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.
As a free user they get engagement, which may or may not offset what they get out of those that do provide them income. It seems like that was good enough for a couple decades.
I…really don’t think it was ever about engagement. I think most free users just didn’t have an adblocker.
I think ublock orgin’s adoption just picked up over the years, and it’s not as if Youtube gets cheaper (I’d imagine it just gets more expensive)
I mean engagement is great, they make the algorithm work (well, “work”) but I’m pretty sure the ads were the selling point (for google) before premium was even an option.
Google is an advertising company. That’s how they make money. Everything else they do – search, youtube, apps, phones – is just an ancillary sideshow that’s a vehicle to showing people ads, or gathering data on them to use in showing them ads. So you are 100% correct.
As a free user they get engagement, which may or may not offset what they get out of those that do provide them income. It seems like that was good enough for a couple decades.
I…really don’t think it was ever about engagement. I think most free users just didn’t have an adblocker.
I think ublock orgin’s adoption just picked up over the years, and it’s not as if Youtube gets cheaper (I’d imagine it just gets more expensive)
I mean engagement is great, they make the algorithm work (well, “work”) but I’m pretty sure the ads were the selling point (for google) before premium was even an option.
Google is an advertising company. That’s how they make money. Everything else they do – search, youtube, apps, phones – is just an ancillary sideshow that’s a vehicle to showing people ads, or gathering data on them to use in showing them ads. So you are 100% correct.