Why You can Never Hide from YouTube

This is a supposition generated from within my brain; I have no factual knowledge of what goes on at YouTube. Or any other social media platform for that matter.

The wizard of Oz remains behind the curtains, pulling the strings, …

Let us suppose that for a valid reason you want YouTube to know nothing about you.

In YouTube you have turned OFF your watch history . And you have cancelled all your subscriptions. In your favorite browser you have learned how to Clear History at the end of each session. As a rugged old warrior of DOS, you have written a batch file to clear the RAMDisk drive of cache and other temporary files related to your activity. You've invoked RegEdit to define your computer's behaviour.

There is, to the best of your knowledge, now no need for you to hide under a bush. You have swept your tracks clean after every binge-watch of James Veitch and Matt's MORR videos.

Surprise!

Today you watched two or three videos triggered by your interest in a news report, and waddyaknow YouTube has popped a James Veitch or Matt's MORR video into that pane of suggestions on the right-hand side of your screen.

Plus a few others from your viewing binges of a few days ago.

How did YouTube track you down? Is your ghillie suit ripped or torn, revealing your vermillion T-shirt?

Sort of.

Despite the fact that you are unique, and despite your belief that there is no one else with your weird set of interests (mitochondrial DNA, origins of the Third Balkan War, the wheat-bin siding at Walgoolan, and a swimming-place at the railway bridge over The Swan River at Guildford in Western Australia) you are not unique.

There are other folks, male or female, with an interest in Matt's Off-Road Recovery. There are other people with an interest in DNA. And how many students have passed through Governor Stirling Senior High School since your time there in 1959-1963?

Lots.

If we take all the YouTube videos you have watched in the past session, we will find Western-Australians who study the BBC online news, follow the Blue Jays baseball team, and want a newer recipe for apple crumble. That means that you fit into a coded group known as Group "Zmxruvbj70554751X689gvqjpmyt"

You might still be unique, but you have been shoehorned – until your next choice of video – into a group of like-minded individuals; and since their interests are well-known because they did not turn off their watch history, YouTube can offer a custom-tailored choice of videos for you, modelled on its custom-tailored choice of videos for the rest of group "Zmxruvbj70554751X689gvqjpmyt"

Neat, eh?