Yesterday, I started watching a video on YouTube but closed out of my browser (Firefox) only a few minutes into the video.

I’ve got my Firefox set to delete all cookies, history, form data, etc on every close. (Pretty much everything but bookmarks.) The image on this post is a screenshot of my relevant settings.

Today, after having exited my browser and fully shut down my computer for a while, I remembered the video and decided to continue watching it.

In Firefox, I searched for the video (I used the search term “gnu taler” – something worth looking into especially for folks interested in this particular Lemmy community by the way). In the search results, the video I was searching for showed the red bar at the bottom indicating I’d watched only the first few minutes of it.

Which seems weird given that I’d cleared all my browser data since I watched the first few minutes.

So I did some experimentation. I closed my browser completely again and opened it back up, searched in YouTube, and it still had the indicator. I updated to the latest version of Firefox in the Arch package repository. Same indicator. I tried the same in Chromium (which I’ve also got set to delete all browser data on close). Still the indicator. I installed Tor Browser Bundle (specifically torbrowser-launcher on Arch Linux), changed none of the default settings at all, and searched in YouTube. The indicator is present. In Tor Browser Bundle.

W

T

F

?

Anybody have any idea how that’s possible?

My only guesses are:

  • That search is so niche as to be literally unique (which if true makes me sad – I really hope GNU Taler takes off and becomes widespread) and YouTube is using that to identify me.
  • YouTube doesn’t know where I left off at all. Not even my browser knows (because if it was my browser keeping track, it wouldn’t persist between browsers). It’s something else on my system that my browsers depend on or tap into.

The only other pieces of relevant info I can think to share:

  • There’s another video (also about GNU Taler) that I watched all the way through the same day that I started the video this post is about. It doesn’t show any indicator.
  • I tried searching on my phone’s browser. No indicator. But then I’m not sure my phone ever shows indicators. I haven’t tried this on any other devices on my network or anything.
  • I still haven’t watched the video in question. Heh.

Thanks in advance for any insight you might have.

  • TootSweet@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Also, did you return to that video with the same IP address as when you first watched it?

    That’s (part of) why I tried Tor Browser Bundle, though. Because it would give me a different IP address. (And when I visited YouTube via TBB, it gave me the little superscript after the YouTube logo indicating a different country than I was in.)

    I’ll just assume you didn’t log in to youtube when watching. :)

    Ha! Should have thought to mention that. But yes, you’re right. I didn’t log in or anything. (And for that matter, in every test I did, when I first got to the home page, I got the “search to get started” prompt that YouTube gives as of pretty recently when you don’t have any cookies on visiting the index page.)

    • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      I’m sure it’s tedious, but run those tests again, and when you do, before and after watching the video, go to https://www.youtube.com/feed/history and see if it tracked it. I understand you’re logged out, but maybe you’re somehow selected for a test of some sort of logged out experience.

      That being said, I ran through your replication steps and could not reproduce it (even down to pulling up the same video). I also doubt that Youtube would create a feature useful for people logged out of their service, since they want to encourage you to log in because they get better data for selling ads.

      • TootSweet@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        While logged out, https://www.youtube.com/feed/history gives me the following:

        "Watch history isn't available when signed out."

        And it’s still showing the indicator on the “gnu taler” search results page.

        I suppose it might be worth closing my browser, opening my browser, going to YouTube, logging in, and checking that page, though. It might at least give some information or something. I’ll try that here and see if it lists the video in question. I’ll update when I’m done.

        Edit: That video about GNU Taler does not show up in my viewing history while logged in. I tried viewing a random video while logged in and checking my viewing history and that random video shows up. But not the GNU Taler one that still has the indicator. I’m starting to think I’m losing my mind. Lol.