Privacy Advocate Files Data Protection Complaint That YouTube’s AdBlocker Blocker Violates Privacy Laws
from the blocking-the-blocking-blockers dept
Over the last few weeks, YouTube has been cracking down on YouTube adblockers, blocking users who are using such adblockers (or, in some cases, disabling extensions). There are still some ways around it, but apparently it’s becoming more difficult.
Here at Techdirt, we’ve always been pro-adblocker (even though we sometimes have ads on the site, for years, we’ve let you turn off ads on Techdirt — and unlike most sites, we don’t even charge you for that or even ask you to login). Our view has long been that adblocking is a right. You have the right to control what happens on your own computer, and if you (quite reasonably!) feel safer without ads, you should use an adblocker.
If sites want users not to block ads, they need to give those users a good reason not to block ads. Blocking adblockers, however, is not a good reason. Not surprisingly, though, YouTube’s crackdown is leading many users to delete their adblockers.
However, in an interesting move, a privacy advocate in the EU, Alexander Hanff, has filed a complaint arguing that this anti-adblocking attempt violates data protection laws by using JavaScript to detect adblockers without consent:
Privacy advocate Alexander Hanff has filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) accusing YouTube of using JavaScript code to detect ad-blocking extensions without explicit consent. YouTube’s Terms of Service do not explicitly disallow ad blocking extensions, but the language suggests that blocking ads on the platform may be a violation.
YouTube’s recent deployment of a popup notice to web users with ad-blocking extensions has raised concerns about non-consensual technical interaction and potential violations of the EU’s ePrivacy Directive. Hanff argues that YouTube’s script for ad-blocking detection violates the directive by not obtaining explicit consent from users before conducting browser interrogation.
This is not Hanff’s first rodeo on these issues. Back in 2016, we wrote about him arguing that other anti adblockers also violated the EU’s ePrivacy Directive.
It’s not entirely clear to me that his analysis of the law is correct… but it would certainly be nice to find out that it is. Again, from my perspective, users should be able to use whatever software on their own computers to do what they want, including blocking ads from loading on a computer. That’s just a straight up right to block content from your own computer if you’d like.
And, yes, you could argue that Google then has the right to try to counter that on its own side, and block users that it doesn’t want to access its servers because they’re using adblockers. But Hanff is at least somewhat credibly arguing that it doesn’t have that right because of how adblockers potentially violate your privacy by scanning how you’ve set up your browser.
Filed Under: adblockers, alexander hanff, data protection, eu, privacy
Companies: google, youtube
Comments on “Privacy Advocate Files Data Protection Complaint That YouTube’s AdBlocker Blocker Violates Privacy Laws”
He’s saying it’s because Youtube is loading and running the javascript adblocker detection on the client-side.
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I wouldn‘t be so sure because YT likes to do limited deployments of new features (or in this case anti-feature), meaning it‘s unpredictable who gets the hammer swinging over them.
It’s odd. For whatever reason, i’ve yet to encounter any issue with YouTube yet. It’s clearly an issue, but none of my setups show me ads or YouTube whining about blockers.
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I haven’t updated my filters in a couple of days or so and I’m not getting the anti-blocker message. Maybe YouTube figured out that they fucked up by telling people who didn’t know they could block ads on the Internet that they could block ads on the Internet.
Re: YouTube block messages on Brave
Early in this anti-Adblock campaign, youtube blocked Brave unless I enabled display of ads. I didn’t change my setting, and stopped going to YouTube for a week or two.
When I did go back, it let Brave show the videos. The only ads I’ve seen are ones where the content creator put ad clips directly into their video. Of course, it could be that youtube could have inserted ads into playback of that stream. I’m not clear on how I could tell the difference.
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It depends on the blocker. It seems some block those messages while others don’t.
Browsing the Internet without an adblocker is like skateboarding without a helmet and pads: Being able to do it doesn’t mean it’s the smart thing to do, and doing it will inevitably cause some damage.
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I don’t block ads, I block trackers.
And I use EFF’s Privacy Badger browser extension, so as to block only the “problematic” (from a privacy perspective) trackers.
If that results (as it rather frequently does) in many ads being blocked as well — that’s on the website and/or advertiser, not on me.
If some website won’t let me view their site unless I allow them to infringe my privacy and track my online activity, like some creepy stalker, well, after all…
… The Internet is a very big place — I can generally find what I’m looking for somewhere else, from someone who doesn’t consider it a deal-breaker to not let them snoop on what’s none of their business.
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I use Firefox with Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin, and everything in the Settings locked down as tight as I can. I rarely if ever see ads, and I also rarely have problems with websites not working. I guess that may be a function of the websites that I visit, though.
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I find Privacy badger (also on Firefox) more than adequate. uBlock Origin seems to me like overkill.
I’m not opposed to advertising itself. As long as the implicit deal is “free content in exchange for seeing our ads”, that seems quite fair and reasonable.
The ads “pay the freight” so to speak. It was basically the same deal with physical, printed-paper magazine and newspaper subscriptions (and historically, subscription fees merely subsidized distribution). It’s the tracking and data harvesting/selling/trading that I find objectionable — and really rather creepy, if one thinks about it.
Re: Re: Re:2
UBO is the best option for people who know what they’re doing when it comes to custom filters. For everyone else, Privacy Badger would probably be enough.
I hate anti-ad-blocker scripts as much as the next freeloader, but this sounds like an over-broad objection to me. What test does Hanff propose for a court to determine whether a piece of Javascript (which necessarily interacts with the browser in a technical way, since it is Javascript) is non-consensual? If it’s something vague like “doing something the user doesn’t want it to do”, then that would have consequences for >99% of the web, since besides cookie consent popups and other annoyances, there will always be users out there who find some features annoying.
Personally the only line I’d be able to draw is that if the user has enabled Javascript on the site, and isn’t running a browser extension to suppress individual Javascript sources or function calls, then the fact that they have configured their own browser to execute the code on the page implies that they consent to that code being executed. Obviously that’s not a perfect test for consent, but it’s the only one I can see that wouldn’t break the whole internet.
Sure, it would be difficult for the average user to enable or disable Javascript on a per-site or per-script basis, but the real solution here is to make better browsers that give users control over what they consent to. The same should have been done for cookies, which only work if the user’s browser participates by storing and sending them alongside requests; there has always been a way to “opt out” of some or all cookies, except for browsers not making it easy enough to do so.
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If a user enables Javascript but chooses to suppress individual functions/scripts, do they consent to the site overriding their decision via code that detects such suppression and either directly disables or asks the user to disable an ablocker across the whole site?
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Javascript is an essential component of how many websites operate, and feature detection is part of that – different browsers may have errors doing things in certain ways, or do not produce the same results for the same code. You can choose to not allow certain features of web sites to work, but it’s not up to you if they choose to detect that you’re interfering with their operation and react to it.
As with any consumer product, you are free to not buy or or accept it, but you are not free to force changes into the product that the manufacturer does not want.
As is routine on TechDirt, there is much whining when attempts by people to bypass paying for services – whether by not sharing passwords, by removing ads, by using mid-city airline tickets – is countered by the people offering those services. Too bad.
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YouTube isn’t a pay-to-use service, at least in its most basic functionality. Nobody is trying to circumvent a paywall or backhack passwords or whatever when they block ads. They’re trying to watch videos without being annoyed by ads (including political ads and ads for scammy bullshit). Would you like it if Twitter, which you currently doesn’t require you to pay for using its most basic functionality level, banned you for blocking ads through either an adblocking extension or a custom CSS style parsed by an extension like Stylus?
Re: Re: Re:2
Having ads displayed, likely personalized by a tracking cookie, is how people pay for YouTube, and for X, and for other free platforms as well. It doesn’t matter if people like the ads or not, any more than it mattered whether people liked advertisements on over-the-air radio and television.
People should be able to modify the way their own computers and software work, but they should not be allowed to restrict the freedom of remote providers to write their own software in the way they want, including detecting local modifications and working around them.
Re: Re: Re:3
Displaying ads is how YouTube pays for YouTube. I don’t have to actually look at whatever ads YouTube wants to offer me. The ROI on YouTube’s investment into selling ads might suck because a lot of other people make the same decision as I do, and that might suck for YouTube, but I’m not obligated to help YouTube make money.
YouTube can demand that I disable my adblocker even after I whitelist YouTube in my adblocker. I’m still not going to disable it. No software, website, or Silicon Valley techbro dipshit is going to make me fully disable my adblocker for any reason. YouTube can write its code any way it wants, but invading the privacy of my browser and demanding I open myself up to malware of all kinds (as well as advertisements and other things I don’t want to see) is not something I plan to reward with a “golly, I guess I could do that” reaction and the full-on disabling of uBlock Origin. And if YouTube can’t live with that? Too bad, because I can live without YouTube.
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As usual, you cannot read and understand simple English. I eagerly await your next TechDirt commendation for keen insight.
People pay for ad-driven media by having ads displayed to them. Some people choose not to watch some ads in various ways, as they always have – going for snacks, going to the bathroom, letting their attention drift – but the general premise is that most people will see most ads. It’s a matter of inertia, if nothing else,
If systematic means of disabling all ads become easy to use, the advertising model fails, and so ad-driven companies are going to attempt to stop such means. If you individually continue to refuse to have ads displayed, you are useless to the companies, and so they will not care if you stop using their services. (You are useless anyway, but that’s a different story.)
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Let me guess, you are in advertising.
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I may have missed this when I was asleep, so you’re gonna have to catch me up: Can you tell me exactly when I agreed to hand over my money to either an advertiser or the outlet running an ad to pay either of them back for the investment they made in those ads and their display?
If a business model can be destroyed by an adblocker, it deserves to be destroyed. Tell me when I’m telling lies.
They’ll care when millions of other people make the same decision I would, in that they’ll either block ads or stop using the service. A single drop isn’t important until it’s part of a flood.
…well, you’re not entirely wrong. 🙃
Re: Re: Re:5
“As usual, you cannot read and understand simple English. I eagerly await your next TechDirt commendation for keen insight.”
Strong in this one the projection is. Hmmm.
Re: Re: Re:5
You’re describing the hope of advertisers and platforms, not any obligation or agreement by viewers/users. People don’t pay. Advertisers pay platforms to display ads. Viewers/users are under no obligation to view them, much less click on them or buy products.
Correct. You’re describing a business strategy problem that the businesses may want to address. None of that involves the viewers/users at all. We’ve never been obligated to support ad-driven business strategies.
This isn’t strictly true. Viewer numbers can still drive business decisions on video hosting platforms. The more views a video channel gets, even if many of them are using ad-blockers, the likelihood of more views from people who don’t use adblockers increases due to popularity.
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That addressing will be paid-for content. Bad advertising drove ad blockers. But ad blockers are driving paywall servicing.
It’s just the way it works. Content isn’t free.
Re: Re: Re:5
You tried this argument years ago, John Smith. You keep trying the same overused argument when you bitch about how Craiglist supposedly destroyed the market for newspapers.
Unfortunately for you, not looking at ads is never going to be against the law. But fuck around enough, and your corporations are going to find out what happens when they break enough laws just to force their advertising on civilians.
Re: Re: Re:3
Well now… just imagine applying that same reasoning to allowing access to your physical home, and what modifications other parties (publishers and distributors) should be entitled to make to your private home while delivering goods to your front porch, postal box or mail slot…
For example, my “free”, local newspaper might be permitted, even requested, to deliver the weekly edition to my home — but that does not somehow magically grant the publisher any right, moral entitlement, or legal justification for “finding a way around” my privacy, security, or other arrangements in order to make delivering the accompanying advertising flyers more effectively. Indeed, many people refuse junk mail by placing a sign to that effect by the door. The sender has no moral or legal right to evade that “ad-block”.
In fact, in every apartment I’ve lived in, building management has willingly placed a waste bin in the lobby, for the convenience of those residents who preferred to strip store flyers before taking the paper into their own unit.
If you want to argue differently, you are going to have to offer some sort of actual argument in support of such a position.
Re: Re: Re:4
I don’t “have” to do anything for the reasons you just explained.
But the argument is that you are asking the remote website to download to your computer and run in your browser; they are not forcing their way in. That program that you have asked to run necessarily interacts with the remote site; the days of pure static HTML pages are long gone. You don’t control the details of that interaction, and in fact people who have tried to meddle with the interactions have sometimes been criminally prosecuted for the attempt.
Re: Re: Re:5
JavaScript runs on my machine, not their server. If I want to change the way it runs I have that right.
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“in fact people who have tried to meddle with the interactions have sometimes been criminally prosecuted for the attempt.”
State level? Case number? trial?
…. details details …
meddle with interactions, what does this mean – exactly
is it a man in the middle attack? is this what was prosecuted?
Re: Re: Re:6
“Meddles with interactions” such as Web scraping by generating URLs not sent by the remote web site. These cases (such as LinkedIn vs. HiQ) have generally resulted in scraping being found legal, but it took the Supreme Court to do that, so not exactly a slam dunk.
Re: Re: Re:7
Webscraping by a business for a for-profit service is significantly different than an end user altering the code that runs client side on their own device for personal purposes.
Re: Re: Re:3
“People should be able to modify the way their own computers and software work, and they should not be restricted from that freedom by anti-adblockers from software not on their computer.”
Correct again.
Re: Re: Re:3
Nope, not at all. There’s no legal right to attention or focus from another human being.
Yes, it does matter. Just because you want people to consent doesn’t mean that they do.
What about rootkits? What about keyloggers? You’re basically assigning the right to corporations to install anything they want just because you went to a website. That doesn’t comport with established rights or applicable laws.
You’re hallucinating obligations and rules that don’t actually exist.
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“As with any consumer product, you are free to not offer it, but you are not free to force changes into the product that the user does not want.”
Correct.
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You are if the service executes on the client side. What you’re arguing for is the equivalent of saying a radio listener isn’t allowed to hire a person to manually turn down the volume when a commercial airs on the radio, except it’s automated scripting here. That is absolutely a right of the user.
Good services build in account sharing. This is a service issue, not a customer issue.
You’re imagining an obligation where there isn’t one. There is no agreement or legal obligation to view or listen to ads. If an ad airs and nobody views it, it might as well be a bear shitting in the woods. Otherwise you’d have to believe that going to the restroom or going to another room to make a snack during a televised commercial break was stealing and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt by guessing you’re not that absurd in your thinking.
Like piracy, this is a service issue caused by the service/product provider. People wouldn’t try to game the system if the system wasn’t so greedy and inefficient.
You’re telling the peasants to eat sawdust instead of standing up for themselves against abusive multi-billion dollar corporations.
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I understand your point, but how do you formulate this as a test that a court can apply, to determine whether the code is non-consensual?
Ultimately all Javascript code on all websites only runs because the user’s browser lets it. I think it’s better to have browsers that let users only run code that they consent to running, than it is to legally require web servers to know what their users will consent to and only send code that does those things.
I agree that it’s wrong for YouTube to write code to be run on people’s computers, who do not want that code to be run on their computers; that’s malware by my definition. The problem is if the law defines malware that way, then the internet doesn’t work. So I’d rather YouTube’s consequences be social and economic rather than legal, unless someone can propose a legal principle for this that wouldn’t break the internet.
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Sure, it’s a crude outline and I’m sure a practiced lawyer could probably come up with something better. But the way I see it, if the answer to the first question is “yes” and the answer to either of the other two is “no”, the code is interfering with the assumed functionality of an end user’s web browser in a way that one could consider “non-consensual”.
But then you’re asking anyone using a web browser on any device that can run one—including computers—to become experts in Javascript and script blocking so they can pick and choose which scripts to run, especially in cases where a single script can be responsible for the backbone of a site’s functionality and injecting ads into the site. That seems like overkill to me. Servers shouldn’t have to have users opt-in to only certain scripts because then servers wouldn’t run ad scripts—but by the same token, servers shouldn’t be trying to detect adblockers and force people into the fate I just described.
The outline for a “non-consensual“ code test notwithstanding, I don’t have any idea for a legal consequence that wouldn’t break the Internet. And I do agree that YouTube’s consequences should be social and economic—as they already are, since YouTube is probably responsible for more people finding out about (and installing) adblockers than they would’ve been if they had decided to nix the “no adblocks plz” bullshit before it got widespread.
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I picked the wrong day to type comments and eat dinner at the same time.
Re: Re: Re:2
e.g. Youtube doesn’t need to know what plugins I’m running unrelated to video delivery (e.g. what codec Youtube can stream with is acceptable) to deliver the video. Ads are not a necessary part of delivering the video that I have requested – I didn’t request ads.
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“determine whether the code is non-consensual?”
First time I have heard this particular phrase.
– wtf
Re: Re: Re:2
It’s not a difficult concept if you’re familiar with other common digital privacy and consent concepts, such as visiting a website that has a GDPR cookie consent popup. The EU requires websites to notify users of their cookie tracking practices and get consent for their use. It’s not radical to suggest that other website should do so for other intrusive measures, similar to the idea that talking to a person at your front door isn’t the same as consenting to them coming in your house and snooping around in your stuff.
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I am the person who filed the complaint and I do often find it both amusing and very sad when I read comments to articles about this.
Amusing because I like watch the apologists flapping their gums about mythical rights of publishers and mythical obligations on the people visiting their web sites.
Sad because it truly dismays me to see how ignorant the general public about their fundamental rights.
I am a lawyer, computer scientist and sociologist who has studied this particular law for the last 15 years and am widely regarded as one of the foremost experts in the world on this matter. I advise the Regulators, Legislators and Parliamentarians on these issues and helped to draft the law which will replace it.
So let me make this clear – in the EU people have no legal obligation to watch ads, period. It is also illegal for any publishers to store any script or other technology on your device which is not strictly necessary for the provision of the requested service – a position clarified by Regulatory Guidance going back to 2014 and further supported by binding case law in the EU’s highest court as recently as July this year. The EU Commission’s formal legal analysis also makes it clear that this is illegal without consent a position they have held since 2016 in a formal written legal evaluation.
And in fact, not is this only a breach of civil law, I have also filed a criminal complaint against YouTube in Ireland for a breach of computer trespass and misuse law – which also makes it a criminal offence to gain unauthorised access to a computer and/or utilize computing resources in an unauthorised manner.
So to the apologists, marketers and Google fan boys, you are quite simply wrong – you have no legal argument and are just polluting the debate with your personal opinions which are both unqualified and utterly irrelevant in the case of a legal complaint.
But it is important to everyone else to note that there is no point in discussing the issue with these people, because there is no discussion with people who live under some false illusion of an entitlement to trespass on our property and ignore our fundamental rights – as such it is an utter waste of energy and time and only serves to give them the attention they strive for in order to get their dopamine hits and feel like they are important.
Have a great day everyone and please, start to exercise your own rights otherwise you will lose them.
Re: consequences for >99% of the web
“If it’s something vague like “doing something the user doesn’t want it to do”, then that would have consequences for >99% of the web,”
You make it sound like “consequences” are necessarily bad. They can also be good.
My computer, my time. I have the right to decide what I want to happen.
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And the basic premise of that statement have been used several times to prosecute people under the CFAA:
The CFAA imposes criminal penalties on individuals who intentionally access a protected computer without proper authorization or whose access exceeds their authorization
Re: Re: Re:
If the computer is my personal property, and I therefore have legitimate access to the admin account, then how is setting up an adblocker on it accessing the device without proper authorization or in a way that exceeds authorization? Even the CFAA doesn’t contain that bullshit argument.
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You are missing my point, you have set the rules for how your computer should be accessed and if a site downloads a script that tries to circumvent that it may be construed as violating the CFAA.
I guess my reply above was a bit ham-fisted.
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The site doesn’t download the script, your browser does. Either you have your browser set to download and execute that script, or you don’t. If you don’t want to execute it, you don’t have to. This isn’t someone else accessing your computer, it’s you downloading and executing code.
Re: Re: Re:4
Details actually matter.
How does the script end up in the browser? The browser doesn’t download the script of its own volition, it is the site that embeds instructions in the web-page you access which directs the browser to download and execute the script.
It can be argued that scripts supplied by a site that does things that expressly exceeds the intended authority you allow sites and their scripts to have on your computer runs afoul of the CFAA.
And my original point above was to highlight that companies have used similar logic to go after people with the help of the CFAA.
Re: Re: Re:5
Yes, but I can configure my browser to not do that if I want.
Possibly; there’s all kinds of messed up stuff argued under the CFAA. Without a legal framework for users to express to sites what they intend to allow scripts to do, that would be an unworkable standard. And it’s hard to imagine any such framework that would be both useful and comprehensible to the average user.
Re: Re: Re:6
How do you know the script or functionality was referenced in the first place? You blocking it after the fact means it was because the site exceeded it’s authority first.
You blocking it before it even happens though, means the CFAA never comes into play.
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The consequences of such a rule would obviously be bad. How can you ever know everything that your users don’t want your code to do? It would effectively criminalise all use of Javascript.
You wouldn’t even be able to have a “click here to consent to the use of Javascript on this site” dialogue, because some users might not want that dialogue.
I mean, maybe you think the web would really be better if there were no Javascript. Perhaps you will be visited by an angel.
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“It would effectively criminalise all use of Javascript.”
a step in the right direction
Interesting take, but I’d have thought a better argument is that Google is blocking his ability to protect his own right to privacy (with an ad-blocker) by blocking said ad-blocker and thereby forcing privacy violating/tracking ads on him.
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Interesting. I use uBlock Origin and haven’t seen a youtube ad in years.
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I also use it, and instead of seeing ads, i saw the popups… but only on certain days (they apparently have been testing the mechanism). Also any time I saw the popup, i was able to open a private browsing window with ublock origin enabled and watch the video. It seems it only serves the popup if you have adblocker running *AND* are logged into youtube.
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Yeah, the common consensus is that the anti-adblock measure is being connected with accounts rather than, say, IP addresses or whatever. That could always change in the future, but that appears to be the mechanism YouTube is using right now.
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I wonder if my experience is slightly skewed, however, since as a loyal, red-blooded American who supports our brave law enforcement [except FBI & ATF, of course] and military, I watch a lot of body camera footage for educational purposes. And most of it (because it depicts the liquidation of criminals/terrorists) is not monetized. Hmmm…
Re: Re: Re:2
Guys! I think we’ve found davec after all this time!
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Eh… Incognito gets them too in my case, but I haven’t seen the stage 3 ‘three strikes’ style message or the stage 4 ‘replaces the video player’ style block.
That being said I am typically up at abnormal hours and have gotten the popups during the early morning, likely not long after they’ve updated the script. The script still updates regularly, some have estimated twice a day if not more.
I’ve lost count over the last 30 years of just how many times some Henny Penny wannabe has said “This will kill/break/destroy/ruin the internet!!”
History says that change is always happening, but you can take it to the bank that the internet itself is not going away within your lifetime. Trust me on this one.
What is the most disturbing is that most YouTube users (as explained in ZDNet article) seeing anti adblocker popup desinstall the adblocker (instead of just adding YouTube, and all the associated domains, to the whitelist), exposing them to much less control on all trackers and ads.
Maybe it’s what Google expected, to remove as much adblockers as possible to drive new revenue using their ads, that are used on almost all websites (that showing ads).
Re: 'As thanks for visiting our site here's an autoplaying ad with audio for you.'
Maybe it’s what Google expected, to remove as much adblockers as possible to drive new revenue using their ads, that are used on almost all websites (that showing ads).
If so it’s an incredibly stupid move on Google’s part as even if users luck out and don’t run across a malware-ridden ad that demonstrates why ablockers are as mandatory as an anti-virus if you’re going online they’re still going to find out what a nightmare dealing with modern ads are.
Making youtube a hassle to use by going after adblockers might work out okay in the short term but long-term I do not see this working out well for Google, whether that’s more people installing and using adblockers, a decrease in users on the site as they decide that it’s not worth the hassle or both.
Are people actually deleting ad blockers?
I’ve seen this reported in a few places. They all list a few ad blockers and how many times they have been uninstalled lately, then conclude that lots of people are giving up on ad blockers. Of course they don’t list all ad blockers, and generally the ones they list aren’t very good. It’s entirely possible that people are just changing to a better ad blocker, and the reports just don’t mention extra installs for things like uBlock Origin.
I have no evidence that this is actually happening, but omitting important information is a pretty standard way to lie about stuff.
Re:
You’re taking a fairly narrow view here. This is similar to people downloading stuff against a copyright holder’s wishes. The goal is to associate a vague sense of “immorality” with it—even Mike and many downloaders have been convinced to call that “piracy”. With ad-blocking, they’re similarly trying to associate it with “freeloading” and “stealing”, and mentioning uninstallation might give you the sense that those people have realized the error of their ways and you should too.
Even on Techdirt, one sees comments that boil down to “of course I’ll let them fuck me with trackers however they like, ’cause I don’t wanna freeload” or “it’s wrong to watch a TV show without giving money to our corporate overlords” (nevermind that even Star Wars is still “losing money” so they don’t have to pay anyone who worked on it). If you really want to support Youtube, you’re probably better off watching one mesothelioma video and clicking the ad. I suspect if you then clear your cookies and turn your ad-blockers back on for a year, you’ll still be one of the more profitable users.
Some things to think about
First, why are people deleting their ad blocker when they see a message on YouTube? Why can’t they just white list YouTube?
Second, I think I read on this very site that even the FBI is telling people to use ad blockers to prevent the installation of malware. Yet some websites still tell people to disable their ad blockers so the site can serve annoying and possibly damaging ads! Uet those websites won’t take any responsibility when their ad serves malware.
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If YouTube can still detect the presence of an adblocker even after whitelisting, it’ll tell you that you have to disable the adblocker.
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The very story that Mike linked to, on “isp.page” about European privacy law, demands that users “Enable JavaScript and cookies to continue”. Were the site in Europe, that itself would be an obvious violation of privacy law (at least with no contact information or privacy policy being made available).
It’s just short advertising
Which keeps the site running. What is it with people who don’t understand nothing is free.
If you don’t like advertising pay to make it go alway.
It’s there to make the site money.
Without income the site closes.
The problem isn’t the ads. People will put up with advertising that isn’t excessively intrusive. In fact, we’ve had advertising for almost as long as we’ve had mass media.
The actual problem is the intrusive tracking, which has been pawned off — despite evidence to the contrary — as somehow necessary to advertise online effectively.
Re:
I understand the view, somewhat, but personally disagree. I’m far more likely to click through and pay for something with targeted advertising. Those buys add money to the site I’m using that helps keep them free. Advertising (the legitimate kind) is useless if you don’t click.
I have a paid membership with YouTube so I’m not sure how their bumpers work. But based on other sites you can click on the advert video and load a separate web page.
they last 10, 15, or 30 seconds. That’s far less problematic, to me, than waiting 60 seconds through an advert for some strategy game I’ll never play only to have it never give Me the x to return to the app.
That’s my big complaint for Apple and iOS. No matter how many time I try to cycle or reset the cross app tracking permissions, I still get adverts for games I’ll never play.
Re: 'To load our site please disable your anti-virus software...'
Tracking is part of it but personally the biggest concern for me is malicious code and the fact that if a site doesn’t properly vet all the ads they’re running I’m the one who’ll have to deal with the fallout, which means it’s up to me to protect my computer and the quickest and easiest way to do that is block the method malicious code might be delivered.