cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2862582

I am still new regarding privacy and all that, so i am sorry for any mistakes/ newbie questions.

I and my friends were talking on Discord regarding the Oxenfree plot (a game about a time loop). One of the plot points mentions a submarine. To his surprise, He received a youtube recommendation about a nuclear-powered submarine as shown:

he was a bit spooked about this and asked if Google is listening. I asked about his browser and extensions, to which he answered that he’s using google chrome and the extensions below:

my question is: how did this happen, and what should he do next to avoid this happening again?

thank you in advance.

  • @[email protected]English
    1•11 months ago

    All good answers here, here is what I got to say:

    • a lot of things could have resulted in such a thing and it is hard to give a definitive answer to your question without knowing everything I need to know, there may be and probably many privacy holes in your system and by system I mean your OS, software and your accounts settings on the internet
    • maybe you both wanna take a look at a summary of discord ToS, you might wanna keep tosdr in your bookmarks it is pretty handy and an awesome resource, anyway, are you convinced now? Ready to switch to a privacy-respecting alternative? Apparently there are some privacy-respecting Discord alternatives but IDK which to recommend as idk anything about them (at 1st I was going to recommend Telegram, matrix and signal but these are not a direct Discord alternative although you can use them to chat with your friend just fine)
    • switch to a privacy-respecting browser, I recommend Firefox to fight against the chromium/blink monopoly
    • opt out of all types of optional tracking/telemetry in everything you have
    • if you are willing to: look into setting up a system-wide ad/tracking blocker something like a PiHole or Adguard home