Check your youtube viewing history!

[WonderCow]

I've been awol for a while because my tablet died and I couldn't remember my password. Lol.

Anyhow, my new tablet is super efficient and likes to send me notifications. I kept getting 'shared controls' notifications  from youtube,  Hmm, I thought, what's that all about?
A quick search on the interwebs led me to Reddit, where people were freaking out because there were random videos in their youtube history that they had never and would never watch, some in foreign languages, some had apparently been watched at times when they were asleep or at work,  


So I decided to check my youtube history. Sure enough, there's a  load of stuff I didn't watch, like Disney stuff and things a little kid would watch. 

I've cleared my history and paused it, and the notifications have stopped. I don't think it's a hack, I'm pretty  sure it's  the autoplay function generating ad income for youtube surreptitiously.

[BIAD]

I've been awol for a while because my tablet died and I couldn't remember my password. Lol.

Anyhow, my new tablet is super efficient and likes to send me notifications. I kept getting 'shared controls' notifications  from youtube,  Hmm, I thought, what's that all about?
A quick search on the interwebs led me to Reddit, where people were freaking out because there were random videos in their youtube history that they had never and would never watch, some in foreign languages, some had apparently been watched at times when they were asleep or at work,  


So I decided to check my youtube history. Sure enough, there's a  load of stuff I didn't watch, like Disney stuff and things a little kid would watch. 

I've cleared my history and paused it, and the notifications have stopped. I don't think it's a hack, I'm pretty  sure it's  the autoplay function generating ad income for youtube surreptitiously.

I can believe that! I never log-in to YouTube and now I'm wondering if it makes any difference!

[WonderCow]

I've been awol for a while because my tablet died and I couldn't remember my password. Lol.

Anyhow, my new tablet is super efficient and likes to send me notifications. I kept getting 'shared controls' notifications  from youtube,  Hmm, I thought, what's that all about?
A quick search on the interwebs led me to Reddit, where people were freaking out because there were random videos in their youtube history that they had never and would never watch, some in foreign languages, some had apparently been watched at times when they were asleep or at work,  


So I decided to check my youtube history. Sure enough, there's a  load of stuff I didn't watch, like Disney stuff and things a little kid would watch. 

I've cleared my history and paused it, and the notifications have stopped. I don't think it's a hack, I'm pretty  sure it's  the autoplay function generating ad income for youtube surreptitiously.

I can believe that! I never log-in to YouTube and now I'm wondering if it makes any difference!

We watch a lot of youtube on the telly, we never log in, but in the previously viewed section there is a lot of stuff that we haven't watched, but it seems to be there because we momentarily clicked those videos to get to the ones we wanted to watch.

About six months ago I read an article where youtube were congratulating themselves on an enormous increase in advertising revenue. This is how they did it.

[NightskyeB4Dawn]

I've been awol for a while because my tablet died and I couldn't remember my password. Lol.

Anyhow, my new tablet is super efficient and likes to send me notifications. I kept getting 'shared controls' notifications  from youtube,  Hmm, I thought, what's that all about?
A quick search on the interwebs led me to Reddit, where people were freaking out because there were random videos in their youtube history that they had never and would never watch, some in foreign languages, some had apparently been watched at times when they were asleep or at work,  


So I decided to check my youtube history. Sure enough, there's a  load of stuff I didn't watch, like Disney stuff and things a little kid would watch. 

I've cleared my history and paused it, and the notifications have stopped. I don't think it's a hack, I'm pretty  sure it's  the autoplay function generating ad income for youtube surreptitiously.

I can believe that! I never log-in to YouTube and now I'm wondering if it makes any difference!

We watch a lot of youtube on the telly, we never log in, but in the previously viewed section there is a lot of stuff that we haven't watched, but it seems to be there because we momentarily clicked those videos to get to the ones we wanted to watch.

About six months ago I read an article where youtube were congratulating themselves on an enormous increase in advertising revenue. This is how they did it.

My history is accurate, but I have had times that my feed will show a bunch of stuff I would never watch, with the majority of the videos being in Chinese.

First time it happened, I checked to make sure it had not accidentally changed country in the settings, it had not.

I thought it was strange the first time, but it has happened several times since, so I just thought it was the real owners dropping their guard for a minute or two.

[hounddoghowlie]

I've been awol for a while because my tablet died and I couldn't remember my password. Lol.

Anyhow, my new tablet is super efficient and likes to send me notifications. I kept getting 'shared controls' notifications  from youtube,  Hmm, I thought, what's that all about?
A quick search on the interwebs led me to Reddit, where people were freaking out because there were random videos in their youtube history that they had never and would never watch, some in foreign languages, some had apparently been watched at times when they were asleep or at work,  


So I decided to check my youtube history. Sure enough, there's a  load of stuff I didn't watch, like Disney stuff and things a little kid would watch. 

I've cleared my history and paused it, and the notifications have stopped. I don't think it's a hack, I'm pretty  sure it's  the autoplay function generating ad income for youtube surreptitiously.

I checked mine and as best as my CRS allows it seems to be only videos that i watched. Now there are the occasional ones that I didn't turn off the auto play and left a tab open that ran several after the one I watched. I have found open tabs that they were running from time to time. I can only guess that i didn't know they were running cause I couldn't hear them over the headphones when I pulled them off.

[rickymouse]

I don't even know how to check my youtube history.  I don't have an account, is that only if you have an account?  I clear my history on the computer every night to deter it from sending me commercials about things I view...does that get rid of you-tube history too?

[WonderCow]

I don't even know how to check my youtube history.  I don't have an account, is that only if you have an account?  I clear my history on the computer every night to deter it from sending me commercials about things I view...does that get rid of you-tube history too?

I think it mainly affects android devices,  most people were worried about their phones. I wouldn't have had any idea if my tablet hadn't flagged it up. I wonder how long this has been going on?

[Schmoe1]

I've been awol for a while because my tablet died and I couldn't remember my password. Lol.

Anyhow, my new tablet is super efficient and likes to send me notifications. I kept getting 'shared controls' notifications  from youtube,  Hmm, I thought, what's that all about?
A quick search on the interwebs led me to Reddit, where people were freaking out because there were random videos in their youtube history that they had never and would never watch, some in foreign languages, some had apparently been watched at times when they were asleep or at work,  


So I decided to check my youtube history. Sure enough, there's a  load of stuff I didn't watch, like Disney stuff and things a little kid would watch. 

I've cleared my history and paused it, and the notifications have stopped. I don't think it's a hack, I'm pretty  sure it's  the autoplay function generating ad income for youtube surreptitiously.

It's the funniest thing that you just posted this thread, I went through my history trying to find a video I watched and a lot of weird videos came up that I would never watch.  Like rap videos.  Not for me, I'm a metalhead....

I don't know what to make of it.

[Ninurta]

Through the intricacies of the inter-spy-webs, I cannot go to YouTube without "logging in", as my Google account automatically logs me in, and I've found no way to prevent that. So who I am logged in as is entirely dependent on which Google e-mail I've had active most recently.

I think you are right, that it is just an underhanded means of pumping up YouTube ad revenue, I keep "autoplay" turned off, because having another video start up that I never asked for annoys the hell out of me... but about a month ago, YouTube was acting strangely. No matter what I set autoplay to, and no matter how many times I set the theme to a dark one, every new video I started reset the account to defaults, giving me a glaring white screen with autoplay back in action. That lasted about a week until it got so annoying I stopped going to YouTube, and after a week of that, it went back to normal.

.

[fishertail]

Autoplay was one of youtube's best cash milking ideas. I hated it the moment it came out.
I was relieved when I found out there is an off button for it. I keep my history off and only use it rarely... and even then only for music 99% of the time save for a random animal video.
I dislike the nanny vibe of youtube. The day they did away with the thumbs-downs was a bad omen. Not a big fan.

[Wizzz]

Oh Dear God!  Who's been watching all those cheer leader videos at 3am?!?!?!?
Oh.....uuummmm......never mind.....carry on.......