[Info-vax] The Student System

[Martin Rushton]

On Tuesday, November 7, 2023 at 4:46:16 PM UTC, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2023-11-06 14:30, Simon Clubley wrote: 
> > On 2023-11-04, Scott Dorsey <klu... at panix.com> wrote: 
> >> In article <ui2rrr$2pmp3$2... at dont-email.me>, 
> >> Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote: 
> >>> On 2023-11-02, Chris Townley <ne... at cct-net.co.uk> wrote: 
> >>>> 
> >>>> I don't recall seeing any intrusive adverts on YouTube 
> >>> 
> >>> There are addons you can add to your own systems that you cannot add 
> >>> to work systems. I assume you are using one of those (unless you are 
> >>> paying for YT). 
> >> 
> >> Google maintains a profile of identifiable unique users. It includes 
> >> location information most of the time, and any accounts they can associate 
> >> with it. This profile is used to deliver ads to you that Youtube thinks 
> >> are relevant, and in this time of year in the US it includes a lot of 
> >> targetted political ads. 
> >> 
> >> This also determines the volume of ads you get. If I watch a video on 
> >> one side of Virginia, I will get far fewer ads than someone watching 
> >> the same video on the other (richer) side of the state. 
> >> 
> >> No two people get the same experience. 
> > 
> > I watch Youtube anonymously in private browsing mode, so there's no 
> > browsing history for it to work with.
> While I'm sometimes surprised by the amount of belief people have in 
> what Google might be doing (it's sometimes pretty far from reality), 
> sometimes I get surprised in the other direction as well. Like now. 
> Browsing in anonymous mode is not as anonymous as you might think. There 
> is a lot of information that can be extracted out, which can still be 
> used to get some pretty good idea of tracking of users. Sure, it's less 
> precise than what can be done in non-anonymous mode, but it's far from zero. 
> 
> Johnny
Try Duckduckgo as an alternative to Google browsing: https://duckduckgo.com/spread