Similar on Facebook: I click through to a scam product to gather details and send a complaint to ASA (in UK). I then say "don't show me stuff like this", block the "story", block the advertiser.

Now consistently I get adverts from Facebook for that same product from other scammers, no matter how much I block them. Presumably because that advert 'engaged' me for the longest. Eugh.

Incidentally, ASA responded that it was not a UK company ... which sounds like "we don't care about scam advertising we're just here for the paycheck". The company were advertising on UK Facebook and held a UK registered trade mark.

Facebook cares so little about scam content I'd regard them as actively complicit in the scams by this stage. Reported a scam as blatant as a Nigerian Prince (crypto product with "guaranteed income" of thousands per week which is "recommended by Martin Lewis" who actually took legal action against them over fake recommendations, according to a fake news website which rips off BBC News web design) to them and the feedback widget later informed me it had been reviewed and found to not be violating their scam policy. And yes, I got more of that type of website in my feed due to "engagement", which I suppose at least wastes advertiser dollars...

I'm sure Facebook advertising is a waste of time now, it certainly is if anyone behaves the way I do on the platform:

• I've conceded that adverts are going to show up in my feed regardless and most advertisers can't be bothered to target properly so are mostly irrelevant

• I take great pleasure in "engaging" with the obvious scams and shitty crypto/NFT ads in the hope it's eating their ad budget

• this makes the adverts I see extremely irrelevant in a reinforced feedback loop

I assume you're right, which puts us in a position where:

- search is neutered/broken, so finding new interesting videos is a chore

- recommendations need to be manually combed regularly to remove dumb videos

- watch history also needs to be combed to remove potential false signals

That's a lot of curation to get somewhat decent recommendations. Not saying we have a choice, it's not like Vimeo will make a comeback to save us, but that's a pretty bad place we're in.

YT has hidden tags that tie it to your account after viewing a video, removing the video from played/history does not affect this and has been an issue with YT for nearly 6-7 years at this point.

This sounds interesting. I tried to Google about it, but I found nothing. How did you learn about this?

I don't know how you can reach it from within YT itself, but I know that if you do a datadump of your account, you can see it in one of the text files within.

It, unsurprisingly, has a history of _lots_ of different things, you'll be shocked about how much Google knows about you. Probably things you yourself have forgotten.

That's why although I do subscribe to YouTube Premium (the only Google service I still use), I only use it from an account that is not used for anything else, on a single tablet that is not used for anything else, and pay with a card that is not used for anything else.

The article is claiming that that doesn't actually do very much.

It works for me and other people I know. Especially useful when I'm baited or my finger slips. Paired with flagging recommendations as "Not interested" or "Don't recommend channel" it's very effective.