Last May I received a new Terms of Service request from YouTube. In this request I had to grant YouTube the right to monetize my videos. In other words when I agree, YouTube can insert ads in the videos. This is the final straw for me with YouTube and Google.
Click here if the the video doesn’t run in your browser: https://makertube.net/w/gBU8QwAYNdV6KcJ3za8tJP
I’ve created this YouTube channel with tutorials about open source 3D CAD programs and never had any intention to monetize the channel. So I definitely don’t want YT to monetize it for me.
My goal has been to inspire people to use open source software instead of proprietary software and judging by the number of views and reactions I’ve been mildly successful with that. I had over 200.000 views with my tutorials and more than 1100 subscribers. Not much for YouTube of course but keep in mind that the channel was about open source 3D CAD. Very much a niche market
I’ve put up with all YouTube’s privacy invading policy and data mining because of the popularity of YouTube. YouTube has a near monopoly when it comes to video sharing and has a huge worldwide audience. So to reach my audience with my video tutorials it made sense to use YouTube.
However where does one draw the line. I’ve created the video tutorials believe it or not with a lot a sweat and blood. And it’s important that I keep sovereignty over these videos. So whether ads will be part of the video is up to me and not YouTube. This leaves me no other alternative than to delete all my videos (except this one).
Luckily I’ve already had found an alternative home for my tutorials. It’s called PeerTube. PeerTube is video sharing software but contrary to YouTube, it is open source. In addition it’s also decentralized and federated.
This means that anyone can create a PeerTube server and host videos. These servers can connect to each other and share the videos between them (federation). As a result there is no single owner of the network. If the server that I joined fails or I don’t like the policy on that server I can either upload my videos to another server or even start my own.
I already have some content on PeerTube and I’ll upload new videos to PeerTube. However it’s unlikely that I’ll upload my older videos to it. I figure that they are less relevant anyway. I’ll put a link in the description to the new home of my videos and I hope to see you there.
I hope to see you on PeerTube and keep using open source software.
Here is a link to the new home of my 3D CAD videos: https://makertube.net/c/homehack/videos
If your interested in the network protocol behind PeerTube and other decentralized services here is link to a post that I wrote about it: https://homehack.nl/activitypub-the-secret-weapon-of-the-fediverse/
Lastly a link to a post that I wrote about the other problems that I had with YouTube: https://homehack.nl/activitypub-the-secret-weapon-of-the-fediverse/
Thanks for reading!