YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

> What if Google didn't horde whatever data it could about me from the analytics systems that it has installed on a myriad of websites without my consent?

Arent you voluntarily using their website? Nobody is forcing you to open your browser, and type y-o-u-t-u-b-e-dot-c-o-m.

> What if Google wasn't a monopoly who amassed insane amounts of capital to do this?

MKBHD, LTT and others are willingly uploading videos to YouTube. YT doesnt have an exclusive deal with any of those. Infact, those folks are free to upload the same video to Vimeo, Twitch and others. What is YT doing wrong here?

> What if Google didn't lobby governments around the world for special treatment?

Such as?

Google analytics tracking is embedded in probably millions of non-Google websites, and YouTube videos get embedded in all sorts of pages.

Arent websites voluntarily embedding Google Analytics? They can decide today, if they wanna switch to Plausible, or any of the other analytics providers right?

I still fail to understand how this is a fault of a company? Would you blame Apple if everyone bought iPhones? What should Apple do? Ask people not to buy their phones?

If airtags were used almost solely to nonconsensually and surreptitiously stalk people (i.e. not to track the belongings of the people buying them), yes I think it would be fair to blame Apple. Especially if that were the advertised purpose, as it is with GA.

It's the fault of the company because they leverage their illegal monopoly position to do this.

You're operating under this unrealistic assumption that Google is an innocent entity that has not broken the law to get to the position that they are in.

This is false. Google does not play by the rules and as such your assertion that people should in turn play by the rules when interacting with Google is unreasonable.

Google Analytics is a tool that websites use to track users, similar to how a store might use a pen & paper to keep track of phone numbers or names. The store made the decision to buy the pen to track users. Why are you angry with the pen company?

Google Analytics is not going around tracking users. They provide a service that the website you decided to go to (cnn.com, bbc.com) is using. If you have to be angry, be angry with cnn or bbc.

I dont follow your logic. The website you visit (cnn, bbc) has made the decision to use Google Analytics. They can very well stop using the GA, and nothing would happen.

Imagine all the restaurants in the world used IKEA for their tables & chairs. Can you say OMG IKEA has a monopoly? No sir, IKEA didnt go into the stores and install the tables & chairs, the restuarants did. Will you be angry with IKEA?

I would imagine that those sites use GA because it's the best tool for their needs. It's probably the best tool for their needs because it is both a very well developed tool with superior integration with other parts of their platforms and has a large developer base that is familiar with it. These advantages come from Google's monopolistic practices and the money and resources that it provides them.

I can certainly imagine such a thing but I'm not sure it's particularly relevant to the situation as IKEA has as far as I'm aware never been ruled to be a monopoly while Google has.[0]

Ultimately my position on this subject comes down to this: Google does things that are hostile to me. They do things that are hostile to you. They do things that are hostile to society writ large. They break the law and violate the social contract. My morals necessitate responding to such an entity with disregard for whatever they're legally entitled to.

I don't like the way that I'm surveilled by Google and I don't like the way that they abuse their monopoly position and lobby the government to make it impossible for me to evade that surveillance.

To bring the conversation back to where it started: I already pay them with my privacy, I pay for the economic harm their monopolistic practices have on society, and I pay for the corrosive effects their lobbying has on the political structure.

I'm not going to be paying them for an ad free Youtube experience.

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/05/business/google-loses-antitru...

Pens have a purpose other than surveillance, and aren't as capable as machines. A better analogy would be Bluetooth trackers and cameras with machine vision to identify and watch people's movements and eye gaze as they move around the store. And yes, that is creepy and the manufacturers should be criticized for creating it.

Also, client side scripts do not run on the website's property. They are taking advantage of the wide-open security model of web clients (the model they coincidentally get to define because they dump massive amounts of money into giving away a free browser, making competition in the space nearly impossible) to use people's computers for unauthorized purposes. It's a malware payload just like a crypto miner. They should be treated the same way (or more severely) that they would be if they published miners and told web developers to add them to get free money (taking their own cut of course). The operator and the tool creator should both be blamed for shady behavior when the tool is designed and advertised for shady purposes.

> manufacturers should be criticized for creating it.

Manufacturers make things when there's a market. If Google didnt build Google Analytics, someone else would (Maybe Microsoft, or Apple) because the demand exists.

Other people steal, run scams, etc. Doesn't mean I have to. Google doesn't have to create surveillance software even if they suppose someone else will.

Why haven't they created crypto miners for even more profit? It would be more ethical and less wasteful than the surveillance/ads combo. Obviously others will and have done it.

Sure, there's a need for a product like GA, and in a vacuum someone else would create a similar product but whatever value it provides to the market and the users does not justify socially malignant behaviour from a convicted monopolist

If GA didn't exist there's no guarantee that the alternatives would create the same negative externalities that damage privacy of strangers while delivering value to the users of the software.

Google Analytics ultimately operates the way it does not because it's necessarily the best way to provide value to the sites that use it, but because it serves Google's monopolistic and unscrupulous interests.