I almost never watch “shorts” but my suggestions for it seem to have an…uhhh…adult theme. I don’t watch any such thing with YouTube. Does everyone see garbage like this?
I almost never watch “shorts” but my suggestions for it seem to have an…uhhh…adult theme. I don’t watch any such thing with YouTube. Does everyone see garbage like this?
They are tracking you even in incognito with a VPN and even across services. People have been using these types of tools for a very long time and porn sites have been tracking people all the while. Basically your devices have enough unique attributes accessible through JavaScript API like make model, screen resolution, bluetooth radio capabilities like ble, connection speed, etc. Basically brute force every data point available in the API and use the results to build a profile to recognize you. Tools like https://modernizr.com/ while not exactly intended for this still make it easier.
How is one supposed to prevent an API from doing this?
Air gap yourself or you can disable JavaScript. But who does that haha. Albeit many browsers allow you to disable JavaScript these days, it’s not a great experience. I will say that it’s hard to monetize these types of profiles because they are somewhat ephemeral and not always accurate. But they are good enough to use to increase engagement on a admin dashboard so that’s what happens. Also there is some considerations to be made in terms of how similar people could potentially buy similar devices and use them in similar ways producing similar profiles. Decisions are made by analysing engagement metrics without any awareness of the behavior that drives them. I think this is what might have led to what Google is pushing as the new model for tracking users instead of cookies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_Learning_of_Cohorts