I don't mind Youtube making a profile of me and recommending similar things. But then again I use youtube to watch channels I'm subscribed to and maybe once a week I watch the recommended stuff.
i just find the youtube login process terrible. my browser doesn’t persist cookies, so i have to re-login every day. not problematic for most sites that use a single login form (like HN) and play nice with a password manager.
but for Youtube its:
1. go to login page.
2. enter username, hit enter.
3. enter password, hit enter.
4. at the 2FA page hunt for the “other method” option and click it.
5. select “authenticate with Google Authenticator” (i.e. OTP).
6. enter TOTP code, hit enter
7. select either “use this method in the future” or “no” — they don’t take effect because no cookies.
sure, it’s self-inflicted on behalf of me not persisting cookies. but a 7 step login process? get real.
3rd party clients like this solve that. in theory i could also whitelist youtube cookies to be specifically persisted, but figuring out how to do that would be a lot more troublesome than just using a 3rd party client.
I had the same pain until I started using Firefox containers. Now I can persist cookies for just YouTube without keeping them for any other sites or making the Google cookies available to Google when I'm browsing other sites using the non-youtube container.
My cookies dont persist.
I do steps 1, 2, and 3 - almost daily. And that, to me, is a pain.
As you say, "self-inflicted" - i can't help but think of the guy-on-the bicycle-meme.
No snark intended, but your steps 4-7 (2fa+) seem remarkably...unnecessary for youtube?
yeah, if Youtube wasn’t connected to my old gmail account which secures way too much of my life, i wouldn’t use 2FA. now that you point it out i should rather create a separate account specifically for Youtube, which wouldn’t need 2FA.
