Hi,

I was wondering about the services I can’t boycott. Youtube being one.

If youtubes value is my usage data, can I obfuscate their data by liking things I don’t really care about, changing my info, and get irrelevant ads, thus making the advertising product less effective and valuable?

And create some doubt about value in the mind of advertisers in the proces?

I’m not dumb enough to think it matters if only I do it. But if it was a movement?

  • morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    6·
    9 hours ago

    Unless you can automate that with a script that runs in the background, it sounds like a pretty time-intensive thing to do. What really matters to YouTube is retention, so if you spend more time loading videos - albeit irrelevant to you - it’s still watch time they can monetize. I wouldn’t bet too heavily on that strategy.

    Ad-blocking is still the most efficient way to hurt their bottom line, considering how hard they fight it.

    • kwr112233OPEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      I’d need some way of getting the random things to follow. I was thinking a plugin like the good old stumbleUpon days.

      I’m om youtube, bam it suggests something to fuck with their tracking. I click. Done.

      Same on fb.

      I’ve done it manually on fb and it had the weird effect of just making fb sooooo boring. After a while it was real easy to just delete.

      But yeah for sure, adblockers also count :)

    • Dyskolos@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      6 hours ago

      This. If you totally have to use the horrible YouTubcrap, disable all ads. I have never seen an ad on yt until I saw a friend use it and watch like 3 ads in a single, short stupid video. What the…