Disabling Youtube Cookies

Hi guys,

we want to offer our visitors the possibility to decline cookie use. However, YouTube for example places cookies automatically if you open a page with an embedded video.

Youtube offers a nocookie-embed options, which can be used like this:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/J---aiyznGQ?rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

However, this comes with several problems:

  1. After clicking on play, the cookies will still be set (which should not happen if consent was declined)
  2. ā€œhttps://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/J---aiyznGQā€ does not get accepted as a link url in Webflows video element
  3. It also doesnā€™t work in Rich Body Elements

I was thinking about writing a script that removes the video, until consent is given. But I guess that would not work since cookies are placed by YT immediately. Can anyone think of a smart solution?

3 Likes

Iā€™m interested in this as well. Both Vimeo and Youtube have ā€˜privacy-problemsā€™ regarding the GDPR. You preferably donā€™t want to use them if you want 100% compliant (and want to avoid obstructive/annoying cookie-walls).

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Unfortunately there is no way to enforce this, since editors can always use videos in rich texts.

It would be great if youtubeā€™s privacy urls would be allowed. Then we could implement a custom solution on top, to remove the video if cookies were disabled, and no cookie will ever be set.

So for now, we can only use videoā€™s with custom iframes, if we donā€™t want YT to set cookies (by default).
Is there an option to host a video on Webflow (besides the background video)?

Any updates on youtube embeds? I think the problem is bigger than just youtube videos ā€“ vimeo, google maps etc. Any ideas how to use it on my clientā€™s website and stay GDPR compliant?

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Might have to create a wishlist item for this?

2 Likes

Hey guys, I created a wishlist item:
https://wishlist.webflow.com/ideas/WEBFLOW-I-1540

However, this is probably difficult to solve for webflow as long as they donā€™t offer a general cookie handling feature themselves. The only other solution I could think of is to not insert video elements by default and offering a javascript function to insert the video that webflow users can call once cookies are accepted.

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Hey andre9000
I wouldnā€™t use any embeds on my personal websites, but what about clients asking to add a youtube video or a google maps embed on their website? Itā€™s a huge limitation. On wordpress there are endless plugins to stay GDPR compliant though. So naturally I will lose my clients to Wordpress developersā€¦ Embed Plus Plugin for YouTube, with YouTube Gallery, Channel, Playlist, Live Stream, Facade ā€“ WordPress plugin | WordPress.org
There are plenty of plugins to stay GDPR compliant

@Josef @andre9000 do you have found any solutions for this topic?

This could be a useful solution ā†’ https://www.bmg.studio/solution/gdpr-compliant-youtube-video-iframe-blocking

So this is not an inhouse webflow solution but since most customizable cookie banner solutions (with automatic cookie recognition) are not free of charge I decided to use Cookiebot (for now).
They also added some custom JS-code to add a placeholder for Youtube videos once the user declines Youtube marketing cookies. The code didnā€™t work right away but I modified it with ChatGpT until it did. This is the original code:

I really hope webflow will add a cost-free solution. This was actually my expectation: That there would be free of charge additions/plugins to use for the few additional use cases the webflow implementation doesnā€™t cover. That was my main reason for switching from wordpress to webflow: Fewer plugins Iā€™d have to pay for. Turns out: Itā€™s only true to a certain extent.

So now I have a working placeholder for youtube videos in my rich text elements.

  1. The youtube videos are being added in the CMS backend via an HTML-code in an embed element.
  2. They are being styled via CSS-code by an embed element on the dynamic article-site that contains the rich text elements.
  3. They are being enabled via JS-code that was added to the ā€œFooter codeā€ or ā€œbefore tagā€ within the site-settings. This only works in combination with the cookiebot solution. But I reckon, a modified version should work with similar solutions as well.

If the user clicks on withdraw consent/decline/ etc. the placeholder will be shown. If they accept Youtube marketing cookies or all cookies, the video will be shown. Let me know in case you are interested in the code.