Starting on August 13, 2025, I will be abstaining from any and all content from YouTube and I encourage you to do the same.

What brought this on?

As many of you are undoubtedly aware, YouTube will soon begin rolling out "AI" age detection on their platform. If this "AI", a term I still despise by the way, of theirs incorrectly deems you a snot-filled disappointment based on the videos you watch, your only way to dispute is to give them a government-issued photo ID, a selfie, or your credit card information.

This all started when the United Kingdom put their Online Safety Act into effect which was meant to "protect the children" by requiring sites containing "harmful and age-inappropriate content" [1] to have age verification before its users are able to access the site, without ever actually defining what "harmful" or "age-inappropriate" means. YouTube (and a few other services) seemed to overcategorize what "harmful and age-inappropriate" was, releasing a statement [2] explaining everything in mentioned the paragraph above.

The hatred of this law was also fueled more when a petition was organized to get Parliment to repeal the law, which almost over night surpassed its legally required goal of 100,000 signatures to be considered for discussion... 3 times over, and at the time of writing, 5 times. In response, the U.K. government... did nothing, if you count a half-assed "trust us" response [3] as nothing as I do.

What can we do?

If you’re in the UK, email or write to your MP. Ask for tighter privacy rules and clear definitions in the Online Safety Act, or the repealment of the act altogether.
If you’re in the US, do the same with your House rep and both senators; tell them we need federal data-privacy legislation that keeps biometric snooping (and forced ID uploads) off American platforms.

Everywhere else, the simplest move is to leave. Delete the app, clear your history, and move your subscriptions to RSS or open platforms like Odysee. Fewer eyeballs mean fewer ad dollars, and that’s a metric the boardroom can’t ignore.

If you must watch YouTube (I don't blame you), then I'd recommend trying out FreeTube, MPV (if you're fancy like that), or literally anything that can anonymize your viewing.

So, again I encourage you, on August 13th, join in the fight.

Thank you and 73.

References

1. “Online Safety Act.” GOV.UK, 24 Apr. 2025, https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/online-safety-act.
2. “Extending Our Built-in Protections to More Teens on YouTube.” YouTube, 29 Jul. 2025, https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/extending-our-built-in-protections-to-more-teens-on-youtube/.
3. “Petition: Repeal the Online Safety Act.” Petitions - UK Government and Parliament, https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903.