This right here. Hamas should have just owner up to it, Israel was already doing a good job of damaging its intervention, all the hospital issue has done is shift a lot of the protests and discussions onto a very shaky platform surrounding it, which will just disengage people who would have otherwise criticized it and make those still protesting because of it more radicalized into fictional narratives. Hamas, once again, has played itself at the cost of Palestinian lives, this time by giving Israel an excuse to gaslight what they are doing with the presence of a false narrative.
This isn’t the solution people think it is. The only thing Google needs to do now to make it legal is to force a prompt asking for your consent where if you disagree you are completely blocked off from the site. That is, assuming Alexander Hanff, the one carrying on this narrative since 2016, is correct and interpreted the response correctly. In Article 5 of the 2002/58/EC there is a second paragraph that states the following:
I’m no lawyer, but I tell you who has them in droves, Google and YouTube, whom I’m sure have already discussed whether their primary means of business revenue, ads, could be construed as a commercial transaction for which evidence is needed. I’m not sure how a two page reply from the EU commission to his request telling him Article 5 applies really helps the guy out if Article 5 also includes the means by which YouTube is allowed to run scripts that provide evidence that ads have been able to be properly reproduced.
Still, assuming Alexander Hanff is right, Google just needs to add a consent form and begin blocking access to all content if users disagree, so it seems to me his claim is damned if he is right, and damned if he isn’t right.