Channel Fixes/Changes

Techlore Announcements
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Techlore has existed since December, 2014 - that’s a LONG time! We ask everyone reading this to reflect on what they knew 5+ years ago and how much they’ve grown since then. We are no different. We made mistakes, we could have worded something better, we could have been more mature, etc. Rather than doing nothing, we wanted to take an active approach and use our mistakes as teaching lessons for our community (and hopefully other creators as well!)

In this thread, you’ll see all the changes we’ve made to our channel’s content and why each decision was made. We encourage everyone to read the reasoning, and we hope this sparks healthy discussions throughout our communities.

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March, 2021 Channel Changes

  • Free VPN Unlimited Lifetime For iPhone and iPad

    This is our first video with nearly half a million views! It recommends a free VPN with no particular business model or transparency. We were previously unaware of the complexity of VPNs, as many people are today. To help educate users, we decided to keep the video up, but add a disclaimer in the description, a pinned comment, in addition to adding a “LEGACY” tag in the title. The disclaimer is as-follows:

    Notice: This is a legacy video being kept up for educational purposes. You should be aware free VPNs are heavily discouraged due to the high likelihood of data misuse. We have done a lot of growing over the years and have gathered tools to help users learn properly about VPNs.

  • Free Tor Browser For iPhone/iPad/Apple iOS Devices

    Here is another oldie. This video recommends an application called “iOnion” to access Tor on iOS. While there is still no official Tor browser for iOS, the Tor team themselves recommend “Onion Browser”, making the recommendation in this video a bad one. To help educate users, we decided to keep the video up, but add a disclaimer in the description, a pinned comment, in addition to adding a “LEGACY” tag in the title. The disclaimer is as-follows:

    Notice: This is a legacy video being kept up for educational purposes. iOnion is not recommended, and we recommend using the Tor-recommend “Onion Browser” from the App Store for the best safety on iOS. It’s worth noting there is still no official Tor Browser for iOS, so we recommend sticking to other platforms if the option is available for maximum safety.

  • Torrent Anonymously on Windows & Free Unlimited Lifetime VPN (Windows Setup)

    Both of these videos recommend the same VPN provider: SoftEther/VPNGate from a Japanese research team. While there is no evidence of data misuse, free VPNs should come with massive disclaimers when there are no accompanying business models. To help educate users, we decided to keep the videos up, but add a disclaimer in the description, a pinned comment, in addition to adding a “LEGACY” tag in the title. The disclaimer is as-follows:

    Notice: This is a legacy video being kept up for educational purposes. You should be aware free VPNs are heavily discouraged due to the high likelihood of data misuse. We have done a lot of growing over the years and have gathered tools to help users learn properly about VPNs.

  • Free Phone/iPad/Apple iOS Jailbreak Screen Recorder

    This video is severely outdated with no room for educational benefit. We have opted to delist it. It is still accessible using the link above but doesn’t publicly appear on YouTube organically. It has also been given a “LEGACY” tag.

  • Tor Setup MOST Secure/Safe Settings: Approaching Anonymity

    Our old Tor setup guide has some A) Outdated information B) Incorrect information. A few of the tips go against the anonymity aspects of Tor and are no longer recommended by us. We did make a newer guide that fixed some of these issues that is already linked on the video, and we have also added a disclaimer in the description, a pinned comment, in addition to adding a “LEGACY” tag in the title. The disclaimer is as-follows:

    Notice: This is a legacy video being kept up for educational purposes. A lot of this advice is either outdated or incorrect and we advise using Tor with default settings and only configuring the basic “Safer” sliders in addition to other practical tips covered on the official Tor Website.

  • Free Unlimited MacOS Lifetime VPN

    Similar to our Windows version of this guide - While there is no evidence of data misuse, free VPNs should come with massive disclaimers when there are no accompanying business models. To help educate users, we decided to keep the videos up, but add a disclaimer in the description, a pinned comment, in addition to adding a “LEGACY” tag in the title. The disclaimer is as-follows:

    Notice: This is a legacy video being kept up for educational purposes. You should be aware free VPNs are heavily discouraged due to the high likelihood of data misuse. We have done a lot of growing over the years and have gathered tools to help users learn properly about VPNs.

  • View Windows Experience Index on Windows 8/8.1/10

    This video is severely outdated with no room for educational benefit. We have opted to delist it. It is still accessible using the link above but doesn’t publicly appear on YouTube organically. It has also been given a “LEGACY” tag.

  • Free Unlimited Lifetime Mac VPN (BEST Working Guide)

    Similar to our Windows version of this guide - While there is no evidence of data misuse, free VPNs should come with massive disclaimers when there are no accompanying business models. To help educate users, we decided to keep the videos up, but add a disclaimer in the description, a pinned comment, in addition to adding a “LEGACY” tag in the title. The disclaimer is as-follows:

    Notice: This is a legacy video being kept up for educational purposes. You should be aware free VPNs are heavily discouraged due to the high likelihood of data misuse. We have done a lot of growing over the years and have gathered tools to help users learn properly about VPNs.

  • My TOP 10 BEST Cryptocurrency Investments 2018!

    I (Henry) really became obsessed with the cryptocurrency scene after the 2017/2018 explosion - as many people did. Here’s a video I did covering some cryptocurrency investment advice which…is something I’d like to stay clear of. To add damage, some projects mentioned like Substratum were complete scams. We have opted to delist it. It is still accessible using the link above but doesn’t publicly appear on YouTube organically. It has also been given a “LEGACY” tag.

  • How to Cloud Mine Cryptocurrencies COMPLETE Guide!

    Probably the worst video on this list so far. There are actually a plethora of warnings given during this video that these cloud mining services are likely scams and people should avoid them - so I’m unsure why I felt it was a good idea to make a video on it anyway. Either way, we have opted to delist it. It is still accessible using the link above but doesn’t publicly appear on YouTube organically. It has also been given a “LEGACY” tag.

  • Braver: A Brave Fork Without The Crap

    Here’s a sad one. Braver/Bold Browser was supposed to be a fork of Brave without the ‘crypto crap’ following the Brave affiliate link scandal. Unfortunately, Brave threatened to sue them and the project has ceased all forms of communication and updates since then. Their GitHub repo is dead, their Discord server is dead, and no word on the project has been released. I consider them a dead project at the time of writing this - hopefully I’m wrong. We decided to keep the videos up, but add a disclaimer in the description & a pinned comment. The disclaimer is as-follows:

    Notice: Unfortunately, Brave threatened to sue them and the project has ceased all forms of communication and updates since then. Their GitHub repo is dead, their Discord server is dead, and no word on the project has been released. I consider them a dead project at the time of writing this - hopefully I’m wrong.

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January, 2022 Channel Changes

The project involved in these videos is beyond upset about our content. We have unlisted the videos above as we don’t believe they add good value, especially the outdated installation guide. However, we have chosen to keep the original review & final recap of the project’s attacks live.

Notice: These changes were implemented in late 2021, but we forgot to make them live here.

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April, 2022 Channel Changes

The process to hardening Firefox is constantly evolving, and this specific lesson of Go Incognito is probably the most out-of-date. We’ve added a card at the beginning of the video on YouTube, a notice in the description, a pinned comment, as well as a notice in the premium version of Go Incognito for people to watch the updated guide we made here.

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May, 2022 Channel Changes

After evaluating several methods of transparently unlisting content while still allowing people to view it, we’ve released the official Techlore Archives playlist! These videos no longer organically appear on our videos, nor are they recommended by YouTube or appear in YouTube search. But the playlist lives on the bottom of our channel homepage and is listed as one of our playlists, so users are always able to access it. In short, this playlist includes videos we feel are no longer:

  • Up-to-date
  • Relevant to our channel
  • Useful
  • Or simply don’t match our current standards of quality

Most of these videos make us cringe, but we still want to keep them up as a learning opportunity for ourselves & others. Enjoy!

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October 6th, 2022 Channel Changes

After (valid) criticism regarding the inconsistency in old videos that did/didn’t have old affiliate links, I have actively gone through several videos that still had old affiliate links which were supposed to be removed. There were 2 NordVPN affiliate links from public videos I removed, as well as several from AirVPN, Windscribe, and PIA. All of these have already been removed from our site and new content for a long time, but the older videos I neglected to properly remove. Windscribe was removed because they haven’t had an affiliate plan in a long time - not for any change in their service.

To take this a step further and clear up uncertainty, I’ve also gone through our unlisted, archive playlist and replaced all the links I could find for the unlisted videos with disclaimers. To put it simply: if anyone finds any link to an old affiliate program we no longer publish on our toolkit - public video or not - please let us know at contact@techlore.tech - it’s incredibly hard to find them all!

Lastly, I have unlisted our What is a VPN?! And Do You Need One? and added it to our archive playlist as I no longer feel it properly represents what a VPN does/doesn’t do. Frankly, it’s not terribly inaccurate, but I’d rather archive it until we successfuly push out a quality update.

Special thanks to Sooraj Sathyanarayanan for helping me find some of these old links!

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