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I'm one of those people that tries as best I can to use Google products while also managing my privacy. One fun thing is watching how privacy controls roll out

by snide 3y ago

I'm one of those people that tries as best I can to use Google products while also managing my privacy. One fun thing is watching how privacy controls roll out across Google products. As an example... I turn my watch history off on YouTube. That stuff rolls out immediately on youtube.com, but took months to make it to the Android version on my Shield TV. There were definitely gap months where I'd see settings that were supposedly turn off in some places, weren't actually turned off in others. The design patterns can get pretty aggressive. Google right now makes my youtube.com homepage blank, asking me to turn on my watch history. A lot of time this is presented in a way not to mention privacy, but to instead promote a "feature". "Turn this feature on", not "Turn off your privacy". You get quite a lot of roadblocks when you turn off settings like this, making the products pretty hard to use. It's nearly impossible to keep up with and figure it all out, and I'm a UX designer by trade! A lot of these dark patterns are the reasons I've moved more and more to alternative tools like Kagi and Fastmail...etc.

bluGill 3y ago
I always search for videos on various peertube instances first. There is too much stuff on youtube that isn't available elsewhere at all though. (I can find a dozen fix whatever problem for my car, I haven't found even one elsewhere)
- lancesells 3y ago
  Piped and invidious instances are mirrors of Youtube.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    They're more like proxies.
blitzar 3y ago
> Google right now makes my youtube.com homepage blank, asking me to turn on my watch history. Google right now fills my youtube.com homepage with what is "popular" - seeing what is widely consumed crushes the last hopes I have for civilization and makes me almost want to turn back on my watch history so I can be oblivious to reality.
- benterix 3y ago
  To make it a bit brighter for you, many of these are just watched for a few seconds by bored teenagers sitting on a toilet without nothing better[0] to do. I'd be very surprised if people actually deliberately sat on the couch and spend hours watching this crap. [0] At least this is what they think/feel
  - twohaibei 3y ago
    I thought that too, until I visited my colleague who turned on their tv on those braincell killing videos and presented it as entertainment.
- svachalek 3y ago
  It's weird, I've had mine go back and forth between blank, popular garbage, and what seems to be inferred from like/subscribe data without using watch history. I assume this is some A/B testing flag they use and somehow I end up in different experiments.
- aqfamnzc 3y ago
  Oh man, me too. The garbage that fills the homepage of yt I think is truly the least-common-denominator bottom barrel stuff. We really have raced to the bottom with clickbait titles, thumbnails with "WOW" faces and neon colors, etc. (And that stuff really works! I find myself tempted sometimes to click on one just to see if some outrageous claim or feat is really true.)
temporallobe 3y ago
If you pause your watch history in Youtube, it disables suggestions in your feed and nags you to turn it back on. This is definitely a dark pattern that tries to coerce users into giving up some privacy. It’s completely unnecessary and disappointing, especially for premium users like myself.
- alwayslikethis 3y ago
  The fact that you are still paying despite this shows they can get away with this. Though for me, I guess it's a good thing. Without a feed I am much less inclined to continue on the site.
  - svachalek 3y ago
    There's still a subscription feed though, a chronologically sorted list of only stuff you asked for. It's a beautiful thing, a relic of a more civilized age.
  - banannaise 3y ago
    I think one of the big lessons of the last few years/decades is that the wallet vote is ineffective at best, in large part because many companies are doing far more to entrench customer lock-in than provide customer value, and you can't really move to an alternative product if the alternatives are all doing the same thing.
BobaFloutist 3y ago
> Google right now makes my youtube.com homepage blank That's funny, I specifically have an add on to do that for me!
mikub 3y ago
I have watch history turned off for long as it's possible. When they started showing me the blank page with "Turn this feature on" I was pleasently surprised because I prefer this to the stupid preview pictures with people making happy/sad faces, forming a heart with their hand or some other bullshit they can come up with. God I really really hate that stuff.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Yea, I really appreciate the bare YouTube home screen that they present when you have Watch History turned off. It's clean and basic, reminiscent of the main Google search page before they stuffed it with animation, popups, dickbars and the usual cruft. The passive aggressive "Your watch history is off" warning that you can't dismiss is the really the only thing bad about it.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
They literally slow video loads based on if you have an ad blocking script running on your own machine. It’s not even hidden, they promote this “feature”
- nokya 3y ago
  Which is a good thing. Why reward stealers? YouTube is not a free service and they have all the right to engage into aggressive practice once you decide to unlawfully bypass their ads. Let's not confuse things here: - deceptive UI/UX to encourage users to surrender their privacy - profiling paid or unpaid users - displaying ads Only two of the above are issues.
rqtwteye 3y ago
Same here. Kagi and Fastmail are doing exactly what they are advertised as. With other platforms I feel constantly manipulated into something I don’t really understand but that’s pretty clearly against my interests. Maybe there will be a backlash large enough to move away from these huge ad supported platforms to more focused platforms that actually have the users interest in mind. One can keep dreaming
lilsoso 3y ago
Forward all your Gmail email to a more private service like Mailbox.org and read your Gmail from there. Then you won't be logged into Google products nearly as often. Watch Youtube with various browser plugins to skip ads etc. Though, I find it's difficult to avoid Google on your phone. I have Google Maps where I'm not logged in but they know who I am as I'm logged into Google Voice.

by snide 3y ago

bluGill 3y ago

I always search for videos on various peertube instances first. There is too much stuff on youtube that isn't available elsewhere at all though. (I can find a dozen fix whatever problem for my car, I haven't found even one elsewhere)

lancesells 3y ago
Piped and invidious instances are mirrors of Youtube.
- userbinator 3y ago
  They're more like proxies.

blitzar 3y ago

> Google right now makes my youtube.com homepage blank, asking me to turn on my watch history. Google right now fills my youtube.com homepage with what is "popular" - seeing what is widely consumed crushes the last hopes I have for civilization and makes me almost want to turn back on my watch history so I can be oblivious to reality.

benterix 3y ago
To make it a bit brighter for you, many of these are just watched for a few seconds by bored teenagers sitting on a toilet without nothing better[0] to do. I'd be very surprised if people actually deliberately sat on the couch and spend hours watching this crap. [0] At least this is what they think/feel
- twohaibei 3y ago
  I thought that too, until I visited my colleague who turned on their tv on those braincell killing videos and presented it as entertainment.
svachalek 3y ago
It's weird, I've had mine go back and forth between blank, popular garbage, and what seems to be inferred from like/subscribe data without using watch history. I assume this is some A/B testing flag they use and somehow I end up in different experiments.
aqfamnzc 3y ago
Oh man, me too. The garbage that fills the homepage of yt I think is truly the least-common-denominator bottom barrel stuff. We really have raced to the bottom with clickbait titles, thumbnails with "WOW" faces and neon colors, etc. (And that stuff really works! I find myself tempted sometimes to click on one just to see if some outrageous claim or feat is really true.)

temporallobe 3y ago

If you pause your watch history in Youtube, it disables suggestions in your feed and nags you to turn it back on. This is definitely a dark pattern that tries to coerce users into giving up some privacy. It’s completely unnecessary and disappointing, especially for premium users like myself.

alwayslikethis 3y ago
The fact that you are still paying despite this shows they can get away with this. Though for me, I guess it's a good thing. Without a feed I am much less inclined to continue on the site.
- svachalek 3y ago
  There's still a subscription feed though, a chronologically sorted list of only stuff you asked for. It's a beautiful thing, a relic of a more civilized age.
- banannaise 3y ago
  I think one of the big lessons of the last few years/decades is that the wallet vote is ineffective at best, in large part because many companies are doing far more to entrench customer lock-in than provide customer value, and you can't really move to an alternative product if the alternatives are all doing the same thing.

BobaFloutist 3y ago

> Google right now makes my youtube.com homepage blank That's funny, I specifically have an add on to do that for me!

mikub 3y ago

I have watch history turned off for long as it's possible. When they started showing me the blank page with "Turn this feature on" I was pleasently surprised because I prefer this to the stupid preview pictures with people making happy/sad faces, forming a heart with their hand or some other bullshit they can come up with. God I really really hate that stuff.

ryandrake 3y ago
Yea, I really appreciate the bare YouTube home screen that they present when you have Watch History turned off. It's clean and basic, reminiscent of the main Google search page before they stuffed it with animation, popups, dickbars and the usual cruft. The passive aggressive "Your watch history is off" warning that you can't dismiss is the really the only thing bad about it.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

They literally slow video loads based on if you have an ad blocking script running on your own machine. It’s not even hidden, they promote this “feature”

nokya 3y ago
Which is a good thing. Why reward stealers? YouTube is not a free service and they have all the right to engage into aggressive practice once you decide to unlawfully bypass their ads. Let's not confuse things here: - deceptive UI/UX to encourage users to surrender their privacy - profiling paid or unpaid users - displaying ads Only two of the above are issues.

rqtwteye 3y ago

Same here. Kagi and Fastmail are doing exactly what they are advertised as. With other platforms I feel constantly manipulated into something I don’t really understand but that’s pretty clearly against my interests. Maybe there will be a backlash large enough to move away from these huge ad supported platforms to more focused platforms that actually have the users interest in mind. One can keep dreaming

lilsoso 3y ago

Forward all your Gmail email to a more private service like Mailbox.org and read your Gmail from there. Then you won't be logged into Google products nearly as often. Watch Youtube with various browser plugins to skip ads etc. Though, I find it's difficult to avoid Google on your phone. I have Google Maps where I'm not logged in but they know who I am as I'm logged into Google Voice.