Railfan Technology > Apple TV and Youtube train videos

My wife signed us up for streaming via Apple TV a few years back and YouTube is one of the included offerings. Since that time YouTube TV has mostly shown us news-type shows. But, a week ago it suddenly started including many train and model rr videos.  Fun to watch but scary. How did it know?? My smart phone habits have not changed over the years. 

If you're logged into YouTube on any other device, YouTube will take note of content related to the content you watch regularly and suggest similar videos.

As soon as you select one title they start throwing more of the same at you. YouTube has all kinds of Train Videos, they have an incredible number of topics and lots of titles that go with it. Careful which news shows you watch because they are pretty keen on the red or blue as well. You don't need to be logged in, they use the MAC address or account number for the device.

My barber found an almost invisible implant scar behind my left ear and my Samsung Android cell phone has been ignoring me lately. Coincidence?

You (we) are being watched. I recently bought a Smart Tv (here in the UK). Got the yout ube app installed and working, and within days it's recommending plenty of
railroad videos, all my favourite bands, interviews etc etc. Scary stuff, but great!! chris uk

yooperfan Wrote:
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> Fun to watch but scary. How did it
> know?? My smart phone habits have not changed over
> the years. 

If you didn't know already, YouTube is owned by Google.

Likely scenario: one day, your "surfing habits" matched statistical behavior of a group of people (news watching people who also like trains), so the "algorithm" decided to show you links of trains and model trains. YouTube's "algorithm" is designed to collect % of money from ads based on viewer behavior. So while your Smartphone habits might not have changed over the years, other people's habits changed recently enough that you were thrown into that statistical group, in hopes of exploiting ad revenue.

Keep in mind that it's political season so your watching the news can influence how you get "noticed" by Big Data. The "algorithm" is likely driven by artificial "intelligence" but if it's wrong, you don't crash into a firetruck and the Smartphone won't catch fire, so in that regard, it's not THAT scary.

I've fooled an e*commerce company into making less money by defeating its "predictive" algorithms to manipulate my shopping habits by targeted advertising. Moral of the story? Real human intelligence is still superior to artificial intelligence... so next time you feel scared, analyze your own behavior and try to understand the consequences of your actions.