Openness
Freely licensed open-source software makes the world go round. It underpins the operation of the internet. Anyone can inspect what these tools do. Anyone can follow the protocols. They invite collaboration, which is a win-win situation. They can run on cheaper hardware and don’t require the money or high-speed internet connections of a rich country.
Open standards should be free and without patents. Luckily, you can stick to totally open standards.
These technologies may be unfamiliar to you. Please be open to new experiences.
Linux, Windows, and Apple
Linux takes the mindset of transparency and collaboration to the level of the operating system.1 The two largest competitors to Linux have been operating systems from Microsoft Corporation and Apple Inc. Their operating systems are not freely licensed or open source. The Windows operating system and the primary software for Macs, Apple TVs, Apple Watches, and iPhones are closed source and proprietary.
Apple makes other decisions that further limit the use of free and open standards. Its products do not support the audio file format that allows for lossless compression and tagging, FLAC. Similarly, Apple does not support Opus, an open and free audio format that is also gapless. Zoom, Mumble, Signal and other forms of real-time communication use Opus. Additionally, Apple doesn’t support the container for Opus and Vorbis,2 Ogg, or the open, free, and versatile container that is called Matroska Video (.mkv).
Additionally, Apple locks down its iPhones so that you must download and install only the apps from the Apple App Store in your country. You cannot drag and drop files as you please. You have to “sync” your data. As a result, you had better hope that you agree with every one of the decisions that Apple and your government make. You don’t so much buy an iPhone as you pay for the long-term rental of something with many conditions and restrictions.3
Outside of FLAC, Opus, Ogg, and MKV, Apple has been great for accessibility, podcasting standards, and making high-quality hardware. It also campaigned strongly to end the scourge of Adobe Flash on the Web. There are mixed feelings on Apple, for sure.
- The operating system is the main software on your device that makes it possible to run apps. Any smartphone that is not an iPhone will probably be Android or based on Android. The iPhone runs the iOS operating system. An AppleTV also uses iOS. A computer from Apple is on the MacOS operating system. Almost any other computer can run Windows, Linux, or both.↩
- An older audio format that is still open and free.↩
- Imagine if you bought a refrigerator from General Electric and the company prevented you from buying food at certain grocery stores. Don’t worry, the company assures you, the policy is only there to prevent you from buying the wrong type of cabbage and putting that in your fridge.↩
Podcasts
For Android users, AntennaPod performs well (Google Play and F-Droid). Pocket Casts is open source too (App Store and Google Play), and so is Podverse (App Store, Google Play, F-Droid).
Despite the problems with Apple as a device seller and an operating system developer, Apple has been wonderful for podcasting. Apple has championed RSS and needed enhancements to directories. It is the first major company to push for transcripts from Podcasting 2.0 and specifically promotes the VTT format so that apps can label who is talking at each moment.
Apple Podcasts is still a solid option for iPhone users because it labels speakers as it displays transcripts. It has other benefits too. Unlike almost all rivals, the app and the directory note episode and season numbers and can properly sort serial shows.
Apple Podcasts is both an app and a directory as is Pocket Casts. Each does a better job than any other that also does double duty. Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Pandora, Podverse, and Spotify all generate transcripts through AI, but of these, only Apple Podcasts can display the transcripts that the author provides in the RSS feed.
The directory for Apple Podcasts has a major issue, however. It ignores transcripts from the show author unless the show author claims the show in Apple Podcasts Connect and manually changes the setting. In contrast, Pocket Casts will immediately use the transcripts from the RSS feed. A limitation for the directory on Pocket Casts, however, is that it cannot group episodes by season, even if it can display episode and season numbers.
Surprisingly, Apple’s own web player cannot display transcripts even though Apple Podcasts on the iPhone can show them. Luckily, people who need transcripts on a web player can use the one from the Public Radio Exchange (PRX). The Yellow Light uses PRX web players for posts that announce podcast episodes and on the Podcast page of this website.
Spotify’s Lack of Standards
One company earns particular scorn for hurting the podcasting ecosystem: Spotify. Listeners cannot add RSS feeds, neither public nor private, to Spotify’s web player or its apps for iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Every podcast creates an RSS feed. Anyone can look at the RSS feed or copy its address (the URL that begins with https://). Then, you can download the files listed in that RSS feed or add the address of the RSS feed into any app—except for Spotify. No middlemen are necessary.
The irony is that Spotify requires the RSS feeds that authors submit to the Spotify directory. Spotify’s own podcasts originally were true exclusives. They had no RSS feed for external use. Spotify relented and finally released RSS feeds. Spotify, however, stubbornly refuses to allow RSS feeds in its apps.
The Yellow Light Sound appears on Spotify’s directory, but I strongly urge you to go with any other directory and to adopt any app that is not from Spotify. If you needed more convincing, Spotify is the company that paid $100 million to Joe Rogan as his show was steering the “podcast bros” to vaccine denial and carrying water for Trump.
Videos
With Peertube, we have a way to distribute video content through WebTorrent. Video files are massive. They are hard to host cheaply. WebTorrent changes that.
You can have a simpler and cheaper host for video files with PeerTube. Its technology, WebTorrent, uses the technology of BitTorrent—but in your web browser.1 The BitTorrent technology makes everybody share little bits of the file with each other.2 This way, the video host does not have to all of the work. Until decentralized video hosting becomes common, however, YouTube will play an important role—as long as we remain aware of the challenges.
In terms of copyright, YouTube is on the side of trolls and big business. The platform sides with any person (or any bot) who accuses you of copyright infringement. Worse still, you can appeal against YouTube’s decision and lose. If this happens on three occasions, YouTube deletes your account. Naturally, many of those who get accused of copyright infringement quietly admit their “guilt” and remove their videos.
The algorithms of YouTube will also punish videos with curse words in them, but YouTube does not show consistency on staying family friendly. The decision to flag a video for adult content seems to have no rhyme or reason. Even if your movie review channel simply mentions nudity in a film and removes any visual content that is not appropriate for children, YouTube may still choose to demonetize and restrict that video. Meanwhile, another video from the same creator will show barely covered frontal nudity without issue.
Predictably, this random and unclear enforcement has led to self-censorship. It has not stopped the creation or distribution of harmful content, however.
YouTube will do nothing to stop a video where the narrator gets frothing mad at women for imagined crimes. Instead, YouTube’s recommendation algorithm will boost misogynistic diatribes, racist screeds, and conspiracy theories that reject the curvature of the planet, deny the impact of greenhouse gases, or increase vaccine hesitancy.3
These videos invite both fawning praise and vociferous condemnation. Any comment at all under a video will make YouTube recommend that video to more people.
Engagement is engagement. Ignore bad content. Resist the temptation to write comments—even negative ones. Don’t feed the beast.
- Any web browser will work. As always, remember that Mozilla Firefox is cross-platofrm, free, and open source.↩
- The most common usage of BitTorrent technology is in the sharing of copyrighted movies. This sharing is often a copyright violation. (Downloading itself is usually fine, but with BitTorrent you are always downloading and sharing at the same time. That’s how it works.) You will get caught if you bootleg movies while you are in a country that enforces copyright laws and you don’t use a reliable VPN. BitTorrents are also useful for perfectly legitimate purposes and even desirable. They are the preferred form of distributing Linux, for example.↩
- The behavior of the US is particularly shameful on this front—even before RFK Jr. became the Secretary of Health. From 2020 to mid-2021, the Pentagon spread disinformation about China’s free vaccine for Covid. Before and after, Bill Gates has consistently defended proprietary secrets in medicine.↩
Websites
This website runs on Ghost software, which is open source and available under the MIT license and on a host that uses nginx. Ghost currently integrates with Mailgun for emails, but it is possible (someday) for someone to add the functionality for other mass email services.
The podcast’s RSS feed and episode files go through a WordPress site that uses the PowerPress plug-in, licensed under a copyleft and open-source license GPL, version 2.0 or above.