1563414 - Youtube Premium Ads and the Level 2/Strict list

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Privacy: Anti-Tracking, enhancement)

Description

[Tanvi Vyas[:tanvi]]

When we move ETP from using the Level 1 list to the Level 2 list, youtube embeds on non-google sites will not have cookie access. What is the consequence to youtube premium users? Will they see ads even though they have paid for an ad-free experience? If so, is their anything we can do to resolve this issue for premium users?

Comment 1

[(no longer active)]

Sorry for the delay. I did some testing on this. I got the storage access API prompt once (with dom.storage_access.auto_grants set to false) and besides that I got ads in YouTube iframes sometimes.

So I think YouTube seems to have started to experiment with the storage access API in their embed iframes, and we should probably evangelize them to use it further.

Peter, do we have a contact on their team?

Comment 2

[Peter Saint-Andre [:stpeter]]

I've sent a note to our email coordination list with YouTube and will report back with our findings.

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to Peter Saint-Andre [:stpeter] from comment #2)

I've sent a note to our email coordination list with YouTube and will report back with our findings.

Did you ever hear anything back? (I didn't...)

Comment 4

[Peter Saint-Andre [:stpeter]]

Yes, they said they were running an experiment with storage access API. They weren't clear on the extent of the experiment. I'll ask for details and loop you in.

Comment 5

[Steven Englehardt [:englehardt]]

Attachment: sites_embedding_youtube.csv

You can view a list of sites embedding youtube in the attachment. Generated by: https://dbc-caf9527b-e073.cloud.databricks.com/#notebook/225586/command/225597

Comment 6

[(no longer active)]

Needinfo'ing Arthur for a recommendation on how to proceed here.

Given that so far we've had no user reports or complaints from this bug, my recommendation is to close this as WONTFIX as an expected side effect of bug 1501461.

Comment 7

[(no longer active)]

Redirecting to Se Yeon, since she's doing some investigation here to gather some more data around the behaviour of Youtube here.

Comment 8

[Arthur Edelstein [:arthur]]

(In reply to :ehsan akhgari from comment #6)

Needinfo'ing Arthur for a recommendation on how to proceed here.

Given that so far we've had no user reports or complaints from this bug, my recommendation is to close this as WONTFIX as an expected side effect of bug 1501461.

That sounds reasonable to me.

Comment 9

[Se Yeon Kim]

Following browsers were tested with user not logged in and logged in to YouTube premium account:
Firefox Nightly all protections off (custom mode, all unchecked)
Firefox Nightly protections on (standard mode)
Safari (standard mode with youtube.com identified by ITP)

In summary,
Nightly with standard protections on and Safari with “youtube.com” identified by Mac’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) properly displayed embedded YouTube videos and banner ad regardless of the user logged in as the YouTube premium user. However, on Nightly with protection off, no banner ads were seen when the user was logged in to their YouTube premium account. No video ads were seen during the YouTube video behavior research.

For more observations please read https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zmXEFtjiOY-tQIJykrIWZNSLoYvDuRiaXbBrX9W_zUI/edit?usp=sharing or look at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18b4bRV4SRU6heFEdQhG0HeEEViRvNqC0uvhWZdcf0Gg/edit?usp=sharing

Comment 10

[(no longer active)]

Thanks Se Yeon!