Comment by quanto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by quanto | Hacker News Reader

Happened to me except even more far fetched:

I shared a car ride with a friend for 20 min, and my colleague, being knowledgeable in trivia, mentioned an obscure historical figure that I couldn't even spell the last name of. I came back home, and on my Google feed there he was, the obscure historical figure with his last name fully spelled out in a biography.

I never connected to my colleague's network in any form (we were in his car); I didn't search for this historical figure (I don't even know how to spell the name correctly). And most definitely not a coincidence as I had never heard of this person before or after the brief mentioning by my colleague. I don't think my colleague searched for this person on his phone recently either as it was some trivia knowledge he randomly recalled.

This happened several times with this particular colleague as he likes to mention random trivia. I have yet to find a plausible mechanism for this phenomenon (unless it is an open mic).

Sounds like certain videos about historical trivia start trending and your colleague watches them before you do.

Yeah, there must have been a reason the colleague came up with that obscure historical person, certainly not random.

My explanation would be fairly trivial: those videos were currently being pushed more broadly by the YT algorithm (propably based on some rough demographics that you two share - age, gender, location, broad interests...). You two probably saw a lot more of the same videos that you didn't talk about.

PS: my understanding is that a lot of social media sites use a strategy where they somewhat randomly push single posts by reliable creators, to make sure that those stay hooked as well. So that could be an explanation why you'd suddenly see something a bit more niche.

Indeed, this is my guess although it means I am having considering my colleague as an unreliable narrator (he is not "randomly recalling" as he claims. He is just regurgitating what he saw on his phone earlier in the day).

On the other hand, the obscurity of the feed subject makes me think YT/Google wouldn't be pushing those on a broader audience, but maybe the algorithm is just that good at nerdsniping us.

Could it be that your colleague just spent the morning googling these subjects, and Google notices a correlation between the stuff your colleague googles and the stuff you later look up?

e.g: it's using location-tracking to link you two, not an open mic and realtime transcription.

Hypothetically there is a common root source further back from your friend. IE a new book/documentary has people talking and the general buzz triggered both your friend to comment and Google independent of each other.

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