Shutting Down the LP Channel

Yesterday, I finally shut down the Let's Play channel. I am not happy about it, but it had to be done.

Those who were subscribed to my patreon may remember I made a post a few months ago about this. YouTube has for some time now been using an undisclosed portion of videos uploaded to their platform to their their generative AI models without granting us the option to opt out.

I am extremely opposed to the use of LLM-based generative AI as a technology. Among the numerous problems it has, the data used to train it is generally collected without consent, the power required to train and operate the models is immense and leads to both energy and water shortages in the areas where the data centers operate, and it is generally not fit for purpose as by design it is only able to produce "statistically plausible" output, not anything based in actual truth or fact.

I do not wish for my videos to continue being used to train such AI, especially without my consent or the ability to opt out. Hence, I will no longer be using YouTube to host my videos. I did look into some alternative options but none were satisfactory or viable for me. The closest option I found was peer to peer file sharing via bittorrent, but this would destroy all discoverability and very few would be down to actually set up and use bittorrent simply to watch my videos.

Beyond the generative AI problems, I am also... burned out. I have been making videos on and off for around 18 years. That's a long time. It has eaten up a lot of my free time. I... want to do other things. I want to put a lot more time and effort into my game. I want to improve my skills so I can get into a better paying job than what I have right now. I want to spend more time relaxing. Honestly, I desperately need an extended break.

I keep "master" copies of every video I upload to YouTube. I am also holding onto the videos that have not been edited or uploaded yet. I may return some day. Hopefully when the tech industry in a much less dire place and when I have a better work-life balance and am able to figure out how much time is actually reasonable to put into my videos.

Thank you all for watching, for however long you did! I'm not going anywhere, the blog is still here of course, and I've got other stuff I am working on! Have a wonderful day~