I always thought it was a stupid idea to try and ask companies not to track you, instead of, you know, blocking trackers without telling them.
It really does seem like the advertising equivalent of BP’s “carbon footprint”, because the company doesn’t like the alternative. In this case the alternative is blocking all ads and trackers for maximum user privacy. The commercial interests of modern web services and advertising services don’t align with the values of privacy conscious users. So instead of pushing for things to try and make the advertisers feel more comfortable, make the users feel comfortable and encourage them to block that crap, and poison their fingerprinting data. These things benefit user privacy so much more than asking not to be tracked politely, and advertisers don’t like them because they can’t just choose not to listen or track the amount of users who don’t want to be tracked.
