Roastube is a comedy app. You sign in with Google, it reads your YouTube activity, and an AI writes a roast of your viewing habits. This page explains exactly what that involves. The short version: read-only access, a summary goes to the AI, and none of your data is stored on our servers.
What we ask Google for
When you sign in, Roastube requests these permissions:
- Basic sign-in (
openid,email,profile): to confirm who is signed in and keep you signed in. Your name and email are never sent to the AI. - View your YouTube account (
youtube.readonly): read-only access, used for one thing, which is reading your liked videos, your subscriptions and the names of your playlists to build your roast. Roastube can't post, comment, like, subscribe, upload or delete anything.
Roastube uses YouTube API Services. By using Roastube you also agree to the YouTube Terms of Service, and Google's handling of your data is covered by the Google Privacy Policy.
What we read from YouTube
- Up to about 200 of your most recently liked videos: title, channel name, category and length.
- Up to about 200 of your subscriptions: channel names.
- Your playlists: names and how many videos each one holds.
- Your channel name and channel picture, if you have them. These are only shown on your roast and on the share image, which is drawn in your browser. They are never sent to the AI.
We read this when you ask for a roast, use it to make that roast, and then discard it.
Share images
Share images are made in your browser. Nothing is uploaded when you download or copy one. When you pick an app like X, WhatsApp or Telegram, we open that app's own share page with the text of your roast; what you post there is covered by that app's policies. If you pick a cartoon avatar instead of your picture, that choice is remembered in your browser only.
What we send to the AI
Roastube computes statistics in code (for example, the share of your likes under three minutes, or how concentrated your likes are in a few channels) and builds a short summary. That summary, plus a sample of up to about 150 liked video titles with their channel names, some subscription and playlist names, is sent to Google's Gemini API to write the roast.
The summary never includes your name, your email address or your channel ID. Before it's sent, we drop titles that clearly relate to health, mental health, grief, religion, sexuality or politics, and the AI is instructed never to joke about those topics.
Gemini free tier. Roastube uses the free tier of the Gemini API. Under Google's terms for unpaid services, Google may use the content we submit (the summary and titles described above) and the generated roast to provide, improve and develop its products, and human reviewers may read it. That's one reason we never include anything that identifies you.
Nuclear mode and Google Takeout
If you use nuclear mode, you export your own watch and search history from Google Takeout and add the files to Roastube. Those files are read entirely in your browser. They are never uploaded. Only the computed summary (statistics plus a sample of titles, channel names and searches, with the same filtering as above) is sent to make the roast.
If you include your comments file, we keep only how many comments you've written and up to eight short snippets, with links, email addresses and @handles removed first. The summary is held in your browser tab until the roast is made and disappears when you close the tab.
What we store
- On our servers: none of your data. No copies of your YouTube data, no saved roasts, and no list of who has used Roastube.
- In your browser: your latest roast is saved in your browser's local storage so it survives a reload, kept separately for each account. Signing out clears it, and so does clearing your site data.
- Sign-in cookie: an encrypted session cookie keeps you signed in. It holds the Google access token Roastube uses to read YouTube on your behalf. The token is only ever read on our server and is never exposed to the page. Sessions end after 55 minutes, before the token itself expires, and we never ask for or keep a long-lived refresh token. Signing out deletes the cookie.
- Rate limiting: to keep the free AI quota fair, we may count roasts per account per day. That counter is keyed by a one-way hash of your Google account ID and expires within 24 hours.
- Usage counts: we count how many roasts are made each day, which level was picked and whether nuclear mode was used. To estimate how many different accounts made roasts, the same one-way hash goes into a counting method (HyperLogLog) that keeps only an approximate total, not the hashes, so it can't list or look up anyone. Daily counts are deleted after about 13 months.
- Visitor analytics: we use Vercel Web Analytics to count page views. Each view records the page, the site you came from, your approximate location (country, region, city), browser, operating system and device type. It uses no cookies and isn't linked to your Google account; visits are told apart by a hash of the request that is discarded after 24 hours.
- Hosting logs: our host keeps standard request logs (like IP address and time of request) for a short period for security and reliability.
We don't sell, rent or share your data, and we don't use it for advertising.
Roastube's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
How to revoke access
Sign out of Roastube at any time. To remove Roastube's access completely, go to your Google Account, open Security, then Your connections to third-party apps and services (also shown as Third-party connections), choose Roastube and remove access. You can go there directly at myaccount.google.com/connections.
Children
Roastube is not intended for anyone under 13, or the minimum age to use YouTube where you live.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top. Questions or requests: roastube.help@gmail.com.