YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

What if people just paid for services they use and depend on frequently

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?

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

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

> 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.

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.

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.