💾 Archived View for gemini.ctrl-c.club › ~stack › gemlog › 2023-01-15.tracking.gmi captured on 2023-06-16 at 17:19:12. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Every now and then I forget where/when I live, and a head-slapping moment, such as this one occurs. And so...
I am kind of privacy-minded. I generally avoid all things google as much as practicable (which is not much these days). One of the ways I do that is by not using the main Web as much as possible. But lately I got bored by mainstream media and succumbed to watching youtube.
It becomes pretty obvious how youtube builds a bubble for you based on your watching habits. And it's pretty interesting to watch how the ads thrown at you are adjusted to the algorithm's idea of who you are. I will mention that lately I've been getting ads for schizophrenia drugs, which I find amuzing. I think the choice of what I am watching is correlated with mental illness!
Anyway, today after watching one of those 'curious things we found on AliExpress' videos I became vaguely interested in the Xiaomi Mi-6/7 Smart Band devices. I wouldn't mind monitoring my steps and heart rate as recently I've been running a lot. Ironically I thought it would be more private than the mainstream Google devices.
Coincidentally I just installed Xubuntu onto a notebook that was sitting around unused, and did a clean install of Librewolf, which is a relatively private browser. I checked AliExpress, and a couple of minutes later, a GitHub repo for an opensource project that provides alternate ways to read a number of devices (thus avoiding the manufacturers' spying apps).
A minute later, youtube was suggesting an advertorial for a smartwatch. I did not expect it to be that fast.
But then I realized that I've been inundated with the apple smartwatch ads ever since I started running, which of course, google knows about from the phone. And I feel a bit stupid to be so surprised, but there is definitely an escalation because of my internet activities.
I am considering an experiment - still hazy on details, but something along the lines of intensely searching for some specific high-margin product using Tor and seeing if my youtube changes in that direction.
I did leak a lot of privacy bits here, starting with watching that video (but there were a dozen products reviewed..) Did I rewind to rewatch the smartwatch section? maybe. I did use AliExpress with a clean LibreWolf install without extra privacy addons I usually employ. But still.
The whole thing is really creepy.