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by jonathankoren 766 days ago
I also think there’s something weird going on with YouTube recommendations. The thing that I’ve noticed is that people I follow on TikTok are showing up in my YouTube recommendations, and I’ve never interacted with their YouTube accounts. Most times I didn’t even know they had a YouTube account.

I use the same email address on both accounts, but it seems weird that TT would export its follow graph to YT for any reason.

3 comments

How is that surprising? Maybe you just get recommended the same stuff on multiple platforms because it reflects your interests? If I am interested in Retro computing and get the 8-Bit Guy in my recommendations on multiple platforms, would you conclude that the platforms colluded? Occams Razor tells me what’s the more likely conclusion
Because I have never interacted with any of that type of content or creators on the platform, and then when I suddenly get 10 different creators recommended to me simultaneously from 10 different topics. That’s weird.

I also explicitly said it would be “weird” for them share information, so you concluding that that I think collusion is the result is unwarranted. Perhaps you should work on your reading skills instead of injecting your assumptions.

Are Google's cookies / ads / analytics used by TikTok? Does TikTok send notifications to your email address (is it Gmail?)? Do the TikTok accounts embed YouTube / related links in their profile anywhere? Quite easy for Google to get tracking info. So many ways that metadata gets leaked.
Maybe Google are listening to you use Tiktok?
I would prefer a more plausible guess