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generator: pandoc
title: Why I Am Leaving YouTube
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2018-06-13T13:15:08Z
How YouTube Appears, *Prima Facie*
==================================
YouTube is a website run and owned by Google, one of the largest,
wealthiest, and most powerful multi-national corporations in the whole
world. YouTube allows anyone with access to the website the ability to
watch any video that exists in their catalogue, provided your country
permits you to access YouTube's entire catalogue. YouTube seems like a
wonderful service because for the most part, it is free to use, provided
you watch the advertisements that usually appear on videos. You are able
to learn mathematics, watch original short films, receive advice on your
hobbies, have commodities you want to buy reviewed, and more. It seems
like a powerful tool for transmitting and receiving information in an
apparently open and democratic manner. Anyone is allowed to upload a
video at any time, at no restriction of file size, or video length.
A Closer Look: The Dangers of YouTube
-------------------------------------
While YouTube seems at first glance to be a wonderful and positive tool
for disseminating information, it is in fact the complete opposite.
YouTube is a terrible thing to use, and participate in. Here are my
reasons:
Censorship
----------
YouTube is governed by a system of mass censorship. In reality, you are
only permitted to discuss certain topics on YouTube if you are to have
your videos properly listed and accessible on the platform. Only certain
types of topics are permitted to receive advertisement revenue, and if
your video does not hit exactly the right tone that the centralised
leadership of YouTube permits, then you will never be able to receive
money for your work. For example, according to the YouTube rules, topics
that are ''controversial'' cannot receive their video author money.
Major YouTube channels have been automatically and irreversibly deleted
because their computer Intellectual Property censorship mechanisms have
the power to interpret and enforce the law on YouTube. You are at the
mercy of the corporate executives and the automatic video display and
censorship mechanisms when you use YouTube. This means YouTube is a
tyrranical system with no room for user and author freedom,
Surveillance
------------
YouTube collects metadata from your browsing habits on the website, and
from virtually everything that you do on your phone. On many phones, it
is impossible to actually permnanently delete the YouTube program. You
can only ''disable'' it. YouTube is watching what you say and view on
other programs on your computer, and it may even be doing so after you
''disable'' the program on your phone. I invite you to test to see what
happens when you buy something on eBay, or discuss a certain topic on
Facebook. You will immediately start seeing advertisements on YouTube
related to that activity. YouTube is tracking your internet activity and
is using it to build an enormous database which it can use to better
manipulate you. It can even sell the data it has on you to political
parties of which you do not approve, so that capitalism can better
manipulate the political system under which you live. YouTube will only
show you videos in its catalogue that are congruent with the metadata
database it has on you. This is a form of immoral censorship. You should
be able to search and access the entire catalogue. YouTube is an
incredibly dangerous and immoral platform. No-one should have as much
power over the world political system as YouTube has.
Exploitation
------------
YouTube is not a not-for-profit service. It is also not a cooperatively
structured organisation. The governance structure of YouTube is
extremely hierarchical, and exists for the sole purpose of making profit
under capitalism. The real parties thar benefit from the advertisements
that are placed on videos made by ordinary people are the massive
capitalist firms that make the advertisements, and principally YouTube
itself. The same goes for services like Patreon. When you give YouTube
authors money on Patreon, you may think that you are helping them escape
the burden of censorship and exploitative treadmill of capitalism, but
you are not. Patreon profits off of the hard work that people do in
order to deserve the following that they get on YouTube and Patreon.
Patreon parasites off the donations that you give. Like the
advertisements on YouTube, Patreon makes money by exploiting the hard
work of artists, film-makers, musicians, hackers, engineers, comedians
etc If you are someone whose career is making YouTube videos, you are
being exploited and stolen from in the exact same way as you would be if
you were working in a factory or a dead-end job. The corporate rulers of
capitalism are making free money off your hard work. For this reason,
YouTube is an immoral service. Everyone deserves the full value of their
labour. YouTube does not give it to you.
What I Am Doing About My Use of YouTube
=======================================
So what can you do to escape the injustices of YouTube?
Go On Strike
------------
First of all, you can encourage people to build a general strike of
YouTube authors, to disrupt the flow of profits to YouTube and all its
capitalist crony friends. A general strike could go some way towards
forcing concessions out of the people who rule over YouTube. But this
option is limited because it would mean that Google would still remain
in control of YouTube. Real, lasting change would require that control
over YouTube be handed over to the masses of people who use and work for
the YouTube system. If there was a YouTube general strike that went on
long enough, this might be possible. YouTube could become so costly for
Google to run that they would be forced to sell it, and we could run a
campaign for a democratic non profit organisation to take over it.
Leave The Platform
------------------
For the time being, I want control over my video journal, my vlog, right
now. I am going to begin transistioning to leave the platform, and host
the videos on my channel on my own virtual private server. You can use
Peertube or Dtube to use free software to host your videos in a
non-hierarchical, federated community of servers. I will not be using
these platforms because I disapprove of video streaming. I think
JavaScript and running invisible and uncheckable code on your computer
is immoral. I will instead be hosting my YouTube videos using static
HTML and thumbnail images. The benefit of this is that people will have
able to have a complete copy of any and all the videos in my video
journal. One of the terrible things about YouTube is that it discourages
users from having their own copy of the videos that they like. It
encourages an ''always online'' culture of computer use. You have to go
to third party websites to download YouTube videos. Another example is
their audio library database - that cannot be downloaded at once in its
entirety.
Conclusion
==========
I encourage you to disrupt and leave the YouTube system. Hopefully I
have been pursuasive. Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to
lose but your chains.