Thanks for reading my post and replying individually to a lot of the things I wrote.
I still think the trans thing sticks out like a weird red flag to me. Literally never before has Youtube ever suggested anything trans related to me. Then for a day and a half after I was working on that spreadsheet, it showed up at the top of the suggested videos. Since then, I have never seen it again. So in short: years of nothing, nothing, nothing, TWO DAYS OF TRANS VIDEO SUGGESTIONS, and then since, nothing, nothing, nothing.
It is bizarre and very fucky. Even after reading a lot of people telling me that it is just The AlgoTM at work, that incident seems so razor specific to activity I was simply doing on my computer at the same time Youtube was open rather than anything that could be related to my personal interests.
Some context I’ll add to my main post in an edit: the only Youtube suggestions I get are music-related, since I use adblock+Youtube as my personal Spotify. It’s why I have Youtube open frequently despite knowing that it is not a great platform and it is also why any suggestions in my feed that are explicitly not music-related stick out like a sore thumb.
I know the prevailing sentiment for a long time in the privacy community has been "DAE Youtube bad?" though I have always thought that it is kinda overblown. Besides, I am using Firefox which is supposed to isolate tabs so they can't speak to each other, so I felt a small amount safer using Youtube.
You can take my post with a grain of salt since all I have are anecdotes, but can anyone else confirm encountering creepiness similar to my experiences:
-Typing *anything* in another window that is *not* my browser, sometimes these words seem like they get picked up by the Youtube suggestion algo and then boom, I get suggested videos based off of those keywords. Recent example, I was copypasting the words "trans" and "talking" over and over for some nerd spreadsheet I am making (read: not transgender purposes) and what do you know, transgender videos about "How to change your voice" start popping up in my feed. Please know I have *zero* interest in transgender politics/culture/anything, it is not something I have ever searched for or engaged in online. Possible that Youtube is reading my clipboard? Reading my keystrokes?
-Listening to an album via VLC, while Youtube is open in my browser. Suddenly, more tracks from that album start showing up in my suggested feed. Possible Youtube is reading the titles of other apps current open on my machine? (VLC changes its active title to the name of whatever file is currently open)
-Have a Discord channel open in another tab, people there start posting things I am uninterested in and don't click on, but lo and behold, videos related to those things start appearing my feed. Tbh, I am the most jaded about Discord's privacy security because there is probably a direct communications pipeline between the Discord and Youtube where they link accounts to each other, even creating shadow accounts similar to how Facebook does. So while not surprising... still at least a little bit creepy, yes?
edit: let me add a small bit of context. I use Youtube all the time as my personal version of Spotify. Adblock+Youtube still works for me and is very nice. So all of my Youtube video suggestions are always music related. If anything weird shows up in that feed (you know, not music-related stuff) it sticks out to me immediately.
edit2: thanks for the replies, even if you are disagreeing with me. I promise you I am not the person downvoting everyone lol.
Thanks for reading my post and replying individually to a lot of the things I wrote.
I still think the trans thing sticks out like a weird red flag to me. Literally never before has Youtube ever suggested anything trans related to me. Then for a day and a half after I was working on that spreadsheet, it showed up at the top of the suggested videos. Since then, I have never seen it again. So in short: years of nothing, nothing, nothing, TWO DAYS OF TRANS VIDEO SUGGESTIONS, and then since, nothing, nothing, nothing.
It is bizarre and very fucky. Even after reading a lot of people telling me that it is just The AlgoTM at work, that incident seems so razor specific to activity I was simply doing on my computer at the same time Youtube was open rather than anything that could be related to my personal interests.