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Quotes from original author: >in order for YouTube to detect the use of adblockers, they are using javascript in the client to detect various behaviours. >The

Quotes from original author: >in order for YouTube to detect the use of adblockers, they are using javascript in the client to detect various behaviours. >The deployment of that js file itself requires consent, the running of the javascript within the browser to ascertain how the browser is behaving also requires consent - there is no other legal basis available under the relevant law. >There is no escape clause here for YouTube, we have EU case law which is binding on all* Member States supporting this.* Wait, what? You got to be kidding me. This law would make it illegal to operate 99% of websites in the world in EU. This just feels like some people don't want to watch ads that makes Youtube free so they're trying to use whatever existing law to try to get Youtube to remove the ads. Youtube is funded by ads. It's their way of keeping the service free. Youtube also pays creators with the ad money. If anything, using an adblocker should be "more" illegal than what Youtube is doing. Can we get some common sense here?

sublinear 3y ago
Feed the entire Web API to a WASM binary. General enough to not have intent. Problem solved?
- salawat 3y ago
  Still requires consent to run on a user's machine if shipped. What Google et al are desperately trying to keep people from waking up to is that they have been treating your computer as theirs for the purposes of profit taking for decades. They've also tried to shape case law to normalize that state of affairs in their favor. Their legal and lobbying departments are there for more than just contract writing.
aurareturn 3y ago
More hot takes from the author: that they are unable to come up with a lawful business model is not my (or anyone elses) concern. There is no morality issue here - there is no law which requires us to watch ads and there is no law which forbids us from blocking them (despite decades of lobbying to try to introduce one). Ads are a cancer on society, they are manipulative and create massive social harms. Then just pay for a Youtube Premium account and get all your followers to buy a Youtube Premium account. No one is forcing you to use the ad-supported version of Youtube. This guy never watched ad-supported TV before Netflix? Never made a free Google search? Never used Twitter? He's on Twitter but doesn't pay for the checkmark (not that I like X's approach). Therefore, he's ok using Twitter's ad-supported service. He has a Twitch channel - which is ad-supported mostly. To me, the author is a giant hypocrite. How can I take the author seriously when he's benefiting from ad-supported free services? PS. He asks his followers to donate in crypto. He calls himself an "expensive consultant for hire". It feels like this guy is just trying to stir stuff up to get attention and rile up "privacy at all cost" people to give him donations and hire him. This is the equivalent to Hollywood's "all publicity is good publicity" in my opinion.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > Then just pay for a Youtube Premium account and get all your followers to buy a Youtube Premium account. No one is forcing you to use the ad-supported version of Youtube Google themselves doesn't want us to use YouTube premium, otherwise they wouldn't be charging multiple times what they earn through ads for the premium service.
  - aurareturn 3y ago
    I'm not convinced by that. I find a ton of value in Youtube Premium. I share it with my family. Youtube Premium also comes with Youtube Music - which allows me to cancel Spotify. Premium provides higher quality videos where applicable. The amount of time I save myself from watching ads is already well worth it. If you're a light user of Youtube - I would agree that it's not worth it. But the way I use it makes it quite a bargain.
    - pipes 3y ago
      Right, this is making me think I should cancel my Spotify account and get YouTube premium. Is it as good as Spotify for both podcasts and music?
      - moritzwarhier 3y ago
        You might be jesting, I'll still answer :) I don't know about podcasts, but there is just so much spoken video content and there is background playback.. so I actually use YT for such content since I have premium (not YT music). For music, YT (music) has been at least on par with Spotify for me. Search can be slightly confusing when the content you are looking for has not been uploaded by "official artist channels", but in the end artist, album, title and "go to album" still always work. It feels they have at least as much content, probably more. Recommendations have been way better for me so far as well. Might be because my Spotify account was overfitted and had too many playlists, but spotify recommendations had become unusable for me, that was one of my reasons for cancelling. I guess the killer feature combination is really just background playback + YouTube catalogue + perfect filtering of music vs non music content.
ahartmetz 3y ago
Practical issues aside (ahem), the purpose of laws is not to protect the viability of business models. Easy to forget because it often does end up that way in practice (Mickey mouse copyright acts, EU law to make search engines pay news websites + many more).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- didntcheck 3y ago
  Sometimes it is. For example shoplifting is illegal, and has been for basically as long as rule of law and organized commerce have existed The refrain "your business model isn't my problem" is common in piracy and ad block debates, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It seems to be saying that if you can subvert a contract of sorts, then you're morally permitted to do so. Does that mean it's OK to steal from a corner shop (who likely won't have the resources to detect and stop you), because "their business model isn't my problem"?
  - kelnos 3y ago
    Shoplifting is just the theft of someone else's private property. If we allowed shoplifting, we'd have to allow theft of people's personal belongings, too. Requiring someone to download and run things on their computer because a company wants to make their business work that way is not in the same ballpark. I think it's perfectly within that company's rights to try to detect that you won't run that thing and then refuse to give you free things, though.
uoaei 3y ago
Yes Youtube requires ads. Other kinds of platform architectures do not. Youtube is not the only possible way to serve videos on the internet.
schleck8 3y ago
This makes no sense indeed. Completely unrelated to privacy in the first place, a lot of Javascript does not even make any requests at all, let alone with user data
cccbbbaaa 3y ago
Yeah, this specifically: >The deployment of that js file itself requires consent is an “interesting” interpretation of ePrivacy. This: >the running of the javascript within the browser to ascertain how the browser is behaving also requires consent is true in some cases, eg. browser fingerprinting for tracking purposes.
- Terretta 3y ago
  Less eprivacy, more net neutrality. User Agent. The browser or player is yours and your agent. You can play or not play .js as you like.
benj111 3y ago
The law will boil down to either A. By visiting the site you are deemed to accept the served JavaScript. B. If not, YouTube will just serve a popup every time you visit, requiring you to accept those terms. A 'win' will just result in another popup, so seems pretty pyrric to me.
zzo38computer 3y ago
I think that the way the EU seems to be trying to make such laws is no good. Requiring the web page to request consent for such a thing doesn't makes sense. Rather, they could require that: web browsers allow user to disable and configure these things easily, that you could figure out how to access it using your own software (e.g. so that they could not block something like youtube-dl), and that web pages that do not need them should avoid such scripts and cookies where possible. Furthermore, they could make illegal that businesses use up the customer's power for their uses (advertising, spyware, DRM, etc). > If anything, using an adblocker should be "more" illegal than what Youtube is doing. I don't think so. If YouTube wants to run their software on your computer then it is your own job to decide how that software runs (if it does so at all). If you run your own software, to display it differently or whatever reason, then you can have the right to do. (If you tried to put it on their computer without their permission that should be illegal, just as much as the other way around.) There might be some reason to prohibit it if it involved using up their power and bandwidth, or by repeatedly sending bad data, but if you are blocking ads then that reduces the power usage instead, anyways. Rather, what should be made illegal is if they sell or provide to you the software or hardware that uses up your power for their use instead, whether for spying or ads or implementing unnecessary restrictions or whatever. (This does not apply to the old style ads on TV and radio which do not involve specialized software on the client side to display them; they are just a part of the show. If you want to block ads you still should, but you would have to add that by yourself.)

sublinear 3y ago

Feed the entire Web API to a WASM binary. General enough to not have intent. Problem solved?

salawat 3y ago
Still requires consent to run on a user's machine if shipped. What Google et al are desperately trying to keep people from waking up to is that they have been treating your computer as theirs for the purposes of profit taking for decades. They've also tried to shape case law to normalize that state of affairs in their favor. Their legal and lobbying departments are there for more than just contract writing.

aurareturn 3y ago

More hot takes from the author: that they are unable to come up with a lawful business model is not my (or anyone elses) concern. There is no morality issue here - there is no law which requires us to watch ads and there is no law which forbids us from blocking them (despite decades of lobbying to try to introduce one). Ads are a cancer on society, they are manipulative and create massive social harms. Then just pay for a Youtube Premium account and get all your followers to buy a Youtube Premium account. No one is forcing you to use the ad-supported version of Youtube. This guy never watched ad-supported TV before Netflix? Never made a free Google search? Never used Twitter? He's on Twitter but doesn't pay for the checkmark (not that I like X's approach). Therefore, he's ok using Twitter's ad-supported service. He has a Twitch channel - which is ad-supported mostly. To me, the author is a giant hypocrite. How can I take the author seriously when he's benefiting from ad-supported free services? PS. He asks his followers to donate in crypto. He calls himself an "expensive consultant for hire". It feels like this guy is just trying to stir stuff up to get attention and rile up "privacy at all cost" people to give him donations and hire him. This is the equivalent to Hollywood's "all publicity is good publicity" in my opinion.

littlestymaar 3y ago
> Then just pay for a Youtube Premium account and get all your followers to buy a Youtube Premium account. No one is forcing you to use the ad-supported version of Youtube Google themselves doesn't want us to use YouTube premium, otherwise they wouldn't be charging multiple times what they earn through ads for the premium service.
- aurareturn 3y ago
  I'm not convinced by that. I find a ton of value in Youtube Premium. I share it with my family. Youtube Premium also comes with Youtube Music - which allows me to cancel Spotify. Premium provides higher quality videos where applicable. The amount of time I save myself from watching ads is already well worth it. If you're a light user of Youtube - I would agree that it's not worth it. But the way I use it makes it quite a bargain.
  - pipes 3y ago
    Right, this is making me think I should cancel my Spotify account and get YouTube premium. Is it as good as Spotify for both podcasts and music?
    - moritzwarhier 3y ago
      You might be jesting, I'll still answer :) I don't know about podcasts, but there is just so much spoken video content and there is background playback.. so I actually use YT for such content since I have premium (not YT music). For music, YT (music) has been at least on par with Spotify for me. Search can be slightly confusing when the content you are looking for has not been uploaded by "official artist channels", but in the end artist, album, title and "go to album" still always work. It feels they have at least as much content, probably more. Recommendations have been way better for me so far as well. Might be because my Spotify account was overfitted and had too many playlists, but spotify recommendations had become unusable for me, that was one of my reasons for cancelling. I guess the killer feature combination is really just background playback + YouTube catalogue + perfect filtering of music vs non music content.

ahartmetz 3y ago

Practical issues aside (ahem), the purpose of laws is not to protect the viability of business models. Easy to forget because it often does end up that way in practice (Mickey mouse copyright acts, EU law to make search engines pay news websites + many more).

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
didntcheck 3y ago
Sometimes it is. For example shoplifting is illegal, and has been for basically as long as rule of law and organized commerce have existed The refrain "your business model isn't my problem" is common in piracy and ad block debates, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It seems to be saying that if you can subvert a contract of sorts, then you're morally permitted to do so. Does that mean it's OK to steal from a corner shop (who likely won't have the resources to detect and stop you), because "their business model isn't my problem"?
- kelnos 3y ago
  Shoplifting is just the theft of someone else's private property. If we allowed shoplifting, we'd have to allow theft of people's personal belongings, too. Requiring someone to download and run things on their computer because a company wants to make their business work that way is not in the same ballpark. I think it's perfectly within that company's rights to try to detect that you won't run that thing and then refuse to give you free things, though.

uoaei 3y ago

Yes Youtube requires ads. Other kinds of platform architectures do not. Youtube is not the only possible way to serve videos on the internet.

schleck8 3y ago

This makes no sense indeed. Completely unrelated to privacy in the first place, a lot of Javascript does not even make any requests at all, let alone with user data

cccbbbaaa 3y ago

Yeah, this specifically: >The deployment of that js file itself requires consent is an “interesting” interpretation of ePrivacy. This: >the running of the javascript within the browser to ascertain how the browser is behaving also requires consent is true in some cases, eg. browser fingerprinting for tracking purposes.

Terretta 3y ago
Less eprivacy, more net neutrality. User Agent. The browser or player is yours and your agent. You can play or not play .js as you like.

benj111 3y ago

The law will boil down to either A. By visiting the site you are deemed to accept the served JavaScript. B. If not, YouTube will just serve a popup every time you visit, requiring you to accept those terms. A 'win' will just result in another popup, so seems pretty pyrric to me.

zzo38computer 3y ago

I think that the way the EU seems to be trying to make such laws is no good. Requiring the web page to request consent for such a thing doesn't makes sense. Rather, they could require that: web browsers allow user to disable and configure these things easily, that you could figure out how to access it using your own software (e.g. so that they could not block something like youtube-dl), and that web pages that do not need them should avoid such scripts and cookies where possible. Furthermore, they could make illegal that businesses use up the customer's power for their uses (advertising, spyware, DRM, etc). > If anything, using an adblocker should be "more" illegal than what Youtube is doing. I don't think so. If YouTube wants to run their software on your computer then it is your own job to decide how that software runs (if it does so at all). If you run your own software, to display it differently or whatever reason, then you can have the right to do. (If you tried to put it on their computer without their permission that should be illegal, just as much as the other way around.) There might be some reason to prohibit it if it involved using up their power and bandwidth, or by repeatedly sending bad data, but if you are blocking ads then that reduces the power usage instead, anyways. Rather, what should be made illegal is if they sell or provide to you the software or hardware that uses up your power for their use instead, whether for spying or ads or implementing unnecessary restrictions or whatever. (This does not apply to the old style ads on TV and radio which do not involve specialized software on the client side to display them; they are just a part of the show. If you want to block ads you still should, but you would have to add that by yourself.)