151–160 of 215 posts
I don't log in to anything google related, I have youtube/google stuff containerized and when I close my browser window it clears all my history and cookies, etc. I surf with ublock on and max privacy settings in the browser. I use YouTube via RSS. My quality of life is incredible.
It's annoying clicking some youtube link only to find it was something you really don't want more of, and then youtube proceed to recommend much more of it, even though you barely watched any of it. kinda forces me to watch something else that is new but at least somewhat wanted in an attempt to make the algorithm look at the new shiny i'm interested in and forget the previous one. i find it funny though when amazon…
Click the three dots and then either "Not interested" or "Don't recommend channel". Seems to work reasonably well for me.
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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,…
> Why should you pay any attention to what YouTube "suggests" you should watch? There is one advantage: some obscure music videos. There are some rare pearls with the comments section almost exclusively thanking YT algorithm for taking them there. Happened to me so many times that I have a separate browser instance and a Google account for YT and I'm very careful what I click when I use it.
https://www.youtube.com/c/TerminalPassage/videos
I didn't even know there was a Jazz/Fusion rock scene in Japan in the 70's for instance. I never would have heard of this band without YouTube suggestions but really enjoying their work.
I think Netflix is the worst offender. If you spend a minute too long looking at the menu for a movie it will not only auto play, but for the foreseeable future Netflix will assume you’re watching it, want to finish watching it and watch similar stuff. More than most other services Netflix doesn’t trust your ratings or your lists when making up recommendations.
You can turn off auto play FYI.
Fair enough. But to what extent would the algorithm know about you if you clear cookies/storage data though? I also imagine changing IP addresses help… does Google use IP as a source for profiling?
I can’t speak for what data points Google uses for tracking, however... with JavaScript, there is a plethora of information that can be used to uniquely identify you across IPs, and even across browsers. [0] If you’re logged in to a service on multiple devices you have now linked multiple fingerprints to your account that can be compared against third party data. A VPN will not protect you from this tracking. [0] htt…
Gives you the entropy your browser is giving out in number of bits.
I don't log in to anything google related, I have youtube/google stuff containerized and when I close my browser window it clears all my history and cookies, etc. I surf with ublock on and max privacy settings in the browser. I use YouTube via RSS. My quality of life is incredible.
Youtube has an RSS feed?
You could also just put the channel URL into your RSS/Atom reader and it might convert it automatically.
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What if it's from a channel I like but don't want to watch that one video...will clicking on this reduce suggestions from this channel, will it do nothing, will it unsubscribe me from that channel(as has happened in the past), ...? Nobody knows, I only know I don't want to play this game.
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,…
I did it for a couple of weeks to see what was being promoted by youtube algorithms in terms of content and ads to the more financially challenged parts of the society. Gangsta and sexually inuendo videos in neighbourhoods that although poor do not have a crime problem and young people don't dress like that. But it seems the algo is working on it. Note: This is in a European country
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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.
I don't log in to anything google related, I have youtube/google stuff containerized and when I close my browser window it clears all my history and cookies, etc. I surf with ublock on and max privacy settings in the browser. I use YouTube via RSS. My quality of life is incredible.