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Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 6, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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It's pretty trivial to collect demographics. Google knows what IP address you used to visit YouTube, and that IP address pretty trivially traces back to a specific city. I'd expect YouTube makes this information available to content creators, since knowing your audience helps you tailor your content. Back when I was working with such tools, it was a pretty standard feature - even my tiny personal blog reports which countries I get visitors from.

I'd be more suspicious of social media making the same claims - as far as I know, Twitter doesn't provide any way to get that sort of information. It wouldn't be hard to build a 3rd party tool to calculate that data, but it would be relying on profiles listing a self-reported location.