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Comment on Youtube's Anti-adblock is illegal in the EU

Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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.

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ugjka@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Ah yeah the kind of hullabaloo that makes everyone accept cookies on every single website ;)

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- noodlejetski@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  shoutout to Consent-O-Matic! addons.mozilla.org/en-US/…/consent-o-matic/
  
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  - FierySpectre@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Also exists on chromium for the chrome/opera/… lovers here
    
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- fraydabson@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yay for ublocks annoyance pop up blocker. No more cookie pop ups
  
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gian@lemmy.grys.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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 ?

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- krellor@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  All they need to implement ad block detection is user consent, which they likely cover on their terms of service and privacy policy.
  
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  - Aceticon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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    krellor@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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 defensive 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.
    
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Chickenstalker@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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.

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- Stumblinbear@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Google DOES make money from ads. Why the fuck else would they need your data other than to serve better ads???
  
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Xabis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
The guy really exudes “don’t you know who I am?” energy. Which is a shame since it detracts from the discussion.

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MooseBoys@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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.

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- Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Exactly.
  
  But people are hell bent on “Google doing this, bad”.
  
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plz1@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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.

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- ugjka@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Afaik you can’t bypass laws and regulations with ToS
  
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  - uis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Definetly not if you are not registered. And likely if you are not logged in. This is EU, not US.
    
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  - Jako301@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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    9bananas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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.

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- gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Spotlight7573@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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: en.wikipedia.org/…/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove…
    
    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.
    
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    gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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    gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- shrugal@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Have you met my friend SponsorBlock?
  
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  - Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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    setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    If users are crowdsourcing what the embedded ads are, couldn’t this hypothetical situation be solved by a version of sponserblock that just learns what the content is and then cuts out any aberrations?
    
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    shrugal@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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. I think as long as we are still in control of the playback devices we can find ways to make them skip ads.
    
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- FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    the problem is not the premium. The problem is the personalized ads.
    
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    FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Then those users would get the ad free stream.
    
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    FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Which users? The ones who pay for Premium? That’s the whole point of Premium.
    
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ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
They could easily put a “consent” requirement to access

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Broodjefissa@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
And in the war you probably also sided with the Nazis because ‘well they invaded already, might as well give up’

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