this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 128 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Cool, so YouTube will start putting pop ups that require you to consent to the detection in order to watch videos. That's what everyone did with the whole cookies thing when that was determined to be illegal without consent.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago (2 children)

that would be illegal too, because that information is not strictly necessary for their service - they could only opt to not provide the service in the eu

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t agree. They can reasonably argue that advertising is a requirement of their business model, so it is necessary to advertise. Therefore it is necessary for them to block access to those blocking advertising. The directive cited isn’t intended to make advertiser supported services effectively illegal in the EU. That would be a massive own goal. It’s intended to make deceptive and unnecessary data collection illegal. Nothing YouTube is doing is deceptive. They’re being very clear about their intention to advertise to non-subscribers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They can reasonably argue that advertising is a requirement of their business model,

Couldn't that claim be countered by pointing out that they already deploy a for pay approach called youtube premium?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, because businesses have multiple revenue streams. YouTube has a subscription offering, and a free, advertiser-supported offering. Both are part of their business model.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There are multiple French websites that do this. It is legal (otherwise these websites would not do this anymore, it's been a while).
There is a popup asking you if you consent to get cookies (for advertisement). If you say "no", it leads you to another popup with two choices :

  • Change your decision and accept cookies
  • Pay for a premium service without advertisements
[–] Honytawk 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That is just because the people who enforce the EDPB guidelines just haven't come around to fining those websites.

That practice is still illegal.

Want to speed up the process? You can report those websites. The more reports the faster those get punished.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, that's not that clear for the moment.

Let me explain the French case :

  • Webedia is a big company that owns most of the famous French websites (jeuxvideo.com , etc.). All these websites have cookie walls with an alternative : a paid subsription. What they say, is that the website is now accessible with subscription only. However, if you accept cookies, you'll get a discount (free access).
  • The CNIL (a big French governemental entity) tried to forbid this. If someone reports a website, it's for this entity to take action. There is no need to report Webedia, the CNIL knows already :-)
  • The Conseil d'Etat (juridical entity of the French gov) said that "non", it's OK for Webedia to use such paywalls. The CNIL can't forbid Webedia to use them.
  • The CNIL asked the jusrists at the European level... here we are. We still don't know.

Here is a French website where the CNIL explains this :
https://www.cnil.fr/fr/cookie-walls-la-cnil-publie-des-premiers-criteres-devaluation

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well, seems like my gdpr knowledge got too rusty. at least to me its an interesting topic to actualise

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Same in Germany and Switzerland. I just close the site immediately when I see this kind of blackmailing. Or use 12ft.io if I absolutely want to read the article.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nothing more fun than having to go through some websites shitty settings to toggle everything off.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can heartily recommend Consent-O-Matic. I'd say that it's able to clear (and reject by default) the cookie warnings on 95% of the sites I visit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

ublock does it too if you enable the "block annoyances" option in the settings

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know why I have not yet donated to these developers. They sure as hell deserve it. As soon as I get home they're gonna get some moneys!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

sadly they're not accepting donations

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I bet the list maintainers accept tips!

At the bottom of the uBlock Origin homepage there's links to the most popular list homepages which would be a good starting point.

The Peter Lowe’s ad tracking list links to its own Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/blocklist (Confirm by clicking on the link at the uBlock Origin homepage, then at the top click on patreon).

The other ones I couldn't find any obvious way to donate to the list maintainers.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sadly, no ublock for me on Safari, but good to know!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Don't use stupid browsers then ;-)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Duckduckgo browser does it too

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Still a curveball. Collecting your data and having to say ot to your face are not the same.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Would be a shame if your answer to that consent question was not saved and would be required to answer each time you open up a video.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

which you could get around by using another frontend for youtube or just going with vlc all the way by playing the url in vlc directly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Firefox's 'Play in VLC' https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/play-in-vlc/ is brilliant for this - it does entire playlists too. It works with smpalyer, which is even better player than VLC, IMO.

https://www.smplayer.info/

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A lot of the cookie notifications can't collect data until you accept them (or follow their annoying "opt-out" workflow). If you install UBlock Origin and go to its settings > 'Filter lists' and enable the "EasyList - Cookie Notices" you can block a lot of cookies. If they can never nag you and you never opt in, assuming they're following the law, you shouldn't be tracked.