Okay so bad news for everyone on YouTube right now
Starting the 13th, we will have an AI determine if we are children or not and if you are a child, than you are forced to send your ID, send a selfie or a credit card
This has the obvious cons of having your privacy being revoked from you and and in case there is a security breach, major identity thefts.
So what do we do in this scenario?
Well right now I have real idea as this is relativity new to me, but I do have two plans
Plan 1. Bug the shit out of them, send letters and send emails about how much of bad idea this is.
Include why the AI will mess up and target adults who watch cartoons, include privacy issues, censorship issues, anything you can think of that relates to this. I want you guys to bug the hell out of YouTube until they reverse this idea
Here their address for letters
Send a mass amount of letters on the 5th of August and than another mass amount on the 8th
Plan 2. Blackout.
Since the thing is coming out on the 13th.
The plan will be to completely avoid YouTube at all cost for that day (and beyond), no watching, no sharing, no uploading, no nothing.
Download videos before things go down, watch Netflix. Whatever you do, don’t touch YouTube.
That’s all I can say right now, I also want you guys to let YouTubers know of this situation cause if it’s important for everyone on the website to talk about this immediately
Spread this stuff around, let people know of YouTube’s upcoming policy and how it’ll hurt everyone
Edit: I have taken into consideration and I am going to agree that the blackout should be until the decision is reversed, this is so we are not out at risk as users and so YouTube doesn’t just ignore the original black out
I might have a more detailed plan posted later today, but it depends on everything goes
Another edit: just to remind yall to send in letters and emails about this to google to force their hands to reverse this decision
There is also the law itself, though I can’t speak much on it other than finding lawing bodies that can force YouTube to reverse this decision. If anyone can find a place to file or call for this, that will be greatly appreciated! (I heard maybe the FTC and or the California Consumer privacy right can be considered, but that needs more research)
BIGGER UPDATE: we have a new plan in motion, here is the updated plan for you all to see
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 0 · Okay, so here’s the updated plans for fighting against youtube's new ai age policy and privacy violating rule (I believe in
and also here's a petition to stop the law that would help support this into becoming a thing
KOSA is a censorship bill that won’t make kids safe. Instead, it'll put all internet users at risk, especially youth. If you believe in a fr
and also a tumblr post about it and how you can help further prevent this from being allowed in office
💬 63 🔁 18974 ❤️ 12112 · Hey guys something fucking bad happened · KOSA/the kids online safety act has been reintroduced into legislature a
Don’t forget to send this fellow people outside of tumblr
YouTubers, Twitter users, send it through out and make sure you are heard
Another update for people, we have a discord server! Come over to the server to join in and be organized then before!
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 1 · Join the Blackout YouTube Discord Server! · To those who have been wanting a YouTube blackout discord server (and other cen
I know people think that with the YouTube age verification thing, there's nowhere else to go and we're just...fucked forever now.
(which makes sense honestly, I'm having a bit of a panic attack at the moment)
Here's the thing though, it's not over. WE'RE NOT DOOMED.
I remember a couple years ago when Twitter got taken over and everyone was scrambling to find a replacement. There was a real fear that none of them were big enough to compete.
Fast forward to now, we have Bluesky. And at the time, I heard people saying "oh it's too small, it's too niche", but it's grown so much since then! Why? Because people didn't just resign themselves to Twitter when it went to shit, TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE packed up and went somewhere better.
I don't have a crystal ball, I can't predict the future, but if the enshittification of YouTube keeps up, I have a feeling that an alternative is going to pop up sometime in the future.
Obviously we need to keep the pressure on YouTube. Use the tactics that we've been using on Mastercard and Visa. Let our opposition to the Age ID Requirement be known by submitting feedback, calling, emailing, etc. We have to SWAMP THEM with complaints, make their lives that much more difficult until they let up.
And I also want people to know that we're not screwed yet.
There is a new age verification bill that has passed the house in America.
They insist that websites "don't have to" verify your age, but then they say, "if you don't when you have certain content on your site that kids may see, you will get a huge fine" which is going to cause most apps and sites to panic and do it anyway.
If you don't think it will affect you, that's where you're wrong.
They aren't just talking about sexual content. They are talking about gay themes in media (even if they are only holding hands and not even doing anything sexual). Discussions of drugs (not promotion of doing it, but discussions of people doing them and how to get help) discussions of self harm (how to get help) discussions about changes happening to your body (puberty, as well as health-related issues), cursing (as if kids haven't heard worse things at the back of the school bus.)
So, here are ways this hurts people in general, but let's focus on the fact that it hurts minors, the people these bills claim to protect:
If a kid has a friend who has started abusing drugs, they cannot reach out to anyone to ask questions to start the process of getting their friend help. Their friend could die because of this, or the one who wanted to help them could end up pressured into joining them.
2. A kid tries to look up how to get help for suicidal thoughts and how to get help stopping self harm and cannot get help and dies because these discussions are age gated.
3. A kid is being abused in anyway, including but not limited to sexually. They try to figure out what counts as that kind of abuse to try and get help, but because it has to do with minors being abused in that way, the search is considered illegal, as well as age gated so that they cannot receive any help.
4. A young girl has found a lump on her breast, and is having some scary symptoms, but she doesn't feel safe to talk to her parents because they're abusive. she turns to the internet to try and get help to learn what steps she needs to do next, but because the images that show what those symptoms look like are medical images that show images of breasts, she cannot learn more about her condition. Over time, the symptoms get worse. In America, we don't have free health care, and we are getting more and more impoverished. She doesn't get the help she needs, and eventually loses her breasts, or worse... it travels to the rest of her body, and she dies a slow and painful death.
This is not about helping minors. This isolates them and keeps them from being able to have online friends. Get basic information that could help them when they're in a scary situation.
What this is is a tool to gather information about people so that they are afraid to speak due to retaliation. This isolation is also good for both political parties--who both agreed that this bill is a good thing, by the way. Your political party is not "the good one" they are both your enemy--because they need us further isolated. If we cannot speak and cannot find ways to reach each other because the websites and apps eventually reach the point that to access them at all you have to prove your age, it will cause a greater divide in the people. Divided, we cannot rise up against fascism together. People have a difficult time meeting in public now to try and make friends, form alliances, or even share interests. There are no third spaces anymore. This has been in the works for a long time. This bill is the perfect tool to silence everyone.
We frogs are in a boiling pot of water right now. I know some of you are so sex averse that you want all of it banned, but because you wouldn't properly filter out that content and instead insisted everyone else curate the whole internet for your experience, you have vied for everything being illegal.
Your animes are going to be banned from viewing, and if you think fleeing this country will fix the issue, you're wrong. This will chase after you everywhere you go.
We have to fight this. this bill is called the KIDS Act. Please look into it.
Look up what is happening in the UK. I'm not overreacting. They have the most arrests over social media posts in the world now. If you don't think that could be you one day, you're a fool.
Please raise Caine about this. We need to stand together, or we will fall. The next thing that would be required to fix this is revolution, and you don't want to know what it's like to be in a post-revolution country. You have no idea what we will lose. You do not go from dystopia to utopia immediately. There is a very long transitionary period of the country being lawless with people rioting in the streets, people killing, stealing, and raping just because they can. You will be hungrier and thirstier and dirtier than you have ever been because the services you have come to know and love will disappear. The stores will be ransacked. Please, for the love of god, I know you hate what we currently have, but don't take this for granter. Don't be a fool. God, please.
If you feel uncomfortable with reblogging things from me due to disagreements you have with beliefs I hold, please just steal the post and copy-paste it as if it's you're own post. This information needs to be seen. It doesn't have to come from me. I don't care. Just please get this in front of as many eyes as possible.
This is not the time to be like "I won't share or even look at posts made by someone I disagree with" this is a life and death situation. We have it GOOD here. Do you understand? I know we have our struggles, but they are nothing in comparison to the other countries. Does the fact that you won't have electricity anymore if we end up having a revolution do anything for you? What about the fact that your dopamine-fulled activities will go away? what about the fact that you won't see new updates on the video games you love to play for years, or maybe even the rest of your life while the country rebuilds? We don't have to have a revolution. We just need to work on our foundation, and rebuild some rooms of the building instead of breaking the whole thing down just because one room is moldy.
I know this won't mean we have instant revolution. I am saying that it will be all we can do to fix this if things go a certain way. I'm not overreacting. This is a worst case scenario that becomes closer to being real if we don't stop this fucking KIDS act. I swear to god please understand.
the UK government has slipped another bill to destroy childrens rights and digital privacy under the radar
It's called the "Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill"
childrens NHS numbers are going to be used as a SUI (single unique identifier) id, which is sold as a safeguarding tool but has no clear safeguarding benefits
it will be "used across services"
this potentially means that advertisers and shady companies could get access to data of every child in the UK, including NHS records, other health records, school records such as attendance rates behaviour records and potentially grades, and other stuff that should be kept private
it could also potentially be used for police profiling
from what I can tell, it will be created for every person under 18 with an NHS number without that persons consent, or even their parents consent. NO FUCK EW NO. THAT JUST SCREAMS SHADY.
I read something about confidential and sensitive data being allowed to be shared more easily"for safeguarding purposes". Not good.
there is also a compulsory children not in school register.
this could prevent homeschooling for vulnerable and disabled children, and could also harm children who use school as an excuse to escape an abusive situation/seek help, as it will make any absence from school visible
It's unclear whether children or parents will be notified when the child's digital id is shared
privacy conscious parents might not register their children in services like education and the NHS, harming children who would otherwise have been able to access those things
What can you do about this?
It's currently in the committee stage in the house of lords, so time is running out to oppose it.
You can oppose by signing this petition if you're a british citizen:
We call on the Government to withdraw the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill. We believe it downgrades education for all children, and un
and you should also make as much noise about this as possible. Spread the word, the government will be less likely to pass this if there's a hell lot of backlash about it. Do everything you can, write to parliament if you're able, because once this system is in place, it will be very hard to get rid of.
Thank you to @tomboyjessie13 for helping me understand how to boycott Youtube! Your comments were super helpful! Thank you for making me aware of Pandora as well!
This is also an addition to @gentleman-velvet's boycott plan.
Use youtube alternatives:
There are many youtube alternatives that you can use for a variety of purposes. Two examples are:
Internet Archive - good for educational videos and books that are either free or very cheap. It's also good for forgoing Google Books because of its wide selection.
Pandora - fantastic for music, finding podcasts, and comedians. There are a lot of music artists on there. Overall, it's a good site for finding people to listen to.
Here is an article that provides a list of alternatives with their pros and cons, alongside their prices (if they have any).
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DO NOT USE A FRONT END YOUTUBE APPLICATION
Front enders like Freetube and Piped (including New Piped), are sites that are good for preventing Google from tracking you, but they still provide YouTube with traffic.
They are wonderful for preserving your privacy, but they are not good for a boycott.
To properly boycott YouTube, use the alternative sites like the ones listed that are completely separate and do not provide it with activity!
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Download Youtube Videos:
At first, you may not think there is a way to do that, but there are several sites dedicated to allowing you to download them. The post I made on this is far more comprehensive.
Use Video Download Helper or a website like Yt1z to download as many videos as you can, so that you can watch these privately without giving YouTube any kind of data. (Remember, empty discs, USBs, and external hardrives still exist for storage.)
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PIRACY
If you are using youtube for paid content, consider either alternative routes (such as netflix, hulu or whatever streaming services there are) or piracy.
If buying ain't owning, then piracy sure as hell ain't stealing. It has the same effect that not using youtube has, with the addition that you aren't giving the site money.
Be careful with piracy, they are trying to crack down on it and there may be unsafe sites that could compromise your security.
Use Pirate Bay with an alternative browser like Tor or a privacy based one like DuckDuckGo. I generally recommend using the Tor browser because your privacy is way more assured.
For legal reasons, I strongly suggest that you use alterative streaming sites that aren't YouTube but still don't involve piracy. (wink wink)
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ANNOY THE HELL OUTTA YOUTUBE
Contact youtube via their email and phone number. Blow up their email and phone lines.
This site lists all the ways to contact them via the phone, letter or fax.
hey uh. google now saves images (I.E./including reverse image search), videos, audio (including voice recordings in search and translate. and "Search Live" but that's an AI thing.), and files you use to search and ALSO SCRAPES THEM to feed ai.
Double-check your privacy settings.
Yeah. Yiiiikes. They also moved some settings from Web and App Activity settings to uhm. I don't know I think it's to the new Search Services History settings where the media saving setting is.
[Transcript:] If your saved media is used to train our AI models, it is disconnected from your Google Account. This training data will be kept for up to 4 years, even if you delete the original activity. [End transcript. ]
Oh great I have no control over it haha that's great /sarc
Google also has this to say (from this article):
[Begin quote:] We take your privacy seriously and take steps to protect it when using your Search Services History data to train our AI models. For example, data is disconnected from your Google Account before it is used to train our AI models or reviewed by our trained service providers. We will seek your permission before sharing your media with these providers for human review as part of the model improvement process. We use filters designed to automatically remove a broad range of identifying info or sensitive personal information. We are constantly working to improve our filtering and safety systems to better protect your privacy. When Search Services History is off, your future activity won't be used to train Google’s generative AI models, unless you provide feedback. [End quote. ]
:/.
Thankfully, you can turn this off. Under the cut is a tutorial for doing this, as well as more (I'd say rather important) info about this media-saving feature. If I've missed anything (especially since the wording on Google makes it seem to me that this may be one of several new features), do feel free to add onto this!
Go to 'My Google Activity'.
Click 'Search Services History'
Once your click it, I think it should show you your history by default (the heading should say 'Search Services History'), but if you're in 'Search Services History Settings', click 'View and delete saved history'.
From there, look through the different sections and look for images, audio, videos, files, etc. If you find any, delete them. This feature seems pretty new (as of writing), and the article is from June 10, so I don't think you have to go TOO far back.
Google's article about Save Media says this:
[Begin quote:] Some activity, like AI Mode or Ask Maps threads, contain links to the product where you can view interactions that include media like file uploads. [End quote. ]
[Begin quote:] My Activity may display thumbnails of images or videos you've viewed on Search services. These thumbnails aren’t considered your media and so are not covered by your Save Media subsetting. [End quote. ]
After you're done deleting media, click the button that says 'Your Search Services History setting is off/on'.
If 'Save Media' is on, uncheck it. IIRC, it should be already off if you have search history off, otherwise it's on by default.
This will display some disclaimers. I recommend reading the disclaimers (including what's under the 'Learn More' which is pretty much a read more) if you're able to. It's where I found that thing about the training data being kept for up to 4 years.
Anyways, to turn off Save Media, scroll to the bottom of the disclaimers, and you should see the 'Turn off' button turn clickable. If you click it, you've now turned off Save Media! Woohoo!!!
Here's more info about how Save Media works (from this Google article again):
[Begin quote:] What your media includes
Your saved media includes your images, files, and audio and video recordings from your interactions with Search services. This includes things like Google Lens images, recordings from Search Live or Translate speaking practice, content you upload, and voice searches.
Saved media doesn’t include media that you generate or modify with AI. It also doesn’t include media you share publicly on Search services, like photos added to your reviews.
If your media is saved when the Save Media subsetting is on, it’ll be shown in your Search Services History. You may need to expand an activity event or click a link to the original thread in products like AI Mode or Ask Maps to see full details.
You can stop saving your media with your history at any time. If you stop saving media, your existing text-based history, transcripts, and generative AI media responses will continue to be saved to your Search Services History. Learn how to find and delete your Search Services History. [End quote. ]
[Begin quote:] When the Save Media subsetting is on
When the Save Media subsetting is on, Google can save media from your interactions to your Search Services History. Learn more about what your media includes.
If you use your device without an internet connection, media may be saved in your Google Account once you go online.
If you previously opted-in to donate your image search history to improve Google services with the help of human reviewers, image donation will continue. Learn more about image search history donation. [End quote. ]
[Begin quote:] When the Save Media subsetting is off
When the Save Media subsetting is off, Google won’t save media as part of your Search Services History. Media from your future interactions with Search services will still be used to respond to you and help keep Google safe, but will not be used to train Google’s generative AI models, unless you provide feedback.
When you turn off the Save Media subsetting:
This doesn’t turn off Search Services History, which can still save your activity on Google Search services. This includes text-based history, transcripts from voice interactions, and generative AI media responses.
Previously saved media that you do not delete can still be used to improve Google technologies.
You can delete previously saved media in your Search Services History at activity.google.com. Saved media that has already been selected to train AI models is no longer connected to your account and is kept for up to 4 years, even if you delete the original activity.
Tip: If you got your Google Account through your educational institution, Google does not use your Search Services History data, including your saved media, to train generative AI models. [End quote. ]
[Begin quote:] Other places media may be saved
This Save Media subsetting doesn’t affect media saved and managed by other Google services, like:
Gemini Apps
Google Voice
NotebookLM
YouTube
It also doesn’t include media that you post or share publicly on Search services, such as reviews.
Tip:
Media that you generate or modify with AI isn’t covered by your Save Media subsetting and is controlled by Search Services History. [End quote. ]
Here's more from the disclaimers. Some of it is a little redundant, but I thought it made things more specific:
[Begin quote:] Any media that you post publicly, including reviews, info, and any links that you share with others, is not included in this setting. This setting does not affect data that is not part of Search Services History, like data from other settings or features. For example, photos you upload as part of reviews in Google Maps and videos you create with other Google services, like YouTube, are not included. [End quote. ]
[Begin quote:] Text-based history, transcripts, and generative AI media responses from your interactions with Search services will still be retained and used if your Search Services History setting is on. [End quote. ]
[Begin quote:] This setting does not affect media saved by other settings, like Gemini Apps Activity, or media that you post or share publicly on Search services, including reviews. [End quote. ]
