Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it

To spell it out: it takes an increasing amount of effort to avoid any of your interests being tracked, logged, and almost immediately used in ways that you already know will be destructive. This is also an IT professional and a programmer saying this, so they do not want your advice. The fact that they can use many, many countermeasures which require many, many rabbitholes of research, that as a programmer they are able to understand (although they will have to be continually updated) is not a way to fix that fear it's the manifestation of that fear.

After 9/11 and the Patriot Act, librarians fought the government to keep the reading habits of patrons private as a core duty like doctors pledge to do no harm. Now it's difficult to get people to understand why clicking through to an attractive hammock while browsing Amazon registering in 900 databases and manifesting in ads and cold calls selling tropical vacations and being flagged on some government system as 2% more likely to be a flight risk if let out on bond (who am I kidding, AI doesn't give percentages, it just gives conclusions, looking at a hammock might be that stray pixel that can turn an OCR "O" into a "Q") - difficult to get some people to understand why that would make you nervous.

The answer to that isn't "use TOR to get to a VPN to browse amazon, and pay for that with a burner debit card loaded with bitcoin" or whatever works this week. There isn't really a hammock.

edit: also Amazon has that figured out, some researcher there figured out that they can identify you based on your click patterns and timing. Right now you can choose between 1) an app that will just click on everything silently, or 2) another app by a professor at some midwestern university that will jerk around the timing and positioning of your clicks in a way that throws your fingerprint off. The first app has been banned by every store, and triggers 80 warnings and a waiver that has to be signed with two-factor even if you manage to root your phone and sideload it. You have to compile the second app yourself, with a weird toolchain, and it draws in 640Mb of npm libraries. It's already been updated three times in response to Amazon's countermeasures, and the professor just wrote a paper about the entire method probably being ultimately doomed.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and induces magical thinking.

This is a quarter step away from voodoo and south seas cargo cult rituals.

I'm mildly curious about the whole Jordan Peterson anti-woke movement. Mildly, as in, I'm interested in the arguments but I often don't agree with them. I once made the mistake of clicking on a Peterson YouTube video and subsequently got only obscene alt-right "Peterson KILLS stupid feminist reporter!!" type of edited content. Like at some point 80% of my suggestions was crap like that, drowning out all the lovely nerdy Tom Scott stuff I come to YouTube for.

I had to reset all suggestions to get away from it. Whenever I now see a video like that about the culture wars (or about covid for that matter), I open an incognito browser and search for the title. It's nuts that this is necessary.

It's come to a point that I now hate suggestion engines with a passion. I wish I could simply only see the tweets/videos/whatever from people I follow/subscribe, chronologically. I can't figure out whether the people making these services are simply incompetent or downright evil.

The AI future is now and it's awful.

Sure lots of negatives, but in a few cases, it can also be useful. I have carefully used a YouTube account that's specifically trained for just the right music recommendations that the auto-play just works mostly right.

I use stimulating music (not relaxing) for work mainly, playing in background, and don't want to keep finding new music. Novelty is an important factor in stimulatory music. So this has been great for me.

Don't use Google to search. DDG!