Yep. He took a massive ego trip early on and immediately came across as someone I don’t particularly want to side with.
I’m a web developer and fundamentally disagree with his take on what JavaScript can do on the client side. I see what he’s getting at but I think he’s wrong. JavaScript can certainly detect access to resources (ads in this instance) without violating any enforceable policies. Half the internet does error handling with JS for things that won’t load - how can this be construed as violating eprivacy? Nonsense.
That being said I’d love for this feature to go away and would be happy to see YouTube and Google go pound sand.. but this feels like a stretch. It was inevitable enshittification imo.
While you’re right conceptually, this isn’t what the wording means in terms of consent dialogs. Legitimate interest means they can assume, legitimately, that you have an interest in aspects of the site (by you being there) that require X cookies, basically. Ie their product is providing functionality they can assume you’re interested in just by being there, and they’re “pre approving” the tracking/storage for that functionality.
I concur that it’s rubbish and used almost always in a manner that reeks of illegitimacy.