Adnausem
It is built on top of unlock origin and will silently click on the ads in the background to mess with your digital footprint while costing advertisers money who use pay per click.
Google:
There are tools that allow people who buy ads to compare the performance of their ads with their own metrics.
The more ineffectual an ad platform is, the less likely ad purchasers are to purchase ads.
If 20% of American internet users used ad nauseam it would cause significant financial damage to ad companies across the globe.
Google might not care, but if enough people install it, their advertisers sure will.
That sounds neat, but it means those ads are at least partially loaded on the background, which is also bad
only the URL is loaded.
https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnauseam-click-ads
How does AdNauseam “click Ads”?
AdNauseam ‘clicks’ Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions the is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a ‘click’ on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam’s clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel.It just sends a request to the ads
That feature it uses to silently click ads increased the RAM usage of my browser by a lot on two separate systems (my android phone, and my PC) and since I really do not give an extra fuck about clicking ads in the background (Google still makes millions, and the plugin dev is also using the clicks to make money via affiliate) and I only care about blocking them, I went back to uBlock Origin.
and the plugin dev is also using the clicks to make money via affiliate
That’s actually kinda brilliant and I’m jealous. I might actually install it just to reward his intelligence. I can’t blame him for doing it, I’d do it too if I was in his shoes; I wish I’d thought of it first.
Ah, well. Still pretty smart, though I’m a bit less interested now.
Is that considered click fraud or is that only when an advertiser intentionally gets competitor ads clicked, and similar behaviors?
Not saying anybody [here] cares just curious (as a Ublock Origin user)
I think it is when a competitor does it in an attempt to make the advertiser lose money.
Adnausem
This is why I browse lemmy instead of reddit
what do you mean by ‘mess with digital footprint’
google (and other ad companies) keep a digital profile (or footprint) of all your clicks. so, for example, if you click on an ad for a fantasy book, they will save that you are at least interested on fantasy books, giving you more ads for that. in theory that might not sound so bad (“hey, at least the ads will be more relevant”) but in reality the amount of data that they store is incredibly invasive.
by clicking random ads, the quality of that profile would go down, as it will no longer be your true interests, thus “messing with digital footprint”
That seems like the only way you don’t get an accurate profile is if the ad is completely unrelated to the page content.
Basically tells advertisers and trackers that you click on every single ad (a common metric used to gauge interest), so it’s harder for them to tell what you’re interested in and build a profile of you
Seems like not clicking on any ads should have the same outcome…
I don’t see ads, so who knows what is in my profile.
Worse actually, since we usually visit a subset of the web, and by “fake clicking” all the ads of all the websites we visit, we actually give google a pretty good profile of the websites we visit, and that’s bad. Fake clicking is not as private as people think it is.
You get tracked based on how you interact. This obfuscates that beyond just “I block all of them”.
It still only clicks ads of the webpages you visit, which again is a pretty good tracking pattern. I prefer to be tracked as “blocks all of them” than “clicks all the ads of these webpages, which are about XYZ, so they must have interests in XZY, which is actually true since I did visit those websites”.
Google tracks everything you do so they can deliver targeted ads to you
By clicking every ad it is harder for them to build a profile
They also take these profiles and sell them so companies know what demographic to focus on
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I don’t suppose it can run in ublock’s hard mode?
by the look of it, yes it can.
I genuinely don’t know how people manage without ad-blockers and other declutterers. The amount of utter shit that gets in the way of what you’re trying to look at is mind boggling.
Do you want cookies? Do you want to share your details with 1049 trusted data partners? How about the top half of the screen taken by a video ad with a close button that isn’t going to work? How about a redirect to something else entirely? How about the back button not working unless you spam it really quick?
This is a war, and we didn’t start it.
There’s also the fact that on mobile ads use up your data. I’m not paying for a data plan so advertisers can use it to shove ads down my throat because I wanted to check the weather. I’ve used the mobile brave browser for a few years now and I will never go back. I don’t go through nearly as much mobile data as I did prior to using ad blockers.
Plus, putting ublock on my PC made youtube usable again. No more ads that are longer than the video I’m trying to watch.
I don’t know how people tolerate the constant ads either. It was driving me insane and genuinely pissed me off.
Do you want cookies? Do you want to share your details with 1049 trusted data partners?
They click this thing once. 1 time only for years of “not being bothered by it” (that they notice actively).
I agree it’s total shit but it is from a regular user point of view, easier to use the “i agree” button on most of that stuff once, than to try to avoid it. Constantly on the same few websites anyhow.
Still doesn’t explain the no ad-block for me though, it’s a whole lot easier on the mind to browse ad-free, it is well worth the tiny effort of using ff and activating ublock…
People just got used to having ads shoved down their throats? I am not one of them though, I use uBlock Origin with pride. But most people simply deal with the baggage.
Ever seen the kind of messes most people drive around with inside their cars? I think that might explain a thing or two.
“…How old are these french fries…?”
🤢
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Do you want cookies? Do you want to share your details with 1049 trusted data partners? How about the top half of the screen taken by a video ad with a close button that isn’t going to work?
"Oh, you want to opt out? First click this tiny 4 pt text next to
>>> AGREE TO EVERYTHING <<<
[ⁿᵒ ᶜᵒᵒᵏᶦᵉˢ ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ]
then uncheck what you don’t want us to track, then click “I don’t not want to be tracked across the Internet for marketing purposes forever and ever.”
We value your privacy!*
*(We just value it just a little more if you’re subject to GDPR or California law…)
And if you do manage to opt out, we’ll ask you again next time you visit.
Old guy checking in. When ad blockers first became a thing, my then-teenaged boys started using one and were trying to talk me into it. I was pretty dubious. I said my concern was that the model most of the web was built on was ad-supported. That is, people created content on the web to try and get visitors, and made money by selling ads on their site, or used monetized links. If everyone started using ad blockers, I said, that model would break down and either people would stop creating content or they’d go to a new model, like subscriptions. I figured few people would take time equivalent to a full time job to create content for free.
I think that largely came to pass. A lot of great online publications have closed their doors, and the are lots of paywalls now. The things is, the sites are just as much to blame. Most people wouldn’t have been driven to use ad blockers if the ads hadn’t gotten so untenable. A banner or a box here or there is one thing, but when there are a giant number of pop-up windows, autoplay videos, windows you can’t back out of, and all the other hellish stuff, people are going to be highly motivated to find a way to stop it.
That whole arms race was one of the things that ruined the internet, in my opinion.
I also think a lot of people who grew up on the internet have completely and totally forgotten about how bad it really was. They had ads that would take over your computer, ads that would download viruses, ads that would use your modem to dial 1-900 numbers, ads that would open 800 uncloseable web pages full of porn and start playing loud screaming music and moaning sounds to gather the interest of every other person in the house just a shame you for using the internet.
And dear Jesus don’t forget about the fucking toolbars. Dozens upon dozens of toolbars installed in every browser, everything from bonzi buddy to AOL email, detecting that a picture would be loaded on your screen and replacing it with one of theirs as an ad link.
Ad blockers have been necessary to use the internet for the last 20 freaking years.
If you’re not the kind of person who would go to the STD clinic and fuck every person there without a condom, you should never use the internet without an ad block.
Going to my parents house to help fix why their computer was “running slow” and like 6 inches of their browser was all toolbars that they had no idea how they got there nor knew what they did.
This is a thing of sheer beauty ❤️
Oooh a free lobster dinner!
Triggered!! 🤣
Yeah, and that’s what I mean when I say that the sites brought it on themselves. If the ads started reasonable, like what you’d see on the old Sunday newspaper, three wouldn’t have been much reason to block them.
You also have to add on the privacy issues with all the tracking, that also drove people to use them.
There was a sort of nice period.
In the wake of a bunch of BS, Google came along with rather nice and unobtrusive ads, and it seemed to catch on. Then over the last decade, it’s really gone way downhill again.
Yeah, I didn’t mind an ad on the side of the screen when all of the content was front and center. But the problem is is that when you make it so that a company’s livelihood depends on forcing users to do things they don’t want to do, and there’s no regulation on that whatsoever, it’s just going to go downhill very quickly and if you think this is bad it can get much much worse.
I’m kind of surprised that isps are not injecting ads into your browsing and forcing you to watch ads just to use the internet that you paid for.
They could even charge you like a $10 a month up charge fee for ad-free internet and say that we’re not going to block the ads on the rest of the internet you just won’t get additional ads from us.
I’m kind of surprised that isps are not injecting ads into your browsing and forcing you to watch ads just to use the internet that you paid for.
If I recall correctly, during one of the more recent public debates around Net Neutrality in the US, it came out that certain ISPs were doing just that. Some people were showing screenshots of ads showing up inside their steam client (which runs the storefront and community sections as webpages).
Not sure if arms race is the right way to put it when 1 side is deploying nukes and the other is only deploying shields. Money ruined the internet, ads is just one way how it did that.
That actually is a major facet of the military arms race. Side A develops a missile. Side B develops an anti-missile missile. So side A develops a missile with multiple warheads or builds more missiles so they won’t all be shot down, etc. The defensive systems spawn the development of more or more-devastating offensive systems.
I still see one party racing with arms and one party trying to survive.
I used to not care about ads in Google because they were minimal. I was OK with ABP “acceptable ads”.
But I’ve since gone full scorched earth. Fuck them all, their trackers, their fake news, the terrible products. I’m still OK with ads in my search results (no longer using Google) because they are often relevant to something I’m looking for. But for the rest, the Web stopped deserving my respect. I don’t consume that much content online, and I pay for most of the few things I do consume.
As a software and data guy, having my search results tainted by paid content is pretty infuriating. I wouldn’t care if there were ads to the side or something, but I find things like Amazon’s search results almost completely unusable. And early on I used to point out to people how amazing Amazon’s search engine really was. It was a marvel at getting you to exactly what you were looking to buy. Now it’s optimized for showing you what they want to sell.
It really doesn’t matter what the users did in response, because the MBAs’ greed is such that they would have eventually ruined everything anyway no matter how compliant or patient the users were. It doesn’t matter how much they get, it’s never enough.
I’m also old (well, middle-aged is the right word I guess), but having lived through the adpocalypse that was the early 2000s, when the majority of sites were rushing to demonstrate their lofty stock valuations and satisfy their debtors by bringing in as much revenue as possible no matter the cost to the user base, I never really had that much patience for this business model, especially not once they discovered the concept of pop-ups (or worse, pop-unders).
I’ve also personally worked for a site whose business model was entirely based on SEO and click funneling and that has further eroded my patience to pretty zero. Pretty much none of our developer meetings were ever about “how can we make the product more useful to our users so they’ll actually WANT to come back”, it was always “our numbers are declining, how can we jam in more ads in order to meet the quarterly revenue goals?”
Yes, there are some sites that DO work hard to make actual, original content in order to earn those clicks, but for the most part, it’s an amoral, downright parasitical industry that doesn’t deserve any sympathy or goodwill.
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I doubt very much adblockers are to blame for that. They’re a convenient excuse for those trying to squeeze as much money as possible from their users… but they would have gone that route no matter what. It’s just the nature of the economic system we live in.
I’m perfectly happy to pay for things I value, especially if the alternative is being forced to pay with my time and attention. The evidence also doesn’t entirely support your argument, since plenty of places that you pay for still try to show ads.
The evidence also doesn’t entirely support your argument, since plenty of places that you pay for still try to show ads.
Where was it ever said that a site could only use one model? The same is/was true of newspapers that cost you a subscription but also sold ads. Without the ads, the subscription would be much more expensive.
I personally am unlikely to pay for a huge variety of news sites and other publications, but I really appreciated having access to all that content for free. Sure, I might pay for one or two especially valuable sites, but my personal opinion is that it was better when the sites were making enough money to make it worthwhile for them by selling a reasonable amount of advertising, and the content was free to the users.
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42% is a fraction, but it’s a huge fraction. Higher in some demographics, lower in others.
If your claim were accurate, they wouldn’t have to resort to putting ads on websites that are subscription based.
How do you figure? Most business ventures will ask themselves how much a customer would pay for their product. If the answer is lower than enough to make product, they either won’t enter the market or they’ll figure out a way to lower the price. Selling ads is a way to lower the price. Also worth noting that ads used to generate a lot more revenue than they do now.
“Without the ads, the subscription would be much more expensive.”
That’s not at all how it works. How is it that adults think prices are based on costs? They teach supply and demand in high school.
As I said elsewhere, for most products, the makers ask how much they think people would be willing to pay for it. If that price is lower than an amount that would generate reasonable profit, they’ll either no go to market or they’ll look for ways to reduce or offset costs. Ads are a common way of keeping the price within what people are willing to pay.
No, that assumes that prices are based on cost, which is not true. Ads are a way to make money on top of what people will pay.
He didn’t write a multi page thesis covering every single use case, quick tell him he’s wrong!
That is, people created content on the web to try and get visitors, and made money by selling ads on their site, or used monetized links.
No, that’s what ruined the web.
You’re right that ads supported the model, but the model was also generally anarcho-communist in nature. That people wanted to experience it without ads was expected, and considered fine. It is fine.
The more popular ad blocking gets, the more I worry about the ad industry lobbying to criminalize blocking ads as “theft of revenue” or some insane concept along that line.
And you just know the burden of that new criminalization won’t come with the expensive and long legal procedures needed to bad all the ad blockers but instead will just be a piecemeal tax charged to consumers
I feel like a big setup for this is all the “forced binding arbitration” TOSs that are quietly being pushed for EVERY service.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/majority-of-americans-now-use-ad-blockers/ar-BB1kEhis
That’s why ads are now being tested on the OS level.
The Censuswide report indicates that 66 percent of experienced advertisers use ad blockers.
lol
https://www.ghostery.com/blog/privacy-report-advertisers-and-adblockers
Straight from the source.
And a funny quote I found from Cory Doctorow a year ago: “One in four web users has installed a blocker, making it (in the words of Doc Searls) the largest consumer boycott in history”.
All sorts of people are fed up with this shit.
That, and the spam texts and calls. I hit the wall with this last night, and finally got a call/text screening app. fuck that noise.
I just don’t even answer my phone anymore unless I recognize the number. It’s exhausting.
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You’re supposed to be able to in the US too, but most of the spammers don’t care about the law unfortunately.
I was spending way too much time blocking numbers. I legit got 3-4 calls a day and about the same for texts. It seems to go in spurts though
I’ve noticed that spurts thing too. I’m a sole proprietor so I also get endless business loan text spam. Those also seem to go in spurts for some reason. One week I’ll get two a day and then nothing for the next couple weeks.
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Time to learn how to Linux, I guess…
nowadays there’s not even that much to learn, probably biggest difference is just the file system, and getting out of the horrid habit of downloading programs from the browser.
Where do you download programs from?
primarily like on mobile, you just download from the “app store”.
This can either be done via terminal (something like “apt install blender”) or via a graphical program like Discover for the KDE desktop, in which case it’s literally just like a mobile app store where you search for the program, click “install” and that’s it.
There are some alternate ways of installing programs, which can involve downloading from a website, but that’s for getting the very freshest release of a program or for very niche projects that aren’t included in the distro’s software repository yet.
So if you’re an android power user it’s exactly like that, most apps come from the store, but some apps you have to download from the web.
The repository of the distro that you’re running or flathub. Sometimes also an AppImage from a GitHub/GitLab releases page if it’s an obscure program.
The other 33 are lying.
I refused to use adblockers on principle - not because I thought multibillion corpos needed more money, but because I recognized that sites using ads to sustain their business model needed views to maintain their viability in our fucked capitalist system.
Then Youtube swapped to three unskippable fucking ads after every video.
Now I just whitelist decent sites and let Adblock take care of the rest.
I wish I could semi-whitelist (graylist?) many websites, like allowing only “acceptable ads” so that the website can pay for costs and make a small profit while not blowing up my screen with ads. At the same time, many websites (Reddit, most recipe sites, and any text site with an autoplaying video) absolutely deserves a full ad blacklist for disrespecting their users so much. Still other websites deserve a full whitelist.
Never see ads using ublock
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Yeah I whitelist as much as I can, but the default is to block because there will be sites that I visit once that would be unusable otherwise. If I find myself visiting more than once, I turn off the ad blocker to see if the site is still usable. If it’s not, sorry, no ad revenue for you, shitty site.
I block all ads, everywhere, period. No whitelists, no nothing.
Because I got sick of ending up with malware infected ads and having to clean up my computer (back when I was on windows, I’m sure the days not far off where linux will have the same problem)
All these companies crying about ad revenues and shit? If they ever policed the ads they force down our throats for content, So they didnt serve malware, or obnoxiously loud or long ads, or any other bullshit, then people wouldnt have to need ad blocking tools.
I block ads specifically so websites that rely on ads as revenue die.
You do know you can whitelist websites in order to selectively disable the adblocking in case you feel like they deserve your support, right?
Selecting which sites serves you malware kinda defeats the point of blocking ads in the first place.
IDK, it’s kinda like being a germaphobe and avoiding the general public because they’re unwashed and filthy, but still allowing certain people to visit you once you’ve assured yourself they practice regular hygiene, no?
No.
Cause getting a cold isnt going to turn you into a botnet or steal your banking information or encrypt your house and hold it for ransom.
If you want a bodily example, Its like wearing a condom when you have random sex with strangers. Unless you are looking to catch something horrific, you use protection, every time, all the time.
getting a cold isnt going to turn you into a botnet or steal your banking information or encrypt your house and hold it for ransom.
Actually, yes, it kinda is. If you catch a virus, it basically uses your body as a host to produce more of itself to send out and infect others with, just like a botnet. And I’m no medical expert but I’m sure you could find a similar equivalency for the other example. There’s a reason the term “virus” was adopted into computer science, because certain software can exhibit much of the same behavior as the real life thing. It’s just art imitating life, that’s all.
If you want a bodily example, Its like wearing a condom when you have random sex with strangers. Unless you are looking to catch something horrific, you use protection, every time, all the time.
Even then you might end up choosing not to use one, if you do end up meeting that special someone and get them tested for STIs.
Sure, choose not to use one.
Don’t come crying to me to fix it when you pick up multiple nasty infections though. Go live with the consequences of your actions.
I appreciate your concern. Thanks for your input and have a nice day!
You do you
Although I pity you
My man, 95% of people dont even know what a browser is and you expect those to know what an adblocker does or is? even now, all people using adblockers, or extensions in general are barely a drop in a desert dry bucket
Either that or they have 20 useless extensions.
Plot twist: they have extensions, but none are active.
We should be more grateful for these people. Our adblockers function because they don’t bother using them.
The moment that most of society starts using adblockers is the moment they become defunct when the big corporations begin actively fighting them. I’ve already witnessed this with YouTube Vanced/Revanced.
What’s wrong with youtube vanced? It works just fine for me.
How long have you been using it?
I’ve been using it for years. About six months ago or somewhere around that, YouTube started a small campaign against adblockers though. In that campaign, they actually forced Vanced to rebrand to Revanced due to a lawsuit. It was in this time that through the campaign more people became aware of adblockers.
This actually sucked for users like me. The amount of times I’d have to repatch Revanced due to the constant updates was awful. It’s more stable now, but if this ever happens again it will be annoying.
If people bring attention back to adblockers, then it will be like this again. Sites will be threatening legal action and restructuring themselves to break adblockers, while adblockers will have to constantly update in order to stay functional.
vanced did not “rebrand” into revanced.
revanced is a whole new thing build from the ground upInteresting. It’s maybe been like a year or so for me. I have had to repatch a couple times. Good to know I got more bullshit to look forward to.
Because Ublock Origin is better than AdBlock in every way? Or maybe because they’re already using PiHole?
I doubt people are using better options as an argument for this. The Youtube stuff makes the news like every other for blocking people, yet I haven’t noticed any of it. If it weren’t for lemmy and reddit spamming it I wouldn’t have known it was possible and I’m not even doing anything crazy. Just Firefox and ublock. If people were using great options, it wouldn’t have even been making the news because no one would have noticed.
Firefox with ublock origin was impacted, however only a set of users get the change. This way Youtube can test what impact it has.
The fact you were unaffected means nothing.
Majority of society:
- “I don’t see a problem”
- “I don’t care, it’s not like my data is that valuable”
- “But I actually like these targeted ads! I find so much good stuff this way!”
every time I hear the 3rd one I lose a little bit more faith in humanity
It’s hard to comprehend their mindset
I can give you another one from my wife:
“I need to watch ads to get rewards or get lives for [whatever game she’s playing on her phone].”
To be fair targeted ads based on what I like I don’t find as a problem as long as they are not intrusive and very in your face! But due to how bad most ads are I don’t see even those as I always have adblock on!
Your the problem.
I enjoy manipulating the advertising targeting algorithm to give me advertisements for industrial machinery, cloud computing, surveys, targeted advertisements, and other things I am not remotely in the market for.
Remember in Futurama when Fry finally goes online in the future and get attacked by ads. Or similar in Altered Carbon with whatever that contact-lens-AR thing was and the character spins out.
I think we don’t give gradual acclimatisation enough credit here. Most of my students have never heard of Firefox and tools like ublock origin because they’re acclimatised to the mobile ecosystem
“How do I install something? I use the app store.”
“Oh, but I already have the internet on my phone, why would I want a 3rd party app to use the internet” (think old people who mix up AOL with the internet in reverse!)
As soon as I show them, they convert in seconds - they’ve forgotten web pages without adverts can exist.
When I see a person with no ad blockers use the web my brain breaks seeing all the ads. Advertising is a malevolent force. Anyone who works in marketing ranks just above people who join the armed forces, police, and weapons manufacturing in my book. I think of big tobacco as better people.
I think of big tobacco as better people.
Let’s not exaggerate either, marketing people don’t have their main motive of profit to make people addicted to a toxic and carcinogenic product.
Well those tobacco companies still have advertisements don’t they?
Kinda not? In many places is illegal to advertise tobacco, and the marketing people are the same who do the anti-tobacco campaigns and many other PSAs.
You could kinda say that marketing people were the ones who ended Pinochet dictatorship even, every tool can be used to do harm, but just as the tool a mugger uses to stab a victim is a knife, knife as well is the scalpel that a surgeon will use to save that person, a tool on it’s own rarely is good or bad, and marketing is a tool.
I’m not saying that they’re marketing is not annoying or many times bad, just that that is not inherently bad.
…?
The point of marketing is to make people buy stuff they wouldn’t have bought otherwise, through manipulation of the brain.
They are directly responsible for our overconsumption and by extension the huge amounts of plastic waste in the ocean, the destruction of ecology and climate change.
They are most definitely way worse than tobacco, at least they only damage the body and the people around the user.
I don’t know why people evangelize others using adblock. The more mainstream it becomes, the more likely websites use effort to stifle their use.
Just let’s keep it on the dl so we benefit.
ublock does a good job of blocking ad block blockers at least on major sites.
I want businesses relying on ads to die though. Doesn’t work if too few people use adblockers.
Whats your solution for covering hosting costs?
Donation, federation (spreading the load so that a single person’s hosting cost are easy for them to cover), non-intrusive premium features, public funding
That cat got out of the bag more than 10 years ago.
I have no less than a dozen plugins in my browser to make the Internet usable. More than half is just for YouTube.
Took me some time to get used to, but I deactivated all the YouTube plugins and now use Freetube an my desktop/laptop.
Freetube is great. I just wish the UI was better about bookmarking playlists and there was some way to sync my progress across devices, including Android
Have you tried the GrayJay app? I’ve been using it to cast Twitch and youtube to my TV, Download videos, and its got polycentric which is some kind of alternative to youtubes comments for videos
That sounds cool! Can I Sync playlist watch history between Linux, Windows, and android?
I’m not sure, but you can login to youtube from the plugins and YouTube can sync the watch history its under sources > YouTube > provide YouTube activity.
There’s no desktop app yet as of now.
