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In incognito, I get nothing similar to what I would actually watch. Nothing is even remotely similar. It's scarily different, and none of it interests me.

by hhh 5y ago

unicornporn 5y ago
> In incognito, I get nothing similar to what I would actually watch. Nothing is even remotely similar. It's scarily different, and none of it interests me. Same here. 100% generic clickbait crap and exactly the same stuff that shows in a Ungoogled Chromium incognito window. I hardly ever use Chromium. I use Cookie AutoDelete, uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes and a VPN for casual surfing though.
Nextgrid 5y ago
Watch a single video that's even remotely related to the topics you watched before and your entire suggestion history will be back (even those unrelated to the single video you watched). When they see a new profile they are basically testing the waters. They suspect it's you, but leave the benefit of the doubt in case it's a legitimately new user. But just giving them a few "fuzzy" data points like watching a video or two will give them enough confidence to fully link your previous activity to the new session despite never providing any concrete evidence such as logging in with the same account.
- Anon1096 5y ago
  This is conspiracy-tier thinking. It's far more likely that once you click one video you like, other videos you like appear because they are topically similar or the target demographics are the same.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    1) I've noticed this behavior and at the time some of the videos I watched on my main profile had nothing to do with my normal watching patterns (and were completely unrelated topic-wise) and yet after watching a single video fitting my regular patterns on a new profile I ended up getting suggestions for the "outlier" videos despite it being very unlikely that there are enough people out there watching both that and the outlier videos for it to be suggested "organically". 2) This is what I would do if I had no morals, and the people working for Google are smarter and are paid way more money than me, and Google itself has an incentive to stalk people across different sessions, so if I can think of this and implement it then so can they and you'd be foolish to believe they wouldn't do it. You'd think this is conspiracy-level thinking (and I would've agreed with you 10 years ago), but so far, when it comes to online tracking, everything that's been considered a far-fetched conspiracy in the past ended up being true, so better safe than sorry? Given the money at stake in adtech and lack of morals and respect for the law (Google still ignores the GDPR), if it's technically possible, you should assume someone's doing it.

In incognito, I get nothing similar to what I would actually watch. Nothing is even remotely similar. It's scarily different, and none of it interests me.

by hhh 5y ago

In incognito, I get nothing similar to what I would actually watch. Nothing is even remotely similar. It's scarily different, and none of it interests me.

unicornporn 5y ago

> In incognito, I get nothing similar to what I would actually watch. Nothing is even remotely similar. It's scarily different, and none of it interests me. Same here. 100% generic clickbait crap and exactly the same stuff that shows in a Ungoogled Chromium incognito window. I hardly ever use Chromium. I use Cookie AutoDelete, uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes and a VPN for casual surfing though.

Nextgrid 5y ago

Watch a single video that's even remotely related to the topics you watched before and your entire suggestion history will be back (even those unrelated to the single video you watched). When they see a new profile they are basically testing the waters. They suspect it's you, but leave the benefit of the doubt in case it's a legitimately new user. But just giving them a few "fuzzy" data points like watching a video or two will give them enough confidence to fully link your previous activity to the new session despite never providing any concrete evidence such as logging in with the same account.

Anon1096 5y ago
This is conspiracy-tier thinking. It's far more likely that once you click one video you like, other videos you like appear because they are topically similar or the target demographics are the same.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  1) I've noticed this behavior and at the time some of the videos I watched on my main profile had nothing to do with my normal watching patterns (and were completely unrelated topic-wise) and yet after watching a single video fitting my regular patterns on a new profile I ended up getting suggestions for the "outlier" videos despite it being very unlikely that there are enough people out there watching both that and the outlier videos for it to be suggested "organically". 2) This is what I would do if I had no morals, and the people working for Google are smarter and are paid way more money than me, and Google itself has an incentive to stalk people across different sessions, so if I can think of this and implement it then so can they and you'd be foolish to believe they wouldn't do it. You'd think this is conspiracy-level thinking (and I would've agreed with you 10 years ago), but so far, when it comes to online tracking, everything that's been considered a far-fetched conspiracy in the past ended up being true, so better safe than sorry? Given the money at stake in adtech and lack of morals and respect for the law (Google still ignores the GDPR), if it's technically possible, you should assume someone's doing it.