Inside the 'arms race' between YouTube and ad blockers
www.engadget.com
YouTube's dramatic content gatekeeping decisions of late have a long history behind them, and there's an equally long history of these defenses being bypassed.

Inside the ‘arms race’ between YouTube and ad blockers / Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies.::YouTube’s dramatic content gatekeeping decisions of late have a long history behind them, and there’s an equally long history of these defenses being bypassed.

    • nous@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Sorry, I was more talking about this in particular:

      Well, things affecting you unconsciously should be plain illegal

      It is far too general a statement to be enforceable. There are things you can better enforce that focus on the negative effects of marketing, but things affecting you unconsciously is to vague and affects both positive and negative behaviours.

      There are regulations about what you can and can’t put into edible products. There are regulations about what you can and can’t use as fuel. There are regulations on materials used in construction, so that they wouldn’t be as toxic as 50 years ago, on paints, on glue and what not.

      These are all specific things though, not general broad reaching unenforceable statements. Which I agree with, there is a lot you can do with regulation that prevents bad behaviours of corporations, but these are generally specific things that are trying to solve some actual problem. And in this case you need to specific what things you are trying to prevent.

      Even for just adverts, trying to ban all adverts that affect you unconsciously would be a ban on all adverts and marketing. Is that reasonable? I would not say so. It would be better to go after specific things like the regulations around advertising cigarettes. Or more relevant to today, maybe something around the shear amount of information advertising agency collect on you, IMO that is one of the bigger problems with them these days. Or the shear number of them that you get shoved into every aspect. Or putting adverts in products that you have already paid for. Those would be far more reasonable things that you could enforce.