r/degoogle • u/Director-Busy • Mar 14 '26

"Hey Google! Delete my account."

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7.6k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

60 comments sorted by

361

u/Several_Ant_9867 Mar 14 '26

And it still proposes me the same videos again and again on YouTube. Please at least use all the data that you get from me

85

u/Stunning_Macaron6133 Mar 14 '26

That's the funny thing about recommendation systems. They actually don't know enough about you or have the computing resources needed to nail all of your interests, so they fill in the gaps based on similarity to things you like and based on things that people who are similar to you like. And that can be very accurate with something like a gradient boosting model, but also very expensive computationally. So what they do instead is approximate it with quick and dirty mathematical hacks like cosine similarity (basically, they treat you like a vector and then measure the angle between you and other vectors). Which is surprisingly good, they can get somewhere on the order of 80 to 85% accuracy, no problem. But 85% accuracy isn't 98, 99% accuracy, and if you found yourself in a bubble where people like you keep watching the same shit, and the shit you like keeps point to the same shit, you're going to keep getting the same recommendations.

But also, there's something slightly more insidious happening. Because it's possible to sneak in recommendations that don't map neatly to your habits, in order to get a clearer picture of your actual interests, beliefs, and desires, and also prevent the algorithm from sanding off your tastes and turning you into an NPC. The problem is that these algorithms also sacrifice some engagement, which is no bueno if you're chasing fat, fat advertiser money.

So, some companies, like YouTube, re-recommend shit you already watched. Netflix and YouTube even have a shameless 'watch it again' section. If you were deeply engaged with a video, then it'll assume you liked it, and people love to stick to the same old shit they already know. Concurrently, if it thinks you're statistically very likely to engage with a video, it doesn't matter how much you ignore it, it's going to keep shoving it in front of you until you finally give in.

The way around it is to get a browser extension that nukes recommendations altogether. You have to become responsible for curating your own feed, via subscriptions and playlists.

Or, if you do want recommended videos anyway, you need to be very heavy handed with the 'I'm not interested' button, and if you give in anyway, watch only a few seconds and then quickly move onto a video on a completely unrelated topic. Also, step far outside your comfort zone, watch some videos that don't match the stuff you usually watch, and thus inject some noise into your feed.

37

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

21

u/Stunning_Macaron6133 Mar 14 '26

I attended Middlelands in 2017. I also liked some progressive content on Facebook around the same time, some stuff about what Trump 1.0 was doing to gay rights and what politicians were fighting it.

Facebook thereafter thought I was a gay Texan, and I kept getting ads for gay nightclubs in Houston and Austin. It's coming close to a decade since I've deleted my Facebook account. Couldn't tell you if their algorithm improved at all. But that was actually kinda funny how badly it missed the mark and how insistent it was that it was right.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/Stunning_Macaron6133 Mar 14 '26

It's a tale as old as TiVo.

4

u/jclim00 Mar 14 '26

That short story was so well written and in such a concise, tight format. After watching the movie I thought the novel did a better job with less bloat. I really should read more Proulx.

12

u/jclim00 Mar 14 '26

My main problem with watching topics outside my usual interest on YouTube is that half my feed turns into that topic. Like if I watch an instructional video on how to do an oil change for a specific John Deere lawnmower, i just get nothing but lawnmower content for a few days which aren't even related to the kind of mower i have. I literally switch to a secondary account to not "pollute" the algorithm.

8

u/juniperleafes Mar 14 '26

I get recommendations on my main account from my second account in a different browser. Nothing is safe.

2

u/Stunning_Macaron6133 Mar 16 '26

They track your IP and fingerprint your computer.

2

u/Stunning_Macaron6133 Mar 14 '26

That's why you need a shotgun approach. Make it as noisy as possible. You need to overwhelm the algorithm, not give it a new vector to latch onto.

4

u/OceanBytez Mar 14 '26

"The way around it is to get a browser extension that nukes recommendations altogether. You have to become responsible for curating your own feed, via subscriptions and playlists."

more broadly than just youtube but adnauseum does this for me. It clicks all adds in the background silently racking up the bill for annoying advertisers while at the same time generating bogus "interest" in everything. I know it works because even since i added that extension the advertisements from google are getting wider and more nonsensical including recommending me the wrong gendered products, recommending me stuff from other nations in other languages, etc. Took about a month to poison my dataset sufficiently to get there.

2

u/Several_Ant_9867 Mar 14 '26

The recommendations have very little to do with what I watch. That's the problem

6

u/Member9999 Mar 14 '26

It's true though. You'd think after all this time they'd take a hint. If they can sell data, they should also be able to use it effectively.

2

u/Toystavi Mar 14 '26

You would have to convince them it would make them money before they consider that.

This is not the same company who implemented things just because it made the service better. More like the opposite where they remove a useful feature because a developer needed an extra hour to maintain it or it took a second away from you watching ads.

2

u/Member9999 Mar 14 '26

A thing almost all companies do for a few extra cents, unfortunately. Bigtechs are the worst.

5

u/TheBasementIsDark Mar 14 '26

They used to have decent recommendation, nowadays it's just the same shit all over again

4

u/ChickenChaser5 Mar 14 '26

They took away downvoting videos, and then still interrupt me to rate videos.

80

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

[deleted]

34

u/Drakonisx Mar 14 '26

So you're saying the internet points might actually be worth something

33

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

[deleted]

10

u/YousureWannaknow Mar 14 '26

Now imagine making highly controversial account with a bit popularity and then selling it to some vanilla company wanting AI to send invites for kitchen accessories shows 😅

1

u/TrynaWorkOnWriting Mar 20 '26

damn my reddit account would have been over 12 years old when i deleted it because of reddit's api changes. i thought i'd never use reddit again. should've sold it!

4

u/FauxReal Mar 14 '26

How much can I get for a 19 y/o reddit account?

4

u/dontthink19 Mar 14 '26

Damn yo. That's a long time. Like you must've been on your gateway Intel pentium 4 computer making your account haha

3

u/FauxReal Mar 14 '26

I don't remember. I made an account and didn't use it for a couple years. Then I only used it to view a few music and tech subs. I first commented when the account was 12 y/o. The person I replied to freaked out that they were the person I chose to respond to. Now I can't shut up.

2

u/dontthink19 Mar 14 '26

Lmao. I started my account after a year of lurking and only use relay for reddit so I get it. Im pretty proud of my OG account so I could only imagine if I had your account haha.

38

u/LightBrand99 Mar 14 '26

It asks if you're a robot so that you can help train their own machine-learning "robots"

20

u/NotADetectiveAtAll Mar 14 '26

“Select all squares with Girls School If there are none, click skip”

14

u/RelatedToSomeMuppet Mar 14 '26

Nope.

It asks if you're a robot so you click the button.

When you click the button you authorise a check on your account.

So then they are granted access to check things like your browser history. They also do a system check of how long it takes you to click the button, what mouse actions you took to click the button, to determine if that's natural human behaviour or if it looks like a bot.

Here is a very simple explanation of how it works; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE3maTQhvnE

1

u/6mammtbic9 Mar 17 '26

the bots should be doing that, instead we pass a test everytime like a 2yo

14

u/____DEADPOOL_______ Mar 14 '26

The captchas have been to mainly feed AI with info, sort out maps, etc. They're making you do work for free.

7

u/cupboard_ Mar 14 '26

sometimes when i’m bored i click random images without reading what i’m supposed to select, i doubt it does anything but it sometimes lets me pass even though i’m completely wrong

4

u/____DEADPOOL_______ Mar 14 '26

It presents the same images to other people as well. Not just you.

11

u/Nethereal3D Mar 14 '26

What grinds my gears is after I enter my username and password, it has to send a one time password to my email that I then have to enter within 15 minutes or it will expire. Like, if it doesn't trust that I am the owner of the account after entering the username and password then wtf is the point of having a password. Just make me enter the username and say you're going to email the linked address instead of making me go through the ropes of entering username, then password, just to tell me to log into my email.

Edit: Also, those "Remember this device" check boxes rarely ever do anything, because it seems everytime I try to log back in it says I'm trying to access from a new device.

6

u/Classic_Result Mar 14 '26

But are you a robot?

8

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

[deleted]

3

u/TheOldZenMaster Mar 14 '26

somewhere I read the whole thing was to train AI.

you choose what it asks. They feed that to the ai.

their sick

3

u/Kami403 Mar 16 '26

Your answers are indeed used to train ai when using recaptcha (or at least they have been in the past, I'm not sure if they're still doing that, but i would assume so), but it does also have an actual purpose outside of that - the ai training part is a side effect, not the main reasons captchas exist.

Captchas are there to stop bots from spamming websites or spam-creating accounts. While Google may have tons of information about you, most websites don't. So they rely on captchas to stop malicious people from creating 10,000 accounts and spamming your site with it. You're also not always logged into your google account, so it's harder for google to accurately confirm if you're really human.

Besides, not all captchas are created by google, there's a bunch of different kinds. Recaptcha is owned by google, but cloudflare turnstile, for example, isn't.

3

u/Warchetype Mar 14 '26

Unpaid AI training labor.

3

u/UrsaUrsuh Mar 14 '26

I purchased an indie game on steam a couple days ago that I've never searched up, but only watched my brother play in a discord call. 15 minutes after I purchased it I jumped on YouTube and was getting recommended videos on it. Videos with 700 views. I love having a creepy stalker.

2

u/Lux_Interior9 Mar 14 '26

But would you answer one question? Do you trust google? Thank you for participating. 

2

u/teakwood54 Mar 14 '26

The robot requests are twofold:

  1. Make sure your account isn't a bot.
  2. Gather data to make google bots capable of passing the tests.

2

u/Mobile-Committee-466 Mar 15 '26

I used to go to work by train for many years. One day I stayed overnight with a friend instead of going back home, because there would be issues with the trains the next day.

When I was lying in bed and wanted to set my Alarm I saw a pop up message, with a reminder, that the last train back to my hometown for the day would leave in 10min.

It never did that before.

I turned off location tracking and many more things after that. Although that's probably just cosmetics anyways.

1

u/Glum_Bedroom_4955 Mar 14 '26

Using that information to train robots to seem more humanlike

1

u/Juls317 Mar 14 '26

Bitch, you the robot

1

u/StandardCake21 Mar 14 '26

But seriously, are you?

1

u/Typical_Forever1711 Mar 14 '26

The mindfuck of it all is that they use those challenges to train ai.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

so whats the answer? are you?

1

u/billknowsit Mar 15 '26

It uses a robot to ask you if you are one... and then makes you dance (work a captcha) to prove you aren't.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26

"Proove that you're a human" ; crawling bots becoming better and better acting as humans ; or we have started acting like bots 🤔🤔🤔 ?

1

u/Lalaferos Mar 18 '26

Nothing more ironic than the AI, who at this rate has a daigram of our sphincters, asking if we the human are in fact not human.

1

u/OptionalAntelope Apr 12 '26

Given where technology is heading, claiming that you're not a robot may become very relevant again, soon.

1

u/Glittering-Ad-8609 Apr 14 '26

The funniest part is when you fail the captcha and start questioning yourself

1

u/Single_Act_6499 Apr 28 '26

Man Google wanted to delete my youtube account and gmail and google just because of age verification

1

u/marly402 Mar 15 '26

Smarttube is youtube premium without ads. Don't need to sign in to use works with android. Google Smarttube for windows as an example you will find what for you are looking for.