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Ask HN: Does Google use Gmail content to influence YouTube recommendations?

8 pointsby jeremyleachalmost 5 years ago
I&#x27;m working on a new version of my webapp, Muzoti.<p>I&#x27;d just finished sending an email in Gmail to a friend saying how I needed to allow users to choose the key and mode of the scale for their generated piece. The exact text was:<p>&quot;Sure. I think a popup dialog screen should go there that allows you to choose scale, mode, track length etc.&quot;<p>Literally 5 minutes later I switched to YouTube and the first recommended video was one by Guy Mitchelmore teaching how different modes work in scales. Specifically: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Agln4_z8D8I<p>I thought that was an incredible coincidence as I don&#x27;t remember seeing any of his videos before.<p>Later on though I started to wonder if Google was actually using my email content to decide what to show me in Youtube! Which, to me, feels completely sinister, even if solely algorithmic..<p>Does anyone know if they do this?

2 comments

highhedgehogalmost 5 years ago
I don&#x27;t know but I think this is no coincidence. Youtube has been part of Google long enough that I presume they have integrated them.
easytigeralmost 5 years ago
As an aside, is there a way to access all the data related to advertising from google?<p>I don&#x27;t see anything about it in google takeout.<p>In facebook you can retrieve such data quite easily and see what facebook api users have reported back to facebook about you on.