Author Topic: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube  (Read 9105 times)

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Offline Zero999

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #100 on: August 20, 2019, 03:36:46 pm »
I think Youtube is not allowed to keep a record of videos you watched due to privacy regulations.

YouTube definitely knows what videos I have seen and I don't even have a YT account nor am I logged in. Google and YT just identify the computer with a signature. They might not know my name, although I suspect they probably do, but they know what the user of this computer has been watching.
They just save a cookie on your computer and use it to identify you. Delete the cookie and they'll have no record of you.
 

Offline soldar

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #101 on: August 20, 2019, 03:52:50 pm »
They just save a cookie on your computer and use it to identify you. Delete the cookie and they'll have no record of you.

Nope. It is not through cookies. All my cookies are automatically deleted on exit. Not cookies.

Like Teamviewer, they compute a "signature" of the computer and the only way to change that is to change the physical configuration.

In Teamviewer I can reinstall the OS and TeamViewer and still be assigned the same ID. Change the physical configuration and the ID changes.

I once read an interesting page explaining how this is done but cannot find it now. It can be done by a combination of hardware identification and software. Create a signature that is based on a combination of say, browser used, add-ons, configuration, other software like codecs, etc, hardware, .... heck just the network card's MAC address is unique if the software can get it. There are many ways to get a unique signature for a computer.

Youtube definitely does not use cookies to identify me because no matter what, they are deleted every time I exit. And some sites will say "enable cookies".

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Offline paulca

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #102 on: August 20, 2019, 05:18:09 pm »
Like Teamviewer, they compute a "signature" of the computer and the only way to change that is to change the physical configuration.

Ah.  Teamviewer.  The ultimate Trojan.  Never seen a higher security threat than that service.
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Offline PlainName

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #103 on: August 20, 2019, 05:21:07 pm »
Quote
Delete the cookie and they'll have no record of you.

There are common or garden cookies, and under-the-radar cookies.

Besides which, particular machines can be fingerprinted and identified uniquely via various parameters your browser will let slip. I would feel safe placing money on Google doing that without shouting about it. Hell, they would do it just because they can and figure how to monetize it later.
 

Offline soldar

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #104 on: August 20, 2019, 06:20:03 pm »
Ah.  Teamviewer.  The ultimate Trojan.  Never seen a higher security threat than that service.

I have seen no evidence of this and have always heard good things about it. I do not want to hijack this thread so if you feel like sharing your evidence and experience I would be interested in reading about it in a thread I started about TeamViewer in the computer section or you can start a new thread there if you prefer. I would like to know what vulnerabilities have been discovered.
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Online Bud

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #105 on: August 20, 2019, 07:00:24 pm »
I once read an interesting page explaining how this is done but cannot find it now. It can be done by a combination of hardware identification and software. Create a signature that is based on a combination of say, browser used, add-ons, configuration, other software like codecs, etc, hardware, .... heck just the network card's MAC address is unique if the software can get it. There are many ways to get a unique signature for a computer.
In Windows you do not have to go through that acrobatics, there is a single API call that does it for you.
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Offline soldar

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #106 on: August 20, 2019, 07:19:06 pm »
In Windows you do not have to go through that acrobatics, there is a single API call that does it for you.

I figure that's how they tie the license number to the hardware.
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Offline magic

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #107 on: August 20, 2019, 07:48:42 pm »
One doesn't simply call Windows API from JavaScript, though :)

But soldar is right, plenty of information can be gathered by JS such as browser version, supported video formats and plugins, screen resolution, supposedly something about browser addons too. Also IP you are connecting from, time at which you use your computer, what things you search for, how it correlates with searches from other machines on the same IP, I'm sure the list is long.
 

Offline KL27x

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #108 on: August 20, 2019, 07:53:52 pm »
Google knows who you are. And unless you use a VPN, your internet provider potentially knows everything you have watched or done online, too.

Quote
Why present videos to people that they know they have already watched?
I have played around with this for a bit, now. And I only ever see the occasional repeat in my sidefeed, maybe 1-2... with one exception. On occasion if I watch a machining-related video, I may get several old videos.... from the same channel, ToT. But ToT happens to be the only machining related channel I'm subbed to. And I have just so happened to have already watched nearly all the videos on his channel. And, I have actually watched several of his videos twice, on purpose.

So my feed doesn't appear super broken.

 

Offline SparkyFX

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #109 on: August 20, 2019, 09:03:56 pm »
Tracking without cookies is not a new thing: search for E-Tag Tracking, in short it does work by a cache identifier that is transmitted when checking if a site changed for the browser to see if it needs to reload the content.
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Offline KL27x

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #110 on: August 20, 2019, 09:17:48 pm »
Yep. Delete a cookie? LOL.
If you want to see what YouTube will show a "blank slate," you can use Chrome incognito mode. Then Google will pretend it doesn't recognize you.
 

Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #111 on: August 20, 2019, 10:19:11 pm »
This is insanity. Why present videos to people that they know they have already watched?
All it does it piss people off.
And it's not just one or two occasionally, for my feed it's sometimes half of the recommended videos.
It never used to do this.
Can it be that people edit the description or title of a video afterwards, which does enqueue it new into peoples feeds? I have the impression that it mostly affects videos i watched right after release.

No, the video ID remains the same.
Some HUGE change happened to the Recommended algorithm so it now spews up old videos you've already watched. It's either very deliberate, or they have somehow "reset" all the info of previous videos you've watched over the years.
 

Offline SparkyFX

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #112 on: August 20, 2019, 10:52:43 pm »
Maybe it is just some cache clearing or a problem with synchronization of which videos have been watched by who in the/between several data center(s) (you don´t always end up in the same). Might just be some technical error after all... some guys are a bit quick with the conspiracy theories  :-DD.

My thinking went: once you change the description or add some other metadata that part technically would need to be reindexed wherever that is, maybe that resets some other entries as well.
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Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #113 on: August 20, 2019, 11:39:14 pm »
And unless you use a VPN, your internet provider potentially knows everything you have watched or done online, too.
Thanks to HTTPS, they can tell what sites you have visited but not what you did on those sites. (E.g. It's easy to figure out that you watch Youtube, but to figure out what videos you have watched, they can only guess based on file size, a difficult task with such a vast library.) With DNSSEC, they'll have to do reverse IP lookups even to figure out what sites you have visited. And then comes a way to add some noise to make that slightly more difficult: seed some legal torrents.
Tracking without cookies is not a new thing: search for E-Tag Tracking, in short it does work by a cache identifier that is transmitted when checking if a site changed for the browser to see if it needs to reload the content.
So if you have fast, unlimited Internet, disable the cache to disable one more tracking mechanism? I would be surprised if they're not using IP address tracking, since a VPN or Tor is pretty much the only way to defeat that at home. Or be (un)lucky enough to be using community Wifi with dozens of users on the same IP.
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Offline wilfred

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #114 on: August 21, 2019, 12:53:10 am »
This is insanity. Why present videos to people that they know they have already watched?
All it does it piss people off.
And it's not just one or two occasionally, for my feed it's sometimes half of the recommended videos.
It never used to do this.
Can it be that people edit the description or title of a video afterwards, which does enqueue it new into peoples feeds? I have the impression that it mostly affects videos i watched right after release.

No, the video ID remains the same.
Some HUGE change happened to the Recommended algorithm so it now spews up old videos you've already watched. It's either very deliberate, or they have somehow "reset" all the info of previous videos you've watched over the years.

Or they are seeing IF people will watch videos twice. Does it matter to YT if someone watches the same content twice? I am watching repeats of the X-Files and Season 3 of Bosch right now on FTA TV.  I think YT wants to appear to most viewers, who see the YT app on their smart TV next to Netflix, as another TV channel.

I also rewatch YT videos. I've watched your video #110 at least 3 times. and years apart. Admittedly I don't need a recommendation from YT to help me choose.

In fact I see the appearance of a YT icon on smart TVs as the true underlying cause of the changes YT has made of late.


And it is very deliberate. Don't bother to doubt it. Their bottom line depends on it directly.

I see the changes in the algorithm as very like the flow of water in a river. The current will carry most (viewers) along the path of least resistance. The sporadic patches of turbulence only matters to the obstacle that generated it. Minor grumbles from viewers here and content creators (ie. the obstacles) will continue to diminish in significance. As with almost everything these day I look at it as a manifestation of Darwinian Natural Selection. The changes that work will stay and those that don't, won't. The AI behind it will become self aware soon and it will introduce it's own changes. If YT can't survive profitably then the algorithm will die.
 

Offline schmitt trigger

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #115 on: August 21, 2019, 02:37:22 am »
“The Algorithm”.
Sounds like a sinister ploy straight out from The Matrix movie.

Sadly, this time is true.
 

Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #116 on: August 21, 2019, 04:22:43 am »
My thinking went: once you change the description or add some other metadata that part technically would need to be reindexed wherever that is, maybe that resets some other entries as well.

Nope, description and metadata can be changed on a whim, and Youtubers often do that and experiment in real time if a video is not performing as expected.
 

Offline SparkyFX

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #117 on: August 21, 2019, 10:40:53 am »
The current will carry most (viewers) along the path of least resistance.
Which is the autoplay feature.

Nope, description and metadata can be changed on a whim, and Youtubers often do that and experiment in real time if a video is not performing as expected.
Sure, but then it will trigger a reindexing of some sort, otherwise it would be displayed/found/considered by recommendations/autoplay with the old data (the creator would see it as an error if changes are not made instantly). All of these would need to respect if the video has already been watched (at least people think it is not as expected/an error). It takes some time until such changes get through all associated databases, maybe a change to the metadata creates some race condition which leads to recommend an already watched video again.
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Offline paulca

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #118 on: August 21, 2019, 10:45:51 am »
Think of your children when you are trying to get them out of your hair for an hour by plopping them in front of the TV.

What do you put on for them?

Well I know that I will pick things that I know they have watched intently before so that I know they will stay in front of the TV.  If I experiment and put something new on and they don't like it, they will arrive in the lab with questions and mischief.

In this analogy we are the children, YouTube is the parents trying to get their kids to watch something intently adverts.
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Offline jancumps

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Re: World's first professional Youtuber quits Youtube
« Reply #119 on: August 21, 2019, 11:53:35 am »
I have the same experience with recommendations. It doesn’t show videos I’d be interested in anymore.

Maybe they want to make the user experience so bad for a while that, when they release the algorithm they really want to use, it is seen as a little step forwards instead of a big leap back?
 


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