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.
They’d argue that you going to their page which you know is sustained by ads is consent enough to check whether you’re using ad block. It’s an implicit thing, like how when you go to a restaurant you’re implying that you’re going to pay the bill afterward. You can’t eat and then leave saying, “well technically I never explicitly agreed to pay for this meal, it’s your fault for not asking before serving me.”
They’re taking information from the page they served you and runs the code they wrote to read the page they served you to ensure what they served you is actually what you’re seeing
You’re accessing the site, you’re continuing to use the site, you are implicitly agreeing to allow the code they run to modify the page you’re on
I fail to see how it specifically being used to check that ads are displaying is any different from code running normally in your browser to change the page without refreshing the page entirely
More importantly and actually on subject: how is this immoral? What moral code are they breaking here? You can argue legal semantics, but legality is not morality. You made a moral argument. How is this immoral?
they are taking information from your browser without getting your permission first, to use that information against you.
They’d argue that you going to their page which you know is sustained by ads is consent enough to check whether you’re using ad block. It’s an implicit thing, like how when you go to a restaurant you’re implying that you’re going to pay the bill afterward. You can’t eat and then leave saying, “well technically I never explicitly agreed to pay for this meal, it’s your fault for not asking before serving me.”
They’re taking information from the page they served you and runs the code they wrote to read the page they served you to ensure what they served you is actually what you’re seeing
You’re accessing the site, you’re continuing to use the site, you are implicitly agreeing to allow the code they run to modify the page you’re on
I fail to see how it specifically being used to check that ads are displaying is any different from code running normally in your browser to change the page without refreshing the page entirely
More importantly and actually on subject: how is this immoral? What moral code are they breaking here? You can argue legal semantics, but legality is not morality. You made a moral argument. How is this immoral?
Google is tracking you on every website that has a “share to Google” icon.
Which means Google has your entire browser history, even if you use Firefox.
If it was just on their own websites, nobody would be complaining.
This is specifically about YouTube and YouTube specifically detecting adblock on YouTube.