Today I filed a formal complaint against #YouTube with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner for their illegal deployment of #adblock detection technologies.
Under Article 5(3) of 2002/58/EC YouTube are legally obligated to obtain consent before storing or accessing information already stored on an end user's terminal equipment unless it is strictly necessary for the provisions of the requested service.
In 2016 the EU Commission confirmed in writing that adblock detection requires consent.
Like I get the sentiment, and I use YouTube with uBlock Origin to avoid paying, but if you’re not willing to pay and you’re not willing to watch ads what are you proposing?
I didn’t say they can’t serve any ads. I said they’re drowning us in them - which even then I could tolerate except all the data they mine from us is ridiculous. Then they use opaque terms to weaponize it back at us to make us into little addicts who can’t look away and/or sell it to third parties. I do not agree with that so I do everything I can to make my telemetry worthless or otherwise inaccessible.
This is a distinction that some defenders miss. A lot of people who use ad-blockers would be fine with ads if they were restrained and not too obtrusive. But the amount and frequency of ads only seem to increase. Something that would be difficult to justify, because time does not suffer inflation.
We went from 1 skippable 5 second ad per video to multiple ads every 10 minutes or so, sometimes even unskippable 15+ second ads or even more ads in a row. When is it going to be enough? Are we supposed to take them on their word that this is necessary, simply assuming that they need it because they don’t even share financial numbers? Is our only other option to pay up, once again, the amount that they decided is a fair compensation and also keep increasing?
Seems that at the very least some way for the users to negotiate what they believe is fair is lacking in this matter. On the lack of that, no wonder some people just decide they refuse to be squeezed forever.
Adversarial tech, like adblockers, is good. We should use it. If people want users to not want to use it, they should change the product so that we don’t want to use it.
It’s not illegal for me to use an ad blocker and it should never become illegal.
But the amount and frequency of ads only seem to increase. Something that would be difficult to justify, because time does not suffer inflation.
I mean time doesn’t, but cost of ads can be cheaper due to competition and then because lots of people use adblockers they need to push more ads on those who don’t block it, really not hard to justify, plus they are a publicly owned company which means they will always suffer from the same problems every other publicly traded company does under capitalism, having to keep growing forever with ever increasing quarterly profits.
Seems that at the very least some way for the users to negotiate what they believe is fair is lacking in this matter. On the lack of that, no wonder some people just decide they refuse to be squeezed forever.
I mean, you can literally just not use the platform, that’s your negotiating power, but you don’t want that, nor ads, nor paying for it, you want it for free, I mean, I don’t blame you for it, I want shit for free too, who doesn’t, just not how the world works at the moment.
If you want to be this cynical about it I can only tell you one thing: the world does work like that, because people can get away with it and they do.
Yeah corporations can decide to sell our time, eyeballs and data for smaller and smaller fractions of a penny without asking us. Because clearly it isn’t about what is fair and equitable, it’s not about making sure every party gets what they deserve, it’s about what they can get away with.
Considering how much tech companies get away with, if anyone wants to moralize over not giving them what they demand, I can only laugh.
I mean they asked you, they told you the exact amount they won’t do that for, you don’t want to pay it, so they engaged you in a weapons race of adblockers vs adblocker detectors.
the world works like that because that’s how the world works currently, because that’s the point of evolution we are at, we haven’t yet moved past the capitalist system.
Because clearly it isn’t about what is fair and equitable, it’s not about making sure every party gets what they deserve, it’s about what they can get away with.
are we still talking about fucking youtube videos or did the conversation somehow changed to be about access to drinking water? damn bro, it’s youtube, a time-sink platform, you don’t need it to live
You are the one who are trying to make a big deal over what people ought to do and how the world works over ads. If you don’t think that’s not worth arguing about, then I dunno why you’re still at it.
I definitely don’t think using an ad blocker is a moral battleground, I’m more baffled by the idea that Google needs defending over this.
I just dislike people making arguments that are really about their entitlement and try to pass it off as something else.
you could make some fair points, that youtube is essentially a monopoly and that locking some educational content behind a pay/adwall is unfairly disadvantageous to people with less money, but nope, your problem is that:
Is our only other option to pay up, once again, the amount that they decided is a fair compensation and also keep increasing?
Seems that at the very least some way for the users to negotiate what they believe is fair is lacking in this matter.
“How dare they ask us for money, why don’t they ask us how much we want to pay? it’s so unfair, why don’t they just run their service for free??”
it’s a bit whingy, innit?
, then I dunno why you’re still at it.
I have covid so I have some free time to tire my brain out calling out whingy shit.
How is YouTube a monopoly? You can use other platforms, YouTube is just the most popular. There aren’t many because it’s wildly unprofitable and people refuse to pay for it.
I’ve had Premium since whenever it was first introduced (a decade at this point?) and I’ve never seen a youtube-provided ad during that time, assuming I’m logged into the appropriate account.
I had it for a long time too and never did until maybe… idk 2 months ago? And they only show up on specific videos that have shows/movies associated with it.
So in this case, I was watching game grumps play peppa pig (would recommend lol) and it showed me this right under the vid.
Huh. 98% of my youtube consumption is on either TV or phone apps at this point, though, so they really wouldn’t have a place to put something like that. Or maybe they would and I just haven’t watched anything that would have it. Who knows.
Paramount Plus definitely likes shoving a 30 second ad before your show even on the ad-free plan, though…
Well, there are no YouTube-served ads but a lot of vloggers are using sponsored segments to better monetize their channels. So that’s where sponsor block comes in.
The existence of the paid offering doesn’t invalidate use of the free offering, regardless of whether people are permitting ads on the latter. Any given Youtube page is just a collection of web elements and a call to a video server: these things get loaded or blocked at my sole discretion. My hardware, my web browser, my internet bandwidth, my opsec, my time.
If I put household items out on the nature strip, I have no expectation that passers-by will have a cup of tea with me first, then take every item as an indivisible lot. So my proposal to Google is: take those items off the nature strip, put them back inside the house and lock the door. Until they do that, no issue exists, despite the company’s efforts to fabricate one.
I’ve recently been downvoted to oblivion for writing this exact thing, talking about online newspapers.
People don’t want ads and they don’t want to pay. They just expect to get stuff for free and I can’t decide if that’s because Lemmy is either filled with spoiled brats, or people who genuinely do not know how the world works, or both.
In their partial defence, I must say that the way companies have used the Internet up until a few years ago may have led them to believe that free content is a thing.
And, before someone comes along and tries to tear me a new one, YES, I do use uBlock on sites that harvest too many data (e.g. anything by Google) or sites that are too aggressive with ads. But at least I know that I’m either a freeloader or, in the best case scenario, a protester. And I know that, if everyone did the same, so much of the internet would just shut down or go behind paywalls.
I provide financial support to the services I believe in, Washington Post, NYT, Nebula, previously HBO, a few others.
But it’s absolutely on my terms. If I were a broke college student. I’d have no issues pirating literally everything. As it is, I’ll find ways to get the stuff from companies that get too greedy. “Public secrets for sale” isn’t a thing, and that’s all data of any form really is. The difference between someone telling you the basic plot of a movie and telling you every pixel of the movie isn’t all that far apart, just the amount of data they’re repeating.
that’s my take too, everyone wants free youtube, well the servers aren’t free, the content creators don’t do it for free, youtube is as big as it is and has as varied content it has is because they provide a platform, but then people want to watch it both for free and without ads.
I cannot get ad-free experience with YT Premium. I can only get ad-free videos bundled with a whole bunch of other useless shit I will never use like YT Music. And the simple reason why I cannot get only ad-free videos is because then I would pay them less, so they don’t give me the option.
There’s a paid service though.
Like I get the sentiment, and I use YouTube with uBlock Origin to avoid paying, but if you’re not willing to pay and you’re not willing to watch ads what are you proposing?
I didn’t say they can’t serve any ads. I said they’re drowning us in them - which even then I could tolerate except all the data they mine from us is ridiculous. Then they use opaque terms to weaponize it back at us to make us into little addicts who can’t look away and/or sell it to third parties. I do not agree with that so I do everything I can to make my telemetry worthless or otherwise inaccessible.
This is a distinction that some defenders miss. A lot of people who use ad-blockers would be fine with ads if they were restrained and not too obtrusive. But the amount and frequency of ads only seem to increase. Something that would be difficult to justify, because time does not suffer inflation.
We went from 1 skippable 5 second ad per video to multiple ads every 10 minutes or so, sometimes even unskippable 15+ second ads or even more ads in a row. When is it going to be enough? Are we supposed to take them on their word that this is necessary, simply assuming that they need it because they don’t even share financial numbers? Is our only other option to pay up, once again, the amount that they decided is a fair compensation and also keep increasing?
Seems that at the very least some way for the users to negotiate what they believe is fair is lacking in this matter. On the lack of that, no wonder some people just decide they refuse to be squeezed forever.
And let’s be honest about who this is paying: Alphabet’s 2023 Annual Meeting of Stockholders.
Adversarial tech, like adblockers, is good. We should use it. If people want users to not want to use it, they should change the product so that we don’t want to use it.
It’s not illegal for me to use an ad blocker and it should never become illegal.
I mean time doesn’t, but cost of ads can be cheaper due to competition and then because lots of people use adblockers they need to push more ads on those who don’t block it, really not hard to justify, plus they are a publicly owned company which means they will always suffer from the same problems every other publicly traded company does under capitalism, having to keep growing forever with ever increasing quarterly profits.
I mean, you can literally just not use the platform, that’s your negotiating power, but you don’t want that, nor ads, nor paying for it, you want it for free, I mean, I don’t blame you for it, I want shit for free too, who doesn’t, just not how the world works at the moment.
If you want to be this cynical about it I can only tell you one thing: the world does work like that, because people can get away with it and they do.
Yeah corporations can decide to sell our time, eyeballs and data for smaller and smaller fractions of a penny without asking us. Because clearly it isn’t about what is fair and equitable, it’s not about making sure every party gets what they deserve, it’s about what they can get away with.
Considering how much tech companies get away with, if anyone wants to moralize over not giving them what they demand, I can only laugh.
I mean they asked you, they told you the exact amount they won’t do that for, you don’t want to pay it, so they engaged you in a weapons race of adblockers vs adblocker detectors.
the world works like that because that’s how the world works currently, because that’s the point of evolution we are at, we haven’t yet moved past the capitalist system.
are we still talking about fucking youtube videos or did the conversation somehow changed to be about access to drinking water? damn bro, it’s youtube, a time-sink platform, you don’t need it to live
You are the one who are trying to make a big deal over what people ought to do and how the world works over ads. If you don’t think that’s not worth arguing about, then I dunno why you’re still at it.
I definitely don’t think using an ad blocker is a moral battleground, I’m more baffled by the idea that Google needs defending over this.
I just dislike people making arguments that are really about their entitlement and try to pass it off as something else.
you could make some fair points, that youtube is essentially a monopoly and that locking some educational content behind a pay/adwall is unfairly disadvantageous to people with less money, but nope, your problem is that:
“How dare they ask us for money, why don’t they ask us how much we want to pay? it’s so unfair, why don’t they just run their service for free??”
it’s a bit whingy, innit?
I have covid so I have some free time to tire my brain out calling out whingy shit.
Sounding like you do want to argue about this. If you don’t think this is a big deal then maybe stop nagging people over petty stuff.
Wow this is the dumbest argument for a monopoly I’ve ever read
How is YouTube a monopoly? You can use other platforms, YouTube is just the most popular. There aren’t many because it’s wildly unprofitable and people refuse to pay for it.
Read the room pal. Nobody agrees with you. It’s time to stop.
They themselves are creating ZERO content. It’s the users who are creating content.
I paid for paid for premium for a while. Then it showed me an ad for paramount + anyways. So I said fuck you google and installed an ad blocker.
Point being I was willing and did pay for the premium service. But even “ad free with premium” still wasn’t ad free. It was “ad reduced”
I’ve had Premium since whenever it was first introduced (a decade at this point?) and I’ve never seen a youtube-provided ad during that time, assuming I’m logged into the appropriate account.
I had it for a long time too and never did until maybe… idk 2 months ago? And they only show up on specific videos that have shows/movies associated with it.
So in this case, I was watching game grumps play peppa pig (would recommend lol) and it showed me this right under the vid.
Huh. 98% of my youtube consumption is on either TV or phone apps at this point, though, so they really wouldn’t have a place to put something like that. Or maybe they would and I just haven’t watched anything that would have it. Who knows.
Paramount Plus definitely likes shoving a 30 second ad before your show even on the ad-free plan, though…
There are stil ads with the paid service as i understand it.
Well, there are no YouTube-served ads but a lot of vloggers are using sponsored segments to better monetize their channels. So that’s where sponsor block comes in.
there are not
I’ve never seen an ad and I’ve had yt premium for 6+ years
The existence of the paid offering doesn’t invalidate use of the free offering, regardless of whether people are permitting ads on the latter. Any given Youtube page is just a collection of web elements and a call to a video server: these things get loaded or blocked at my sole discretion. My hardware, my web browser, my internet bandwidth, my opsec, my time.
If I put household items out on the nature strip, I have no expectation that passers-by will have a cup of tea with me first, then take every item as an indivisible lot. So my proposal to Google is: take those items off the nature strip, put them back inside the house and lock the door. Until they do that, no issue exists, despite the company’s efforts to fabricate one.
I’ve recently been downvoted to oblivion for writing this exact thing, talking about online newspapers.
People don’t want ads and they don’t want to pay. They just expect to get stuff for free and I can’t decide if that’s because Lemmy is either filled with spoiled brats, or people who genuinely do not know how the world works, or both.
In their partial defence, I must say that the way companies have used the Internet up until a few years ago may have led them to believe that free content is a thing.
And, before someone comes along and tries to tear me a new one, YES, I do use uBlock on sites that harvest too many data (e.g. anything by Google) or sites that are too aggressive with ads. But at least I know that I’m either a freeloader or, in the best case scenario, a protester. And I know that, if everyone did the same, so much of the internet would just shut down or go behind paywalls.
I provide financial support to the services I believe in, Washington Post, NYT, Nebula, previously HBO, a few others.
But it’s absolutely on my terms. If I were a broke college student. I’d have no issues pirating literally everything. As it is, I’ll find ways to get the stuff from companies that get too greedy. “Public secrets for sale” isn’t a thing, and that’s all data of any form really is. The difference between someone telling you the basic plot of a movie and telling you every pixel of the movie isn’t all that far apart, just the amount of data they’re repeating.
Nah, it’s neither.
It’s that while I do enjoy whatever it is, if it were to disappear because I’m ad blocking and won’t sub then … ohh well?
There are a select few groups I actually care about and I donate to them (like PBS).
Anything else will either find a way or die but I don’t care which.
that’s my take too, everyone wants free youtube, well the servers aren’t free, the content creators don’t do it for free, youtube is as big as it is and has as varied content it has is because they provide a platform, but then people want to watch it both for free and without ads.
I cannot get ad-free experience with YT Premium. I can only get ad-free videos bundled with a whole bunch of other useless shit I will never use like YT Music. And the simple reason why I cannot get only ad-free videos is because then I would pay them less, so they don’t give me the option.
lol you got downvoted for a perfectly reasonable question, it’s like Reddit all over again