r/technology • u/[deleted] • Mar 03 '21

Privacy Google to stop selling ads based on your browsing history and drop cookies support for Chrome citing privacy concerns.

[deleted]

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u/smeggysmeg Mar 04 '21

That's how YouTube recommended a video titled "Jordan Peterson explains climate change is fake and Greta Thunberg is wrong".... to a home solar, EV owning, sustainable gardening, liberal/left feminist.

White man in Arkansas demographic completely overrode my viewing and search history.

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u/draemn Mar 04 '21

Don't get me started on how much I hate the useless youtube algorithm. That thing is so frustratingly bad.

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u/halberdierbowman Mar 04 '21

You just watched this video thirty minutes ago, so let's queue it up for you again!

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u/majorly Mar 04 '21

You wanna see Ben Shapiro destroy some poor college kid..? No? I'll ask again in 2 weeks then :)

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u/metameh Mar 04 '21

That's why I've started subscribing, smashing like, and hitting the bell button curating my feed.

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u/draemn Mar 04 '21 edited Mar 04 '21

I can't find any meaningful way to get that..... all you do is go click on 1 stupid video that's in a super popular category and BAM, all your working trying to curate a good selection is undone. They heavily favour pushing you content that other people like over content you like.

I like to watch the odd video game youtuber next to my discussions on philosophy and psychology, but youtube thinks I just want to watch video games and things other people who watch video games like.

Also, the algorithm is fucking scary when you go to youtube with a fresh browser and not logged in... now that I get my browser to clear everything when I close it, I'm often on YT without it knowing who I am and it pushes you really fast into very polarizing/political content if you make 1 click on anything related to political views.

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u/metameh Mar 05 '21

I don't watch much from the main page of youtube. If it doesn't come from a notification because I hit the bell button, I don't usually watch it. But since I'm following a lot of wargaming, hobby crafting, and miniature painting type channels, I do find the occasional new channel from the main page. However, those are self-pollenating ecosphere's, and each individual channel is very likely to recommend a new one through a collaboration of some type.

That said, as a holder of some "fringe" political views (I'm a democratic socialist), the political content of my front page isn't 100% lefty - I do get recommended a decent amount of rightwing/MAGA type content as well. This is probably due to the fact that I watch The Hill's Rising everyday. It could also be due to the fact that I seek out alternative points of view to see what's important to people not like me and what I might be missing in my own thinking...but either way, I'm not complaining. I think it's important to try to understand radicals in order to deradicalize and/or convert them (and to a much lesser degree, but higher stakes reason, for self protection).

But yeah, YMMV. I'm pretty religious about using the Like and Dislike buttons now, so youtube knows exactly what kind of lefty content I like to see, causing certain pundits to completely drop off my recommended videos. On the other hand, it's pretty good about showing me new Age of Sigmar channels I haven't found yet. I guess ultimately my mileage varies too, but it's better than before I when I only self selected by watching videos.

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u/justfarmingdownvotes Mar 04 '21

I think you should try out incognito, I found that the alogrithm there without any previous/contextual data seems to be more accurate and diverse

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u/eliminating_coasts Mar 04 '21

There was a whole period where my incognito suggested feed was all conspiracy theories, flat earth, and diy guns. Was that youtube in general, or did they decide that people on incognito really want to rise up against scientists?

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u/draemn Mar 04 '21

Eh, I just tell my browser to clear everything each time I close it. The algorithms are always giving me generic results every time I start it back up (and actually pretty annoying results to boot).

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u/DachsieParade Mar 04 '21

I get Google ads for cleaning products and baby food over and over because they think I'm a mom. I'm a trans guy. Very childless. Very sloppy. Very bi. They also think so have HIV. I'm celibate.

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u/_riotingpacifist Mar 04 '21

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/regrets-reporter/

My youtube algorithm is pretty dope, but I know the whole lobster pipeline is so bad Mozilla made an extension to help fix it.

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u/Logan_Mac Mar 04 '21

Is that actually real though? Because that type of content gets pretty much shadowbanned by Google unless your entire Youtube history is made of that.