
Logged out - patwalls
https://patwalls.com/logged-out
======
amadeuspagel
Youtube's recommendation algorithm is one of the wonders of the modern world.
I discovered so many incredible videos that I would never have searched for
and that no one would have recommended to me, thanks to it.

~~~
scottoreily
Nice anecdote. YouTube constantly recommends _me_ stuff I have 0 interest in.

~~~
ubercow13
Did you give it any useful information? I mean for example, I am subscribed to
a bunch of channels about music theory, and Youtube will put other videos
about music theory and analysis in my feed. They are highly relevant and at
least somewhat popular, so usually reasonable quality. Sometimes it will start
recommending videos from a channel that is not so good, and you can tell it to
never show you that channel again.

If you only watch random Youtube videos linked from other sites with no
particular theme, or generic news and political videos, or don't subscribe to
any channels, I can imagine the recommendations would be pretty useless. But
the algorithm does seem pretty good at recommending things related to your
interests if those are clear from what you watch and subscribe to. It's
probably the only recommendation engine I find useful.

~~~
patwalls
My point is less about the content being useful/interesting and more about
being mindful of our information diet.

How many videos do you need to watch about music theory? Does it ever feel
like the same content but regurgitated in different ways? Do you watch this to
genuinely learn? Or is it more enjoyment/infotainment? (honest questions)

I don't study music theory, but this is how I feel about productivity/self-
help/business videos, which dominate my feed. Although these videos were life
changing at one point, I'm not sure how much more value I'm getting by
continuing to watch these anymore. When I get to the end of these videos,
nowadays, I just feel a bit 'bleh'.

It feels nice to find new, refreshing content that is completely outside of
what the youtube algo would give me, and sometimes that happens by talking to
friends (esp in different industries), reading books, old blog posts, etc. I
want to stay curious and proactive in finding discovering new things and
hobbies and interests.

~~~
ubercow13
I appreciate the general point of being careful about one's information diet.
It's easy to fool yourself into thinking what you're consuming is bettering
you, when it's really just entertainment (I consider HN to be a good example
of this!)

Regarding Youtube and music education, I feel like it's a pretty healthy
stream of content.

>Does it ever feel like the same content but regurgitated in different ways?

Learning an instrument is such a challenging and broad topic, there's no
shortage of things to learn. One thing I like about Youtube is that the better
content can surface for everyone to access. Finding a good teacher in real
life can be tricky, but with Youtube I can watch 10 different people's takes
on a topic and see which explanation clicks for me.

>Do you watch this to genuinely learn? Or is it more enjoyment/infotainment?

It's both. Staying motivated, interested and enthusiastic is just as important
as the learning itself. Often watching a good performance or explanation of
some musical idea is what makes me want to pick up my guitar in the first
place. Of course there's a balance to be found - just watching videos about
things you would do if you weren't so busy watching videos isn't much use.

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marcinzm
I have a curated list of subreddits I follow on reddit without any of the
large default meme-spam ones. Without that reddit is basically useless to me
as I don't need even more meme-spam in my life. Same with twitter, I use it to
follow some engineers and artists while avoiding the mainstream accounts that
have no relevance to me. I honestly want to know what these people are up so
as it's usually either beautiful or interesting or insightful.

~~~
mimimi31
I use Multireddits for that. They let you view a custom feed by concatenating
subreddit names in the URL. No need for login or subscriptions.

E.g.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux+privacy](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux+privacy)

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gruez
This is pretty easy to do with firefox, just use the multi account containers
and the temporary containers extension. During normal browsing you use
temporary containers, which keeps you logged out and avoids anonymous session
tracking. If you need to log in all you need to do is right click the tab and
reopen in your dedicated "logged in" container

~~~
pteraspidomorph
Can't you just use a private window?

~~~
noman-land
Private windows are all linked to each other. Different private windows are
not in different private sessions. They all share the same private session, so
It's not really the same.

~~~
pteraspidomorph
Interesting, I didn't know that. Seems clear from the language in the initial
view of the private window, but I hadn't really paid attention before.

This isn't how I think private windows should work. They should be fully
isolated (tabs within the same private window could share a session, though).

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caiobegotti
Because I find video recommendations useful, because I want to upvote good
content on the internet just like I do here on HN and because I actually have
a nice timeline with curated content. The points of the article are rather
weak to me, specially considering you are supposed to have good security for
your accounts so even if you decide to actively log out yourself the next time
you'd like to interact with any of these networks you will at least have to go
through a manual login, 2FA using your phone and an authenticator app etc,
it's a bummer so convenience wins there. If this is a problem then, I believe
convincing people to never save login passwords in their browsers is more
compelling than suggesting to log out. That said, if I could log in with Face
ID in like 2 seconds everywhere I'd probably stay logged out until I wanted to
interact in SOME networks.

~~~
codetrotter
With a MacBook Air and iPhone it's not too much hassle.

I use Touch ID on the MacBook Air to fill in the username and password, and
then I open the 2FA app on my iPhone and tap the code to copy it. The
clipboard is synchronised between the MacBook Air and the iPhone in their out-
of-box configuration, so I can immediately paste the 2FA code on the MacBook
Air by just pressing ⌘+V.

Thanks to this, I log out a lot of the time.

However, to make it even more friction-less I am also going to make a simple
little 2FA app myself for the MacBook Air, where I just glue together a couple
of libraries and make it more effortless than having to touch the phone at
all.

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agakshat
> Why do we need to be constantly logged in to YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, and
> Twitter?...These apps all work fine anonymously

Instagram most certainly does not work without logging in. I don't have an
account, and it only lets you see at max 1 or 2 posts before prompting (and
mandating) a login. Also, I don't know how Twitter is useful without being
logged in - you're just seeing the "trending", very little of which is
statistically likely to be interesting to you.

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liammonahan
Even if you log out don’t they still know who you are based on IP or other
fingerprints to serve relevant content? Anecdotally I’ve been on online
shopping sites that will email me my cart to ask if I want to check out even
when I’m not logged in, so it seems unlikely that you’ll be any more anonymous
by signing out.

~~~
gruez
IP: use commercial VPN so you blend in with thousands of other users

fingerprinting: use firefox and turn on resistfingerprinting

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Darky
Having a browsable & searchable history of "every youtube video ever watched
on any device" is something pretty valuable to me.

~~~
gruez
Just use your local browsing history?

~~~
dan_can_code
That doesn't cover the 'on any device' requirement.

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timelincoln
Today being logged out might equate to choosing the “default” view of the
world (as far as the internet is concerned) while the AI creates a view for
every “logged in” person that distorts the world to fit their biases almost
completely

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jypepin
I am subscribed to a lot of small subreddit I would not see content from if I
wasn't logged in.

I follow people on Twitter.

But most importantly, I _really_ started using youtube about a year ago. I
replaced my TV watching at 90% (everything except movies at night). Not only I
am subscribed to enough channels that there are at least 2-3 new videos per
day I would want to watch, the recommendations algorithm is very good and I
can literally go on Youtube multiple times a day and be recommended new videos
that I like and introduce me to new channels I will subscribe to.

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kyriakos
Reddit is a pointless stream of memes if you are not logged in to see your
subscribed subreddits.

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wrs
YouTube still recommends content when you’re logged out. In fact, I used
YouTube for years logged out, and when I started having to log in because I
got YouTube Premium, I was unhappy to find all my recommendations reset! I’m
starting over from the generic recommendations (which are quite frankly a
little terrifying). I wish there was a way to move the recommendation data
between accounts.

~~~
wayneftw
I wish Reddit would implement a recommendation engine like YouTube. I don't
want to ever log into Reddit and I just treat it as my funny pages, but every
single day without fail I am subjected to all sorts of abhorrent, deviant
content that is essentially forced onto their "popular" timeline despite the
fact that it's not really popular.

Many times when you read the comments on these types of posts, if you sort by
controversial, you can see people asking "Why is this on the front page?" or,
just by counting the number of deleted comments you can see how unpopular that
content really is.

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lazyjones
But what is the benefit of logging out? It's not like these websites can't
track you and your interests anyway.

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mgraczyk
Question for anyone working on ranking at Youtube:

Recommendation quality got way worse ~March of this year, presumably due to
capacity restrictions after a surge in post-shutdown usage. Anecdotally, the
quality has not recovered and is still worse than pre-COVID. Is my experience
widespread? What's going on?

I ask as somebody working on a similar product, where capacity caused
recommendation quality degradation in March/April but recovered soon after.

~~~
lostmsu
Maybe you just run out of interesting content to watch?

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worik
Golly.

I almost never log in to any of those services. Am I missing out? Yikes. Self
doubt starts, gnawing at me....

~~~
derefr
Presuming you "browse" the service (e.g. look at whatever equivalent it has to
a front page), you're seeing only the "mainstream" of its content, without any
"niche" content.

For many of these services, most of the reason that people even use/recommend
them is that they allow each person to conveniently "browse" within the set of
long-tail niches that interest them. Reddit, for one, is certainly not popular
_because_ of its mainstream/default subreddits. It's popular in spite of them.

On the other hand, presuming you do no "browsing" of the service, but just get
linked to specific content on the service from elsewhere, you're pretty much
getting the full experience either way. (I think one difference is that some
services won't show you all the comments unless you log in; and sometimes the
comments themselves are what was interesting-enough to link to.)

Also, some particular services (e.g. YouTube) track you and build a viewer
profile of you even if you never create an account there, and so "browsing"
them will still result in niche content if that's what you've previously
visited there. But most services don't do this.

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peignoir
I like apple solution for that, logging using a randomized apple account ID
per service

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jabroni_salad
My tweetdeck layout is by far the most effective way to use twitter. My
youtube subscription page is my first port of call. Reddit.... its just highly
vexing if you aren't logged in.

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onyva
There’s invidio.us to avoid YouTube as much as possible.

Also, strongly disagrees with

    
    
      >> While logged in, my YouTube recommended feed is doing a great job of serving me interesting content - but is that a good thing?
    

I see one related item and then a barrage of the worst of humanity.

