Mozilla observed that YouTube keeps recommending comparable videos even when users say they’re not interested.
Mozilla researchers found that “not interested,” “dislike,” “stop recommending channel,” and “delete from viewing history” are ineffective at stopping comparable content from being recommended. Even at their finest, these buttons still let through more than half of user-rejected recommendations, the survey showed. The buttons rarely blocked related videos.
Mozilla researchers recruited volunteers to use RegretsReporter, a browser plugin that adds a “stop suggesting” button to YouTube films. On the back end, users were randomly assigned to a group. When they clicked the button placed by Mozilla, different signals were sent to YouTube: dislike, not interested, don’t recommend channel, remove from history, and a control group for which no feedback was sent to the platform.
Using data from 500 million recommended videos, study assistants constructed 44,000 pairs of “rejected” and recommended videos. Researchers evaluated pairs or utilized machine learning to determine if a recommendation was too similar to a rejected video.
Youtube’s ‘Dislike’ and ‘Not Interested Button’ seem useless
YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez told The Verge that Mozilla’s study uses terminology that don’t represent its feedback tools: “Not interested” merely eliminates that video from future recommendations, while “Don’t recommend channel” removes the entire channel.
Its algorithms ignore entire topics or opinions to prevent echo chambers. Hernandez says the business expanded Data API access through YouTube Research. Mozilla said its study uncovered metrics the API wouldn’t have provided. It also maintains that user feedback is less important when YouTube changes a policy.
Mozilla claims that when a system is opaque, like YouTube’s video recommendation algorithm, people will try to manipulate it.
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