Use a private browsing/incognito window then. Not bullet-proof, but probably good enough.
Or through the Tor Browser.
Google blocks Tor users pretty aggressively in my experience.
Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it
141–150 of 215 posts
Re: Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it
#142You should abstain from googling politically incorrect ideas. It is possible that the state will require searches for for politically incorrect content be logged and used to create a profile on possible dissidents.
What country do you live in?
American. Programs like this almost definitely exist in America.
Even if they didn‘t, it would only be a matter of time for them to be implemented since it is in the interest of the state to monitor its population for behavior that could be dangerous to it.
That isn‘t even necessarily bad! It‘s just problematic that it could easily be used for immoral surveillance. It‘s imo a good thing to identify likely future terrorists. It‘s not a good thing to surveil members of e.g. sexual minorities or peaceful dissidents.
I‘m a recent immigrant, so I am sorry if my English sounds weird.
Re: Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use Firefox multi-account containers and the temporary containers add-on. Now your YouTube starts fresh with every new tab. It's actually nice, it means you get to build a new set of recommendations each time you open a tab, and because YT doesn't have that much data on you yet, the recommendations are directly linked to the thing you're currently watching, similar to how it used to be before the whole tracking extra…
Or use different folders of portable Chromium so you have any semblance of sandboxing + security.
You can just have multiple profiles on chrome. One logged in and one logged out.
Re: Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it
#144Incognito.
Re: Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it
#145It's so weird, across all Google's products I occasionally get these weird Arabic and sometimes even Islamic content suggestions. I've never opened any of these links, am not behind a VPN, am very much not Arabic and do not understand the language, and - with all due respect - am completely uninterested in Islamic holy scripture. Why, even after all these years, Google thinks this is content I'd want to see is a comp…
For me it’s India. “xyz price in India” “restaurant in Delhi” “product - amazon. in” “how to say word in Hindi” and so on. tf?
Re: Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it
#146Honest question: Why are you logged into Google? If you must use gmail, use imap. The only other “sticky” service they offer (that benefits from a login) is docs. So, use some other office suite, or keep a separate browser installed just for docs. Problem solved, I think.
If you wanted to scale that across more identities you could probably use seperate vms.
If you have enough RAM it‘s really easy to do.
That would beat browser fingerprinting as long as browser A running in VM A looks different enough from browser B running in VM B.
The average browser is unique out of like 300 thousand other browsers but with the right settings you can get that down to more like 1 in 10.
Re: Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are also part of the Chromium project, so you're welcome to check it out, inspect the source code, and build it locally.
Just because it's open doesn't mean anyone can do such thing. I'm a professional dev and I can't browse such a complex C++ codebase.
I was being flippant, but isn't that true of anything though? How do you know Linux isn't secretly reporting all your activities to Big Penguin?
You should be able to trust a popular open-source project, because you trust that there are folks who will go in and take a sticky beak at these kinds of things. This why a lot of security folks prefer open-source software over close-sourced solutions.
Surely, if Chromium were cross-correlating profiles, then it'd be on the front page of Hacker News in short order.
Re: Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best way of not playing this game is to, well... not play it. Why should you pay any attention to what YouTube "suggests" you should watch? I just treat YouTube as a service that hosts videos, with a mediocre search feature, and I have no interest in what it thinks I should watch. If a real human mentions a video that piques my interest, I may watch it. If I'm interested in finding a video on a particular topic,…
This is the correct answer.
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Re: Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it
#149I like recommendation features in principle. I don’t want an unfiltered feed of stuff. It would just be nice if they were configurable, understandable and actually worked for me. Some systems’ “We’re showing you this because ...” is an important first step, but it needs to go way, way, further. Big companies probably don’t do it because they’re afraid of overwhelming a user, disclosing too much about their own algori…
My hobby project https://linklonk.com (use invitation code 'hn') is a content recommendation system that is built around these principles:
- Control: what you see is based on your explicit upvotes & downvotes, not what you happened to click on.
- Transparency: you see content from feeds that posted content you upvoted and from other users who upvoted what you upvoted, but did that before you. For example, when you upvote a link it will tell you that "You will get more content from 2 users that also liked it and from 3 feeds that posted it". And when you see a recommendation from other users you can see what likes in common do you have with those users (“We’re showing you this because ...”).
- Fairness: the amount of attention every user and feed gets from you depends on how useful their past recommendations have been. Ie, the higher their signal-to-noise ratio has been for you - the more prominently their other upvoted items will be in your "feed".
Give it a try and let me know what you think. I'd like to do a "Show HN" post for my project soon and your feedback would help me prepare for it.
If you like to read a bit more here are my announcements with discussions:
- https://tildes.net/~tech/u7f/linklonk_a_link_aggregator_with...
- https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/mpqnpl/...
Re: Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is your XBox online? Are you sure the DVD player doesn't report back what you're watching and how you're watching it?
Or your smart TV.
Which, for those out of the loop, is likely taking random screenshots of the displayed image and uploading enough data up positively correlate images to known content, or more, I haven't bothered to learn these things. The people who implement them are creepy af though.