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.
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.
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.
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.
This is why I’ve never had an issue blocking ads. Pick a couple creators you like, join their patreon or buy some merch. You owe YT nothing.
If Google wasn’t so shady with their practices including playing extremely fast and loose with our data and trust, I MIGHT have the goodwill to sit through 50% of the commercials they inject suddenly with no respect for the place they’re added in the content. 100% though? I’m honestly shocked anyone can sit through it.
I’d disagree here. To me it seems like YouTube isn’t a monopoly because Google is being monopolistic with it (if you do have any examples of this, please show me) but rather because of the ridiculous scale and expense of such a project. The infrastructure to support something like YouTube at the scale of YouTube is insane, and I doubt many organisations or companies have the ability to even dream of it, not to mention the extreme network effect with something like YouTube. Google doesn’t have to be monopolistic (I’m sure they would be if there were viable competitors, sure, not saying that Google’s a saint) because it’s almost impossible to compete just in sheer complexity and cost.
It’s kind of like how the entire semiconductor industry is dependent on lithography machines from one company: ASML. But that’s not because they’re being anti-competetive, it’s because their products are insanely, extremely complex, precise and advanced. Decades upon decades and billions and billions of RnD.
The big problem with Google is that they are in, or a part of, almost everything on the internet, and it all funnels users back to them one way or another.
Their search favors their own things, so if you search for anything, YouTube will come up most of the time. This by itself is enough to kill competition. Their search also recommends their browser heavily if you’re not using it, which is how they became the most-used browser, which defaults to their search, which by default recommends YouTube in most searches.
Even if you don’t use Chrome, don’t worry because they will pay absolutely nuts money to be the default search on their competitors browsers, which is again more people to YouTube. And if that isn’t enough, most browsers are built on Chromium, which Google maintains, meaning they can sway the course of their competitors browsers over the long term, which they are doing by selectively killing and bringing in certain technologies over years.
Android, which is also Google, I believe has YouTube installed by default, or at least all of my phones have had it. Trying to compete with defaults is almost unachievable. It’s easy to think that people will change settings, but most people don’t.
I agree that the technology and infrastructure needed to run YouTube is huge, and it’s amazing, but that’s only part of the story. Google has so much control of so many things that even if you could build the same thing, that’s only the beginning.
But it’s not only YouTube, it’s the same for Gmail. Gmail has so much market share that they can kill competitors by making another email service seem unreliable. And all of their services point back to Gmail.
It’s not just that they have a monopoly on video, they have a monopoly on the whole internet.
Don’t put all the financial costs on one single company. Spread the financial costs out among lots of people and run small peertube servers. If a creator becomes popular, then the people watching their videos at the same time will be sharing the video with anybody else who loads it afterwards and take load off the server so it does not crash.
PeerTube needs a better way to monetize videos, I think. I know the Fediverse and FOSS community is generally against paying for things like content, but the fact is that most content creators aren’t gonna create for free.
Back when it was unintrusive banner ads and the like? Sure, you might have had a point then. But now, with multiple unskippable 2 minute ads, before, during, and after the video? Fuck no.
The thing is, YouTube has no value to me. The only reason I use it is because of the creators on there. They make the content and they deserve my money but if I could, I would use a different platform.
YouTube has created a Monopoly, which makes it impossible to watch the videos anywhere but on their platform tho.
The reason I don’t like YouTube is because they remove features everyone wanted to keep, then add stuff nobody ever wanted. They demonetize creators for no reason all the time and a lot of the rules they have for staying monetized are stupid and actively make the content worse, like not being allowed to swear. The DMCA takedown system is also extremely flawed, you can literally file a takedown for any video and they’ll instantly remove it and give the creators channel a strike without checking anything about the takedown request. This has led to channels being removed (3 strikes and your channel gets removed), eventhough they didn’t even do anything wrong. And even if the DMCA takedown is actually justified, you get a strike even when the video is years old, which is stupid because you can’t remember every single video, so you shouldn’t get a strike if it’s that old already. Communication with YouTube, when they’ve once again made a mistake, is also very difficult because the only way to reach them is though Twitter and also only if your tweet gets popular enough that they actually see it or care about it.
AdBlockers are the only way to vote with your wallet. A service with this many huge flaws is nothing I want to support or even use.
Strictly speaking, isn’t that exactly how the DMCA is designed to work? Aren’t they technically violating it anytime they actually review something manually and decide to ignore a DMCA notice? I don’t think how Google responds to DMCA notices has really been tested with respect to keeping their safe harbor protections.
Removing content that didn’t violate the DMCA is not how it should work and older content should obviously still be removed but you don’t have to get a strike for that
The problem is there’s the statutory notice and takedown then counter-notice then lawsuit process that must be followed. There is also a requirement to have a policy to deal with repeat infringers and that doesn’t really have an ‘only for new content’ exception as it’s generally all still under copyright. If Google doesn’t follow those requirements, they can be found liable for the copyright violations instead of being covered under the safe harbor. No business is going to want to open themselves up to that kind of potential liability for all the thousands of hours of videos they get a day.
That said, the whole ContentID and non-DMCA copyright process they have is on them, as that part is voluntary (to some extent, they got pressured by the music industry and friends).
When you say YouTube crested a monopoly, what do you mean? There are tons of video hosting and streaming websites. Basically all social media platforms have video now, as well.
I mean that I can’t really use other video platforms because the content I want is on YouTube. If you upload videos you also kind of have to use YouTube because otherwise almost no one is going to see your videos and you also can’t really make money with it.
I watch plenty of YouTube, so I get the attraction. But at the same time that’s basically like saying your favorite ketchup brand has a monopoly on ketchup just because it’s your favorite. You have the power to switch ketchup brands, very easily actually, and you also have the power to watch other content on other platforms. I think talking about YouTube like it’s a monopoly is actually empowering to Google. They want you to think it’s a monopoly.
do you think that the content creators that you enjoy would be able to exist as profitable businesses
I’m probably showing my age, but there was a time in human history, where people created things not because it was or could be a profitable business, but because they were inspired to share their vision, or humor, or art with the world. In the years before 2008, and in this mythical time on the internet, we did and were and created simply “for the lulz”. If anything, I think that focusing on the idea that your job on the internet is to “generate content” is a toxic leak from neoliberalism/ VC culture. Its the commoditization of the self.
No one joined SA’s or Farks photoshop contests because it made them money. We did it because it allowed us to be funny, to one another, for one another. We pitched in together to cover the server costs and that was that. In fact, that’s how Reddit stayed alive. We pitched in together to cover server costs so that we could do things for ourselves (memes, nudes, music, whatever…). I learned to code making crappy flash games for new grounds not because it was profitable, but because it was fun, and cool to be a part of a community who loved to make thing and then give them away.
The enshitification of all things is a symptom of a broader issue, which is the commoditization of the process of self actualization, which happens through lived experience. The human desire to build, to create, to make art, to talk, chat and communicate; its part of a process where we find out who we are.
There are plenty of things in life that are worth doing that aren’t profitable. The ideal that we should allow a neo-liberal doctrine to determine how we find out about ourselves via our creative expression, for me, is worth resisting.
I think it’s awesome that some people would create awesome things just for the love of creation and of sharing it with other people. However, I think we all know that the vast majority of current creators would not create if they couldn’t make money from it anymore. Do we really want that world?
That’s all a bit separate from the YouTube ads conversation, more about money in entertainment more broadly.
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.
Blargerer is probably saying that because the Mastodon post OP linked to says “In 2016 the EU Commission confirmed in writing that adblock detection requires consent.”
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.
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”.
Also required should be YouTube accepting liability for damage done by malicious ads or hacks injecting malware onto user systems via ad infrastructure.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is why I’ve never had an issue blocking ads. Pick a couple creators you like, join their patreon or buy some merch. You owe YT nothing.
This so much! Same argument for piracy tbh.
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Sure, but Google has created a monopoly where no one else can even compete.
If Google wasn’t so shady with their practices including playing extremely fast and loose with our data and trust, I MIGHT have the goodwill to sit through 50% of the commercials they inject suddenly with no respect for the place they’re added in the content. 100% though? I’m honestly shocked anyone can sit through it.
They do evil, or at least won’t not do evil.
And they require us to trust them?
I’d disagree here. To me it seems like YouTube isn’t a monopoly because Google is being monopolistic with it (if you do have any examples of this, please show me) but rather because of the ridiculous scale and expense of such a project. The infrastructure to support something like YouTube at the scale of YouTube is insane, and I doubt many organisations or companies have the ability to even dream of it, not to mention the extreme network effect with something like YouTube. Google doesn’t have to be monopolistic (I’m sure they would be if there were viable competitors, sure, not saying that Google’s a saint) because it’s almost impossible to compete just in sheer complexity and cost.
It’s kind of like how the entire semiconductor industry is dependent on lithography machines from one company: ASML. But that’s not because they’re being anti-competetive, it’s because their products are insanely, extremely complex, precise and advanced. Decades upon decades and billions and billions of RnD.
The big problem with Google is that they are in, or a part of, almost everything on the internet, and it all funnels users back to them one way or another.
Their search favors their own things, so if you search for anything, YouTube will come up most of the time. This by itself is enough to kill competition. Their search also recommends their browser heavily if you’re not using it, which is how they became the most-used browser, which defaults to their search, which by default recommends YouTube in most searches.
Even if you don’t use Chrome, don’t worry because they will pay absolutely nuts money to be the default search on their competitors browsers, which is again more people to YouTube. And if that isn’t enough, most browsers are built on Chromium, which Google maintains, meaning they can sway the course of their competitors browsers over the long term, which they are doing by selectively killing and bringing in certain technologies over years.
Android, which is also Google, I believe has YouTube installed by default, or at least all of my phones have had it. Trying to compete with defaults is almost unachievable. It’s easy to think that people will change settings, but most people don’t.
I agree that the technology and infrastructure needed to run YouTube is huge, and it’s amazing, but that’s only part of the story. Google has so much control of so many things that even if you could build the same thing, that’s only the beginning.
But it’s not only YouTube, it’s the same for Gmail. Gmail has so much market share that they can kill competitors by making another email service seem unreliable. And all of their services point back to Gmail.
It’s not just that they have a monopoly on video, they have a monopoly on the whole internet.
Don’t put all the financial costs on one single company. Spread the financial costs out among lots of people and run small peertube servers. If a creator becomes popular, then the people watching their videos at the same time will be sharing the video with anybody else who loads it afterwards and take load off the server so it does not crash.
PeerTube needs a better way to monetize videos, I think. I know the Fediverse and FOSS community is generally against paying for things like content, but the fact is that most content creators aren’t gonna create for free.
deleted by creator
You can start uploading your videos somewhere else right now. You won’t, because everyone is on YouTube.
That’s called the network effect, and we’re to blame for maintaining it.
What do you mean? Google has a bunch of competitors.
Back when it was unintrusive banner ads and the like? Sure, you might have had a point then. But now, with multiple unskippable 2 minute ads, before, during, and after the video? Fuck no.
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The thing is, YouTube has no value to me. The only reason I use it is because of the creators on there. They make the content and they deserve my money but if I could, I would use a different platform. YouTube has created a Monopoly, which makes it impossible to watch the videos anywhere but on their platform tho.
The reason I don’t like YouTube is because they remove features everyone wanted to keep, then add stuff nobody ever wanted. They demonetize creators for no reason all the time and a lot of the rules they have for staying monetized are stupid and actively make the content worse, like not being allowed to swear. The DMCA takedown system is also extremely flawed, you can literally file a takedown for any video and they’ll instantly remove it and give the creators channel a strike without checking anything about the takedown request. This has led to channels being removed (3 strikes and your channel gets removed), eventhough they didn’t even do anything wrong. And even if the DMCA takedown is actually justified, you get a strike even when the video is years old, which is stupid because you can’t remember every single video, so you shouldn’t get a strike if it’s that old already. Communication with YouTube, when they’ve once again made a mistake, is also very difficult because the only way to reach them is though Twitter and also only if your tweet gets popular enough that they actually see it or care about it.
AdBlockers are the only way to vote with your wallet. A service with this many huge flaws is nothing I want to support or even use.
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Strictly speaking, isn’t that exactly how the DMCA is designed to work? Aren’t they technically violating it anytime they actually review something manually and decide to ignore a DMCA notice? I don’t think how Google responds to DMCA notices has really been tested with respect to keeping their safe harbor protections.
Removing content that didn’t violate the DMCA is not how it should work and older content should obviously still be removed but you don’t have to get a strike for that
The problem is there’s the statutory notice and takedown then counter-notice then lawsuit process that must be followed. There is also a requirement to have a policy to deal with repeat infringers and that doesn’t really have an ‘only for new content’ exception as it’s generally all still under copyright. If Google doesn’t follow those requirements, they can be found liable for the copyright violations instead of being covered under the safe harbor. No business is going to want to open themselves up to that kind of potential liability for all the thousands of hours of videos they get a day.
That said, the whole ContentID and non-DMCA copyright process they have is on them, as that part is voluntary (to some extent, they got pressured by the music industry and friends).
The creators are free to upload content anywhere they want without restrictions. It’s not YouTube’s fault that they don’t.
Uploading content to other websites is just not worth it. You won’t get views anywhere else.
When you say YouTube crested a monopoly, what do you mean? There are tons of video hosting and streaming websites. Basically all social media platforms have video now, as well.
I mean that I can’t really use other video platforms because the content I want is on YouTube. If you upload videos you also kind of have to use YouTube because otherwise almost no one is going to see your videos and you also can’t really make money with it.
I watch plenty of YouTube, so I get the attraction. But at the same time that’s basically like saying your favorite ketchup brand has a monopoly on ketchup just because it’s your favorite. You have the power to switch ketchup brands, very easily actually, and you also have the power to watch other content on other platforms. I think talking about YouTube like it’s a monopoly is actually empowering to Google. They want you to think it’s a monopoly.
I don’t disagree with what you are saying, but its really not my problem and I don’t feel obliged to help them make money.
Its not my problem if their service is costly and not profitable. They don’t have to do it. I have no moral obligation to them being profitable.
deleted by creator
I’m probably showing my age, but there was a time in human history, where people created things not because it was or could be a profitable business, but because they were inspired to share their vision, or humor, or art with the world. In the years before 2008, and in this mythical time on the internet, we did and were and created simply “for the lulz”. If anything, I think that focusing on the idea that your job on the internet is to “generate content” is a toxic leak from neoliberalism/ VC culture. Its the commoditization of the self.
No one joined SA’s or Farks photoshop contests because it made them money. We did it because it allowed us to be funny, to one another, for one another. We pitched in together to cover the server costs and that was that. In fact, that’s how Reddit stayed alive. We pitched in together to cover server costs so that we could do things for ourselves (memes, nudes, music, whatever…). I learned to code making crappy flash games for new grounds not because it was profitable, but because it was fun, and cool to be a part of a community who loved to make thing and then give them away.
The enshitification of all things is a symptom of a broader issue, which is the commoditization of the process of self actualization, which happens through lived experience. The human desire to build, to create, to make art, to talk, chat and communicate; its part of a process where we find out who we are.
There are plenty of things in life that are worth doing that aren’t profitable. The ideal that we should allow a neo-liberal doctrine to determine how we find out about ourselves via our creative expression, for me, is worth resisting.
deleted by creator
I think it’s awesome that some people would create awesome things just for the love of creation and of sharing it with other people. However, I think we all know that the vast majority of current creators would not create if they couldn’t make money from it anymore. Do we really want that world?
That’s all a bit separate from the YouTube ads conversation, more about money in entertainment more broadly.
It’s Google. They can afford it.
Just replying to confirm that “strictly necessary” has never meant, “makes us money.” It means technically necessary.
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.
Do you have a link to the EU requiring consent to detect ad blocking?
Most of what I can find is from the late 2010s but specifically says that consent is not required for adblock detection. https://adguard.com/en/blog/eu-defines-its-stance-on-ad-blockers.html
https://iabeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/20160516-IABEU_Guidance_AdBlockerDetection.pdf
But also: I assume consent can be obtained with a mandatory TOS update.
Blargerer is probably saying that because the Mastodon post OP linked to says “In 2016 the EU Commission confirmed in writing that adblock detection requires consent.”
That, in turn, is probably referring to a letter received from the European Commission by the same person, which you can see here: https://twitter.com/alexanderhanff/status/722861362607747072
It’s not exactly a “ruling”, but it’s still pretty convincing.
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.
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?