here is your not-so-friendly reminder that single-day boycotts do jack shit. youtube still has not walked back the ai age estimation bullshit so you should not be using youtube. still. if you only skip a day or a week or a month they will just wait us out and keep raking in cash. cancel your premium subscription. send letters every week. call them every day. don't cave until we get what we want.
you understand that if we let youtube do this that forms a dangerous precedent of every website and company wanting to ask for our government ID, right? that this isn't for the safety of the children? that they're censoring queer content (at the very least, and probably lots of other liberal topics) and when we give them our identifying information to regain access to that, they'll keep that? they're already selling our watch histories to the highest bidder. if you're watching anything liberal you don't want that to be tracked to your fucking ID with the political climate we have right now. if we let this happen it will keep getting worse and more restrictive and we will have less and less privacy.
people keep saying it's pointless since the people who care is such a small portion but that's. you realize saying that, and refusing to do anything is just making you easier to steamroll over, right? who cares if you're the minority. be a loud minority. stop giving them power over you. don't just lay down and take it. don't ghost them for a day and then go right back.
stand your fucking ground.
there's so much bullshit in the world that yeah this feels like a stupid hill for me to be dying on but christ this is the issue that my crippled ass is capable of confronting. and if i can't start with this that says bad things about my ability to eventually face the more terrifying, more exhausting issues. but we aren't going to get fucking anywhere if we can't do something as simple as this.
i know youtube brings comfort but there are other ways to get that. build into your local community. go to farmers markets and queer support groups and library events and knitting or gaming meetups. find the people in your immediate world and find out how to support them. talk to your neighbors about your hopes and fears. compliment the tired cashier.
if you go out and you are a good person you will find that there are people who care about this shit too. and you can plan bigger actions with them and the more you do something the more you'll be able to trust that we will be okay. because we will, but you have to fucking fight for it. you have to do something.
