this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
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Privacy
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The irony of reporting on this from the largest consumer spying platform in existence, while collecting money from it...
TheTechnician27 has volunteered to improve our lives. When’s the peertube instance comrade?
This is not "participating in society", this is participating in, contributing to, and directly benefitting from the very thing they're complaining about.
You do understand what "participation" means, right? You understand that the original comic is specifically talking about contributing to and benefitting from the very thing they're complaining about, right?
I agree with your other point that GN should offer more alternatives to watch their videos, but this one is creating a distinction without a difference.
The original comic is referring to cars and iPhones (or smartphones more broadly). Basically, things you absolutely need to "participate in society" for most people. YouTube is very much not one of those things.
I have multiple young-ish (30s) friends that don't own a phone (not just smartphone; any phone), and basically all people I know above 80 years don't own one either.
You can absolutely live a perfectly fine and good life without a smartphone. You're just drawing the line where it's convenient for you.
Or let's put it in more familiar words...
Your personal anecdotes aside, myself and many others literally cannot . Modern society expects you to own one, including organizations like banks, healthcare, and, possibly most importantly, employers. It's literally mandatory to participate in much of society.
Similarly, my local city has nothing representing public transportation or safe routes for walking or cycling. In addition, in areas where many of the jobs are, housing is obscenely-priced, and completely unaffordable for "normal" people, so living close to work isn't an option either.
No job is going to require you to watch YouTube news.
It may be initially inconvenient, but you can choose a bank that offers 2FA/TAN beyond the smartphone app.
Not sure what healthcare apps you mean. There's lots of categories, so won't comment without clarification.
Same for employers tbh. Would love an example. (Besides: work apps can't be forced on your private phone in most places.)
I live in "modern society" and do own a smartphone, but I'm aware that it's a convenience, not a necessity.
For you. For many people it is not. You're projecting your personal experiences onto the rest of the world.
I know plenty of people without cars or smartphones that still participate in society. This is a terrible argument.
It's not a terrible argument for people who have adequate reading comprehension.
So you've moved the goalposts from "that's not just participation, it's [things that participation entails]" to "well this doesn't apply unless you need it to exist"*. GN needs a major platform like YouTube to actually reach an audience.
* By the way, the comic is illustrating a man with a car that's seemingly from the 1920s or 30s, so there goes that tenuous argument.
I haven't moved anything, and you know I haven't. I'm not going to continue engaging in bad faith discussions.
Should he start his own video platform that nobody knows and nobody uses?
html comes with a <video> tag. pretty simple to use
Sure. Or he could choose from any of the dozen existing ones?
Which one has nearly as many users as YouTube, and is not overrun by right wing nuts, crypto scammers or people banned from YouTube?
Well now you're moving the goal posts
It's where eyeballs live, otherwise you only reach small amount of tech nerds.
That's why you make it available elsewhere for "tech nerds" who don't want to be a part of the problem.
I wouldn't mind if they also mirrored their videos on Nebula.
You would if you looked at Nebula's privacy policy.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don't see really anything of concerns that stands out
Did you even look?
Fully agreed. At least give an alternative source. But that would not play well with the goal of any of these YT "influencer" videos - cashing in.
Walk the walk.
They did buy a blu-ray copying setup and sell some of their long-form content as USBs, DVDs, and Blu-rays. So I guess that's something.