I know the prevailing sentiment for a long time in the privacy community has been “DAE Youtube bad?” though I have always thought that it is kinda overblown. Besides, I am using Firefox which is supposed to isolate tabs so they can’t speak to each other, so I felt a small amount safer using Youtube.
You can take my post with a grain of salt since all I have are anecdotes, but can anyone else confirm encountering creepiness similar to my experiences:
-Typing anything in another window that is not my browser, sometimes these words seem like they get picked up by the Youtube suggestion algo and then boom, I get suggested videos based off of those keywords. Recent example, I was copypasting the words “trans” and “talking” over and over for some nerd spreadsheet I am making (read: not transgender purposes) and what do you know, transgender videos about “How to change your voice” start popping up in my feed. Please know I have zero interest in transgender politics/culture/anything, it is not something I have ever searched for or engaged in online. Possible that Youtube is reading my clipboard? Reading my keystrokes?
-Listening to an album via VLC, while Youtube is open in my browser. Suddenly, more tracks from that album start showing up in my suggested feed. Possible Youtube is reading the titles of other apps current open on my machine? (VLC changes its active title to the name of whatever file is currently open)
-Have a Discord channel open in another tab, people there start posting things I am uninterested in and don’t click on, but lo and behold, videos related to those things start appearing my feed. Tbh, I am the most jaded about Discord’s privacy security because there is probably a direct communications pipeline between the Discord and Youtube where they link accounts to each other, even creating shadow accounts similar to how Facebook does. So while not surprising… still at least a little bit creepy, yes?
edit: let me add a small bit of context. I use Youtube all the time as my personal version of Spotify. Adblock+Youtube still works for me and is very nice. So all of my Youtube video suggestions are always music related. If anything weird shows up in that feed (you know, not music-related stuff) it sticks out to me immediately.
edit2: thanks for the replies, even if you are disagreeing with me. I promise you I am not the person downvoting everyone lol.
Am I really being paranoid?
Some context I’ll add to my main post in an edit: the only Youtube suggestions I get are music-related, since I use adblock+Youtube as my personal Spotify. It’s why I have Youtube open frequently despite knowing that it is not a great platform and it is also why any suggestions in my feed that are explicitly not music-related stick out like a sore thumb.
No you’re not being paranoid its how it works. No browser isolates tabs like you’re talking about unless you use containers. Google owns the largest ad company on the internet, so any site that embeds their tracking scripts (most of the Western internet) will send the page you visited to Google, so they know what pages you’re going to, and highly likely use that information to inform the YouTube algorithm about you. Even if you have a tracker blocker installed, like unlock Origin, if you use Google they still know which link you clicked and what you searched.
“They” will recommend you irrelevant shit cos it’s the way “they” manipulate public opinion, directing the people attention to what “they” want to, that’s why you see irrelevant shit, it’s not all about recommending you things based on the information “they” have about you.
These platforms don’t make money just selling you stuff, “they” make money also directing your attention and manipulating it in the direction “they” want to.
If “they” make 10 bucks for selling you physical shit, “they” make 1000 bucks selling ideological shit following their owners agenda.
Maybe I am more paranoid than you haha…
Going to the point: not all the shit mainstream social media algorithm shows you it’s about the information they have about you.
Adblock doesnt help privacy.
You need to use a hardened browser with as little unique identifiers as possible. Then you need to delete cookies and use different or unified IP addresses, obviously.