Ethics: on values, money, and life goals

Sometimes, it’s easier to focus on what you really want in life and what your goals and values are when you write them down. And if you have somewhere to put them on display, it’s even easier to stay accountable for them, so here we go!

Minimalism

I used to be very focused on myself. When I was in my 20s, I was greedy, I wanted to climb the social ladder, spend tons of money for flashy things to make people jealous, and generally wasn’t a very good person. I went into more detail on an article I wrote a while back:

Nowadays, I try to focus on other things than myself. I value a simple life. I don’t want the chaos of living in a huge city, the proximity of millions of other human souls, or the rush to try and do tens of different activities. I value living a life of simplicity. This is why I try to live as a minimalist: the big mansions, humongous cars, holiday houses hold no appeal to me anymore. I’m satisfied with a flat in a small-ish city in France, with a small utilitarian and cheap car that I use as little as I can (I prefer public transportation anyway), and while I do own way too many computers for a single person, they’re all used in some way or another for my work, the rest gets sold or donated, or recycled.

I try to apply this to my computing needs as well: I don’t download thousands of applications, I’m tidy with my files, I use a system that just does what I want from it. The important thing is the experience you’re living, the thing you’re creating, reading, watching, or enjoying, not the means by which you’re doing all of that.

It’s not that the design is unimportant, on the contrary: the design must be elegant enough, simple enough, and neutral enough to let your mind focus on what you’re doing an not on the object that lets you do the task.

Money

With minimalism comes a lot more money in the bank. If you’re freed from huge mortgages for a giant house you don’t really need, if you’re not dragged down by a monstrous car payment, if you don’t spend a third of your income buying things, you have a lot, and I mean a LOT more money available to you.

YouTube is now my only job, it’s been since May 2022. My YouTube activities pay decently well for the actual value I deliver. Let’s be honest, compared to someone who collects garbage every morning, I’m completely useless to society, and yet I’m paid more for an easier job. I don’t live like a king, I’m not LTT or PewDiePie, I will never be, unless Linux completely explodes on the desktop (and even at that point, the huge tech channels would probably capture the market quickly). Nowadays, I make enough to pay my bills, to save a bit for potential problems and retirement, and while I actually make less money than what I did back when I lived in Paris, or had a high paying day job, I still earn more than what I need.

Now this money only has one goal: to allow me to be able to pick the work I want to do without any limitations or financial worry. For now, this work is YouTube, and I really enjoy it. I have no idea if it will last for another 5 years, or more than that, but as long as it lasts, I’ll do it.

In terms of money, though, I’m not willing to take any shortcut to get there. I want that money to be earned reasonably ethically, so I avoid a few avenues:

• The stock exchange: it’s a parasitic system where you make money without creating or contributing anything. It’s all virtual, and a company’s stock value doesn’t represent anything real, while it still has an impact on the employee’s lives. I find this system repulsive, and will avoid having anything to do with it if at all possible.

• Crypto: not all crypto currencies are designed to be a scam, but the general market is basically the stock market on steroids, with insane volatility, and pyramid schemes run rampant there. I don’t see any value in this sector, and I refuse to use or promote anything related to it.

• AI: I find these relatively recent tools fascinating. They hold great promise to make tedious work easier. But I also have to recognize that there’s a very shady ethical side to how these tools were trained. Consent to use online content was generally never given or asked for, and that’s a big issue for me. I will not promote, or use (outside of learning and recreational activities) any AI related product until these concerns can be alleviated.

• Selling my soul or my values: I won’t accept a sponsorship from any company that I don’t believe in, or from which I don’t think the product is worth using. I declined a lot of offers for weird products, windows key resellers, gaming chairs, some shady VPNs, and other companies. I’ll keep doing so.

My end goal is to be free financially for the grind of a daily job, it’s not to profit at the detriment of other people. This means I probably lost thousands in potential revenue, but it also means that when I finally enjoy my financial freedom, I won’t have a thing to regret, and it will all feel well deserved.

YouTube alternatives

YouTube isn’t a wonderful platform. It’s owned by Google, which is a company I don’t like, don’t trust, and don’t believe in at all. But right now, let’s be honest, if you want to reach the largest audience, whether it’s to pay the bills, or try and put Linux in the hands of the most users, YouTube is the only option.

Odysee had promise, but quickly turned into a toxic hellhole, so I left it in 2023, and while I love Peertube, and I’m using it (all my videos are mirrored there, on the TilVids instance) for now, I don’t think it has a shot at replacing YouTube. As long as these alternatives don’t offer a way for creators to make money, they just won’t appeal to most video makers, and so they won’t have the same breadth of content as YouTube, and users won’t come to them.

I’ll still always offer at least one alternative to Youtube. I think choice is crucial in computing, and I think people who want to escape privacy invasive services should be able to do so.

Adblock

Adblock (and sponsorblock) is a complicated thing. On the one hand, it’s YOUR decision. It’s YOUR browser, or web experience, and you have every right to tailor it as you want. On the other hand, it does come with the problem of funding: if you don’t see any ads on my videos, I don’t get paid at all, which means you got my work for free (unless you support me in another way, of course). That’s fine, that’s your choice, and I will never engage in anti-adblock promotion. But it’s still important to remember that most creators make money through ads. If you can’t support a creator through another avenue, or if you just don’t want to, ads are a way to let them keep making more stuff.

I wish I could rely on Patreon and user funding only. That would be the dream, and if Patreon reached the same amount of money monthly as YouTube ads, I would disable ads on my channel (if that’s still even possible?). The reality though, is that we’re not even close to that yet, and so for now, I need ads, and sponsors to pay the bills.

Sponsors

In terms of sponsors, I’m very picky. I only work with the ones that I personally use, or that I would use if I had a personal need for their product or service. I try out the service before I promote it, and if I find something that feels a bit off, I’ll question them about it, and drop them if the answer doesn’t satisfy me.

My current sponsors are the following:

• Linode, that I use to run my own Nextcloud server, my podcast, and my online office suite.
• Tuxedo: they make computers that run Linux out of the box, and I run my channel with some of their devices.
• Kasm: they make an open source “OS / desktop / apps in your browser” solution, and also an open source VNC alternative that’s quite impressive.
• ProtonMail: their suite is the most competent alternative to Google’s services right now, and since the various privacy / “NSA honeypot” conspiracies turned out out to have no factual basis, I’m happy to have them support the channel.
• TuxCare: they have a great suite of services for businesses, to manage and secure a fleet of servers and workstations. I don’t have a personal need for them (my company only employs myself), but I can recommend them with my eyes closed.
• Safing: they make open source software to monitor and secure your internet connection, block ads at the connection level, and generally gain more control over all you do on the web.
• SquareSpace: sure, they’re not open source, but I can’t see any other option to build a competent website if you don’t have technical skills. It just makes creating a website more accessible to everyone, and that’s a laudable goal.

I charge pretty low prices for the amount of views I generate, because I want partnerships that last, I don’t want to chase the latest, highest paying sponsor. All of these sponsors still pay the same price as they did when they first sponsored the channel. I never increased prices on them, and probably never will. This way, I ensure I earn enough to make a living, and I ensure that sponsors are happy with the performance they get as time goes on.

Linux

I use Linux for EVERYTHING. I don’t have a Windows partition as a dual boot, and while I do own a Mac, it’s an old cheese grater Mac Pro that I use to record footage of macOS for the videos that include them, I never use it for anything else. All script writing, invoicing, video recording, editing, gaming, everything is done on Linux. These days, it’s Fedora GNOME, but I also used a lot of other distros, and still plan to explore other options in the future.

I believe Linux is the only ethical desktop operating system (well, any FOSS system too, like BSD based operating systems). Windows and macOS are privacy invasive, locked down systems that I don’t enjoy using. I find their design and UX sub par, and I don’t like the companies that own them and develop them. If you have to use them for work, I have no issue with that, and if you prefer them, that’s also fine, but for my personal use, I can’t see myself moving to anything other than a Linux-based OS.

Linux won’t bombard you with optional services, ads, features you’ll never need or use, it won’t make your experience actively worse to upsell you, it’s just what you need to work, and you can choose whatever suits your workflow to make sure you can work without distractions.

Open Source

Now this one might ruffle some feathers. I love open source. It’s, in my mind, the best software development model. But I also have to acknowledge that open source software can’t cover all of my needs right now. I like gaming, and I use Steam, which is a proprietary program. The games themselves are too. I use an Nvidia GPU, which uses proprietary drivers, and I edit videos using Davinci Resolve, which is, again, not open source.

I will try to use open source software if the alternatives work for me. In these few cases, they didn’t, so I’ll use whatever works, even if it’s not free, or open source, while I wait for the world to catch up and provide some better alternatives.

I’m willing to accept some compromises if the open source alternative is mostly there. I’d rather have Microsoft Office than LibreOffice, because I’m more familiar with it, and I think it’s the better option, especially for spreadsheets and presentations, but LibreOffice is close enough that I’m willing to trade some comfort and some features to have the benefit of using open source software.

The environment

I love Earth. It’s a beautiful planet, and it’s the only one I’ve known, and that we’ve got for the foreseeable future. I want to keep living on it, and I want my potential future kids to be able to, as well (not that I plan to have any, but you never know). That’s why I respect the environment, and I’ll always tend to be as alarmed as possible about how dire the outlook is. Better safe than sorry, I guess.

This translates into a few actions here and there. I’m definitely not a paragon of virtue regarding the environment. I use a gas powered car when I need to move somewhere where public transportation isn’t a realistic option, because electric models are still way too expensive. I do use a lot of power to run my computers and to game. I’m not perfect, but I’ll do what I can to make sure my contribution to environmental waste is as reduced a possible.

I’ll recycle what I can, sell or donate instead of throwing away, and I won’t buy new stuff when the old stuff still works if I can help it. If I can’t, I’ll try to find another home or another use for the older things. In terms of food, I’ve recently tried to only buy sustainable stuff, like vegetables grown locally, without too many chemicals, and that are from the current season. Again, I’m not perfect, I do still buy plenty of crappy stuff, but I try my best.

Quality of life

In general, all these values and objectives all feed into the same end goal: having the best quality of life I can have, without harming the way of life of other people. I aim to live the most simple life I can while still being able to indulge in the various hobbies I have. This is why I don’t work a lofty position: I used to be Chief Product Officer, and I ended up quitting, not because I didn’t like the job, or because I couldn’t do it, but because I didn’t want the overtime, the pressure, or the responsibilities.

I don’t want to sacrifice living my life and enjoying the journey for the sake of appearances, of a stuffed bank account, or because “that’s how you’re supposed to do things”. I want to dictate how my life goes, what I bring into it, and how I make use of my time, and now that it’s written down, I guess I have no choice but to keep applying these values, forever!