YouTube will use AI to monitor your viewing habits to determine if you're under 18 and require an ID for you to view certain content, yes even if you're in the US.
Now. I have some questions. Like if I watch kids shows from the 90s is that a mark for me being over 30 because it's an old TV show? Or under 30 because it's a kid's show?
Okay question aside.
There's legitimate reasons to have "odd" viewing habits. I for one have chronic fatigue. I've fallen asleep with Youtube's autoplay on and will wake up 3 hours later with the weirdest shit playing (sometimes it's kids stuff).
I'm learning 2 languages. I will watch kids shows in those languages to help me practice and pick up the language. (Muzzy in Gondoland is SO CUTE). But it's really helpful to watch shows that are like "Red orange yellow green! One two three!" To learn the basics like your colors, numbers, days of the week.
Also. Bronies... adults like kids shows. Sometimes they got a really good message like MLP. Sometimes for Nostalgia, I mean Pokémon is still going, and I watch that for nostalgia.
"No, but AI would be smarter than that!"
Is it? Is it really? Bitch if kids want to watch YouTube, that's what YouTube Kids is for. We don't need your 1984 bullshit monitoring our fucking watching habits.
"I don't understand why you're so upset. Just give them your ID." Because I'm a developer. I watch programmers increasingly use AI to fucking program their goddamn software every fucking day. And the thing is AI is really fucking bad at it. It leads to issues like the Tea app leak.
The Tea app was an app where women warned other women in the dating scene about red flag men in the area and they could ask other women if the guy that were dating was a red flag. That app had women upload their Drivers Licenses, and they recently had a leak due to shitty security protocols caused by AI coding causing a legacy database to literally be open to the public, with so security features to keep any old random person from accessing it. All of the data in that database what just... dumped to the open internet. Location data. IDs. All of it.
So, no... I'm not gonna me uploading my ID anywhere BECAUSE I'VE SEEN HOW POORLY SOME OF YOUR ASSHOLES CODE. And by "how poorly you code" I mean you don't fucking code. You just give it to AI and the fucking dumbass system wouldn't know a security feature if it punched it in the face.
Suck my dick. You're not "keeping the kids safe" you're exposing everyone to identity threats.
GO BURN CD'S. GO FILL PHYSICAL DISCS. PIRATE EVERYTHING. DOWNLOAD BOOKS, MUSIC, GAMES, SHOWS, FILMS. SAVE SNAPSHOTS ON WAYBACK. FUCK THE MEDIA COMPANIES. STREAMING ISN'T FOREVER. PURCHASE ISN'T OWNERSHIP. FORGE THE OWNERSHIP WITH YOUR OWN HANDS. MAKE MEDIA YOUR BITCH. STAY VIGILANT. I LOVE YOU.
If this post reaches your dash after Jan 1st- YOU'RE NOT LATE to the party!!!
It's never too late to practice selective consumerism, and when companies try to pull bullshit it's up to us to say we won't stand for it by not continuing to use their product until they roll back the change. If we don't push back that's seen as consent, and more sites will follow in YouTube's (and Spotify's) footsteps.
And if this post reaches you before Jan 1st- GREAT! Please reblog (or even repost this on other socials- no need to credit!) to help get the word out as quick and as far as possible!
[Edit: Please also keep reblogging this after the 1st as well to keep this circulating!!!]
And if you have more questions on the hows and why's they're under the cut:
[Updated as of Jan 3]
For those unaware, people started boycotting Youtube and Spotify in August 2025 because of internet privacy and data safety concerns* after they started implementing the ID age verification, as well to push back at this push towards mass surveillance poorly veiled as "we need to protect the kids!"
*It's only a matter of time until there's a data breech (or your data just gets flat out sold) and YouTube just says "Whoops! Your ID is now out there and not only will you have NO recourse, but we'll receive ZERO repercussions!"
However, the first attempt at a boycott made the mistake of giving a three day deadline - which resulted in poor turnout and high drop off.
We won't make that same mistake again. We'll "start" the boycott on Jan 1st, but keep pushing out the word even after it's started because it's never too late to join. (Yes, there have been those of us already boycotting for a minute now (Since August)- but having looked around it seems like a relatively sparse group with little attention. Only reason we're calling for this new "start date" is to hopefully get A LOT more people on the wagon)
No deadline. We're going to keep going until they roll the policy back, checking in at each financial quarter (every 3 months) to see how well they're listening. (Got this idea from the Kelloggs boycott)
Need advice on how to boycott? Here's some steps you can take:
Step one: Stop using YouTube (if you're required for school or work, do so with an adblocker, but aside from that avoid giving YouTube any traffic at all) Also, if you have YouTube Premium, cancel it.
Step two: Complain. Leave 1 star reviews in the app store and on google. Tell them why you're upset with this policy.
Step three: Spread the word! Make your own posts and/or memes. Just be sure to let people know the boycott is ongoing and that we won't be returning until we are heard.
Step five: Remember that we're boycotting YouTube/Spotify- NOT the creators on those platforms. Find other ways to support them. Your favorite creator is bound to have another way to support them, and I suggest you find out what that is. (i.e: do they have Patreon/Kofi? Something else? A different platform perhaps?)
This ties into Step Six, which is to find an alternative to fill the void. Personally, I've switched to podcasts and Internet Archive for the time being. Others have suggested Public Library sites (Libby, Hoopla, Overdrive, etc- PBS has lots of free shows); Bandcamp & SoundCloud for music; Twitch for streams; as well as Newgrounds, Bitview, and Glomble which are YouTube alternatives. And I'm sure there's plenty of other alternatives out there! (I have also seen some recommending NewPipe- but be aware that this still gives YouTube traffic)
And finally, Step seven: Encourage, don't shame. (This goes especially for those of us who have been already boycotting since August.) Shaming those who started boycotting later than you, or for boycotting 'imperfectly' will only hurt the cause by pushing people away. We need numbers for this to work, so encourage people to fight back- don't shame them for not getting there 'soon enough.'
Boycotts work if done effectively. This isn't just about YouTube, or Spotify. This is about precedent. If we don't push back that's seen as consent, and more sites will follow in YouTube/Spotify's footsteps.
This way they're not caught in the crossfire and can't be used as leverage to guilt you into abandoning the boycott. ("Oh a company wouldn't do that-" YES they would!)
That's all I got for now, just remember the important thing is that we don't stay silent and we fight back.
.mp3 is very small, but uses lossy compression which means it's lower quality
.flac is smaller than .wav, but uses lossless compression so it's high quality
.m4a is an audio file format that apple uses. that's all i really know
downloading the music
doubledouble.top is a life saver. you can download from a variety of services including but not limited to apple music, spotify, soundcloud, tidal, deezer, etc.
i'd recommend ripping your music from tidal or apple music since they're the best quality (i think apple music gives you lossless audio anyway. .m4a can be both lossy and lossless, but from the text on doubledouble i assume they're ripping HQ files off apple music)
i also love love love cobalt.tools for ripping audio/video from youtube (they support a lot of other platforms too!)
of course, many artists have their music on bandcamp — purchase or download directly from them if you can. bandcamp offers a variety of file formats for download
file conversion
if you're downloading from apple music with doubledouble, it spits out an .m4a file.
.m4a is ok for some people but if you prefer .flac, you may wanna convert it. ffmpeg is a CLI (terminal) tool to help with media conversion
if you're on linux or macOS, you can use parameter expansion to batch convert all files in a folder. put the files in one place first, then with your terminal, cd into the directory and run:
for i in *.m4a; do ffmpeg -i "$i" "${i%.*}.flac"; done
this converts from .m4a to .flac — change the file extensions if needed.
soulseek
another way to get music is through soulseek. soulseek is a peer-to-peer file sharing network which is mainly used for music. nicotine+ is a pretty intuitive (and open-source) client if you don't like the official one.
you can probably find a better tutorial on soulseek somewhere else. just wanted to make this option known
it's bad etiquette to download from people without sharing files of your own, so make sure you've got something shared. also try to avoid queuing up more than 1-2 albums from one person in a row
tagging & organizing your music
tagging: adding metadata to a music file (eg. song name, artist name, album) that music players can recognize and display
if you've ripped music from a streaming platform, chances are it's already tagged. i've gotten files with slightly incorrect tags from doubledouble though, so if you care about that then you might wanna look into it
i use musicbrainz picard for my tagging. they've got pretty extensive documentation, which will probably be more useful than me
basically, you can look up album data from an online database into the program, and then match each track with its file. the program will tag each file correctly for you (there's also options for renaming the file according to a certain structure if you're into that!)
there's also beets, which is a CLI tool for... a lot of music collection management stuff. i haven't really used it myself, but if you feel up to it then they've got extensive documentation too. for most people, though, it's not really a necessity
how you wanna organize your music is completely up to you. my preferred filestructure is:
artist > album > track # track
using a music player
the options for this are pretty expansive. commonly used players i see include VLC, foobar2000, clementine (or a fork of it called strawberry), and cmus (for the terminal)
you can also totally use iTunes or something. i don't know what audio players other systems come with
i personally use dopamine. it's a little bit slow, but it's got a nice UI and is themeable plus has last.fm support (!!!)
don't let the github page fool you, you don't have to build from source. you can find the releases here
click the "assets" dropdown on the most recent release, and download whichever one is compatible with your OS
syncing
if you're fine with your files just being on one device (perhaps your computer, but perhaps also an USB drive or an mp3 player), you don't have to do this
you can sync with something like google drive, but i hate google more than i hate spotify
you can get a free nextcloud account from one of their providers with 2GB of free storage. you can use webDAV to access your files from an app on your phone or other device (documents by readdle has webDAV support, which is what i use)
disroot and blahaj.land are a couple providers i know that offer other services as well as nextcloud (so you get more with your account), but accounts are manually approved. do give them a look though!!
if you're tech-savvy and have an unused machine lying around, look into self-hosting your own nextcloud, or better yet, your own media server. i've heard that navidrome is a pretty good audio server. i unfortunately don't have experience with self-hosting at the moment so i have like zero advice to give here. yunohost seems to be a really easy way to manage a server
afterword
i don't know if any of this is helpful, but i just wanted to consolidate my personal advice in one place. fuck big tech. own your media, they could take it away from you at any moment
At the start of the year I got myself a digital audio player (specifically this one) as part of trying to be less dependent on my phone. I'm gradually adding music (from Bandcamp, Qobuz and my old collection of ripped CDs and liberated iTunes files), podcasts (downloaded straight from the feed) and audiobooks (from Libro, though I plan on 'liberating' my Audible library too).
It's been an interesting little experiment, I love having a device with buttons! It's also super small which, to be transgender for a moment, is both aesthetically satisfying and great for my tiny lady pockets. The audio quality, generally, has also been noticeably better.
There have also been a couple of other fun little revelations too:
I realised, to my horror, that most podcasts do not pay as much attention to metadata as I do. I have a new appreciation for podcasts putting their episode number in the titles. This is an extra mark for audio dramas releasing on Bandcamp, where the metadata is automatically sorted.
Being a device intended for music listening, it doesn't save your place for podcast episodes or audiobook chapters (though you can enable a fast forward/rewind function). At first this was a bit frustrating but I quickly realised that when I was listening to an episode/chapter, I was committing to it, and found I was listening to more books and audio drama episodes as a result, rather than my attention span defaulting back to my usual comfort listens.
I realise this a very specific little rabbit hole that will not be for everyone but, as someone who really struggles with listening to things sometimes (especially after a full work day of listening to things) and someone who gets glued to their phone really easily, it's really helped me.
(for anyone interested, Midnight Burger & The Disordered Cosmos are my current listens)
EDIT: I thought I'd shared the tool I've been using to batch download podcasts, it's this one. It's command line which is a little daunting at first but it downloads everything: artwork, metadata, artist names. Great for getting series all in one go, straight from the RSS feed
EDIT EDIT: I have left Audible! And I also have my purchases downloaded and added to my DAP. For the curious, this is the tool I used
