I have been using YouTube since some time around 2008-2010, and there have been so many anti-consumer and anti-privacy practices in that span of time through them alone that it’s hard to count. From the Google+ account fiasco to the self-censorship most creators do in order to skirt demonetization, my dislike of the platform on both a privacy and anti-consumer level has grown.
The introduction of AI ID Verification was the final straw so now, I’m finally done with YouTube! I sadly had to get rid of a lot of creators that I followed on my RSS reader because they didn’t have their videos up anywhere else nor did they have any sort of blog I could follow, but I was able to find a few of them on PeerTube and a few others had blogs that I didn’t know about until I went through this process. Is it a sacrifice? Absolutely, but it’s one I’m willing to make for myself on a personal level, as well as in the battle for a freer internet.