No More YouTube for Obama

After taking some heat from privacy advocates, the Obama administration has switched from using YouTube to post President Obama's weekly addresses to Vimeo, according to CNet's Chris Soghoian.

Federal agencies, including the White House, have had a longstanding policy not to use long-term tracking cookies, which are placed on visitors' PCs or laptops. YouTube uses these cookies, but the White House gave YouTube an exemption from the rule. Privacy groups, such as the Center for Technology and Democracy, spoke out against the use of the cookies.

From Soghoian:

As of Saturday, the White House seems to have ditched YouTube as its video provider. Visitors to the White House blog can now click play to view a Flash-based video that loads directly from the White House's own Web servers. This solution, which appears to use Akamai's content delivery network, does not make use of tracking cookies.

The president's tech team seems to have finally hit on an optimal solution--one which protects the privacy of the visitors to the White House site, while still permitting the president to spread his message.

. . . It is unclear whether this switch away from YouTube marks a permanent shift in policy for the White House, or whether the Oval Office geek squad is merely testing an alternate video provider. While the latest video is served using Akamai's servers, the older videos remain as embedded YouTube files.