Today I filed a formal complaint against #YouTube with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner for their illegal deployment of #adblock detection technologies.
Under Article 5(3) of 2002/58/EC YouTube are legally obligated to obtain consent before storing or accessing information already stored on an end user's terminal equipment unless it is strictly necessary for the provisions of the requested service.
In 2016 the EU Commission confirmed in writing that adblock detection requires consent.
You can help by filing your own complaint here:
https://forms.dataprotection.ie/contact
The more complaints the DPC receives - the quicker they will act.
You can use my complaint to help write your own (attached).
I cannot stress enough how important it is for you all to take the 5-10 minutes it takes to file this complaint.
If the Irish DPC receives only my complaint they will likely not pay it any attention for at least 18 months if at all - but if they receive 10 000 complaints it will seriously eat into their budget (it costs money to handle complaints) and will "motivate" them to act much faster.
If they receive 100 000 complaints - YouTube will be forced to stop this very quickly indeed.