City of Camarillo
Public Comments
Tuesday, August 5, 2025 07:52 PMPUBLIC COMMENTS
NOTICE
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Meeting Date Tuesday, August 5, 2025
Agency City Council
Item Type Item Not On Agenda
Item Number or Subject Airing the City Council meetings live elsewhere besides YouTube-Spencer Richey
Position Support
Comments Dear Camarillo City Council,
1) Is there any particular reason why the City Council meetings aren't currently aired live on local TV and instead are only being aired on TV after the meetings are already finished?
Because, honestly, in a city where there's so many seniors and people from other demographics that are as a whole less likely to use a computer to do things like access City Council meetings, not letting the meetings air on TV until *after* they're all finished seems...kinda suspicious, to be honest, especially since there's far less ability to edit the coverage of events like City Council meetings as they're airing live compared to if they're only airing after the event's completely concluded.
Especially since not only is there limited space in our City Council chambers for people who are attending City Council meetings in-person (I would know, it got VERY crowded in City Hall at that City Council meeting I attended to speak out against the local ICE raids and our continued funding of the VCSO's assistance with them), but due to transportation issues, conflicts with work, current contagious illness, other current 1 health issues, infection risk, accessibility issues, and, extremely pertinent to Camarillo in particular, childcare and eldercare obligations including attending and ferrying to | from events like club meetings, practices, and sports games, it's not remotely feasible to expect or require people physically attend our City Council meetings if they want to be able to watch them in real time and aren't able to access them via the Internet.
Camarillans and other people deserve the ability to watch what the city government they are paying for, even with "just" sales taxes, is doing in real time and more or less unedited even if they're relying on their regular TV to do it instead of being able to show up in-person or access it using their computer, phone, or other device capable of accessing the Internet.
2) Starting August 13th, 2025 (so only about a week from now), YouTube is planning to implement a policy in which AI will be deployed to flag certain users as minors and subsequently remove them from the unrestricted version of the site.
Adults who the AI flags as minors will, if this new policy is ultimately implemented, have to give YouTube either their card info or a government ID in order to be verified as adults and regranted access to the unrestricted version of the site.
It's also worth noting that the version of YouTube that people who aren't currently logged in will see is the restricted version YouTube's planning to roll out for minors.
While in a *fair* world something as innocuous as a Camarillo City Council meeting would stay completely viewable to
everyone, including people not currently logged into YouTube and minors alike, in reality our world really isn't fair at all, and in fact over in the UK both Wikipedia and coverage of protests have been censored under their now-in-effect Online Safety Act, which pretty much places the *entire* British Internet under this harsh AI-powered "submit your personal info or be banished from the unrestricted version of our site" policy YouTube's planning to implement starting just over a week from now.
If both Wikipedia and even PG-rated protest coverage are apparently considered too dangerous for minors to see under laws and policies like this, I really do genuinely worry that, as a city that *has* been severely rocked by the unrelenting ICE raids and other ICE kidnappings Trump's regime has inflicted
nationwide and that subsequently *has* had politically- controversial policies like this brought up multiple times in Camarillo's more recent city council meetings, that under this age-gating censorship logic that clearly deems anything and *everything* that could fuel or encourage dissent against the current government as unfit for minors or the general public as a whole to view our city council meetings would get flagged by YouTube and subsequently put behind an age verification wall that's only surmountable by handing over one's personal information.
2 Minors, via paying *sales taxes* whenever they buy something like the sodas and Starbucks I've noticed they tend to be fond of, are *absolutely* local taxpayers and should NOT under *any* circumstances be denied real-time, generally unedited remote viewing access to Camarillo's city council meetings via YouTube deciding the livestreams are too spicy for kids and putting them behind highly invasive "age verification" walls.
Neither, for that matter, should any adult in Camarillo or elsewhere who, quite understandably and rightfully since of course the lack of this level of invasive "age verification" wasn't and still isn't remotely necessary to supposedly ensure a safe experience for kids, isn't willing to hand over their card info or government IDs to YouTube just to use an unrestricted, un- heavily censored version of the site.
Frankly, YouTube or anywhere else demanding *any* of their users hand over their personal information just to use the un- heavily censored version of their site are being a direct danger to the public in doing this because we've known for many years now it's really not all that difficult for hackers to get into and leak *everywhere* whatever personal information these
companies have accumulated.
One need only see the recent Tea app hacking and leak for an example of that, as the hackers managed to leak the
uncensored drivers licenses and other government IDs of 13,000 women that Tea still had in its possession at the time it was hacked because it mandated users submit their
government IDs to "ensure they were women", as Tea is an app specifically meant to be a safe space for women.
The people who'd been calling for the Tea app to be hacked in the first place for literally months beforehand were all matter of incels, redpillers, and other members of the manosphere and their enablers who were itching for the opportunity to doxx and then harass, including physically, the women who *dared* try to avoid dating scumbag men like them by discussing the local dating scene with other women on an app specifically meant to be a safe space for them to do that in.
So, yeah, it'd *highly* behoove Camarillans to just leave YouTube for good if it comes down to having to do either that or hand over their prime doxxing information.
I am among *many* adult YouTube users, Camarillans certainly included, who are planning to log off and completely stop using YouTube starting August 13th if YouTube does ultimately go through with implementing this, and if YouTube hasn't corrected course and completely undone this by definitely the end of August or September 2025 I will join *very* many others in shuttering my account there and permanently leaving the site.
Under the current circumstances in which the only way to watch 3 Camarillo City Council meetings live is on YouTube, we're facing the possibility that tons and tons and tons of Camarillans- taxpayers, pretty much all of them!-*will* for sure completely lose the ability to see our city council meetings live or otherwise in real time unless they physically go to City Hall to watch them in-person, which as I've mentioned earlier isn't always feasible for Camarillans (or anyone else).
In order to improve and safeguard Camarillo's remote access to its City Council meetings, the City of Camarillo needs to do two things:
1) Air the Camarillo City Council meetings live on local TV as well as after the meetings end, like how other events like the Rose Parade are aired both live and then again after the event ends.
2) Either somehow figure out livestreaming its City of Camarillo meetings directly from the city's official government site, no YouTube needed, or establish official City of Camarillo accounts on at least one other video-sharing site that has the ability for users to livestream on the site so, in the event YouTube goes through with their AI-"age verification"-censorship policy on August 13th, Camarillans have a way to access their City Council's meetings online in real time that doesn't require them to hand over their personal information in order to do so.
As far as a second place for Camarillo City Council meetings to be livestreamed online goes, I think the current best option for that would be the video-sharing site Odysee because it's completely free to use both as a viewer and as an uploader, something generally G | PG-rated like the Camarillo City Council meetings would be for sure just as free and unrestricted in viewership there as it's been on YouTube, and I've noticed there isn't any real indication that something like "promoting antifa" could get anyone's videos | comments removed or kicked off the site like Odysee's two main non-YouTube competitors who are comparably good as far as their operating speed and options for livestreaming go, the very noticeably rightwing Rumble and Bitchute.
Sincerely,
Spencer Richey
Highly Concerned Camarillan
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IDENTIFICATION
Name Spencer Richey
Address 5351 Paseo Ricoso
Camarillo, California, 93012
4 Telephone (424) 786-1247
Email [email protected]
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