YouTube provides around 1 billion hours of video content every day.

The problem is that to get to this point, Big tech like YouTube has embraced a business model of addiction to capture more attention by using psychological tricks that make it difficult to look away.
Things like Infinite scrolling or autoplay - also known as “dark patterns” - intend to manipulate users.

Consequently, a reasonable fraction of the video content streamed by YouTube, Netflix, or similar platforms is not actively desired.

Not only do these tricks make you lose a part of your freedom, but they also harm our climate.

Based on my research, the fact that YouTube activates the autoplay feature by default generates approximately 10 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. As a comparison, it is the equivalent of 2 million passenger cars.

We ask YouTube and its parent company Alphabet, to make the autoplay feature deactivated by default and let people make a conscious decision on the matter.