Hey all, i wanted to make a serious post about the new AI age verification system YouTube is trying to enable in a few days, please read because this is very important: (There’s a TLDR at the bottom if you just want the gist of what I’m trying to say here, this post ended up way longer than I thought it would)
I, and probably most of you as well, are very concerned with this new age verification system YouTube is planning on implementing. If you’re out of the loop, I put together this playlist of helpful videos explaining what’s going on, a lot of points in these videos are relevant to this post: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW... I was going to summarize it myself here, but it ended up being way too long.
When I was a kid, I had internet safety drilled into me by my parents and school, telling me to never share any of my personal information online, including my full name, home address, passwords, identification cards or documents, banking or credit card information, and pictures of myself, among other things. The culture surrounding the internet has largely shifted in the years since then, where anonymity on the internet is often unheard of and widely disregarded, and most children now are not being taught this kind of extreme internet safety. Still, sharing this kind of sensitive personal information like YouTube wants its users to do is a beyond awful idea.
YouTube is not at all being transparent about how this new system is supposed to function or what they will do to ensure none of the extremely sensitive personal information of the users it requests to verify their ages ends up in the wrong hands. It is also extremely likely that this AI will not work correctly and falsely flag many adult users as children, given the well known poor quality of all of YouTube’s previous automated systems. If they are determining users ages based on the content they watch, then what is deemed as childish content? Will adults with interests considered “childish” (ie: me) be flagged as children? Is animation considered “children’s content” by default? We have no answers for any of this. At this point, it seems more like a ploy for YouTube to try to get us to give them sensitive information in order to fully use the site.
This and many other internet age restriction or content removal efforts are being implemented under the guise of “protecting the children”. This is a Trojan horse argument. The real goals are censorship and monetization. If this were about protecting children, YouTube would be cracking down on the porn bots that flood comment sections with profile pictures of bare asses, or ads for porn/hentai games that are constantly shown in recommended sections. Instead, they are trying to parent children who should be parented by their actual parents, and throwing their adult users under the bus to do so.
The internet isn’t supposed to be for kids to run amok on unsupervised, but the people responsible to keep that from happening are their own parents. Too many parents try to shirk the responsibility of raising their kids onto the internet, and unfortunately many have no choice because we live in a capitalist hellscape that prevents them from having adequate time to spend with their children if they want to have money to survive. That problem requires other change to resolve, but at the end of the day, none of this is YouTube’s responsibility to fix, and these new age verification systems are setting a disturbing precedent for where internet censorship efforts may be going next. It’s freaky dystopian shit.
HERE’S THE REALLY IMPORTANT PART!!!
The idea of a YouTube boycott has been floating around and gathered popularity with users as a way to protest this new system and hopefully get YouTube to walk it back. Starting August 13 (the day the system is set to roll out), do not use YouTube at all. Don’t use the website, don’t use the app, don’t post anything, don’t watch anything. Some people are only planning to do this just on the day of the 13th, while others plan on continuing to not touch the platform until YouTube discontinues the new system. If enough people boycott on just the 13th it will likely catch YouTube’s attention, but in my opinion playing the long game will be more effective, as it shows a commitment on our part that we will not stand for this change. A decline in users, especially one that continues for days, will hit YouTube right where it hurts, and if they know what’s best for them, they’ll fix their mistake.
It might not be easy for a lot of you (this is a self-callout, I use this damn site so much according to my screen time it’s like a full time job 💀) but if you choose to participate in the longer boycott, (which I would highly encourage) stay motivated by remembering that you’re standing your ground against a big corporation that only sees you as a money-making opportunity, and you’re working together with others to make a difference. During the boycott, do something nice for yourself, something you enjoy, and/or something to better yourself if you have the motivation for that (I’m sick of hearing that last one from people but I mean it in the best most supportive and least condescending way possible. Do it for you, not because someone told you that you should.)
And of course, if you do use YouTube while this system is in place and it asks you to verify your age with identification, DO NOT GIVE THEM ANYTHING!!! Don’t give them your ID, don’t give them your credit card, and for the love of fuck do not give them your face! We have no idea where or for how long this information is being stored or who it may be given to, plus it’s just an awful idea to upload any of that stuff to the internet. Your account will be restricted unfortunately, but hopefully the decision to use this system will be reversed or a safer way of overriding the AI’s decision will be implemented. PLEASE DON’T GIVE THEM YOUR DATA!!
I’m not a big creator by any means, but I wanted to say something and spread the word even a little bit farther. Obviously, I myself will be participating in the boycott, as long as necessary. I won’t be active on here at all during that time. I might hang around on Tumblr more at that time (same username as here, it’s not hard to find) so if you need to contact me for some reason or just wanna chill there with me, go there. Hopefully, with enough people this will go well and YouTube will see first hand that they can’t get away with what they’re trying to do to their users. I may make a short about this if I have time because it’ll probably have a wider reach than this community post but we’ll see.
TLDR: I’m participating in a boycott of YouTube to protest their dangerous new AI age verification; I will not be active on here from August 13th onward until YouTube caves; I highly encourage all of you to participate as well and not give YouTube your personal info if they ask you to verify your age.
GraciousDragon
Hey all, i wanted to make a serious post about the new AI age verification system YouTube is trying to enable in a few days, please read because this is very important:
(There’s a TLDR at the bottom if you just want the gist of what I’m trying to say here, this post ended up way longer than I thought it would)
I, and probably most of you as well, are very concerned with this new age verification system YouTube is planning on implementing. If you’re out of the loop, I put together this playlist of helpful videos explaining what’s going on, a lot of points in these videos are relevant to this post: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW...
I was going to summarize it myself here, but it ended up being way too long.
When I was a kid, I had internet safety drilled into me by my parents and school, telling me to never share any of my personal information online, including my full name, home address, passwords, identification cards or documents, banking or credit card information, and pictures of myself, among other things. The culture surrounding the internet has largely shifted in the years since then, where anonymity on the internet is often unheard of and widely disregarded, and most children now are not being taught this kind of extreme internet safety. Still, sharing this kind of sensitive personal information like YouTube wants its users to do is a beyond awful idea.
YouTube is not at all being transparent about how this new system is supposed to function or what they will do to ensure none of the extremely sensitive personal information of the users it requests to verify their ages ends up in the wrong hands. It is also extremely likely that this AI will not work correctly and falsely flag many adult users as children, given the well known poor quality of all of YouTube’s previous automated systems. If they are determining users ages based on the content they watch, then what is deemed as childish content? Will adults with interests considered “childish” (ie: me) be flagged as children? Is animation considered “children’s content” by default? We have no answers for any of this. At this point, it seems more like a ploy for YouTube to try to get us to give them sensitive information in order to fully use the site.
This and many other internet age restriction or content removal efforts are being implemented under the guise of “protecting the children”. This is a Trojan horse argument. The real goals are censorship and monetization. If this were about protecting children, YouTube would be cracking down on the porn bots that flood comment sections with profile pictures of bare asses, or ads for porn/hentai games that are constantly shown in recommended sections. Instead, they are trying to parent children who should be parented by their actual parents, and throwing their adult users under the bus to do so.
The internet isn’t supposed to be for kids to run amok on unsupervised, but the people responsible to keep that from happening are their own parents. Too many parents try to shirk the responsibility of raising their kids onto the internet, and unfortunately many have no choice because we live in a capitalist hellscape that prevents them from having adequate time to spend with their children if they want to have money to survive. That problem requires other change to resolve, but at the end of the day, none of this is YouTube’s responsibility to fix, and these new age verification systems are setting a disturbing precedent for where internet censorship efforts may be going next. It’s freaky dystopian shit.
HERE’S THE REALLY IMPORTANT PART!!!
The idea of a YouTube boycott has been floating around and gathered popularity with users as a way to protest this new system and hopefully get YouTube to walk it back. Starting August 13 (the day the system is set to roll out), do not use YouTube at all. Don’t use the website, don’t use the app, don’t post anything, don’t watch anything. Some people are only planning to do this just on the day of the 13th, while others plan on continuing to not touch the platform until YouTube discontinues the new system. If enough people boycott on just the 13th it will likely catch YouTube’s attention, but in my opinion playing the long game will be more effective, as it shows a commitment on our part that we will not stand for this change. A decline in users, especially one that continues for days, will hit YouTube right where it hurts, and if they know what’s best for them, they’ll fix their mistake.
It might not be easy for a lot of you (this is a self-callout, I use this damn site so much according to my screen time it’s like a full time job 💀) but if you choose to participate in the longer boycott, (which I would highly encourage) stay motivated by remembering that you’re standing your ground against a big corporation that only sees you as a money-making opportunity, and you’re working together with others to make a difference. During the boycott, do something nice for yourself, something you enjoy, and/or something to better yourself if you have the motivation for that (I’m sick of hearing that last one from people but I mean it in the best most supportive and least condescending way possible. Do it for you, not because someone told you that you should.)
And of course, if you do use YouTube while this system is in place and it asks you to verify your age with identification, DO NOT GIVE THEM ANYTHING!!! Don’t give them your ID, don’t give them your credit card, and for the love of fuck do not give them your face! We have no idea where or for how long this information is being stored or who it may be given to, plus it’s just an awful idea to upload any of that stuff to the internet. Your account will be restricted unfortunately, but hopefully the decision to use this system will be reversed or a safer way of overriding the AI’s decision will be implemented. PLEASE DON’T GIVE THEM YOUR DATA!!
I’m not a big creator by any means, but I wanted to say something and spread the word even a little bit farther. Obviously, I myself will be participating in the boycott, as long as necessary. I won’t be active on here at all during that time. I might hang around on Tumblr more at that time (same username as here, it’s not hard to find) so if you need to contact me for some reason or just wanna chill there with me, go there. Hopefully, with enough people this will go well and YouTube will see first hand that they can’t get away with what they’re trying to do to their users. I may make a short about this if I have time because it’ll probably have a wider reach than this community post but we’ll see.
TLDR: I’m participating in a boycott of YouTube to protest their dangerous new AI age verification; I will not be active on here from August 13th onward until YouTube caves; I highly encourage all of you to participate as well and not give YouTube your personal info if they ask you to verify your age.
4 months ago | [YT] | 1