Privacy Policy
This policy explains what data Yardstick Economics (“we”, “us”) handles on this website, yardstickecon.com, and in Yardstick Machine, our private production tool. If you have a question or a complaint, write to hello@yardstickecon.com.
YouTube API Services
Yardstick Machine uses YouTube API Services to publish and manage videos on our own YouTube channel. When you sign in with Google, Google’s handling of your data is governed by the Google Privacy Policy. Yardstick Machine’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy.
What Yardstick Machine accesses and stores
Yardstick Machine is used only by our own team, so the only Google account it connects to is the one that owns the Yardstick Economics channel. After that account grants permission, Yardstick Machine:
- receives OAuth access and refresh tokens and stores them only on our own computer, in a file that only our user account can read;
- reads basic channel information, the channel ID and title, to make sure it publishes to the right channel;
- uploads the videos, thumbnails and captions we produce, sets their titles, descriptions and AI-disclosure labels, and reads back their processing status;
- reads YouTube Analytics reports for our own channel, such as views, watch time, audience retention, impressions and click-through rate.
It does not read anyone else’s channel data, comments, messages or subscriber details.
How we use and share this data
We use this data only to publish and manage videos on our channel and to prepare internal reports that help us plan new videos. We do not sell it and do not share it with anyone, with one exception: aggregated statistics about our own channel may be processed by our AI service providers, Anthropic and Google, solely to prepare these internal reports. Neither this website nor Yardstick Machine shows advertising or lets third parties serve content.
How long we keep it
We keep OAuth tokens only as long as Yardstick Machine needs them to publish to our channel, and delete them when access is revoked. Other data received from YouTube API Services is kept for no longer than 30 days; after that we delete it or fetch a fresh copy.
Cookies and this website
This website does not use cookies, analytics or tracking, and it loads no third-party scripts or fonts. Yardstick Machine runs on our own computer and places no cookies on anyone’s device. Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, processes technical data such as IP addresses to deliver and protect the site; see the Cloudflare Privacy Policy.
If you email us, we use your address and message only to reply to you.
Revoking access
You can revoke Yardstick Machine’s access to your Google account at any time on the Google security settings page. Yardstick Machine also has its own disconnect command, which revokes the token with Google and deletes it from our computer. After access is revoked, we delete the related data within 7 days.
Deleting data
To ask us to delete any data we hold about you, write to hello@yardstickecon.com. We will delete it as soon as possible and within 7 days. Deleting data held by Yardstick Machine does not affect data stored by YouTube; to remove videos or other content from YouTube itself, use YouTube’s own tools.
Security
We protect our Google account with two-step verification, keep tokens and API keys in files that only our user account can read, and never publish them.
Children
Our channel, this website and our tools are not directed to children.
Changes
If we change this policy, we will update the date above. If Yardstick Machine ever needs to use data in a new way, we will update this policy and ask for consent again before doing so.