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I searched for "Adele's weight loss" today and up popped the article "How to support your fat friends?" in my news feed on Medium. I literally have read nothing about fat people on Medium and it just popped up today.

schroeder
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most venerable sir
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    To me, that sounds like it could be a coincidence. – 6005 May 09 '20 at 02:11
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    I don't think this can be answered without knowing if/how Medium and Google have cookies/data sharing in place. – Limit May 09 '20 at 02:19
  • This isn't a security question more than it is a "how do cookies and ad networks work?" question. It looks like "something weird" but it's how the Internet has worked for 20 years. – schroeder May 09 '20 at 13:51

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In Medium's Privacy Policy Effective Date: 31 Dec 2019, Medium tracks quite a bit of information

  • such as what pages you view (including how much of a given page and for how long)
  • your use of product features (like Save to Medium, highlights, follows, and applause)

Most importantly the part where you are concerned with. It is possible that you linked Google with Medium!

When you create your Medium account, and authenticate with a third-party service (like Twitter, Facebook, Apple or Google) we may collect, store, and periodically update information associated with that third-party account

Under Tracking & Cookies,

Some third-party services that we use to provide the Service, such as Google Analytics, may place their own cookies in your browser.

mallocation
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    Thanks mallocation, do you regularly read privacy policies? – most venerable sir May 09 '20 at 14:42
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    @mostvenerablesir when you have a question about how a site gets data from outside the site, privacy policies are the place to look – schroeder May 09 '20 at 15:19
  • exactly what @schroeder said! Whenever I join new sites, or when sites ask for permissions that's where I spend just a couple minutes scanning through their policies, just a little due diligence! – mallocation May 09 '20 at 15:25