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YouTube is just bad

They limit you if you do not want to tell too mcuh

Last month I uploaded on this website a song with a video called Anna rohkeutta. I also uploaded that song on my YouTube channel. In a description box I wrote basic description what camera I used, what recording equipment etc. what I personally are keen about. I also added a link to my own personal website (this site) so the people can click the link if they are curious and they can see on this page also lyrics and chords for that particular song.

When I had uploaded the video and had added the description I noticed that for reason or another the link to my own personal website was not a link. It was just a text instead of a link. Personally I don't find that as a big issue for me since it is easy to copy-paste on computer, and if somebody can't do that, well, then they just can't do that. No big deal. Bigger annoyance was that the link was cutted in the middle of the text so I could not see the whole link to this specific subpage where I was trying to link. Instead I only was able to see the hostname of the URL so I would be able to copy that and go to main page of this site and then just navigate here to that specific subpage. Since on this page there is quite many subpages that would be annoying and therefore it is just not practical and working solution.

I opened the YouTube Studio again and went to see if there is something wrong in my description because the link was not working properly and there I noticed a reason for it - I can't add links to external sources before I am validated user of YouTube. I clicked the link and I saw all the options what I have (shown in image below). As you might see, there is no any good options - only terrible (record your face in a video), even more terrible (photo of a official ID papers) or annoying (make channel history what will take time).

YouTube user validation window

Since the screenshot is in finnish, those options are in english:

All given options are just pure crap. First two options are terrible if you think those with privacy in your mind. Do I really want to take around 30 second video of myself looking to camera and provide that to YouTube staff? No, I don't. Even my face can be seen on my videos at least on some angle, I still do not want to make a video where I explicitly stare at the camera and make YouTube staff or their AI algorithms to do the scanning. What they are doing with it? Add to their registry and create a model of my face to do whatever shady they want in future? Heck no.

What about the second option, send a photo of my personal ID to they. This is a huge NO. What on earth, if they want they could do an identity theft, make orders and whatever they want with my person ID after that. How I would know who would look it, how they handle the picture etc. This is just pure insanity. Just because I want to add a link to external web page I should share my official ID image to whoever creep there might be looking? Are you serious YouTube? Sadly, obviously you are. This is madness. I am not going to give you a picture of my passport where you can see my Person ID so you can start to collect even more data of me.

Last option is not bad in point of privacy compared to those other two, but heck, it will take a long time (normally less than two months it says). In practice only at least somehow privacy respecting option is made to be so slow to validate that for many those first two options are much better. No matter what kind of creep is there to watch your validation video and do whatever with your video or no matter what kind of criminal there might be getting your ID, at least you can add links to external sources! Hooray! What a worthy deal! In case you missed it, it was sarcasm.

User hostility is the standard in modern web

It seems that more and more user hostility is the price to be paid if you want to stay in modern web. What is the future? Do YouTube want to make a video validation where I dance naked on a finnish winter so they can validate in future that I am not the AI generated dude? Or do they require that I will share photo of my passport so I can be validated later? Or something else?

Biggest problem is that you can't know what the future holds. When you are hosting your sites, sharing your videos, share your photos or files or whatever on a service like YouTube, Dropbox, Google Drive and what-so-ever, you are just forced to obey whatever insanity they decide to do or your data might gets wiped out of digital space. It should be already quite clear for many that if you really care about your data, you should never trust services like YouTube or any other big service. All what it takes to lose everything is just that they change their Terms of Service and if you do not accept it then good luck with that.

Modern web services are digital slavery where your options are "take it or leave it" - or in worst case you will leave before you even can make any decisions, they can and might do the decision for you anytime they want.

Of course I understand that this can happen also on my personal web site if the hosting provider makes same kind of retardity, but at least on my personal web site I have all my files backed up to totally different place and if they start to do same kind of stupidity I just move my server to another hosting provider and install NGinx and other stuff required and point my domain to new place. Also if I do not find any other place to host my servers I can always setup server at my home.

So what are the options?

As you can see, there are many options but of course I understand that every situation is different. If you are a famous YouTuber and your money income is dependent on it then it is much harder to do same choices than those who have much less and who does not generate any revenue with their videos.

Obey and be a good slave

This is the most obvious and the easiest one. Just do nothing, continue using YouTube and other similar services what does not care about you and keep going. For many this is probably the best option (in terms of "practicality") since mostly people don't care about privacy that much. Also most of the users does not upload any videos and therefore they don't meet this kind of issues anyway.

Reject modernity, return to monkee

Close the computer, unplug from internet and move to forest and enjoy life without internet. Not that easy to do and for most not even fun thing to do.

Find better services what will respect your privacy

Well, title says it all. Find another video hosting service (or whatever service you want to use) and just start using it. This might be good for some, but sadly not very realistic option for many since it takes time to find alternatives and if you are making money on YouTube then you probably won't be making any after the move. In that sense it is not very realistic for real content creators, but people like me it is an option since I have only couple of followers, only couple of videos and I do not make any money in YouTube on my personal channel.

One thing with this is still very problematic as you might guess. If they respect your privacy and care about you and other users it does not take much until those are same kind of piece of crap like YouTube and other big web services nowadays are. Bigger company might buy them and after that it is realistic to except that the service will go crap or they just notice that it is not profitable business and then they will just take their service down and you will lose your content if you do not have backups.

Host on your own whatever you want to host

If you are a geek enough, this is what I highly recommend to everybody. Yes, it takes time, effort and money to host your stuff yourself but it is the most privacy respecting option. If your hosting company starts to do stupid stuff and change their Terms of Service then you just move your stuff to another server from another company or just start to host at home or your friends home or wherever.

This is what I do even I have still a YouTube account (but I am considering to delete it). I put my new videos to this website and I can remove them anytime I want or keep them as long as I want. If I want I can add as many links to whatever external sources I want without sending video of my face to whoever creep or do other stupid things what current Terms of Service requires in future.

Internet was meant to be free and it gave an awesome platform for people to do and share great and stupid but fun stuff, but nowadays the mainstream web is totally opposite. It is a locked walled garden where you tie yourself and obey the rules, no matter how insane those are if you want to be part of the modern web. Is it really worth it, is it really what you want?

Make a change and make a Internet better place - start self hosting if you have skills and no any realistic reasons why not to do so (eg. your business needs it, you get paid to be there etc.).

It is all about freedom.

2023-08-06