This whole thread is a whole lot of hullabaloo about complaining about legality about the way YouTube is running ad block detection, and framing it as though it makes the entire concept of ad block detection illegal.
Nope, the point is that, at the moment, Google seems to look where it should not look to know if a user has an adblocker and they don't ask for permission.
Let put it in another way: Google need to have my permission to look into my device.
But it doesn’t stop Google from refusing to serve you video until you watch ads.
Which is fine as long as Google can decide that I am using an adblocker without violating any law, which is pretty hard.
Of course Google could decide that it is better to leave EU and it law that protect the users, but is it a smart move from a company point of view ?
Managers aren’t worried about the remote workers who are productive and reliable. The worry is the people who aren’t. On my team, you are fully remote as long as you meet expectations. You don’t, you return to office.
Fine, but that mean that they have no way of measuring productivity other than the "I see him doing his work" or "I see him at his desk" methods.
They only mention it once, but I do have issues with mentorship in a remote work environment. I just personally haven’t been able to make it work. I’m sure some do.
This is a minor problem. You can implement a progressive WFH policy where the new hires must be in the office with their menthor for the initial training period and then begin to WFH for more and more days. The downside is that the company need to return to hire locally which could means to pay the new hires higher salaries.
While it is true what you say, it is also true that they must give you an option to not accept the changes.
And if you do not accept the changes, then they cannot apply them.
Now, if we are talking about a service, then the normal result is that I, as consumer, have the option to terminate the contract without any additional fees even if expected. In this cases people normally accept the changes since most of the time is more a mess to change provider than the gain. It is not the optimal way in my opinion, but at least it have a logic: the new contract is this, you have 30 days to accept or refuse it and if you refuse it we have no contract. In my opinion the correct way should be "ok, no new contract, keep the old one with its goods and bad" but at least I have a choice if the new condition are really bad (for me of course)
On the other hand, when we talk about hardware it is debatable what you can do on a device that is my property and especially if I bought it with a given amount of working features.
And, BTW, here we have the concept of vexatious clauses, which are void by default even if I accept an EULA that has them.
Probably something along the line of breach of contract. You buy something with an implicit understandement that it work as inteded and advertised and that it should continue this way unless it broke (or it assolve its functions if it is the case).
One could argue that if you buy a device that work "as is" and then with a later update it start to require a subscription to work, this change could not be that legal.
To make an example: you buy a full optional car. 1 year later, an update make one of your option (let's say, the cruise control) a subscription service. That could be argued should be illegal.
The problem is when the subscription model is introduced to the alredy sold devices, not on the new ones, like in this case.
Probably.
A similar approach is under discussion even where I live and everyone seems to think that forbidding the "short rent" (as it is called here) will magically put all these apartament on the market for "long rent", lowering the prices.
Until it is not understood that (well, at least here) AirBnB is not the cause but the result the problem will never be solved.
How does that pan out when the company discontinues that product model or product line?
It does not, but that is not the problem my suggestion would solve. The solution to this problem is to not buy these "advanced" devices
A family member got a fancy device with zero buttons on it, and an app that basically provides ‘+’ and ‘-’ buttons that has to go through that companies cloud service. When their internet went down, they had to unplug it because it was set wrong and without internet, it couldn’t be set.
This wasn’t some advanced capability. It didn’t require massive data or computational power. It literally could have been handled with a 7-segment LCD panel and three buttons (+/-/Power). If you buy that device now, they require you pay a monthly subscription for the privilege of being able to do that (under the excuse that they use ‘AI’ to know the right values without being told, but conveniently even the ‘+/-’ functionality is now locked to the subscription plan.
Wrong choice in my opinion. And also terrible design of the device itself. But as long as people will look more to the design than to its usability, companies will continue to do these kind of devices.
And I don't buy the "but all the companies do this and that, there are no alternatives": alternatives are present, people are just ignoring them to buy the last device sold with the lastest buzzwords.
No problem. The app would be able to connect to their internet services, it only do it connecting to your local guest network that is connected to internet but have not access to anything else on your local network using wifi, from a phone that has nothing else on it so so SIM, no contacts, no navigation cookies and so on. At least some other useless app like itself.
It is not the perfect solution (which would be to not need an app) but at least you neutralize any kind of spyware/data harvesting since there is no data to harvest if not the one generated by the app itself.
Solvable: just put these apps on an old smartphone with nothing else on it and that you don't use anymore then put it on the guest wireless network without access to anything else 😁
Good luck to look for something is not there...
Roll it out quickly, and you create awareness and ignite the fuckery out of the arms race, do it slowly, watch the engagement, and try to find the best messaging to bring “us” “back on side”, and maybe they stand a chance to shift the needle.
I think they are too naive then... I mean, how do they plan to win back people that use adblocker blocking the adblocker ? Forcing them to disable the adblockers ? It is clear that this action will start an armed race (not that it was never an armed race in this situation).
Nope, even in EU the only option is a gift card (or a coupon) if you need to reinburse someone if more that a certain time is passed (usually about a week). There are fiscal reasons to this.
Theres so few people who’d pay for it that all the social media companies would, hopefully, collapse and cure us of one of the worst technoplagues of the 21st century.
I would not be that sure. As long as they will offer the choice between paying with cash or with data, social media companies will survive.
The money for it has to come from somewhere. If you want to protect your privacy (which you should) then you’d be better off paying for services like that than not. It’s been circlejerked to death but: If it’s free, you’re the product.
It was not always like this. When this "everything is free" craze started, in some cases the idea was to offer something free to attract customer to the paid services. In other cases the idea was to show how powerfull was something (Altavista for example was a demo to show how powerfull the Alpha processors were at the time) and were seen as another way to have some visibility. Other cases were investments from entities to offer a public service or something similar.
It is only when companies were born with only the free service to offer that what you say become true.
Even Lemmy is not immune. Sure it’s FOSS, but it’s not free to host. Someone has to pay for servers, data, web domains and more.
True, but the costs are way lower and are also distribuited. I can host my instance for a reasonable low price and if I want I can share the price with some friend for example.
See Lemmy as the old BBS, of course there is a price but it is the price of a passion/interest.
Fine, but that is how it works pratically everywhere, it is not an Amazon specific thing.
It is extremely rare that even a real store give you back real money if you return something and some time have passed, they usually just give you a coupon of the same value.
The problem here is that Amazon take your item, not that you return something and got a coupon for it instead of real money
Its comical that you think its a “problem for Fitbit”
Well, if I don't buy a Fitbit who has the problem ? Me that buy another brand device or Fitbit that don't sell one device (and as consequence also loose the option to gather some data) ?
Also, that’s not “thanks to the GDPR”, as itn doesnt prevent data collection when you’ve consented to it, which the overwhelming majority of people happily do.
True. The point of the GDPR is allowing people to be able to decide who and when share their data without fearing something like "If I sell you something you are forced to give me your data".
Look, there are only two options: 1) you sell me something knowning I can deny your data collection and 2) you don't sell me anything from the start.
In the first case, you have a sell and maybe have my data, in the second you have nothing and I have sothing from someone else.
But let's end here. I understand that we are not thinking the same. Nice discussion anyway.
True, but the calculation probably include also less expensive models, which make probably the big part of the market.
And even for a low price smartphone there is no necessity to buy a new one every year.
Then I agree, actually probably there is way less people that can put 1000 or more $/€ on a phone every year.
Nope, the point is that, at the moment, Google seems to look where it should not look to know if a user has an adblocker and they don't ask for permission.
Let put it in another way: Google need to have my permission to look into my device.
Which is fine as long as Google can decide that I am using an adblocker without violating any law, which is pretty hard.
Of course Google could decide that it is better to leave EU and it law that protect the users, but is it a smart move from a company point of view ?