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.
It's made for WordPress but the idea is so dead simple that it can be integrated in almost anything with some work (if nobody else did that work already :D)
In other news, I'm currently recovering from this mild heart attack of suddenly experiencing ads on YouTube for the first time in probably 10+ years. 😵
Last month, YouTube extended its ad blocker detection to users in the European union.
But privacy campaigners say that the adblock detection techniques used by YouTube (and almost everyone else) could be illegal under the EU’s ePrivacy Directive.
For WIRED, I looked at at the legal and technical arguments and spoke to privacy advocate Alexander Hanff (@thatprivacyguy) and MEP Patrick Breyer (@echo_pbreyer) about their work in this area.
Adblockers and alternative frontend will only get you so far in this. It's literally just a matter of time until step it to yet another level. Want some real change? Stop giving them power. #Boycott these fuckers.
"Youtube has started to artificially slow down video load times if you use Firefox" -> https://archive.is/yAdak (link to avoid direct #reddit)
Bring down closed data silos like #YouTube. Empower #foss federated platforms like #peertube.
Enlightening, isn't it? There are other empty blocks, but they are either fairly standard or are described elsewhere in the document.
If you are familiar with #helm, you won't despair because you have the power of analytics.enabled: false. That works on the rest of this chart and is the standard way to en/disable things.
It doesn't work that way.
Let me save you some time with the terrible new #github code search. Here is the actual syntax:
"analytics.reporting_enabled: false"
The privilege of enraged people with regards to the fine volunteer maintainers who spent sweat and tears to serve us with #Adblock software stood out:
> And then one of the moderators actually deleted their Reddit account. “The ID in the post wasn’t updated because my mother was hospitalized,” they said
YouTube’s Ad Blocker Detection Believed to Break EU Privacy Law
A complaint filed with the EU’s independent data regulator accuses YouTube of failing to get explicit user permission for its ad blocker detection system, potentially violating the ePrivacy Directive.
YouTube warns it might make your viewing experience worse if you don't turn off your ad-blocker (www.businessinsider.com)
YouTube has been cracking down on people using ad blockers. Now, a spokesperson says that using ad blockers could lead to "suboptimal viewing."