IMG_0001

I love that the view count is included in the minimalist UI. I came across one with zero views, and there's something so intimate and exciting about being the first person to watch an ancient home video (even if it's shaky handycam footage of a horse, narrated in Russian).

As an aside, hats off to Google to being able to serve an 11 year old video with no noticeable delay from what must be the coldest of caches.

I felt slightly uneasy myself - the first thing I saw was a mum laying on her bed doing a selfie-video with two small kids (probably between 2 and 4 years old) singing a song to daddy.

That felt like a total invasion of their private lives.

I've had the same videos from my own kids, and while there is nothing embarrassing or shameful about it, it's not something I'd want broadcasted. Maybe it hit a nerve for me as it is so very very similar to my own life right now. Sure yeah they uploaded it to YouTube and it's public but it still felt wrong to watch that.

Kinda ruined my day a bit - feel kinda bad for viewing it.

Because the truth is it’s likely that most of these were never meant to be public. People will say that it’s the fault of the user and thus there is no guilt attributable to the viewer, but I sincerely doubt most of these users knew they were making it public and may not have if they knew.

While I don’t think intentionally surfacing these videos is wrong in any legal sense of course, I think it’s wrong ethically.

Exploiting someone’s mistake in this manner is not noble.

It’s the same reason we (good folk) look away when someone’s clothing accidentally reveals more than they intended, though it would be within our right to look.

I choose not to view these because I don’t believe it was intended that I should, and without the consent of the creator I chose to err on the side of decency.