Logged out

Youtube's recommendation algorithm is one of the wonders of the modern world. I discovered so many incredible videos that I would never have searched for and that no one would have recommended to me, thanks to it.

I have a curated list of subreddits I follow on reddit without any of the large default meme-spam ones. Without that reddit is basically useless to me as I don't need even more meme-spam in my life. Same with twitter, I use it to follow some engineers and artists while avoiding the mainstream accounts that have no relevance to me. I honestly want to know what these people are up so as it's usually either beautiful or interesting or insightful.

This is pretty easy to do with firefox, just use the multi account containers and the temporary containers extension. During normal browsing you use temporary containers, which keeps you logged out and avoids anonymous session tracking. If you need to log in all you need to do is right click the tab and reopen in your dedicated "logged in" container

Because I find video recommendations useful, because I want to upvote good content on the internet just like I do here on HN and because I actually have a nice timeline with curated content. The points of the article are rather weak to me, specially considering you are supposed to have good security for your accounts so even if you decide to actively log out yourself the next time you'd like to interact with any of these networks you will at least have to go through a manual login, 2FA using your phone and an authenticator app etc, it's a bummer so convenience wins there. If this is a problem then, I believe convincing people to never save login passwords in their browsers is more compelling than suggesting to log out. That said, if I could log in with Face ID in like 2 seconds everywhere I'd probably stay logged out until I wanted to interact in SOME networks.

&gt; Why do we need to be constantly logged in to YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, and Twitter?...These apps all work fine anonymously<p>Instagram most certainly does not work without logging in. I don&#x27;t have an account, and it only lets you see at max 1 or 2 posts before prompting (and mandating) a login. Also, I don&#x27;t know how Twitter is useful without being logged in - you&#x27;re just seeing the &quot;trending&quot;, very little of which is statistically likely to be interesting to you.

Even if you log out don’t they still know who you are based on IP or other fingerprints to serve relevant content? Anecdotally I’ve been on online shopping sites that will email me my cart to ask if I want to check out even when I’m not logged in, so it seems unlikely that you’ll be any more anonymous by signing out.

Having a browsable &amp; searchable history of &quot;every youtube video ever watched on any device&quot; is something pretty valuable to me.

Today being logged out might equate to choosing the “default” view of the world (as far as the internet is concerned) while the AI creates a view for every “logged in” person that distorts the world to fit their biases almost completely

I am subscribed to a lot of small subreddit I would not see content from if I wasn&#x27;t logged in.<p>I follow people on Twitter.<p>But most importantly, I _really_ started using youtube about a year ago. I replaced my TV watching at 90% (everything except movies at night). Not only I am subscribed to enough channels that there are at least 2-3 new videos per day I would want to watch, the recommendations algorithm is very good and I can literally go on Youtube multiple times a day and be recommended new videos that I like and introduce me to new channels I will subscribe to.

Reddit is a pointless stream of memes if you are not logged in to see your subscribed subreddits.

YouTube still recommends content when you’re logged out. In fact, I used YouTube for years logged out, and when I started having to log in because I got YouTube Premium, I was unhappy to find all my recommendations reset! I’m starting over from the generic recommendations (which are quite frankly a little terrifying). I wish there was a way to move the recommendation data between accounts.

But what is the benefit of logging out? It&#x27;s not like these websites can&#x27;t track you and your interests anyway.

Question for anyone working on ranking at Youtube:<p>Recommendation quality got way worse ~March of this year, presumably due to capacity restrictions after a surge in post-shutdown usage. Anecdotally, the quality has not recovered and is still worse than pre-COVID. Is my experience widespread? What&#x27;s going on?<p>I ask as somebody working on a similar product, where capacity caused recommendation quality degradation in March&#x2F;April but recovered soon after.

Golly.<p>I almost never log in to any of those services. Am I missing out? Yikes. Self doubt starts, gnawing at me....

I like apple solution for that, logging using a randomized apple account ID per service

My tweetdeck layout is by far the most effective way to use twitter. My youtube subscription page is my first port of call. Reddit.... its just highly vexing if you aren&#x27;t logged in.

There’s invidio.us to avoid YouTube as much as possible.<p>Also, strongly disagrees with<p><pre><code> &gt;&gt; While logged in, my YouTube recommended feed is doing a great job of serving me interesting content - but is that a good thing? </code></pre> I see one related item and then a barrage of the worst of humanity.