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Comment by hateful | Hacker News Reader

I also like this feature - it's never been a problem for me. What is the problem is the data that they keep that I don't easily know about. I may be wrong, but this article sounds to me like it's going to delete the data you use so they don't have to store it (saving space) not the analytics data that they use to show you targeted advertisements.

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While deleting data does save space, one 10-minute YouTube video is far bigger than a few years of browsing history. Google isn't turning auto-delete for storage reasons.

YouTube watch data is used to personalize recommendations, and browsing data is used to personalize ads: https://policies.google.com/privacy#whycollect.

Disclaimer: I work at Google.

Thanks for sharing.

Can I consent to permanent storage somewhere? I love using the timeline in Google Maps!

Yes, in “my activity.”

https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols

The location history setting toggles whether data for My Timeline is kept.

I just don't get how Youtube recommendations are so bad. So often it recommends me things I have already watched.

Or the algorithm knows I like David Bowie so recommends me "Changes". The most boring possible recommendation it can give to a David Bowie fan.

I really wish it had a setting to up the daring of the recommendation. It seems designed to just never recommend something that I would really hate but in doing so it never recommends me anything all that interesting.

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