As a google user, what... what am I doing ~~wrong~~ right?
Using a browser instead of the YouTube app?
Unless you're talking about Google links then yes. Amazon too, along with many other services. There's a ClearURLs Firefox add-on to remove them automatically.
But it's insidious with YouTube because people are much more likely to share YouTube videos on a public forum, and they just randomly started doing it one day.
You know that ?si= at the end of the YouTube URL that is copied when you share a video from within the YouTube app?
That's an individual tracking ID specific to you. So if you've ever shared a YouTube video on lemmy, reddit, Facebook, tiktok, or anywhere else without removing that code one time, anyone at Google with access to the ID system can now link you to that account with your real name, IP address and time accessed, device name, etc.
Something smells funny here, but I can't put my finger in it.
That... doesn't look like a makeshift crack pipe to smoke DMT?
Maybe Vic and Garfield had more ethnobotany knowledge than the comic let on and they're puffing changa. Maybe that's why Garfield can talk.
These days?
We live in the most peaceful time in human history. We just also live in the most informationally accessable time, so you get a constant stream about new violence and inhumanity happening hundreds or thousands of miles from you.
Join an intentional community and trade your smartphone in for a dumb phone. You'll have some disagreements with people, and once in a while there may be a fight with violence, but by and large this is a peaceful time. You won't have the state threatening violence against you for keeping to yourselves. You won't be taken over by a competing state unless you already lived in an unstable region of the globe.
By and large things are great. The corporatized internet has done a number on the minds of the global population, keeping everyone scared, where now someone letting their 10 year old walk to school in a decent neighborhood is reason enough for multiple calls to the police. Shooting someone for ringing their doorbell. Having family-breaking arguments over people's private lives.
Everyone's afraid and there's largely nothing to fear. Far less than a couple decades ago, yet we're far more terrified of everything, we're the least connected in the ways that matter and the most connected in the ways that ultimately don't matter at all. On the internet, toxicity has become the rule, not the exception. That carries over to real-world interactions.
Security (and budget) vs. Convenience
You could use your clearnet browser and IP, and gotten through easily.
Or, now you have to find a static residential IP, create a VM with a recognized browser (like Chromium.. nothing that letterboxes so tor and mullvad browser are out of the question), disable a few things like WebGL but not too many things so you still have a trackable browser fingerprint, then once your reputation from that browser is built up, keep paying $30/mo or whatever for the static IP (or, other free ways..) and then you can load that VM any time you need to do something like this.
ezpz.
or you could just say fuck it, patch the bug on your setup and post the bug on pastebin with a recommendation that they make it easier to submit security bug reports in the future.
Look man I'm a Bitcoin holder okay
Grow dope, gain hope, become self suffic-an?
Yup. It's like an actor getting typecast as a tough guy who always kicks ass and never gets his ass kicked, makes tons of money from it, and then everyone complaining about him only ever playing a tough guy.
I'm sure a few names come to mind. But they're rich and stuck in that role because most people subconsciously agreed they should be rich and stuck in that role (by liking those movies and going to see them).
Guess my age. :)
Guess my age (:
guess how old I am 💀 no 🧢
User asked why they never see &si= on their links on Android. @Synnr said they may be copying the link from the browser, which suggests they don't even have the YouTube app installed, as it 'never happens to them.'