Some municipalities and regions broadcast the city council on Youtube. There are several problems with this that we highlight in this article.
Why broadcast the city council on Youtube?
There are two rational reasons for streaming the city council on Youtube. One reason is that it can easily be perceived as “free” to publish video on Youtube – no invoice will ever show up in the mailbox. The second reason is that the material becomes available to the vast audience on Youtube – which can be a very good reason in many contexts, but hardly when it comes to the city council. Why? The average citizen who wants to find municipal or regional information hardly turns to Youtube to find answers, but rather to the municipality or region’s website.
Tracking issues
If you publish a video from Youtube on your own website, Youtube tracks the visitors as soon as you enter the page. This is done, among other things, with cookies, but not even the “no-cookie solution” is good enough. So the “free” solution actually means that you are paying Youtube by giving away your visitors’ personal data for advertising purposes. Something that directly violates the GDPR.
Linking to Youtube is another solution, but it is only marginally better. Then no tracking takes place on their own page – but the only thing the visitor has done is to follow a designated link to access public information. It is still highly doubtful whether all visitors understand and expect to be profiled for advertising purposes.
Related videos
Youtube is a platform over which you have very little control. One such example is related videos that somehow associate your own organization with content that may be far from your organization’s values. Other questions that need to be addressed are control of advertising, who now owns the rights to the material and what Youtube is allowed to do with it, and so on.
Rights under the GDPR
It should also be clarified how the personal data in the videos themselves (those that participate by image, voice or are mentioned by name, for example) are to be handled when the data is turned over to countries outside of the EU. How to deal with the right to be forgotten and the executing of removing this data?
Do you use Youtube today?
Here we have gathered some tips just for you on how to improve the use of Youtube as far as possible.
The cost-effective option
There are many ways to deal with City Council TV. Youtube is, for legal reasons, one of the worse ways. Many of the technologically advanced solutions also cost accordingly. Of course, it can feel tough to migrate from Youtube’s “free model” to another solution that maybe cost hundreds, or even a thousand, Euros a month. Streamio offers an adequate alternative to streaming the city council on Youtube, with a cost of just over a hundred Euros a month, depending on whether you have many broadcasts and how many viewers you have. We are happy to help you analyze your current solution and suggest a cost-effective solution!
