Home » News » Study finds that YouTube 'dislike' and 'not interested' buttons barely work

Study finds that YouTube 'dislike' and 'not interested' buttons barely work

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According to a recent Mozilla study, identical recommendations continue to be made even when users indicate on YouTube that they are not interested in particular genres of films. Researchers from Mozilla discovered that buttons like "not interested," "dislike," "stop recommending channel," and "delete from watch history" are mainly useless at stopping similar content from being recommended using data on video recommendations from more than 20,000 YouTube users. The survey discovered that even at their finest, these buttons still let through more than half of the offers comparable to what users indicated they weren't interested in. The controls, at their worst, hardly made a dent in preventing similar movies. Study finds that YouTube 'dislike' and 'not interested' buttons barely work Volunteers who utilized the foundation's RegretsReporter, a browser extension that adds a generic "stop recommending" button to YouTube films viewed by participants, were recruited by Mozilla researchers to help them gather data from actual videos and users. When users clicked the button placed by Mozilla, different signals were sent to YouTube based on the group they were randomly assigned to on the back end. These signals included dislike, not interested, don't recommend channel, removal from history, and a control group for which no feedback was sent to the platform. Research assistants produced approximately 44,000 pairs of videos, each consisting of a video that was "rejected" and a video that was later recommended by YouTube, using information gathered from over 500 million recommended videos. Researchers then evaluated couples manually or with machine learning to determine whether the recommendation was too similar to the video a user rejected. Study finds that YouTube 'dislike' and 'not interested' buttons barely work Sending the "dislike" and "not interested" signals was only "marginally effective" at preventing faulty suggestions, containing 12 percent and 11 percent of unsuitable recommendations, respectively, as compared to the baseline control group. In addition, although the "don't recommend channel" and "delete from history" options averted 43 percent and 29% of unsuitable recommendations, researchers said the platform's capabilities are still insufficient for directing users away from objectionable content. Study finds that YouTube 'dislike' and 'not interested' buttons barely work According to academics, YouTube should respect user input on their experiences and take it seriously by interpreting it as valuable information about how users wish to use the platform. In addition to YouTube, TikTok and Instagram have included many feedback options for users to train the algorithm, designed to offer them relevant material. However, users frequently lament that identical recommendations continue even after flagging something as inappropriate. According to Mozilla researcher Becca Ricks, platforms are opaque about how feedback is used, and it sometimes needs to be clarified what specific options truly achieve.

By Saloni Behl

I always had a crush on technology that\'s why I love reviewing the latest tech for the readers.

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