Youtube let the other shoe drop in their end-stage enshittification this week. Last month, they required you to turn on Youtube History to view the feed of youtube videos recommendations. That seems reasonable, so I did it. But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don’t get much from my choices. It still did a pretty good job of showing me stuff I was interested in watching.
Then on Oct 1, they threw up a “You’re using an Ad Blocker” overlay on videos. I’d use my trusty Overlay Remover plugin to remove the annoying javascript graphic and watch what I wanted. I didn’t have to click the X to dismiss the obnoxious page.
Last week, they started placing a timer with the X so you had to wait 5 seconds for the X to appear so you could dismiss blocking graphic.
Today, there was a new graphic. It allowed you to view three videos before you had to turn off your Ad Blocker. I viewed a video 3 times just to see what happens.
Now all I see is this.
Google has out and out made it a violation of their ToS to have an ad blocker to view Youtube. Or you can pay them $$$.
I ban such sites from my systems by replacing their DNS name in my hosts file routed to 127.0.0.1 which means I can’t view the site. I have quite a few banned sites now.
Implying that deleting them from your view actually deleted them.
My man thought he was permanently erasing it from history.
Next you’ll tell me cognito mode isn’t keeping my browsing completely private! /s
How can my workplace admin block Pornhub even when I’m using private mode? He shouldn’t even be allowed to see what I do privately!
I mean, this is mostly borne from a fundamental misunderstanding of what “Private Browsing” mode is and was meant to be.
When you open an incognito tab on Chrome, it literally says “Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity.”
It also says
Fuck using Chrome and I’m not defending Google at all here, but they never once claimed Incognito was anything more than it was.
Pretty sure Firefox says that too. Users just don’t read. Like, ever. They’ll get an error message saying “Important!” and click whatever button seems most likely to make it go away before calling support and demanding they “fix the computer”.
If the incognito mode is not keeping your browsing private, imagine the cognitive mode!
I think op meant he requests google to delete the history through the account settings, which they are required to comply with.
Surely they’ll actually comply, not be caught in an audit years down the line and given a friendly “Now now, we talked about this: don’t get caught breaking the law again!” slap on the wrist for failing to delete and instead further monetising that data?
This isn’t some trivial information like your precise location history, this is serious.
doesn’t even matter. what matters is the meta data. if the data from the list say you like science videos with emphasis on electrical engineering, star wars podcasts and mmorpg let’s plays - does that data go away apon history deletion. what about meta-meta data. if the meta data puts you on group X that receive content Y, does that go away apon history deletion. and what kind of integration does that get with the rest of the google knowledge about you…
I doubt turning off history truly does what it says either though. I think it was more about avoiding the shitty algo recc’s that try to turn everyone’s dad and uncle into a far right extremist.