This was never about protecting children

YT is using AI to determine who’s under 18. Theres no point to making a YT account anymore because it ignores your stated age.

With the ads they give me, I can tell.

Ads are supposedly based on what you watch and what they track you doing (total bullshit). I personally don’t allow yt to track me but it appears to be somewhat doing that anyways. It’s also influenced by what other people who watch your content also watch. If a lot of people with certain interests watch what you’re watching but you don’t have them, they’re still gonna give you ads for it.

Heres an example. I mainly use my YT account to listen to video game OST. Youtube for some reason gives me nearly full nsfw ads for f**king anime mobile games (no, I will not play your “boobtastic” game) combined with fake weight loss ads (“japanese pink salt trick” my ass) for the majority of them, I’ve rarely seen an actual normal ad. I had this flip flop back and forth for the majority of this summer and it’s just now starting to fix itself, though it’s being replaced by those weird right wing propaganda and christian church ads combined with military recruiters.

In contrast, when I don’t use my YT account, I see mostly normal ads with a few exceptions. I get some fast food chains, a few old spice ads here and there, but nothing too crazy except for the occasional bait mobile game ad.

That's why I use brave browser. It blocks all trackers and adds that scoop your data by default which means 90% of YT ads.

I’m pretty sure the YT app can track what I say irl even though I don’t allow it too and my phone says my mic isn’t in use. I occasionally stuff to myself like “I need to go to the gym more.” This logically shouldn’t affect my ads if YT doesn’t have access to my microphone, nor do I make any searches for gyms in my area or anything relating to weight loss. However, if the app is tracking me through my microphone, despite me not giving it permission to do so, that would explain the snake oil weight loss ads I’ve been getting. The only other way I would be getting this is if YT tracks a lot of people who searched up weight loss programs and watch the video, YT may associate that video with weight loss in general, and thus push more ads for it, but I think this is unlikely.

If you remove microphone and camera permissions it can't do that. Though other apps like social media and your phone will do it anyway. Best to take it to a shop that will install a switch to manually turn them on when you want to record.

I watch video game ost all the time, I seem to almost always get domino’s ads… I don’t know what this means, I don’t even like pizza