Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it(twitter.com)
twitter.com
Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to think I like it
https://twitter.com/jjcollinsworth/status/1390328342533054472
214 comments
> amazon still make recommendations to me based on a purchase in 1998. yes, Jeff, i still want to buy wrestling VHS tapes...
It’s funny you mention that.
For many years I would get recommendations for Latino lgbt books. Weird as it’s not really my topic. I found a way to look at how they generate recommendations, and it turns out that I bought a book about a gay Chicano growing up for a college class in 1998 or something.
It’s funny you mention that.
For many years I would get recommendations for Latino lgbt books. Weird as it’s not really my topic. I found a way to look at how they generate recommendations, and it turns out that I bought a book about a gay Chicano growing up for a college class in 1998 or something.
Can you share what you found out?
He found out he bought a book about “chicanos” which I assume is slang for a gay or lesbian Latino/Latina person which the user takes as confirmation that the purchase they made in 1998 is the explanation for why they are receiving recommendations for Hispanic LGBT literature now in 2021.
I don’t think the user meant to imply they had gained any special insight into the algorithm other then personal confirmation that purchase as far back as 1998 are still being incorporated.
I don’t think the user meant to imply they had gained any special insight into the algorithm other then personal confirmation that purchase as far back as 1998 are still being incorporated.
Chicano means a Mexican-American with political overtones.
It's frustrating that nowadays YouTube seems like it can only keep 3 or 4 types of videos that you like in its head. I feel like I'm watching the same thing over and over whenever I click on recommendations. I totally agree with you.
Exactly! Sometimes my recommendations are good, with long form tech and history content I actually want to watch. But click on one Top Gear clip and that's all out the window, and I have to actively recall what these channels were called and try to build them back into my recs.
There was a time a couple years ago I watched one episode of Arthur for nostalgia purposes and it completely obliterated my recommendations. I scrolled for hundreds of videos and didn't see a single non-arthur one. It took months for the site to become usable again.
There was a time a couple years ago I watched one episode of Arthur for nostalgia purposes and it completely obliterated my recommendations. I scrolled for hundreds of videos and didn't see a single non-arthur one. It took months for the site to become usable again.
i find NewPipe subscription groups are a better way to keep up with creators i care about.
I hope you never make the mistake of clicking on a clip from The Office!
I continually get suggested videos that are all already watched. I can't think of the last time I've gotten video suggestions that don't already have a red line at the bottom. At least it has stopped queueing up the same 3 videogame walkthrough videos I always click out of the minute they start.
About half of the videos Youtube throws at me are ones I've already watched. While I will occasionally rewatch something, it's nowhere near half the time. I thought that it was because I use Youtube without being logged in, but I guess not?
I keep youtube logged in on all of my devices. I suspect it's just the algorithm being stupid.
The fewer categories they use, the less manpower and computer power they spend on classifying and censoring content. They serve millions upon millions of queries a day with millisecond response times, and they don't get paid for providing value to you, so that's what we get. I hate what the internet is these days.
Click the three dots and then either "Not interested" or "Don't recommend channel".
Seems to work reasonably well for me.
Seems to work reasonably well for me.
What if it's from a channel I like but don't want to watch that one video...will clicking on this reduce suggestions from this channel, will it do nothing, will it unsubscribe me from that channel(as has happened in the past), ...?
Nobody knows, I only know I don't want to play this game.
Nobody knows, I only know I don't want to play this game.
The best way of not playing this game is to, well... not play it. Why should you pay any attention to what YouTube "suggests" you should watch? I just treat YouTube as a service that hosts videos, with a mediocre search feature, and I have no interest in what it thinks I should watch.
If a real human mentions a video that piques my interest, I may watch it. If I'm interested in finding a video on a particular topic, or a specific scene from this-or-that film or TV show, I will search for it myself. If am interested enough in a certain producer's content, I may "subscribe" to them, but I will be the judge if I want to watch the latest video they uploaded.
If a real human mentions a video that piques my interest, I may watch it. If I'm interested in finding a video on a particular topic, or a specific scene from this-or-that film or TV show, I will search for it myself. If am interested enough in a certain producer's content, I may "subscribe" to them, but I will be the judge if I want to watch the latest video they uploaded.
> Why should you pay any attention to what YouTube "suggests" you should watch?
There is one advantage: some obscure music videos. There are some rare pearls with the comments section almost exclusively thanking YT algorithm for taking them there. Happened to me so many times that I have a separate browser instance and a Google account for YT and I'm very careful what I click when I use it.
There is one advantage: some obscure music videos. There are some rare pearls with the comments section almost exclusively thanking YT algorithm for taking them there. Happened to me so many times that I have a separate browser instance and a Google account for YT and I'm very careful what I click when I use it.
Yes 100%. I have to plug this channel that came up like that a few months ago. It has a lot of obscure rock and a lot of it is really good!
https://www.youtube.com/c/TerminalPassage/videos
I didn't even know there was a Jazz/Fusion rock scene in Japan in the 70's for instance. I never would have heard of this band without YouTube suggestions but really enjoying their work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20eVtt1VJyg
https://www.youtube.com/c/TerminalPassage/videos
I didn't even know there was a Jazz/Fusion rock scene in Japan in the 70's for instance. I never would have heard of this band without YouTube suggestions but really enjoying their work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20eVtt1VJyg
This brings us right back to square one: are the benefits of the recommending algorithms worth the downside? We can make that choice.
True, you do have a point there. I'll admit I have discovered a few bands/musicians by just leaving YouTube on autoplay, after having searched for specific artists I already knew to concentrate while working (before lo-fi hip hop was trending!).
Not playing is even worse, I used to live near a less financially developed area of the city and youtube would promote dreadful videos either musically or societally if not logged in.
I did it for a couple of weeks to see what was being promoted by youtube algorithms in terms of content and ads to the more financially challenged parts of the society. Gangsta and sexually inuendo videos in neighbourhoods that although poor do not have a crime problem and young people don't dress like that. But it seems the algo is working on it. Note: This is in a European country
I did it for a couple of weeks to see what was being promoted by youtube algorithms in terms of content and ads to the more financially challenged parts of the society. Gangsta and sexually inuendo videos in neighbourhoods that although poor do not have a crime problem and young people don't dress like that. But it seems the algo is working on it. Note: This is in a European country
Use Firefox multi-account containers and the temporary containers add-on. Now your YouTube starts fresh with every new tab. It's actually nice, it means you get to build a new set of recommendations each time you open a tab, and because YT doesn't have that much data on you yet, the recommendations are directly linked to the thing you're currently watching, similar to how it used to be before the whole tracking extravaganza.
Or use different folders of portable Chromium so you have any semblance of sandboxing + security.
Temporary Containers is a pretty amazing sandbox already, as it uses a builtin Firefox feature.
More or less. Sadly, they still suggest a ton of stuff based on geolocation.
I'm in germany so i always get asinine videos recommended about what americans think about germany and what germans think about what americans think about germany
It doesn't in my experience. I've been telling it I don't want to see: news, politics, music, or reaction videos for months. It still puts them there.
Last week it decided that I wanted to see rap videos and filled my feed with them. I don't listen to rap. I've never watched a rap video. I've told it I'm not interested in every single video, but it still puts them there.
Last week it decided that I wanted to see rap videos and filled my feed with them. I don't listen to rap. I've never watched a rap video. I've told it I'm not interested in every single video, but it still puts them there.
Try going through your watch history/liked videos and deleting things if it’s really bothering you, I watched a bunch of political videos a few years ago and got burnt out so I deleted every one (took a few hours) and my recommendations instantly changed
Not sure it'll do much about news videos - Google seems to force the same presumably hand-picked selection of news videos onto everyone's front page, generally covering the kind of political topics tech workers think everyone should hear about.
I’ve been trying it for a few months. I dutifully clicked away every preposterously stupid clickbait title or thumbnail and topic I didn’t care about. It had no noticeable effect.
I wish someone would make an extension that makes this a simple hover+keypress instead of multiple clicks. As it stands right now it is too much of a hassle to manually click 2 times per video. But if you do not then youtube will continue to plaster that video on your homescreen for weeks.
Doesn't work well at all. There's a popular garbage news channel here in Brazil.
Every week I have to do that, it never works.
I never click on the videos, so no idea why they think I'm interested.
You can block individual channels from recommendations ("Don't recommend channel").
really annoying if you mostly watch youtube from a tv (unless there's way to do that from the youtube app in e.g. amazon firetv)
YouTube's personalization recommendation is a nightmare. Just the other day, YouTube played "Billie eilish -copycat" for me literally after every other song.
I pretty much only YouTube in Incognito mode these days. Everytime I forget, YouTube manages to annoy me so much within half an hour that I switch to Incognito again.
I pretty much only YouTube in Incognito mode these days. Everytime I forget, YouTube manages to annoy me so much within half an hour that I switch to Incognito again.
Yes, I always hesitate to mark YT videos as unwanted because often it's from a channel I otherwise like a lot and I have no idea how YT will behave after that. Considering the site is known for even auto-cancelling subscriptions sometimes it feels like a UX minefield.
You can delete your YouTube history, which will make the recommendations usually disappear.
This will kind of clean up your current recommendations but it doesn't reset the recommendation algorithm like it used to. The algorithm still retains memory of your past behaviour.
For example if I consistently listen to 3 unrelated songs [A B C] on youtube together, the algorithm will regularly recommend them to me (because of my unique behaviour, not because they're similar). If I reset my history and then listen to song A, then B and C get immediately recommended even though they aren't similar to A and they don't exist in my listening history which means that the information about my listening/browsing habits is still there in the recommendation model.
For example if I consistently listen to 3 unrelated songs [A B C] on youtube together, the algorithm will regularly recommend them to me (because of my unique behaviour, not because they're similar). If I reset my history and then listen to song A, then B and C get immediately recommended even though they aren't similar to A and they don't exist in my listening history which means that the information about my listening/browsing habits is still there in the recommendation model.
If you turn off watch history is basically only suggests stuff based on subscriptions which is much better imo and I never need the history feature anyway.
I never log into YouTube and this still happens, it's at least in part keyed to IP address
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use Invidious https://docs.invidious.io/Invidious-Instances.md
It'd be great to know what invidious is in the first place. No description of it in the docs site, and the main site is an empty placeholder. Super.
It’s better if you click that stuff, it causes the algorithm to recommend stuff you don’t care about, which means less YouTube holes to get sucked into
Isn't there a "not interested" button on YouTube? That might fix your issue.
You should use the dislike button to let the algorithm know that you didn't enjoy the video.
you can mark the recommendaitons as not interesting, likely to fix it up pretty quick.
It's crazy just how much I go out of my way to avoid things that "personalize" my experience.
I don't use online music services, I discover music on various platforms and and download mp3s and keep a local library.
I avoid Youtube at it's defaults, I use 3rd party apps and VLC to do most of my watching, other than my subscriptions I tend to skim the Home page very rarely.
I do not use Netflix or other streaming services, I try to hunt down DVDs/Blu-Rays and prefer ripping them for my personal library.
My only problem is exclusives, as a fan of The Witcher series, I do feel like I am missing out, but if I feel a really strong urge I can always borrow an account from a friend, create a temp profile, watch the series and delete it.
Their convenience features just add more inconvenience to me.
I don't use online music services, I discover music on various platforms and and download mp3s and keep a local library.
I avoid Youtube at it's defaults, I use 3rd party apps and VLC to do most of my watching, other than my subscriptions I tend to skim the Home page very rarely.
I do not use Netflix or other streaming services, I try to hunt down DVDs/Blu-Rays and prefer ripping them for my personal library.
My only problem is exclusives, as a fan of The Witcher series, I do feel like I am missing out, but if I feel a really strong urge I can always borrow an account from a friend, create a temp profile, watch the series and delete it.
Their convenience features just add more inconvenience to me.
I don't know how common this is, but I've gotten into the habit of creating "personas"-- different users that have different habits and are interested in different things, yet all me.
It's insane that I feel it helpful to take on "multiple personalities", but there it is.
Part of it is that these algorithms are fairly one-track. They can mix it up a bit, but it's always too much of one thing and too little of another. They can't truly comport with the reality that someone can have multiple interests and tastes.
It's insane that I feel it helpful to take on "multiple personalities", but there it is.
Part of it is that these algorithms are fairly one-track. They can mix it up a bit, but it's always too much of one thing and too little of another. They can't truly comport with the reality that someone can have multiple interests and tastes.
It infuriates me that we basically had this as a feature, lost it, and have to sort of reimplement it with an almost illicit feel.
I can recall in the mod-late 1990s when Mainstream America was starting to go online for the first time, everyone was training their kids "never give out your real name." From that simple bit of stranger-danger paranoia, we built a lot of communities as psuedonymous by default-- your AIM "screen mame" was rarely your given name, you could have different usernames on each forum, your email address probably referenced your favourite sports team or anime character.
This inherently constrains aggressive "passive" personalization. Without an obvious canonical identity, you don't want to try to cross-profile too aggressively, because user "hakfoo" on site A may well be different from user "hakfoo" at site B, and you had to assume that any ID you tracked was limited or transient: when you go off to college or apply for a job, you're probably not going to want to be slapping "PonyGirl1987" on your resume.
I wonder if it's that the algorithms are limited to being one-track or if they're overoptimized to being one-track though. I assume they have a profile somewhere that looks like "12% coin collecting, 31% travel to Paraguay, 9% 2004 Ford Focus Repair, ..." and then they offset that data with what content produces the best revenue/engagement/metric of the week. In the process, many secondary interests simply get demoted to the pont you see nothing but tire change tutorials.
I can recall in the mod-late 1990s when Mainstream America was starting to go online for the first time, everyone was training their kids "never give out your real name." From that simple bit of stranger-danger paranoia, we built a lot of communities as psuedonymous by default-- your AIM "screen mame" was rarely your given name, you could have different usernames on each forum, your email address probably referenced your favourite sports team or anime character.
This inherently constrains aggressive "passive" personalization. Without an obvious canonical identity, you don't want to try to cross-profile too aggressively, because user "hakfoo" on site A may well be different from user "hakfoo" at site B, and you had to assume that any ID you tracked was limited or transient: when you go off to college or apply for a job, you're probably not going to want to be slapping "PonyGirl1987" on your resume.
I wonder if it's that the algorithms are limited to being one-track or if they're overoptimized to being one-track though. I assume they have a profile somewhere that looks like "12% coin collecting, 31% travel to Paraguay, 9% 2004 Ford Focus Repair, ..." and then they offset that data with what content produces the best revenue/engagement/metric of the week. In the process, many secondary interests simply get demoted to the pont you see nothing but tire change tutorials.
What you're describing is the "real" Internet, which peaked somewhere around 2007. Everything was pushed about as far as it could be in that direction.
The problem was (almost) no one was making money off it. Online advertising, as it was originally done, was a joke. Most of the early internet was based on ideals of quality, community, and freedom. None of these make much money.
So people started hunting for what DID make money, and they discovered data harvesting and targeted advertising. And like a cancer, that unholy pair devoured most of the web. Information really WAS power, like all those breathless articles and hacker manifestos in the 90s said. Power and MONEY. And the new masters of this realm have dedicated themselves to taking as much of YOUR information as possible. They need it, like Elizabeth Báthory would have needed the blood of virgins if she was an actual vampire and not just insane.
The problem was (almost) no one was making money off it. Online advertising, as it was originally done, was a joke. Most of the early internet was based on ideals of quality, community, and freedom. None of these make much money.
So people started hunting for what DID make money, and they discovered data harvesting and targeted advertising. And like a cancer, that unholy pair devoured most of the web. Information really WAS power, like all those breathless articles and hacker manifestos in the 90s said. Power and MONEY. And the new masters of this realm have dedicated themselves to taking as much of YOUR information as possible. They need it, like Elizabeth Báthory would have needed the blood of virgins if she was an actual vampire and not just insane.
This is what Bruce Schneier calls distorting digital surveillance. His taxonomy also includes avoiding, blocking, and breaking (i.e. crime).
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/data-and-goliath-digital-surv...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/data-and-goliath-digital-surv...
On desktop Firefox has Multi Account Containers and Profiles.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...
another solution is to use 2 instances of chrome or firefox with different --user-data-dir which can run in parallel . It's actually very convenient for checking up stuff without 'messing' the main setup
I have multiple about:profiles on Firefox, each with different accounts (think school vs personal vs work etc.) Works quite well.
Firefox multi-account containers, no?
PortableApps makes this especially easy. Nothing ever touches your main system files, each instance of the browser is quarantined to its own folder.
Why not use the built-in profile functionality?
God knows if Google does any kind of cross-correlation between them. I would actually expect it.
They are also part of the Chromium project, so you're welcome to check it out, inspect the source code, and build it locally.
Just because it's open doesn't mean anyone can do such thing. I'm a professional dev and I can't browse such a complex C++ codebase.
I was being flippant, but isn't that true of anything though? How do you know Linux isn't secretly reporting all your activities to Big Penguin?
You should be able to trust a popular open-source project, because you trust that there are folks who will go in and take a sticky beak at these kinds of things. This why a lot of security folks prefer open-source software over close-sourced solutions.
Surely, if Chromium were cross-correlating profiles, then it'd be on the front page of Hacker News in short order.
You should be able to trust a popular open-source project, because you trust that there are folks who will go in and take a sticky beak at these kinds of things. This why a lot of security folks prefer open-source software over close-sourced solutions.
Surely, if Chromium were cross-correlating profiles, then it'd be on the front page of Hacker News in short order.
IME they do cross-correlate...
can you use them in parallel? in any case i don't want any correlation between the two (other than the IP i guess). in my case i often log in to the same website from different accounts for testing purposes
You can you them in parallel and they share no extensions, sessions, website settings, or other local data. You can even have separate themes for each profile.
I'm unaware of any potential problems relating to fingerprinting and so on, but for your use case it doesn't sound like it'd be a problem.
I'm unaware of any potential problems relating to fingerprinting and so on, but for your use case it doesn't sound like it'd be a problem.
Same, but I did this long before the current tracking nightmare. That's the whole FUN of "cyberspace": you can create and destroy identities at will, which means you can experiment. Even better, you can live out multiple lives simultaneously to some degree, like multi-threading code.
Realistically, on the modern net you need to: Use a VPN, kill cookies and ads aggressively, have multiple accounts (or avoid logging on at all in some cases), and never, ever use 2FA except with financial institutions. That's the bare minimum. No point in just complaining that tech companies are evil all the time. The smart organism adapts to its environment, and uses the tools at hand.
Realistically, on the modern net you need to: Use a VPN, kill cookies and ads aggressively, have multiple accounts (or avoid logging on at all in some cases), and never, ever use 2FA except with financial institutions. That's the bare minimum. No point in just complaining that tech companies are evil all the time. The smart organism adapts to its environment, and uses the tools at hand.
Put in an old DVD of Dr. Strangelove:... recently in the XBox. It was just a random thought to pop it in and enjoy. (okay, was cleaning up shelf)
I eventually realized I could skip around and enjoy the parts I liked. Freely. Without that feeling of being watched.
Flashback.
I eventually realized I could skip around and enjoy the parts I liked. Freely. Without that feeling of being watched.
Flashback.
Is your XBox online? Are you sure the DVD player doesn't report back what you're watching and how you're watching it?
Fair question.
This is exhausting.
This is exhausting.
Or your smart TV.
Which, for those out of the loop, is likely taking random screenshots of the displayed image and uploading enough data up positively correlate images to known content, or more, I haven't bothered to learn these things. The people who implement them are creepy af though.
These comments made me wonder if any smart TVs have something like built-in content-id detection, which then somehow gets shared with the mother ship.
One precedent is Nielsen Audio's Portable People Meter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Audio#Portable_People_...
I assume that if surveillance can be done, someones are doing it.
One precedent is Nielsen Audio's Portable People Meter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Audio#Portable_People_...
I assume that if surveillance can be done, someones are doing it.
They absolutely do, which is why I always deliberately give mine bad wifi credentials (if I didn't give it SOMETHING, it would nag).
They do. That's literally the reason Vizio TVs are so cheap.
Knowing this, I leave it on because I want everyone to be forced to watch what I watch.
Knowing this, I leave it on because I want everyone to be forced to watch what I watch.
yes of course. Roku tv does content recognition.
So, what's happening when I watch a video on my PC that is feeding into the Roku tv via hdmi?
Is Roku actually capturing info about the content of the stream, or just the fact that I'm streaming from the PC? I'm fairly sure they aren't so blatant as to grab screenshots, but are they doing some sort of analysis of the video stream directly?
Just stuff I wonder about.
Is Roku actually capturing info about the content of the stream, or just the fact that I'm streaming from the PC? I'm fairly sure they aren't so blatant as to grab screenshots, but are they doing some sort of analysis of the video stream directly?
Just stuff I wonder about.
I sometimes want to rewatch a funny scene, but the fear of having to sit through a 2min ad on Hulu after I press the back button outweighs the few seconds of joy I'd get from that scene. Nor is it worth the money to upgrade.
This is the default experience of vlc, mpv, and kodi. You have to do the surveillance-navigating work when obtaining content, but then when you're relaxing you're free to relax.
It's amazing that in 2021 piracy is still superior to all the paid products in terms of quality and user experience. They've had over a decade to figure this out, and they just don't care.
Piracy wins yet again. If someone is watching what mp4 files you load into VLC, you probably have bigger problems.
I like recommendation features in principle. I don’t want an unfiltered feed of stuff.
It would just be nice if they were configurable, understandable and actually worked for me. Some systems’ “We’re showing you this because ...” is an important first step, but it needs to go way, way, further.
Big companies probably don’t do it because they’re afraid of overwhelming a user, disclosing too much about their own algorithm and the things they know (“We’re showing you this because someone you hung out with on Instagram just before you met”).
Thus it’s probably up to open source projects again to make algorithms that actually work for people, not against them.
Are there any such projects already? Are there projects trying to dissect common proprietary recommendation systems? They’re some of the most mysterious influences on current society.
It would just be nice if they were configurable, understandable and actually worked for me. Some systems’ “We’re showing you this because ...” is an important first step, but it needs to go way, way, further.
Big companies probably don’t do it because they’re afraid of overwhelming a user, disclosing too much about their own algorithm and the things they know (“We’re showing you this because someone you hung out with on Instagram just before you met”).
Thus it’s probably up to open source projects again to make algorithms that actually work for people, not against them.
Are there any such projects already? Are there projects trying to dissect common proprietary recommendation systems? They’re some of the most mysterious influences on current society.
My hobby project https://linklonk.com (use invitation code 'hn') is a content recommendation system that is built around these principles:
- Control: what you see is based on your explicit upvotes & downvotes, not what you happened to click on.
- Transparency: you see content from feeds that posted content you upvoted and from other users who upvoted what you upvoted, but did that before you. For example, when you upvote a link it will tell you that "You will get more content from 2 users that also liked it and from 3 feeds that posted it". And when you see a recommendation from other users you can see what likes in common do you have with those users (“We’re showing you this because ...”).
- Fairness: the amount of attention every user and feed gets from you depends on how useful their past recommendations have been. Ie, the higher their signal-to-noise ratio has been for you - the more prominently their other upvoted items will be in your "feed".
Give it a try and let me know what you think. I'd like to do a "Show HN" post for my project soon and your feedback would help me prepare for it.
If you like to read a bit more here are my announcements with discussions:
- https://tildes.net/~tech/u7f/linklonk_a_link_aggregator_with...
- https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/mpqnpl/...
- Control: what you see is based on your explicit upvotes & downvotes, not what you happened to click on.
- Transparency: you see content from feeds that posted content you upvoted and from other users who upvoted what you upvoted, but did that before you. For example, when you upvote a link it will tell you that "You will get more content from 2 users that also liked it and from 3 feeds that posted it". And when you see a recommendation from other users you can see what likes in common do you have with those users (“We’re showing you this because ...”).
- Fairness: the amount of attention every user and feed gets from you depends on how useful their past recommendations have been. Ie, the higher their signal-to-noise ratio has been for you - the more prominently their other upvoted items will be in your "feed".
Give it a try and let me know what you think. I'd like to do a "Show HN" post for my project soon and your feedback would help me prepare for it.
If you like to read a bit more here are my announcements with discussions:
- https://tildes.net/~tech/u7f/linklonk_a_link_aggregator_with...
- https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/mpqnpl/...
There is one problem really. These companies are not charging money for their services. It's the same problem with other mega-corps. They can afford short and medium-term losses to kill other players entering the field. This is the root cause of so many problems in capitalism.
There are of course other challenges preventing people and corporations from entering this field but at this point I don't even think there's hope. They have not only destroyed everyone else in the private sector, but they partnered with governments and political entities in such a way that their continued rule is basically cemented in place. You won't get the recommendations that you know would be good for you because they're not trying to do something good for you, they're trying to extract more value from you.
There are of course other challenges preventing people and corporations from entering this field but at this point I don't even think there's hope. They have not only destroyed everyone else in the private sector, but they partnered with governments and political entities in such a way that their continued rule is basically cemented in place. You won't get the recommendations that you know would be good for you because they're not trying to do something good for you, they're trying to extract more value from you.
I think Netflix is the worst offender.
If you spend a minute too long looking at the menu for a movie it will not only auto play, but for the foreseeable future Netflix will assume you’re watching it, want to finish watching it and watch similar stuff.
More than most other services Netflix doesn’t trust your ratings or your lists when making up recommendations.
If you spend a minute too long looking at the menu for a movie it will not only auto play, but for the foreseeable future Netflix will assume you’re watching it, want to finish watching it and watch similar stuff.
More than most other services Netflix doesn’t trust your ratings or your lists when making up recommendations.
Fundamentally, tools should serve their masters. When it's the other way around, it's time to find a different tool.
And yes, they had to get rid of ratings, because some people's feelings got hurt because they were being rated so low. Can't have that pesky objective reality rearing its ugly head.
And yes, they had to get rid of ratings, because some people's feelings got hurt because they were being rated so low. Can't have that pesky objective reality rearing its ugly head.
Netflix apparently have no idea what I like. Well maybe they do, but don’t actually that type of content, so they just throw random junk at me.
It feels like Netflix knows what I like and throws things I don’t like at me on purpose, just to see whether I’ll change my mind. (So I unsubscribed)
The discovery is specifically what makes Youtube, Netflix or Spotify sticky beyond just content hosting, and even at suggestions, pirate websites are better at it.
The discovery is specifically what makes Youtube, Netflix or Spotify sticky beyond just content hosting, and even at suggestions, pirate websites are better at it.
You can delete half watched things from your history so they don't show up in the main UI
You can turn off auto play FYI.
You can disable autoplaying of next episodes in a series that you're watching, and you can disable autoplaying of previews, but I don't see any way to disable autoplaying of movies and shows in general when you're looking at their info pages.
Those are previews as far as I know.
Previews show on the main screen when you hover. But clicking in to get more info auto-starts the show, not just a preview.
The same setting controls both in my experience.
And if I want automatic previews because that's convenient but not for shows and movies to start themselves because that's annoying?
Suggest it to Netflix.
I don't log in to anything google related, I have youtube/google stuff containerized and when I close my browser window it clears all my history and cookies, etc. I surf with ublock on and max privacy settings in the browser.
I use YouTube via RSS. My quality of life is incredible.
I use YouTube via RSS. My quality of life is incredible.
Youtube has an RSS feed?
Yes — https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=…
You could also just put the channel URL into your RSS/Atom reader and it might convert it automatically.
You could also just put the channel URL into your RSS/Atom reader and it might convert it automatically.
Thanks!
I wonder how many features like this exist that I could use if I knew about them.
Does anyone know if Netflix/Hulu/etc. have an accessible database of their content? Most of my search results reference a Netflix API that seems to no longer be accessible.
I wonder how many features like this exist that I could use if I knew about them.
Does anyone know if Netflix/Hulu/etc. have an accessible database of their content? Most of my search results reference a Netflix API that seems to no longer be accessible.
Do your connections to Google come from your home IP address?
In the novel, "Feed", one of the characters has a hobby of searching for all sorts of random things, in order to confuse the algorithms. She would add absurd items to her shopping cart, without buying any of them.
The book, written in 2002, was very prescient.
The book, written in 2002, was very prescient.
I feel the same, and I stopped using Chrome, Gmail, Google Search and Facebook quite a long time ago.
I am not afraid, but annoyed to not have "manual mode" internet where everything I do has no hidden consequences and is simply what I asked.
I am not afraid, but annoyed to not have "manual mode" internet where everything I do has no hidden consequences and is simply what I asked.
The dumb thing about recommendation algorithms are that they assume that I’d like the same things, regardless of my mood or current situation. YouTube Music at least try to make guesses based on the time of day, but fail to take the actual music into account and just focus on the bands, and not the tempo, lyrics and overall sound of a track.
The only “algorithm” that sort of work is Amazons book recommendation, but I’m not sure that not just based on what others have bought.
The only “algorithm” that sort of work is Amazons book recommendation, but I’m not sure that not just based on what others have bought.
I'm mildly curious about the whole Jordan Peterson anti-woke movement. Mildly, as in, I'm interested in the arguments but I often don't agree with them. I once made the mistake of clicking on a Peterson YouTube video and subsequently got only obscene alt-right "Peterson KILLS stupid feminist reporter!!" type of edited content. Like at some point 80% of my suggestions was crap like that, drowning out all the lovely nerdy Tom Scott stuff I come to YouTube for.
I had to reset all suggestions to get away from it. Whenever I now see a video like that about the culture wars (or about covid for that matter), I open an incognito browser and search for the title. It's nuts that this is necessary.
It's come to a point that I now hate suggestion engines with a passion. I wish I could simply only see the tweets/videos/whatever from people I follow/subscribe, chronologically. I can't figure out whether the people making these services are simply incompetent or downright evil.
The AI future is now and it's awful.
I had to reset all suggestions to get away from it. Whenever I now see a video like that about the culture wars (or about covid for that matter), I open an incognito browser and search for the title. It's nuts that this is necessary.
It's come to a point that I now hate suggestion engines with a passion. I wish I could simply only see the tweets/videos/whatever from people I follow/subscribe, chronologically. I can't figure out whether the people making these services are simply incompetent or downright evil.
The AI future is now and it's awful.
It's a consequence of the algorithm optimizing for engagement. YT obviously wants people to stay for as long as possible, to interact, write comments, upvote/downvote and follow the chain of recommended videos. The longer they stay on YT and the more content the consume, the more ads YT can show and the more money they make.
Anti-woke/alt-right type content is provocative, controversial and makes people engage with. Either because they want to enthusiastically join in or because they want to dunk on it for how ridiculous it is. And the people who are into it are generally really into it, so they'll keep watching hour after hour of it.
YT doesn't care, as long as they get as many people watching videos and looking at ads as they possibly can.
Anti-woke/alt-right type content is provocative, controversial and makes people engage with. Either because they want to enthusiastically join in or because they want to dunk on it for how ridiculous it is. And the people who are into it are generally really into it, so they'll keep watching hour after hour of it.
YT doesn't care, as long as they get as many people watching videos and looking at ads as they possibly can.
> And the people who are into it are generally really into it, so they'll keep watching hour after hour of it.
Maybe that's the effect and not the cause.
Maybe that's the effect and not the cause.
I see it as a self-sustaining loop at this point. At some point the flames were lit and fanned, and now they've taken on a life of their own.
It'd make a good The Onion headline "AI Accidentally Resurrects Fascism."
This supposedly won't happen anymore because YouTube changed the recommendation algorithm a year or two ago to not show hardcore politics as a suggestion for everything.
Personally I find it easy to dismiss bad suggestions by looking at animal videos or vtubers, those reliably displace everything else. And that everything else was just strange Minecraft roleplays for small children, not racism lately.
Personally I find it easy to dismiss bad suggestions by looking at animal videos or vtubers, those reliably displace everything else. And that everything else was just strange Minecraft roleplays for small children, not racism lately.
It's important to note however that alt-right content is just one particular example. Often people encounter this algorithmic behavior and ascribe certain motives to Youtube etc. And while that probably IS happening to some degree, it's also true, and probably more common, that the system is just showing you more of what it thinks you will like. There are plenty of stories of this happening in a more innocuous (but still obnoxious) way: click one car repair video, everything is car repair videos. Click one clip from an old animated show for nostalgia, EVERYTHING is now clips from old 90s shows.
And to counter all this, often the system is actually surprisingly insightful in digging up obscure crap from god knows where that's really neat, and right up your alley, that you never would have seen otherwise.
And then it goes back to filling your whole front page with Simpsons clips.
And to counter all this, often the system is actually surprisingly insightful in digging up obscure crap from god knows where that's really neat, and right up your alley, that you never would have seen otherwise.
And then it goes back to filling your whole front page with Simpsons clips.
Same. Worse is the fact it continues to make the same suggestions no matter how many times I scroll past, no matter how many other videos I watch.
I find Spotify similar. I try a suggested playlist. I check out after 2 or 3 songs. It doesn't get the hint.
I find Spotify similar. I try a suggested playlist. I check out after 2 or 3 songs. It doesn't get the hint.
I think that in the future, having a way to tell the algorithm "I didn't like this" will be common courtesy. Especially as the algorithm becomes stronger, I.E. companies offload more and more curation to ML.
On YouTube, this exists. On the Home screen where you get video recommendations, you can mouse-over each video title, click the little three dots, and mark that you're not interested in a video or channel. They'll never show up again in your recommendations.
[deleted]
Im the opposite. I very ocassionally watch a JP video which I find interesting and it means Google no longer fills my feed with woke stuff which is nice.
It’s going to kill us
It's so weird, across all Google's products I occasionally get these weird Arabic and sometimes even Islamic content suggestions.
I've never opened any of these links, am not behind a VPN, am very much not Arabic and do not understand the language, and - with all due respect - am completely uninterested in Islamic holy scripture.
Why, even after all these years, Google thinks this is content I'd want to see is a complete mystery to me. Something I'm going to have to live with for the rest of my life it seems.
I've never opened any of these links, am not behind a VPN, am very much not Arabic and do not understand the language, and - with all due respect - am completely uninterested in Islamic holy scripture.
Why, even after all these years, Google thinks this is content I'd want to see is a complete mystery to me. Something I'm going to have to live with for the rest of my life it seems.
I can think of several explanations. The least likely is that for some reason your IP (or one of the IPs) is misattributed to another country by their geolocation mapping system. Another is that some of your property have been used by an Arab (you bough a second-hand device, lost a phone etc). More probably ones: one of your devices might have been infected or you might have clicked an ad that was disguised by something else but was linked to products/services offered in Arabic.
Yes those are the only explanations I came up with as well, but none of that applies.
I have kept a log of all IPs I regularly connected from, and only a single one of those originated in another country - another European one.
Never lost a device (jinxed now) or bought or even temporarily used a second-hand one.
An ad or intrusion do seem to be the most likely culprits, but ads are blocked everywhere, and I believe my security hygiene to be pretty decent.
This has been going on for over a decade now. Due to the sporadic nature if these happenings, I'm almost starting to think there's some old (but still wrong) data stuck on some edge node somewhere - or perhaps someone at Google is actively teasing me for being so critical of the company :)
I have kept a log of all IPs I regularly connected from, and only a single one of those originated in another country - another European one.
Never lost a device (jinxed now) or bought or even temporarily used a second-hand one.
An ad or intrusion do seem to be the most likely culprits, but ads are blocked everywhere, and I believe my security hygiene to be pretty decent.
This has been going on for over a decade now. Due to the sporadic nature if these happenings, I'm almost starting to think there's some old (but still wrong) data stuck on some edge node somewhere - or perhaps someone at Google is actively teasing me for being so critical of the company :)
You should abstain from googling politically incorrect ideas.
It is possible that the state will require searches for for politically incorrect content be logged and used to create a profile on possible dissidents.
Not an unreasonable concern. Remember Google's Project Dragonfly? They were building and testing a system which would not only censor Google Search in mainland China, but provide Communist Party authorities with unlimited access to search logs.
They only stopped because they got caught, and enough Google employees caused a stir about it internally. The executives who supported this project and kept its existence secret within Google are still with the company. Who's to say they won't try again, in China or any other country?
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/29/google-china-censored-se...
>Locating core parts of the search system on the Chinese mainland meant that people’s search records would be easily accessible to China’s authoritarian government, which has broad surveillance powers that it routinely deploys to target activists, journalists, and political opponents.
They only stopped because they got caught, and enough Google employees caused a stir about it internally. The executives who supported this project and kept its existence secret within Google are still with the company. Who's to say they won't try again, in China or any other country?
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/29/google-china-censored-se...
>Locating core parts of the search system on the Chinese mainland meant that people’s search records would be easily accessible to China’s authoritarian government, which has broad surveillance powers that it routinely deploys to target activists, journalists, and political opponents.
What country do you live in?
American. Programs like this almost definitely exist in America.
Even if they didn‘t, it would only be a matter of time for them to be implemented since it is in the interest of the state to monitor its population for behavior that could be dangerous to it.
That isn‘t even necessarily bad! It‘s just problematic that it could easily be used for immoral surveillance. It‘s imo a good thing to identify likely future terrorists. It‘s not a good thing to surveil members of e.g. sexual minorities or peaceful dissidents.
I‘m a recent immigrant, so I am sorry if my English sounds weird.
That isn‘t even necessarily bad! It‘s just problematic that it could easily be used for immoral surveillance. It‘s imo a good thing to identify likely future terrorists. It‘s not a good thing to surveil members of e.g. sexual minorities or peaceful dissidents.
I‘m a recent immigrant, so I am sorry if my English sounds weird.
No idea what country they’re in, but the US government’s already logging such things:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/can-government-look-yo...
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/can-government-look-yo...
Use a private browsing/incognito window then. Not bullet-proof, but probably good enough.
Not so easy. It seems that major companies are on the offensive against privacy.
Google search, map and translate display a pop up. Youtube search displays two (!).
Bing translator is the most dishonest - for anything else than a trivial sentence, it requires a captcha to be completed, pretending that it detected abnormal traffic (I know it's a lie, because if I don't use private mode, it doesn't do this).
The services above essentially defeat address bar (keyword-based) searches.
It's interesting (and not in a good way) times. I've changed almost all the services I use, which is something I've never considered before. I have to say that there are valid alternatives, though.
Google search, map and translate display a pop up. Youtube search displays two (!).
Bing translator is the most dishonest - for anything else than a trivial sentence, it requires a captcha to be completed, pretending that it detected abnormal traffic (I know it's a lie, because if I don't use private mode, it doesn't do this).
The services above essentially defeat address bar (keyword-based) searches.
It's interesting (and not in a good way) times. I've changed almost all the services I use, which is something I've never considered before. I have to say that there are valid alternatives, though.
What do you mean? It doesn't matter how many popups or CAPTCHAs the sites make you deal with: as long as you don't log in to your Google account, any searches you make with an incognito window shouldn't be associated with your Google identity. They'll be associated with your IP address (and of course browsers can in principle be fingerprinted, etc.)
If there's any reason to believe that Google tries to defeat incognito mode and associate that history with a particular Google account, I haven't heard it, and it seems really unlikely, given the things people are expected rely on incognito mode for.
If there's any reason to believe that Google tries to defeat incognito mode and associate that history with a particular Google account, I haven't heard it, and it seems really unlikely, given the things people are expected rely on incognito mode for.
> given the things people are expected rely on incognito mode for.
I don't think Google tracks these things in regular search either. My interests profile doesn't include my favorite porn.
I don't think Google tracks these things in regular search either. My interests profile doesn't include my favorite porn.
Google in $5bn lawsuit for tracking in 'private' mode:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52887340
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52887340
Discussed [0] and elsewhere.
I have to agree with [1] that Google is completely in the right here.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23552967
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23554678
I have to agree with [1] that Google is completely in the right here.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23552967
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23554678
I'm not concerned about the privacy, rather, that this is a strategy to attack it indirectly.
I believe that they're just trying to make life harder for those who browse in private mode, in order to push them to always stay logged in. After all, Google built a browser based on the concept of user being logged in (this was one of the primary reasons why I've moved from Chrome).
This is nothing new, as at least some news paper had explicitly rules against it, for a long time.
On an extreme and hopefully far fetched scenario, I image this becoming common practice, and Google says that you have only a certain amount of searches before you must log in. I think the current situation as a sort of middle ground (or step towards).
I believe that they're just trying to make life harder for those who browse in private mode, in order to push them to always stay logged in. After all, Google built a browser based on the concept of user being logged in (this was one of the primary reasons why I've moved from Chrome).
This is nothing new, as at least some news paper had explicitly rules against it, for a long time.
On an extreme and hopefully far fetched scenario, I image this becoming common practice, and Google says that you have only a certain amount of searches before you must log in. I think the current situation as a sort of middle ground (or step towards).
I imagine the captcha is to combat bots abusing the service.
> I know it's a lie, because if I don't use private mode, it doesn't do this
If you don't use incognito/private browsing then you have an ordinary-looking set of cookies, so it makes sense you wouldn't be challanged with a captcha.
> I know it's a lie, because if I don't use private mode, it doesn't do this
If you don't use incognito/private browsing then you have an ordinary-looking set of cookies, so it makes sense you wouldn't be challanged with a captcha.
The irony is that incongito looks the most distinct of anything because of that.
You'd think there'd be a plugin that gathers some common tracking cookies, and swaps them around with other users. So the adtech firms see a tangled mess of location/IP/interest data.
If the randomization is log enough, the cookies pollute the data while hopefully remaining "conventionally looking" enough that they won't be discarded outright.
You'd think there'd be a plugin that gathers some common tracking cookies, and swaps them around with other users. So the adtech firms see a tangled mess of location/IP/interest data.
If the randomization is log enough, the cookies pollute the data while hopefully remaining "conventionally looking" enough that they won't be discarded outright.
> If you don't use incognito/private browsing then you have an ordinary-looking set of cookies, so it makes sense you wouldn't be challanged with a captcha.
Right. I find it very troubling (in a general sense; I don't doubt that there are technical grounds) though, that browsing in incognito/private mode is a flagged behavior.
Right. I find it very troubling (in a general sense; I don't doubt that there are technical grounds) though, that browsing in incognito/private mode is a flagged behavior.
On YouTube I create multiple channels to curate my recommendations. I have multi modal tastes but most recommendation systems don't really seem to deal with feedback that spans independent interests very well.
So, one channel for how-to's, crafting, and tech talks. One for instrumental and foreign language focus music, etc..
So, one channel for how-to's, crafting, and tech talks. One for instrumental and foreign language focus music, etc..
Spotify cannot figure out that I don't listen to German/French podcasts/books and constantly recommends them to me. My interface is English, I listen to primarily English but also Russian/German/French music and will often specifically click off of French/German music and after 5 years it still cant figure out that I don't want fucking French and German books and podcasts. WTF SW people, I thought this was your bread and butter...don't even get me started on youtube ads which seem to follow the country you're currently in, like...how haven't you figured out which languages I speak after using you for 10 years.
It's funny, just today I noticed how much worse is Google Now feed (or whatever it's called today) because it keeps repeating news items and category that I have very little interest in. It's almost like Google is trying to save money by computing less accurately for my interests.
Use duckduckgo and this is a non-issue.
I tried it and went back to google because google saves me time.
As a dev, I google a lot to figure out how to do X.
My experience with DuckDuckGo was that it added 2-10 minutes of filtering for usable results every time.
As a dev, I google a lot to figure out how to do X.
My experience with DuckDuckGo was that it added 2-10 minutes of filtering for usable results every time.
I am using DuckDuckGo and my experience is completely different, but I might be missing something.
Do you have an example of a search you've done where the results were much better from Google Search than from DuckDuckGo?
Do you have an example of a search you've done where the results were much better from Google Search than from DuckDuckGo?
My experience is that we reached a point where if DuckDuckGo can’t find something, then neither can Google. For local search Google is still a little better, but they choosen to drown out actual results with ads.
Not my experience for dev related searches. I assume this is because Google has learned I always search for JS stuff and I've gotten used to that so I'm not specific enough in my searches on DDG.
This might be true. But my point was that DuckDuckGo costs me too much time.
To rephrase it: DuckDuckGo is more expensive to use. (At least for me).
> Do you have an example of a search ...
Due to the very topic this HN post is about, I don't think this is a good method - your results might be vastly different from mine.
But let's look at the number of relevant results among the top 5 results for some thing I recently wanted to learn about.
"Comprehension categories" - a rather specific term from category theory
https://www.google.com/search?q=comprehension+category https://duckduckgo.com/?q=comprehension+category
Google: 5/5 (for me) DuckDuckGo: 1/5 (for me)
Due to the very topic this HN post is about, I don't think this is a good method - your results might be vastly different from mine.
But let's look at the number of relevant results among the top 5 results for some thing I recently wanted to learn about.
"Comprehension categories" - a rather specific term from category theory
https://www.google.com/search?q=comprehension+category https://duckduckgo.com/?q=comprehension+category
Google: 5/5 (for me) DuckDuckGo: 1/5 (for me)
> Do you have an example of a search you've done where the results were much better from Google Search than from DuckDuckGo?
Here you go: https://imgur.com/a/CssDXS3
Here you go: https://imgur.com/a/CssDXS3
Have been using DDG for years, needed to call to Google maybe once per month in a particularly tough queries, on those I get about 50% success ratio - sometimes Google helps, sometimes doesn't. For the vast majority of routine queries DDG is more than enough.
Google for tech stuff, Startpage/DDG for anything else. Google doesn’t need to know every single infant-related concern I have.
I think this reply is for you
https://twitter.com/jjcollinsworth/status/139066623945075507...
https://twitter.com/jjcollinsworth/status/139066623945075507...
To spell it out: it takes an increasing amount of effort to avoid any of your interests being tracked, logged, and almost immediately used in ways that you already know will be destructive. This is also an IT professional and a programmer saying this, so they do not want your advice. The fact that they can use many, many countermeasures which require many, many rabbitholes of research, that as a programmer they are able to understand (although they will have to be continually updated) is not a way to fix that fear it's the manifestation of that fear.
After 9/11 and the Patriot Act, librarians fought the government to keep the reading habits of patrons private as a core duty like doctors pledge to do no harm. Now it's difficult to get people to understand why clicking through to an attractive hammock while browsing Amazon registering in 900 databases and manifesting in ads and cold calls selling tropical vacations and being flagged on some government system as 2% more likely to be a flight risk if let out on bond (who am I kidding, AI doesn't give percentages, it just gives conclusions, looking at a hammock might be that stray pixel that can turn an OCR "O" into a "Q") - difficult to get some people to understand why that would make you nervous.
The answer to that isn't "use TOR to get to a VPN to browse amazon, and pay for that with a burner debit card loaded with bitcoin" or whatever works this week. There isn't really a hammock.
edit: also Amazon has that figured out, some researcher there figured out that they can identify you based on your click patterns and timing. Right now you can choose between 1) an app that will just click on everything silently, or 2) another app by a professor at some midwestern university that will jerk around the timing and positioning of your clicks in a way that throws your fingerprint off. The first app has been banned by every store, and triggers 80 warnings and a waiver that has to be signed with two-factor even if you manage to root your phone and sideload it. You have to compile the second app yourself, with a weird toolchain, and it draws in 640Mb of npm libraries. It's already been updated three times in response to Amazon's countermeasures, and the professor just wrote a paper about the entire method probably being ultimately doomed.
After 9/11 and the Patriot Act, librarians fought the government to keep the reading habits of patrons private as a core duty like doctors pledge to do no harm. Now it's difficult to get people to understand why clicking through to an attractive hammock while browsing Amazon registering in 900 databases and manifesting in ads and cold calls selling tropical vacations and being flagged on some government system as 2% more likely to be a flight risk if let out on bond (who am I kidding, AI doesn't give percentages, it just gives conclusions, looking at a hammock might be that stray pixel that can turn an OCR "O" into a "Q") - difficult to get some people to understand why that would make you nervous.
The answer to that isn't "use TOR to get to a VPN to browse amazon, and pay for that with a burner debit card loaded with bitcoin" or whatever works this week. There isn't really a hammock.
edit: also Amazon has that figured out, some researcher there figured out that they can identify you based on your click patterns and timing. Right now you can choose between 1) an app that will just click on everything silently, or 2) another app by a professor at some midwestern university that will jerk around the timing and positioning of your clicks in a way that throws your fingerprint off. The first app has been banned by every store, and triggers 80 warnings and a waiver that has to be signed with two-factor even if you manage to root your phone and sideload it. You have to compile the second app yourself, with a weird toolchain, and it draws in 640Mb of npm libraries. It's already been updated three times in response to Amazon's countermeasures, and the professor just wrote a paper about the entire method probably being ultimately doomed.
> figured out that they can identify you based on your click patterns and timing.
This isn't restricted to just Amazon either; as I understand it, this is the core of the current reCaptcha version (and even more so, its evil twin, reCaptcha V3, which is seemingly so effective it can rely on those mouse events exclusively in most cases)
This isn't restricted to just Amazon either; as I understand it, this is the core of the current reCaptcha version (and even more so, its evil twin, reCaptcha V3, which is seemingly so effective it can rely on those mouse events exclusively in most cases)
"I complained on a public forum and received advice. What a horrible day to have an internet connection."
Wow this guy loves to be a victim in as many ways as possible to squeeze into 3 tweets! This must be a kind of a Twitter archetype.
Women just love it when random internet dudes pull the "if I were a woman you couldn't point out how trite and pointless my complaint is, so let's just assume I am a woman and you shut up now" card. It's so cool for them to be the exemplars of the trite and the pointless.
the thing I hate the most are personalized ads and amazon suggestions that keep pestering you for weeks about an item you just bought and don't need anymore
You bought a cable for your phone yesterday. Why don't you buy another one? Don't you wanna buy? You sure? Here are the best single cables in your area ready to be hooked.
Sure lots of negatives, but in a few cases, it can also be useful. I have carefully used a YouTube account that's specifically trained for just the right music recommendations that the auto-play just works mostly right.
I use stimulating music (not relaxing) for work mainly, playing in background, and don't want to keep finding new music. Novelty is an important factor in stimulatory music. So this has been great for me.
I use stimulating music (not relaxing) for work mainly, playing in background, and don't want to keep finding new music. Novelty is an important factor in stimulatory music. So this has been great for me.
I use incognito mode ALL of the time for this. I'm looking up things that I _know_ will retarget me but aren't really relevant or I don't want linked to me _forever_. Like a medical condition for a friend, for instance. I don't need Google retargeting me cancer ads. All. the damn. time.
Ah the solution is simple, technology is advanced enough that you can easily build a music player yourself with local files.
(this is a HN joke)
(but I did start building my own music player)
https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1379765168482172940
(this is a HN joke)
(but I did start building my own music player)
https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1379765168482172940
Sounds like an opportunity for a search proxy service.
Which begets an arms race of proxies, and fake proxies sponsored by Google, fuzz proxies blowing up the signal-to-noise ratio for your account, TOR proxies for the "double-hush-hush" searches. . .
Who knew that the act of finding stuff would be such a voyeuristic delight?
Which begets an arms race of proxies, and fake proxies sponsored by Google, fuzz proxies blowing up the signal-to-noise ratio for your account, TOR proxies for the "double-hush-hush" searches. . .
Who knew that the act of finding stuff would be such a voyeuristic delight?
Personalized feeds are broken. I think there's work to be done to improve content discovery.
[deleted]
Disable your search history
Fair enough.
But to what extent would the algorithm know about you if you clear cookies/storage data though? I also imagine changing IP addresses help… does Google use IP as a source for profiling?
But to what extent would the algorithm know about you if you clear cookies/storage data though? I also imagine changing IP addresses help… does Google use IP as a source for profiling?
I can’t speak for what data points Google uses for tracking, however... with JavaScript, there is a plethora of information that can be used to uniquely identify you across IPs, and even across browsers. [0]
If you’re logged in to a service on multiple devices you have now linked multiple fingerprints to your account that can be compared against third party data.
A VPN will not protect you from this tracking.
[0] https://amiunique.org/
(I’ve plugged this site before, so I feel like I should say I am not affiliated with it)
If you’re logged in to a service on multiple devices you have now linked multiple fingerprints to your account that can be compared against third party data.
A VPN will not protect you from this tracking.
[0] https://amiunique.org/
(I’ve plugged this site before, so I feel like I should say I am not affiliated with it)
An even better site for determining your browser uniqueness from EFF.
https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
Gives you the entropy your browser is giving out in number of bits.
Gives you the entropy your browser is giving out in number of bits.
Don't use Google to search. DDG!
Use Firefox Focus on mobile.
On desktop, set Firefox to purge everything when closing the browser. Use Chrome only when necessary to do strictly Google-related things.
On desktop, set Firefox to purge everything when closing the browser. Use Chrome only when necessary to do strictly Google-related things.
Should've used NORDVPN FOR ONLY 2,75 A MONTH!
This is an example of Social Cooling: https://socialcooling.com
Personally, disposable virtual machines on Qubes OS for browsing make me less stressful about that.
Personally, disposable virtual machines on Qubes OS for browsing make me less stressful about that.
I also don't want certain things in my browser autocomplete history so every time I have a question I think is dumb I open an incognito window.
> I'm afraid to skip a song because I don't want the algorithm to block all songs like it.
Weird, can't reproduce on mpd/ncmpc. (stop using hostile software!)
But seriously I was just explaining to some friends how my use of Audioscrobbler two decades ago has stuck with me, in that sometimes when I jump around in a track I have a quick thought of whether my listening to that song will have been counted. Even such a simple dynamic created long lasting behavioral effects, and these days we're all just swimming in such external context with every piece of remote code trashware we're goaded into using.
Weird, can't reproduce on mpd/ncmpc. (stop using hostile software!)
But seriously I was just explaining to some friends how my use of Audioscrobbler two decades ago has stuck with me, in that sometimes when I jump around in a track I have a quick thought of whether my listening to that song will have been counted. Even such a simple dynamic created long lasting behavioral effects, and these days we're all just swimming in such external context with every piece of remote code trashware we're goaded into using.
It must be miserable to use technology with such paranoia.
I use duck duck go when I want to do that
You can remove individual items from your search history.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and induces magical thinking.
This is a quarter step away from voodoo and south seas cargo cult rituals.
This is a quarter step away from voodoo and south seas cargo cult rituals.
ctrl + shift + p
Now my printer also knows what I read
Ah the confusion of application-specific shortcuts VS OS-global ones... You're clearly a Chrome user :)
Incognito.
Even in a tweet about algorithms the guy can’t help but dunk on men to show what a nice guy he is.
The comment you're referring to didn't occur in the tweet about algorithms - it was a reactive comment that occurred in response to an experience that happened after the tweet. Also, I'm not sure what "to show what a nice guy he is" means here, though I'm guessing it's just being used an insult in the same family as "white knight".
I can't know whether his comment was reasonable without looking through the comments he was referring to (and neither can you), but even given that he was being unreasonable, you chose to be unreasonable in turn.
I can't know whether his comment was reasonable without looking through the comments he was referring to (and neither can you), but even given that he was being unreasonable, you chose to be unreasonable in turn.
> I can't know whether his comment was reasonable without looking through the comments he was referring to (and neither can you)
Nah, I can. It seems quite toxic regardless of what has been said to him.
> even given that he was being unreasonable, you chose to be unreasonable in turn
I don’t see what is unreasonable about shaming anti-social behavior. When you see any “unsolicited advice”, even between two same gendered persons, as a manifestation of patriarchy you are bound to come off as toxic.
Nah, I can. It seems quite toxic regardless of what has been said to him.
> even given that he was being unreasonable, you chose to be unreasonable in turn
I don’t see what is unreasonable about shaming anti-social behavior. When you see any “unsolicited advice”, even between two same gendered persons, as a manifestation of patriarchy you are bound to come off as toxic.
Rainbow, BLM, it's all there, so he can afford the sharp reaction towards the "random dudes".
Without the protective ideological shield, that reaction would have been deemed "hostile" and "toxic" by the twitteria.
Without the protective ideological shield, that reaction would have been deemed "hostile" and "toxic" by the twitteria.
I had a good laugh because that's actually a comment against the mansplaining common narrative, people will jump to explain things everytime they feel it's easy to add their contribute, being the audience a woman or a random guy on the internet or anyone they perceive weak enough to be a good target to show off their knowledge and skills
> Update: random dudes are now saying the unsolicited toxic replies are actually my fault for saying something in the first place. So NOW I feel like I've gotten a little glimpse of what it's like to be a woman on the internet.
I was very curious about how this is evidence that women specifically get berated on the internet rather than evidence that everyone is a potential target. Obviously from this interaction alone you can't tell if it happens more to women or not but... I thought it was kind of funny to say "this thing happened to me as a man and now I really understand that this thing happens to women."
I was very curious about how this is evidence that women specifically get berated on the internet rather than evidence that everyone is a potential target. Obviously from this interaction alone you can't tell if it happens more to women or not but... I thought it was kind of funny to say "this thing happened to me as a man and now I really understand that this thing happens to women."
I think that’s a really cynical way to look at it, especially when the explanations are public. People can explain things to others without there being a hidden power dynamic.
How is an example in another context a "comment against the mansplaining common narrative"? Even your explanation makes it pretty clear that a man-to-woman combination would be one of the most common versions.
He's the one who extrapolated the context, my point is that the explainer does it for reasons that have nothing to do with the gender of the receiver. And this is one example
anotha1(2)
The height of first world inconvenience
Honest question: Why are you logged into Google?
If you must use gmail, use imap. The only other “sticky” service they offer (that benefits from a login) is docs. So, use some other office suite, or keep a separate browser installed just for docs.
Problem solved, I think.
If you must use gmail, use imap. The only other “sticky” service they offer (that benefits from a login) is docs. So, use some other office suite, or keep a separate browser installed just for docs.
Problem solved, I think.
If you wanted to scale that across more identities you could probably use seperate vms.
If you have enough RAM it‘s really easy to do.
That would beat browser fingerprinting as long as browser A running in VM A looks different enough from browser B running in VM B.
The average browser is unique out of like 300 thousand other browsers but with the right settings you can get that down to more like 1 in 10.
That would beat browser fingerprinting as long as browser A running in VM A looks different enough from browser B running in VM B.
The average browser is unique out of like 300 thousand other browsers but with the right settings you can get that down to more like 1 in 10.
kinda forces me to watch something else that is new but at least somewhat wanted in an attempt to make the algorithm look at the new shiny i'm interested in and forget the previous one.
i find it funny though when amazon still make recommendations to me based on a purchase in 1998. yes, Jeff, i still want to buy wrestling VHS tapes...