- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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This whole thread is a whole lot of hullabaloo about complaining about legality about the way YouTube is running ad block detection, and framing it as though it makes the entire concept of ad block detection illegal.
As much as you may hate YouTube and/or their ad block policies, this whole take is a dead end. Even if by the weird stretch he’s making, the current system is illegal, there are plenty of ways for Google to detect and act on this without going anywhere remotely near that law. The best case scenario here is Google rewrites the way they’re doing it and redeploys the same thing.
This might cost them like weeks of development time. But it doesn’t stop Google from refusing to serve you video until you watch ads. This whole argument is receiving way more weight than it deserves because he’s repeatedly flaunting credentials that don’t change the reality of what Google could do here even if this argument held water.
Ah yeah the kind of hullabaloo that makes everyone accept cookies on every single website ;)
shoutout to Consent-O-Matic! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-matic/
Also exists on chromium for the chrome/opera/… lovers here
Yay for ublocks annoyance pop up blocker. No more cookie pop ups
You’re missing the point/s
- What they’re doing is illegal. It has to stop immediately and they have to be held accountable
- What they’re doing is immoral and every barrier we can put up against it is a valid pursuit
- Restricting Google to data held remotely is a good barrier. They shouldn’t be able to help themselves to users local data, and it’s something that most people can understand: the data that is physically within your system is yours alone. They would have to get permission from each user to transfer that data, which is right.
- This legal route commits to personal permissions and is a step to maintaining user data within the country of origin. Far from being a “dead end”, it’s the foundation and beginnings of a sensible policy on data ownership. This far, no further.
How is it immoral? Is Google morally obligated to provide you with a way to use their service for free? Google wants YouTube to start making money, and I’d guess the alternative is no more YouTube.
Why is everyone so worked up about a huge company wanting to earn even more money, we know this is how it works, and we always knew this was coming. You tried to cheat the system and they’ve had enough.
I think it’s a question of drawing a line between “commercial right” and “public good”.
Mathematical theorems automatically come under public good (because apparently they count as discoveries, which is nonsense - they are constructions), but an artist’s sketch comes under commercial right.
YouTube as a platform is so ubiquitously large, I suspect a lot of people consider it a public good rather than a commercial right. Given there is a large body of educational content, as well as some essential lifesaving content, there is an argument to be made for it. Indeed, even the creative content deserves a platform.
A company that harvests the data of billions, has sold that data without permission for decades, and evades tax like a champion certainly owes a debt of public good.
The actions of Google are not those of a company “seeking their due”, for their due has long since been harvested by their monopolisation of searches, their walked garden appstore, and their use of our data to train their paid AI product.
A public good? Like roads, firefighters, etc? You want the government to pay for your Youtube Premium subscription?
Less snarky, if you’re arguing that Youtube has earned a special legal status, a natural consequence is that Google gets to play by a different rulebook from all other competitors. That’s quite a dangerous direction to take.
Your snark was actually closer to the mark than you think.
Let’s say YouTube vanished overnight, what would the impact be? Sarcasm might suggest “we’d all be more productive” but let’s take a deeper look.
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A lot of free courses (or parts thereof) would vanish. (A key resource for poorer learners)
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Most modern tech repair guides would be gone (no machine breakdowns, no guides on fixing errors on old hardware)
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A lot of people’s voices would be silenced (YouTube is an awful platform, but for some people it’s one of the only ones they have)
Seems to me, it would do a lot of public harm. Probably more harm than removing a freeway or closing a fire station.
As for letting Google “play by a different rulebook”, it does so already. The OP has indicated that they’re undertaking an action in an illegal way, and yet no-one much cares to stop them. Yes, they could do the same thing via legal channels, but that’s rather like suggesting there is no difference between threats of violence vs taking someone to court when trying to collect money.
Would you grant an insurance company similar legal indemnity? How would you feel about your local barber peeking in your window and selling what they see? Google has long played by a different rulebook, and thus different expectations are held.
Your arguments would only work if you’d argue for breaking up or nationalizing YouTube.
As long as they are a for-profit company you can’t deny them the right to legally earn money the way they see fit, doesn’t matter how big they are or what other revenue streams they have. Forcing them to offer a service for free is nonsense, and attacking them on a technicality that is probably easily circumvented is just a waste of everybody’s time and money imo.
If we really want to do something about this then we have to break their monopoly, same as any other huge company that’s f*cking with consumers.
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Honestly if I were a politician I would support legislation restricting permanent bans from major websites from being given out willy-nilly because too many of them are ubiquitous enough to qualify as a public good.
Err, going through threads of conversations on both reddit and lemmy regarding YouTube, one would assume ad free access is the norm and Google even daring to offer Youtube Premium is a bad thing.
I feel offering Youtube Premium while still tracking the users online movement is indeed a bad thing.
I get what you are saying, but you could argue that google is pretty much a monopoly at this point, using their power trying to extract money from customers they could never do if their was any real competition with a similar number of channels and customers.
I think most users see google/youtube as a “the internet”, or a utility as important as power, water and heat. And don’t forget that google already requires users to “pay” for their services with data and ads in other services (maps, search, mail) as well.
So because they earn money somewhere else they should do something else for free? Why? What does Google owe us?
They only have the monopoly if we give it to them. I find their model fair, I use their service a lot. if they overprice me I’ll find another form of entertainment.
But you are right, people see YouTube as a necessity at this point. I’m trying to remind you, it’s not.
YouTube is a lot more than just entertainment. Not trying to argue your overall point just pointing that out.
That’s fair
So because they earn money somewhere else they should do something else for free?
Obviously not, but there is nothing to stop Google from making Youtube a paid service and drop that charade about adblockers.
Google’s main source of income is ads across the board, so fighting adblockers is certainly in their best interest
And users blocking all ads as long as Google is illegally tracking their online movement is in their best interest as well.
Fine. But it need to fight by the rules.
It is not up to discussion: Youtube want to serve video to EU user ? They need to follow EU rules. If the rule says that adblocker detection technologies (or attempt) are illegal Youtube has no really a say in it.
How is it immoral? Is Google morally obligated to provide you with a way to use their service for free? Google wants YouTube to start making money, and I’d guess the alternative is no more YouTube.
Nope, but it is legally required to ask for permission to look into my device for data that it does not need to provide the serice.
Of course Google could make money, it just need to make them without violating the laws.
It’s all well and good that Google want to make money from my data - but they should be paying me for it. The value of my data isn’t from the data itself, but what can be done with it.
You can’t build a car without paying for the nuts and bolts.
They are. They provide you with a service for your data. It’s called YouTube. And if they don’t have a place to show you ads, the data is useless because no one will use it. It’s a closed loop.
And even if you don’t agree with it, it’s still a company selling a service and it can do whatever it wants to earn money from it. There’s nothing unethical about that.
No, it is not an exchange of data for access to the website. The website is provided completely free, and the data collection is the small print. A normal contract exchanges one thing for another, then the details are in the fine print. If it were an exchange of data for access, then the amount of data they collect would be proportional.
Why? Who made the rules about exchanging data? And it is an exchange of data for a service, it’s just not as obvious as you might want it to be. But nothing comes for free.
Hey I’m not saying I like the big company ethic scathing that’s been going on around the world, but it is how our society currently works.
Why? Who made the rules about exchanging data?
There’s a whole area of legislation called contract law. An exchange of value requires consideration, ie payment. They invite you in for free, then take your data without consideration. In particular, you only have use of the website while you visit it and so long as they host it in that current form, but they claim rights to your data in perpetuity. They have no obligation to continue hosting the website, because that is a separate arrangement to the data collection.
It’s how things have been going so far, but the law always takes a long time to catch up with new innovation. The law is not always right or comprehensive, which is why it has a facility to be changed. The GDPR cookie splash screen was the first real attempt at this, it falls well short but if everything works as it should then further laws should come.
Frankly though, I think what should happen is that businesses should be allowed to continue collecting data as they are, but their raw dataset should be publicly available for a small nominal fee. This way Google et al can still keep their proprietary data processing magic to themselves, but everyone can make use of the datasets and drive competition. It also gives people a reasonable opportunity to actually see their data, and act accordingly.
Businesses will complain about giving away “their” data, but the reality is that the data belongs to the users and the business merely has a licence. The cat is already out of the bag and it’s not practicable to put it back in, so the best choice is to embrace it openly.
Unrecognized entitlement on their part, lol.
the data that is physically within your system is yours alone.
Actually, ALL the data Google has on you is yours. Google do not own the data, neither do reddit, Facebook or anyone else. They merely have a licence.
Personally I think even that is illegal. Contracts require consideration, you exchange x for y, then you have details in the terms and conditions. This is like “come in for free!” and then everything is in the terms and conditions. If you look at insurance, they’re required to have a key facts page to bring to the front the main points from the terms in plain English. The cookie splash screen doesn’t really do this, as it obfuscates just how much data they collect, and is for the most part unenforceable as you can’t see what data they hold. Furthermore, the data they collect isn’t proportional to your use of the website.
The whole thing flies in the face of the core principles of contract law under which all trading is done. They tell us our data has no value and it isn’t worth the hassle of us getting paid, yet they use that data to become some of the wealthiest businesses in the world. We might not know how to make use of that data, and you’ll need a lot of other data to build something to sell, but a manufacturer of nuts and bolts doesn’t know how to build a car - yet they still get paid for a portion of the value derived from their product through others’ work, as most of the value comes from what you can do with it. We’re all being robbed, every single one of us, including politicians and lawmakers.
Very good point.
Immoral? For making you watch ads? How are ads immoral? You’re using the service, you watch ads, it’s not rocket surgery
Its immoral for the way its being done, not what was done.
Fuck that noise. Advertising as a whole is mostly immoral, we just got used to it.
Marketing in general is a reason we live in a consumer society.
The only reason marketing exist is to trick our brains into buying stuff we do not need.
I’d say ban all of it. The world would be better off.
Uh. It’s not immoral to read the data they’ve served to you on the page they’re visiting on their own website. I’m honestly genuinely curious what moral argument you could make, here
they are taking information from your browser without getting your permission first, to use that information against you.
They’d argue that you going to their page which you know is sustained by ads is consent enough to check whether you’re using ad block. It’s an implicit thing, like how when you go to a restaurant you’re implying that you’re going to pay the bill afterward. You can’t eat and then leave saying, “well technically I never explicitly agreed to pay for this meal, it’s your fault for not asking before serving me.”
They’re taking information from the page they served you and runs the code they wrote to read the page they served you to ensure what they served you is actually what you’re seeing
You’re accessing the site, you’re continuing to use the site, you are implicitly agreeing to allow the code they run to modify the page you’re on
I fail to see how it specifically being used to check that ads are displaying is any different from code running normally in your browser to change the page without refreshing the page entirely
More importantly and actually on subject: how is this immoral? What moral code are they breaking here? You can argue legal semantics, but legality is not morality. You made a moral argument. How is this immoral?
Google is tracking you on every website that has a “share to Google” icon.
Which means Google has your entire browser history, even if you use Firefox.
If it was just on their own websites, nobody would be complaining.
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Youtube makes money off of adblocked users.
They send your watch habit aggregate data profiles to the number crunchers at alphabet hq, to sell off.
They make fuckloads of money off the free video content theyre given as well as the nonstop data stream of demographics data. Thats why alphabet bought it in the first place.
The ads are just bonus cash. They dont want to miss an opportunity to score more money by selling ad space in their data profile mines.
They are being fully compensated by me logging in and feeding them either free labor as video content or free money as data profiles. They can easily keep the lights on off that alone. They dont need more free cash.
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I am not obligated to sit dutifully with the volume up when ads play on my tv.
Nor am I obligated to allow ads to load within my browser.
They send the data they want me to display, down to every element on the page. It is fully within my rights to choose which elements are allowed to load on my computer.
And I wont be fuckin guilt tripped that the billion dollar company will make a fraction of another billion less dollars this quarter over my decisions to do so.
Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t the typical terms of service or privacy policy even mention that you, as a user, have the power to reject tracking cookies, tracking pixels, etc. via your browser configuration and third party tools? As far as I know, the YouTube ToS and Privacy Policy also mention these things. I just tried to read it but they seem to have broken it up into a sprawling multi-site multi-page document where I can’t find the legalese to ctrl+f and pore over.
Can anyone find these documents, so I can read through them please?
Edit:
I found it: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en#intro
There are other ways to control the information Google collects whether or not you’re signed in to a Google Account, including:
- Browser settings: For example, you can configure your browser to indicate when Google has set a cookie in your browser. You can also configure your browser to block all cookies from a specific domain or all domains. But remember that our services rely on cookies to function properly, for things like remembering your language preferences.
- Device-level settings: Your device may have controls that determine what information we collect. For example, you can modify location settings on your Android device.
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it’s immoral
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
This whole thread is a whole lot of hullabaloo about complaining about legality about the way YouTube is running ad block detection, and framing it as though it makes the entire concept of ad block detection illegal.
Nope, the point is that, at the moment, Google seems to look where it should not look to know if a user has an adblocker and they don’t ask for permission.
Let put it in another way: Google need to have my permission to look into my device.
But it doesn’t stop Google from refusing to serve you video until you watch ads.
Which is fine as long as Google can decide that I am using an adblocker without violating any law, which is pretty hard.
Of course Google could decide that it is better to leave EU and it law that protect the users, but is it a smart move from a company point of view ?
All they need to implement ad block detection is user consent, which they likely cover on their terms of service and privacy policy.
Because of GDPR, in the EU user consent has to be explicitly asked for and given, not implicitly via some catch all in a 20 pages Terms Of Service.
Hence all the cookie pop-ups.
That is addressed in the source I linked, which is an industry groups advice to publishers on the implementation of ad block detector. They specifically say that having it listed in your ToS is a defensible strategy but could have some risk. To mitigate the risk, you can introduce either a consent banner, consent wall, or both.
It’s an interesting read, and something I wish I’d had a few years ago in a prior role when I wrote my organizations gdpr strategy, though I’m not an expert on EU specific law.
“Defensible strategy” doesn’t mean much until it goes to court and gets tested - just look at all those Cookie Popups in the early days with “user must uncheck everything to Reject” anti-patterns which ended up being ruled as not valid per the GDPR which is why nowadays all the major websites have “Reject All” buttons in those.
So far on everything that had not yet been explicitly clarified, when it did the ball has consistently fallen on the side of explicit user consent on colleting any “user identifying” data beyond that which is technically required for operation and Ad Blocking is not a tecnical requirement for the operation of a video sharing website.
Indeed, it ultimatelly will need to be tested in court. My point is that relying on an expectation that a court will rule that the collection of user private information for remote processing related to a functionality which is not technically required without explicit user consent is ok if there’s some entry somewhere in the ToS, is quite the wild bet as that would be a massive loophole on the GDPR, and further, even if that that did happen, relying on Commission not rush to close such a massive loophole is also a wild bet.
I suppose that’s my point though. Most of this thread, and the page linked have been asserting clear and unequivocal violation of gdpr, but that doesn’t appear to be true. It hasn’t been tested or ruled on authoritatively, and the technical mechanism makes s difference as well. There is room to equivocate.
My own personal opinion is that I doubt the EU policy makers or courts will treat the mechanism to ensure the delivery of ads with as much skepticism as they treat tracking, fingerprinting, and other things that violate privacy. Courts and policy interpreters often think of the intent of a law, and I don’t think the intent of GDPR was to potentially undermine ad supported business.
My goal in replying throughout the thread has been to address what feels like misinformation via misplaced certainty. I’m all for explicit consent walls, but most people in this thread don’t seem to be taking an objective look at things.
For some reason your link doesn’t load. Is it this? https://iabeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/20160516-IABEU_Guidance_AdBlockerDetection.pdf
Yep that’s it. I’ll double check the link in my post.
Edit: yep borked the link, fixed now. Thanks for letting me know!
The guy really exudes “don’t you know who I am?” energy. Which is a shame since it detracts from the discussion.
It’s not even clear to me that the mechanism they’re using today is problematic. I don’t know what it is, but the author seems to think they do but aren’t sharing details beyond “trust me bro”. I agree that some kind of inspection-based detection might run afoul of the law, but I don’t see why that’s necessary. All you need to know is that the client is requesting videos without any of the ad requests making it through, which is entirely server-side.
Exactly.
But people are hell bent on “Google doing this, bad”.
Ha ha no. Google needs you more than you need google.
> but but but the ads moneh
If google made so much money from ads, they wouldn’t care if you watched it at all. They want your consumerist data and they can’t get it with adblock.
> but but but muh creators
Most major creators have complained about google shafting them with schizo rules about monetization. The biggers ones have started to sell merch and use other platforms as insurance. You watching those ads gives google more benefits than the creators.
Youtube is NOT essential. You can live without youtube. Simply follow the creators you like on other platforms. If you’re a creator, time to diversify your platform. The iceberg is sighted and it’s time to jump ship.
Google DOES make money from ads. A metric tuckton of it. Why the fuck else would they need your data other than to serve better ads???
I feel like they’re eventually just going to embed the adverts directly into the video streams. No more automated blocking, even downloading will make you see ads. Sure, you can fast forward the video a bit, but it will be annoying enough that you’ll see and hear a few seconds of ads each time, and you won’t be able to just leave it running while you do other things.
the reason they are not doing it is because the ads are personalized. So if they want to bake an ad onto a video they will end up with countless videos each on with their own unique ads which is not viable logistically. So they can only do it on-the-fly. But re-encoding each video on-the-fly for each user is also a nightmare logistically, if not impossible at all.
I don’t think you’d need to re-encode the whole thing on the fly. More frigging the container data around, than the video/audio codec itself.
That way I could request some_pointless_video.mp4 and it sends me 95% the same thing as is already on their server, with adverts jammed into it at defined intervals.
They probably think they can win for now by messing with individual ad-blockers, but with 3rd party players becoming more popular, I can see that being a catch-all solution.
isn’t this more or less what they’re doing now? The difference is that the ads are coming from different server and have an overlay on top with a timer and a skip. As long as the ads are coming from a different server they will be detectable. Also as long as the ads have overlays they are also detectable. They would need to make the ads be served from the same server that serves the video and eliminate the overlays.
That’s the difference. The ads are coming from somewhere else and displayed in a different way.
By injecting it into the stream, there’s no way to detect that. To your player it would all look like it’s coming from the same place. Instead of a ten minute video and a couple of 20 second ads, it’s now just 11 minutes of video.
yes. But then they have different problems. Now it is the ad company who is responsible to serve the ads and the personalization comes from there. This is achieved by the client directly “asking” the ad company for ads. If they want the ads to come from the same stream this means that the customer identity is passed to youtube, then youtube requests the ads in behalf of the client, and then serves them mixed in the video stream. I’m not a lawyer but I think that this causes different legal problems for youtube on the part that they will need to ask the ads on behalf of someone else.
Also apart from that, technically, the part of the video that is an ad, will be associated with a call-to-action URL and an overlay on top of the video, since they need that by clicking on the video it will go to a the ad’s call-to-action instead of just pausing the video. This will still make them detectable
The ad company is Google, no? So they already have that logic ready to go.
Does anybody actually click the ads in YT videos? The only clickable thing I ever see is “Skip Ad”.
Don’t they have standardized resolutions and the file broken into hundreds/thousands of parts anyways? Couldn’t they just add in ads to some of those parts in those same resolutions?
e.g: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP
Similar to Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) solution, MPEG-DASH works by breaking the content into a sequence of small segments, which are served over HTTP.
isn’t this more or less what they’re doing now? The difference is that the ads are coming from different server and have an overlay on top with a timer and a skip. As long as the ads are coming from a different server they will be detectable. Also as long as the ads have overlays they are also detectable. They would need to make the ads be served from the same server that serves the video and eliminate the overlays.
We could build a public database (like SponsorBlock) of known ad video slices and detect them that way.
There will always be a way to detect and block ads.
I’m not worried.
That’s why Google is pushing hard their Web Environment Integrity. It’s DRM for the browser! They want the TPM chip in your computer to attest that the code running processing the video stream is authentic. Then you can’t slice out the ads because you do not have physical access to the inside of TPM. With HDCP encryption on the HDMI video output, you gonna need to point a literal video camera at the physical screen to DVR the video and slice out the ads later.
They’ve been working hard for decades to lock down the video pipeline with TPM and HDCP and now WEI. They said “don’t worry about it” and we let them. They are really close to snapping the trap shut!
Now please excuse me, my tongue is falling off with all the acronyms…
Have you met my friend SponsorBlock?
That only works by users crowdsourcing and flagging the advert sections.
By doing it on the fly, each user could get different ads in different places.
If users are crowdsourcing what the embedded ads are, couldn’t this hypothetical situation be solved by a version of sponserblock that just looks at the agreggurate of the non-flagged video runtime, and learns what the content is and then cuts out any aberrations?
You could have an app running in the background that detects ads based on the audio (like Shazam for music) and skips it for you. You could probably analyse all the video slices YT sends you and detect ads that way. I think as long as we are still in control of the playback devices we can find ways to make them skip ads.
Sure, you could do that.
You could also download the stream multiple times under different profiles, compare them and then strip away differences.
But we’re quickly exiting “one guy with a bit of Javascript” territory.
We left that territory years ago. There are big community projects and entire companies built on providing adblocking features. People will build it if the need and potential audience is great enough.
There even is a project that uses machine learning to detect sponsor segments. https://github.com/xenova/sponsorblock-ml
MythTV has a broadcast television ad detection module and it works pretty damn well.
This goes into a bit of detail on it’s methods:
https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Commercial_detection
A lot of what it does could be applied to a video stream, although adapting it to useful real-time could be tricky.
They can’t do that because of YouTube premium. They know they’re making a lot of money from people who don’t want to see ads.
the problem is not the premium. The problem is the personalized ads.
I’m not talking about the EU’s issue, I’m talking about why they could never embed their own ads in videos. Because people pay for premium specifically to not see ads and they would have a mass cancellation on their hands.
This is a non issue, on twitch if you sub to a streamer you don’t see ads and they are embed in the stream for non paying users still, and it’s pretty hard to block for free.
This is what I was responding to:
I feel like they’re eventually just going to embed the adverts directly into the video streams. No more automated blocking, even downloading will make you see ads.
That would be embedding the ads directly in the videos, which I do not think they will do.
yes. This is what I replied at. Having a version with ads and a version without ads is not that big of an issue. The issue becomes huge because the ads are personalized which means that they cannot even have a version with ads since the ads are different for each user.
It’s an issue of storage space if nothing else. It means doubling all of their videos. Why would they do that? As others have pointed out, they have other options when it comes to dealing with adblockers which don’t violate any EU regulations and even this is pretty tenuous. So they don’t need to do that. They can just prevent the site from working properly if you have an adblocker.
Then those users would get the ad free stream.
Which users? The ones who pay for Premium? That’s the whole point of Premium.
Yes, those users.
Won’t cost them anything near weeks of dev time. They can just write it into their terms of service and prompt you to re-accept those next time you access the site.
Afaik you can’t bypass laws and regulations with ToS
Definetly not if you are not registered. And likely if you are not logged in. This is EU, not US.
You can’t bypass laws, but the law in question only requires permission of the enduser. Getting this permission in your ToS isn’t bypassing anything, it’s acting according to the law.
that’s not true in the EU.
the reason those cookie banners are everywhere, for example, is because the EU requires explicit consent for a lot of things that used to be covered by ToS.
simply putting clauses into your ToS doesn’t shield the company from legal action at all.
regardless of what’s written in the ToS, final say over what is and isn’t legal lies with local authorities, not YouTube.
Here is a guide from a publisher trade group on the implementation of ad block detectors under gdpr.
It says that listing the use in your ToS is a defensible strategy but could have some risk. If the organization wants to further limit risk, they can add a consent banner, consent wall, or both.
My guess is Google is the risk accepting type on this issue and it’s willing to litigate to argue that its ToS is sufficient or the way they implement it differs from cookies. Either way, they could completely make this go away by asking a consent for ad delivery to their cookie notice.
The TOS holds no weight in EU courts.
No matter what some companies want you to believe. That is why they call it a risk.
They could easily put a “consent” requirement to access
And in the war you probably also sided with the Nazis because ‘well they invaded already, might as well give up’
Everyday I think the European Union for preventing the internet from being worse than it could be. It’s sad that back when the internet was a cesspool was so far the best age for it. Normies really do ruin everything
The same EU that threaten E2EE?
The EU has its faults, too, like this BS about sacrificing encryption. Overall, there seem to be a lot of benefits reigning in big companies, though.
Who else is looking out for their citizens? I think some congresspeople in the US ask tough questions, but in the end, business just goes on as usual.
Yes, the same EU. The fact that it’s considering some poor choices doesn’t detract from the fact that it’s actions thus far have been positive and deserve appreciation. Real Life doesn’t split people neatly into heroes and villains.
Don’t be an asshole and blame regular people for shit like this. This is because of big tech
Actually I will, because big Tech used to be on the level because they knew they would be called out for fuckery. Then Facebook brought the Baby Boomers online and it was the Eternal September on steroids.
Those are still actions made by the tech companies. Blaming people for not complaining enough is not the best take on this. Just shifts the blame to the public, not to the people who made those decisions in the first place
This is the same chicken / egg thing as plastic pollutions.
Sure consumers choice of whether to discard or recycle a plastic straw is nothing compared to the decisions of corporations, but then consumers invest in those companies, buy their products, and elect representatives who do not hold them accountable.
Big tech has ruined the internet because people were willing to trade their privacy and their attention in order to watch gifs of cats playing the piano. I’m not “blaming” people for that - hell, I was one of them, but you can’t solve the problem without understanding how it’s perpetuated.
Strictly speaking, management at Big Tech are all normies and they make the decisions.
I think the point is solid: non-tech-people sell capabilities to other non-tech-people to make money, and this forms a feedback loop and drives direction. A non-big-tech world is wildly different because it’s more like tech people building an environment for doing things with other tech people.
Management of big tech are excessively rich assholes. The rich, by the very definition, do not fall into the category of “normal people”
Strictly speaking, that’s nonsense. Is everyone that’s not you a normie? Or is normie a ‘normal person’, which then absolutely does not include rich managers of big tech companies?
Really strange point to make, man.
The normies support big tech, they love it. They probably work for big tech, or wish they did, or at least imagine themselves as the next Elon Musk.
The “normies” don’t even know what these things are. It’s just the big blue “f” on their phone, or the colourful camera icon.
Half this shit is installed by default on pretty much any phone you can buy.
Touch grass bud.
“Don’t be an asshole”? As a response to a short three sentence statement where no one was an asshole…
I think you’re the fucking asshole regardless of how much blame “big tech” and corporations in general bare here.
Slow the fuck down.
It’s not the sheep’s fault they’re led to the meat grinder
If a private company has to succeed, it has to offer things ** that normies want.** FB/G is shit because this is what normies consume - the ego-display, the dopamine kick. In every enshittification of a service, there is a history of it being cravingly indulged by the mass. Now when the companies started rising up and used their monopoly, they (the normies) are realizing they have been shit-eating for a long time. One may argue the companies were not so in the beginning, but that would be a very myopic view.
Normally it wouldn’t be, but these sheep were told “Do not go to this farm or you will be cooked.” and responded with “Pffft, that’ll happen to the other guy…” or “Pfft you’re just whining because you expect everything just handed to you”
But they weren’t led. They were convinced by big tech. But in the end they choose to go into the meat grinder themselves.
But they weren’t led. They were convinced by…
Same difference man
“Normies”? Seriously?
Because “normies” are responsible for the entshitification of the Internet right?
As much as I loathe that term, it could be argued that they indirectly are.
The massive increase in the amount of people online made it profitable for companies to be online. Lack of regulations and the inability for regulators to keep up with technological advancements allowed companies to maximize profits at the expense of everything else. The complete inability of government to prevent monetary influence on legislature has prevented good regulations from developing. The fact that the average person online uses maybe five websites in total and doesn’t engage further means that most issues fly under the radar of the average person, which limits the ability of any significant amount of constituents to pressure the politicians supposedly representing them to do better, and limits the overall impact of any movement away from shitty sites to better ones.
It’s a tangled yarn ball, but one that would struggle to exist without a majority of people to pull money from who just do not care about any of the shit that people more deeply invested in the internet care about.
Honestly, I see your argument. I don’t fully agree with it, but thank you for enlightening me.
They’re also trying to wiretap the whole thing… pay attention to EVERYTHING that’s in a bill, not just the clickbait stuff you agree with.
Every tech article I read nowadays I feel like has the appendix, “which is illegal in the EU.” Lol
The only thing still preventing mayhem along with California
Seriously. Everything causes cancer which has the unfortunate effect of dulling the fear response but it is good to know. If you want to sell your product in California, which is where silicon valley is, you need to observe their safety standards.
And thank the EU we might actually get right to repair.
Elon can block EU for Twitter if he wants to but it’s probably going to cost him even more.
Fuck yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. California is the only reason we don’t have products giving insta-cancer ect.
Cool, so YouTube will start putting pop ups that require you to consent to the detection in order to watch videos. That’s what everyone did with the whole cookies thing when that was determined to be illegal without consent.
that would be illegal too, because that information is not strictly necessary for their service - they could only opt to not provide the service in the eu
I don’t agree. They can reasonably argue that advertising is a requirement of their business model, so it is necessary to advertise. Therefore it is necessary for them to block access to those blocking advertising. The directive cited isn’t intended to make advertiser supported services effectively illegal in the EU. That would be a massive own goal. It’s intended to make deceptive and unnecessary data collection illegal. Nothing YouTube is doing is deceptive. They’re being very clear about their intention to advertise to non-subscribers.
They can reasonably argue that advertising is a requirement of their business model,
Couldn’t that claim be countered by pointing out that they already deploy a for pay approach called youtube premium?
No, because businesses have multiple revenue streams. YouTube has a subscription offering, and a free, advertiser-supported offering. Both are part of their business model.
alright
There are multiple French websites that do this. It is legal (otherwise these websites would not do this anymore, it’s been a while).
There is a popup asking you if you consent to get cookies (for advertisement). If you say “no”, it leads you to another popup with two choices :- Change your decision and accept cookies
- Pay for a premium service without advertisements
That is just because the people who enforce the EDPB guidelines just haven’t come around to fining those websites.
That practice is still illegal.
Want to speed up the process? You can report those websites. The more reports the faster those get punished.
No, that’s not that clear for the moment.
Let me explain the French case :
- Webedia is a big company that owns most of the famous French websites (jeuxvideo.com , etc.). All these websites have cookie walls with an alternative : a paid subsription. What they say, is that the website is now accessible with subscription only. However, if you accept cookies, you’ll get a discount (free access).
- The CNIL (a big French governemental entity) tried to forbid this. If someone reports a website, it’s for this entity to take action. There is no need to report Webedia, the CNIL knows already :-)
- The Conseil d’Etat (juridical entity of the French gov) said that “non”, it’s OK for Webedia to use such paywalls. The CNIL can’t forbid Webedia to use them.
- The CNIL asked the jusrists at the European level… here we are. We still don’t know.
Here is a French website where the CNIL explains this :
https://www.cnil.fr/fr/cookie-walls-la-cnil-publie-des-premiers-criteres-devaluationWell, seems like my gdpr knowledge got too rusty. at least to me its an interesting topic to actualise
Same in Germany and Switzerland. I just close the site immediately when I see this kind of blackmailing. Or use 12ft.io if I absolutely want to read the article.
Nothing more fun than having to go through some websites shitty settings to toggle everything off.
I can heartily recommend Consent-O-Matic. I’d say that it’s able to clear (and reject by default) the cookie warnings on 95% of the sites I visit.
ublock does it too if you enable the “block annoyances” option in the settings
I don’t know why I have not yet donated to these developers. They sure as hell deserve it. As soon as I get home they’re gonna get some moneys!
sadly they’re not accepting donations
I bet the list maintainers accept tips!
At the bottom of the uBlock Origin homepage there’s links to the most popular list homepages which would be a good starting point.
The Peter Lowe’s ad tracking list links to its own Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/blocklist (Confirm by clicking on the link at the uBlock Origin homepage, then at the top click on patreon).
The other ones I couldn’t find any obvious way to donate to the list maintainers.
Sadly, no ublock for me on Safari, but good to know!
Don’t use stupid browsers then ;-)
Duckduckgo browser does it too
Still a curveball. Collecting your data and having to say ot to your face are not the same.
Would be a shame if your answer to that consent question was not saved and would be required to answer each time you open up a video.
which you could get around by using another frontend for youtube or just going with vlc all the way by playing the url in vlc directly.
Firefox’s ‘Play in VLC’ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/play-in-vlc/ is brilliant for this - it does entire playlists too. It works with smpalyer, which is even better player than VLC, IMO.
A lot of the cookie notifications can’t collect data until you accept them (or follow their annoying “opt-out” workflow). If you install UBlock Origin and go to its settings > ‘Filter lists’ and enable the “EasyList - Cookie Notices” you can block a lot of cookies. If they can never nag you and you never opt in, assuming they’re following the law, you shouldn’t be tracked.
I only just posted a meme about the EU flooring companies for going against their regulations. It was my first post too :)
I’d really like to add YouTube to it. Godspeed.
The only government actually doing shit. *Also, California
All these fuckers are our neighbors and for many of us former employers.
We know exactly how they think, and what they think of us.
Andreesen is the tip of the iceberg.
Thank fuck for EU and GDPR
… We’re gonna get another cookie click-through, aren’t we?
Another three cheers for the EU! 🇪🇺🍻🥂
FUCK YEAHHHHHHHH. YOUTUBE IS FUCKED LMAOOOOOOOOOOOO
EU to the rescue again!
Rescue lol. The EU is singlehandedly bringing forth the end of online privacy.
Really interested in your thought process here
Probably referring to this. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
EU wants to make sure I see ads? Screw that. Freaking capitalists. Seems the US doesn’t have a monopoly on capatalism.
unless it is strictly necessary for the provisions of the requested service.
YouTube could quite easily argue that ads fund their service and therefore an adblock detector would be necessary.
that’s not how it is to be interpreted.
it means something like in order for google maps to show you your position they NEED to access your device’s gps service, otherwise maps by design can not display your position.Just replying to confirm that “strictly necessary” has never meant, “makes us money.” It means technically necessary.
Correct. Youtube can still play videos on your screen on a technical level without the need for adblocker detection. Their financial situation is not relevant in that respect.
Adblock detection has literally already been ruled on though (it needs consent). I’m sure there are nuances above my understanding, but it’s not that simple.
You consent to their terms of service and privacy policy when you access their website by your continued use. They disclose the collection of browser behavior and more in the privacy policy. I suspect they are covered here but I don’t specialize in EU policy.
Their terms of service have to be compliant with local laws though. You can’t just put whatever you want in there and expect it to stand up in court.
This is true. And I’ll disclaim again that I’m not an expert on EU law or policy. But I’m not familiar with a US policy or law that would preclude that consent to collection from being a condition of use. I’ve written these policies for organizations, and I think it will be a difficult argument to make. I’d love to read an analysis by a lawyer or policy writer who specializes in the EU.
Not an expert either, but from what I’ve seen, the EU actually has some amount of consumer protection. The USA on the other hand mostly lets big corporations get away with whatever they want, as long as they make some “donations”.
I haven’t agreed to any new terms and the adblocker appears for me
Assuming it didn’t exist for months or years before this. As far as I know, blocking ads has always been against ToS.
This sign can’t stop me because I can’t read!
Also required should be YouTube accepting liability for damage done by malicious ads or hacks injecting malware onto user systems via ad infrastructure.
Why wouldn’t the hacker just be liable instead?
Because Google is the one trying to force consumers to raw dog the internet.
Their precedent is that they sold our data for 20 years before this and are now the biggest company in the world, so they can go pound sand.
In the interest of making criticisms factually correct, they don’t “sell” user data, they make money through targeted advertising using user data. They actually benefit by being the only ones with your data, it’s not in their interest to sell it.
That’s a very good point. I’m not very aware of EU regulations, I wonder if there has been established precedent in court
Call me naive, but doing something illegal is never OK in the eyes of the law, whether I deem it necessary or not. I would have to receive a legal exception to the rule, as it were. As it stands, it’s illegal.
doing something illegal is never OK in the eyes of the law
yeah, doing something illegal is illegal, hard to argue with that tautology.
but you seem to be living under the impression that immoral = illegal, which is not the case.
I think what they were saying is that the law specifically makes exceptions for things that are necessary. Others are saying ads are not necessary per the law’s definition, but that’s a separate issue.
Saving Jews during the holocaust in Germany was illegal. How naive are you?
I am not paying for Premium again until they bring the dislike button back.
I am not paying for Premium.
It was pathetic for them to hide away this button with its statistics. Honestly it’s an valuable tool.
Too many big companies got their feefees hurtied because we downthumbered their stupid announcements. Think of them for once 😭
UP RYD!
As if it made any real difference while we had it…
Shouldn’t have been paying for it in the first place.
Don’t ask how, but my dad found out that at least with Ublock, cleaning the cache in the addon makes it bypass the stupid pop-up.
As an English person I thought yay that means us. Then I remembered. . .
Not that the social media corps have ever given a shit.
You should all go file a complaint with a data protection agency.
The thread in the linked social network suggests concentrating the complaints to the Irish DPC: https://forms.dataprotection.ie/contact
It seems like it worked, the same guy published an update asking people to stop filing the same complaint again and again. The agency is looking into it.
Thanks for highlighting this, I might have missed it otherwise.
expired
I didn’t know either, but I figured any option is better, the filings are read by humans after all. Still, as another poster pointed out, the agency is already investigating.
