Privacy Policy
1. Controller and contact
The research activity described on this site is carried out by Max Sedlmair, a private individual in Germany with no institutional affiliation. Where YouTube API Services are used, this happens through a Google Cloud project registered as “Sedlmair Linguistic Corpus Research”.
Email: research@woidwide.net
2. Purpose of the research workflow
The research workflow is used for small, non-commercial studies in empirical linguistics, corpus linguistics and digital discourse. It may retrieve limited samples of publicly available YouTube comments and associated public video metadata for defined research questions, technical validation and linguistic annotation.
3. No public user accounts or OAuth login
The research workflow is not a public-facing application. It does not offer user accounts, subscriptions or a login service, and external users are not asked to authenticate with their Google accounts.
4. Data minimisation and research use
Data collection is limited to information needed for a specific research question. The research is not used for advertising, marketing, individual targeting or commercial profiling. It is not designed to infer private characteristics of commenters. Unnecessary author-identifying information is avoided in research datasets and outputs. Published results are aggregated counts, linguistic categories and paraphrased examples; no user names, channel identifiers, comment IDs or full comment texts are published.
Public comments are not treated as ethically unrestricted simply because they are visible online. Research publications therefore favour aggregated results, linguistic categories and paraphrase where appropriate, and avoid publishing unnecessary usernames or searchable verbatim passages.
5. YouTube API Services data
Where YouTube API Services are used, API data is handled in accordance with the applicable YouTube API Services Terms of Service and Developer Policies.
Publicly available statistics and independently generated derived research metrics are stored beyond standard refresh periods only where and to the extent permitted under the applicable YouTube policies or an additional data-storage permission granted by Google. Derived measures are identified as independently generated research measures and not as metrics supplied directly by YouTube.
Other API data — including data such as comment text, video titles and creator names — is subject to the applicable refresh and deletion requirements. Under the current additional derived-metrics/data-storage terms, such data continues to be subject to the 30-day refresh and deletion policy.
6. Google and YouTube policies
Use of YouTube API Services is also subject to Google's and YouTube's own policies. Google's Privacy Policy is available at https://policies.google.com/privacy. The YouTube Terms of Service are available at https://www.youtube.com/t/terms.
7. Research outputs and provenance
Research outputs may report aggregated counts, independently created linguistic categories, manually coded research variables, methodological documentation and reproducibility materials. Provenance and material AI assistance are disclosed where applicable.
8. Website access
This website is primarily an informational site. It sets no cookies, uses no analytics or advertising trackers and builds no behavioural profiles. Fonts are served from this server; the site loads nothing from third parties. The hosting provider may technically process standard server-log information necessary to deliver the website; such processing is governed by the hosting arrangement and applicable law.
9. Changes
This policy may be updated if the research workflow, applicable law or the YouTube API Services policies change. The date above identifies the current version.