I won’t hold my breath on this one. Filing complaints does not mean they’ll necessarily be taken seriously:
Privacy consultant Alexander Hanff, who has occasionally contributed to The Register, has challenged Meta’s collection of data without explicit consent under Ireland’s computer abuse law. He told The Register he’s also in the process of filing a similar criminal complaint against YouTube over its use of scripts to detect ad blocking extensions in people’s web browsers.
I hope it’s taken seriously, but I don’t think we can say anything until it’s reached a court.
(Copied this from my previous comment on c/technology)
Another article about this
In any case it gives the EU user the right to use all measures at their disposal to block this crap, to give the middle finger to YT. The use of ad- and trackerblocker are a right and even recommended by security experts and official institutions. Fuck surveillance tech by big compnies.
I agree entirely. And if it’s not a legally enshrined right that people are allowed to run their own scripts in their own browsers on their own computers, it should be.
There might be a big distinction between the right to fight it, versus the rights to not be presented with it to begin with. From a previous article from October
“The European Commission sent me a formal written response agreeing with my position that such activities [e.g. anti-adblock] would require consent.”
But I’m not sure how much traction this particular argument will get, because it seems to boil down to YouTube simply not requesting consent to run its anti-adblock scripts. Google’s policies are extremely murky, and they are more or less universal: if you want to use YouTube, you consent to the same universal privacy policy that governs if you use Gboard. As far as I can tell, doesn’t this just mean that Google could say “you also consent to us using anti-adblock technology” somewhere, and keep operating the exact same way they have been?
After all, I’m sure their overpaid lawyers could argue this was simply an oversight because they haven’t ever used anti-adblock tech before.
And even if Google fails at that, I’ve got the feeling they will pay a microscopically small fine, throw in a consent dialogue full of flowery language, and effectively create the same blockade to YouTube content. They might even make it a dark pattern, so that they will roll out the anti-adblock tech a month or two after you consent to them using it.
I understand that pages use ads to finance themselves, but this is one thing and quite another to abuse ads, as YT does, in addition from unverified origins, to destroy videos and concerts with 3-4 ads in the middle and even with advertorials of up to 10 minutes, annoying with popups to use premium, having thumbnails with clickbaits that also require an extension to avoid them and also for this shit of interrupting playlists after a certain time, yes or yes, this serves no one, not even the user and nor from the authors of the videos. All of this practically forces the user to put in place countermeasures to block all this shit, or to use some frontend or similar, if they want to see something from their subscriptions properly.
It is not because YT needs money, on the contrary, in recent years it has had more income than ever in its history, it is simply abusing its position in the market, practically as a monopoly and the greed of the shareholders. No other thing. Before it was not so pronounced and you could even use YT without an adblocker, having a banner in the header of the page or an ad at the beginning of a few videos or a promotional video in the list of recommendations, but this has changed drastically.
In any case, I think that if this continues, they are going to shoot themselves in the knee (Cobra effect), getting more and more users to use countermeasures and content creators moving to other platforms (like on Twitter with Musk going overboard)
Vivaldi Ad- and Trackerblocker statistics from last week of Octubre, showing ads and trackers blocked since then.
Nice!
Get those f*ckers!
However, the latest trend in the EU, is to pave way for a legislation to intercept encrypted messages on a government mass surveillance scale level.
They can achieved this by (pre)installing MTM (man-in-the-middle) software on new devices. Or require a user to install a (Trojan) app on their phone to be able to access a particular public service etc.
Now, That’s troubling news indeed.
Edit: The EU is turning into a police state.
I do not think this will happen in many EU members, simply because they have more important problems, adding that most member states do not even have the means and infrastructure necessary for a control of this magnitude, nor is necessary this proposal from some old people who confuse a remote control with a cell phone. If there is a criminal investigation, there is no problem at all, that security forces can access chats and social networks with a court order. This has always been the case, they can even access the Onion network, but this only in individual cases, but widespread, well, sit tight. So don’t worry, as they say, nothing is eaten as hot as it is cooked.
As I predicted, it has finally decided against ChatControl, as expected. In any case, it would have been a fiasco to introduce this control that goes against the current legislation of each country and Europe’s own GDPR, that is, a monumental bureaucratic and political mess that required changing current legislation to accommodate this, this is of no one’s interest.
At the most, they’ll just get a million dollar fine. Maybe.
90% of their users don’t care about/understand privacy.“Why would I care? I’ve got nothing to hide.”
You’re right, you don’t.
Not anymore.This is the best summary I could come up with:
Privacy consultant Alexander Hanff, who has occasionally contributed to The Register, has challenged Meta’s collection of data without explicit consent under Ireland’s computer abuse law.
“I have notified Pearse Street Garda that I want to give a statement to them for the purpose of the criminal complaint and will be sending them additional information over the weekend,” Hanff told us last night.
Two weeks ago, Hanff filed a civil complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commission against YouTube’s browser interrogation system, which detects ad blocking software and refuses to play videos unless adverts are allowed or subscription money handed over.
“Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd for a period of not less than five years from May 25, 2018 to present, illegally deployed surveillance technology to my computers for the purpose of monitoring my behavior, as they had no reasonable excuse or lawful authority to do so,” Hanff alleged to The Register.
“Regulators have let us down and are absolutely (in my opinion) partly responsible for the erosion of our fundamental rights and the expansion of these illegal behaviors, by failing to do their jobs and take strong enforcement action against violators,” he claimed.
“As a result, it is now considered as the normal way to conduct online business, which is an incredibly bad reflection of the regulators and has significantly eroded trust of the public that their complaints will ever be dealt with at all – let alone in a meaningful way.”
The original article contains 1,288 words, the summary contains 241 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
If I print up an invoice for the time I’ve spent blocking all their tracking cookies, do you think I could take it to small claims court? It’s gotta be at least a couple hundred bucks worth of labor at this point.
