt-out of personalization — in part because people don’t change settings, but they may also feel less threatened by personalization because the opt-out option is available.
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