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1. Embed this notice
   Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Monday, 20-Nov-2023 22:01:02 JST Aral Balkan

   Corporations: just let us regulate ourselves, it’ll be fine…

   Also corporations: https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17z8hsz/youtube_has_started_to_artificially_slow_down/

   Regulate the absolute living crap out of the these bastards. (But who’s going to when the folks who should be regulating are having drinks with them at the pub every evening and eyeing their next gig at them?*)

   * Did you know Google’s lobbying offices are literally round the corner from the European Parliament?

   #regulation #selfRegulation #lobbying #revolvingDoors #institutionalCorruption

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 02:26:06 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     @jmaris Oh, I’ve seen it with my own eyes but thank you; appreciate it.

   • Embed this notice
     Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO (jmaris@eupolicy.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 02:26:07 JST Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     in reply to

     @aral you seem to think we are having a lot more fun than we actually are. The first thing I'll be doing when I'm back in the office is calling Google and demanding an explanation.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 02:28:02 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     @jmaris PS. I’d put good money on the explanation being “oops… a bug.”

     (One way we can do more is to push for algorithmic transparency regulation so we don’t have to ask them and can take a look ourselves.)

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 04:56:23 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     @jmaris PS. Hadn’t realised you were working with Karen (just properly read your bio). Say hi from me :)

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 18:51:30 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     @jmaris It’s possible, yes. However there is at least one piece of evidence (the screencast) of the wait going away when one person at least set their browser agent to Chrome.

     That’s what I meant when they’ll likely say it’s accidental/a bug/side-effect. (They’re starting to block ad/tracker blockers like uBlock Origin in Chrome so it would make sense they aren’t checking for ad/tracker blockers there because they’ve made it impossible for them to run.)

     End result’s the same.

   • Embed this notice
     Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO (jmaris@eupolicy.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 18:51:31 JST Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     in reply to

     @aral I'm now hearing the 5 second wait is due to Adblock détection...

   • Embed this notice
     Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO (jmaris@eupolicy.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 18:51:33 JST Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     in reply to

     @aral there is no imaginable way that code can be a bug. We're that to be the explanation given I would have to kindly ask them not to take the piss.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 18:54:11 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     @jmaris (Note that person in screencast had uBlock Origin running. Also, because Google can serve a different version of a page to anyone based on criteria only they control, it is very difficult to exactly reproduce anyone’s experience with any level of certainty. This is why we need algorithmic transparency.)

     https://ar.al/2019/05/11/the-dos-and-donts-of-tech-regulation/

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 19:06:53 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     @jmaris Afaik, Chrome does not, but there are ways using fingerprinting (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-chrome-extensions-can-be-fingerprinted-to-track-you-online/). However, I’d be very surprised if that was the case here. Because they don’t need to resort to such things. They’re already sure effective ad/tracker blockers cannot run in Chrome going forward because they’ve made it impossible for them to do so (see https://www.androidauthority.com/google-chrome-manifest-v3-changes-3386506/).

   • Embed this notice
     Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO (jmaris@eupolicy.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 19:06:54 JST Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     in reply to

     @aral that does sound like it is on purpose. Do we know if chrome communicates installed add-ons to any of Google's sites ? They might eliminate the wait when chrome reports no Adblock

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 22:35:29 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     @jmaris Indeed. And not just Google. Surveillance capitalists in general.

     (And the solution isn’t to have surveillance capitalists of our own in the EU. It’s to ban their surveillance-based, extractive, and exploitative business model and fund technology from the commons for the common good.)

   • Embed this notice
     Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO (jmaris@eupolicy.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 22:35:31 JST Jordan Maris 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 #NAFO

     in reply to

     @aral I saw this. Just goes to show we have let Google accumulate way too much power over the web. We're lucky it is just chrome now, and not the chromium engine, but I suspect it is just a matter of time...

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 22-Nov-2023 17:15:42 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • European Commission

     “YouTube has provided a statement on the issue … ‘Users who have ad blockers installed may experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using.’
     …
     This does not completely explain how the five-second delay goes away when using Google Chrome.”

     https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-reportedly-slowing-down-videos-firefox-3387206/

     So a slower experience for those who protect themselves from tracking and oops, it affects rival browsers.

     How’s this legal, @EU_Commission?

     #gdpr #antitrust #google #eu #youTube

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 22-Nov-2023 18:46:50 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • European Commission
     • Jack

     @technotion @EU_Commission Fuck every trillion-dollar company. People feel free to quote me on that.

   • Embed this notice
     Jack (technotion@urbanists.social)'s status on Wednesday, 22-Nov-2023 18:46:52 JST Jack

     in reply to

     • European Commission

     @aral @EU_Commission could you make this same argument against apple for refusing to adopt a modern messaging standard other than SMS at this point? Not only are users who don't choose to own Apple devices loosing QOL features, but both parties are lacking end to end encryption.

     Not trying to straw man this, I actually hate that Google is doing this, just genuinely curious your thoughts.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Friday, 24-Nov-2023 18:30:35 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • European Commission
     • alex.tm
     • Jack

     @technotion @alextm @EU_Commission They apparently don’t want to implement Google’s version and are pushing for a standard instead:

     https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/11/16/apples-flavor-of-rcs-wont-support-googles-end-to-end-encryption-extension

   • Embed this notice
     Jack (technotion@urbanists.social)'s status on Friday, 24-Nov-2023 18:30:37 JST Jack

     in reply to

     • European Commission
     • alex.tm

     @alextm @aral @EU_Commission wow, that's fantastic news! Can't believe I missed that.

     That's really too bad about the end to end encryption not being default... I'd love to learn more about that decision if you have more info?

   • Embed this notice
     alex.tm (alextm@mstdn.ca)'s status on Friday, 24-Nov-2023 18:30:38 JST alex.tm

     in reply to

     • European Commission
     • Jack

     @technotion @aral @EU_Commission Apple announced they will adopt RCS last week (to replace SMS). Unfortunately encryption isn’t part of the standard, and it’s unclear if the carriers are willing to update it to include E2EE.

     Apple Plans to Make It Easier to Text Between iPhones and Androids https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-16/apple-plans-to-adopt-rcs-texting-standard-in-truce-with-android