Survey results that YouTube's 'low rating' and 'not interested' buttons hardly work



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Mozilla Foundation , which is involved in the development of Firefox and others, conducted a survey on YouTube's recommendation system. Surveys have shown that users feel they have no control over the videos YouTube recommends to them, and in fact, it is becoming very difficult for users to control which videos are recommended. has also become clear.

Mozilla Foundation - YouTube User Control Study
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/youtube/user-controls/

Mozilla Foundation - Mozilla Investigation: YouTube's Dislike Button, Other User Controls Largely Fail to Stop Unwanted Recommendations
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/mozilla-investigation-youtubes-dislike-button-other-user-controls-largely-fail-to-stop-unwanted-recommendations/

YouTube's 'dislike' and 'not interested' buttons barely work, study finds - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/20/23356434/youtube-dislike-not-interested-buttons-bad-recommendations-mozilla-report

YouTube has a recommendation system that displays recommended videos based on the user's video viewing history. However, this recommendation system has received various complaints such as 'algorithms are opaque', 'inconsistent', and 'geographic inequalities exist'. YouTube notes in its help center about its recommendation system that users can change what is shown as recommended videos by removing certain videos from their watch history. However, it turned out that users who actually use YouTube feel that they are not able to control recommended videos by themselves.

The Mozilla Foundation conducted a survey using RegretsReporter , an open source tool built to study YouTube's recommendation system. The total number of videos analyzed in the survey was 567,880,195, and the number of users surveyed was 2,758. In the survey, it seems that we are conducting a combination of qualitative and quantitative research in order to understand how much users have control over YouTube's recommendation system.

Qualitative research has shown that users use the low rating button and buttons such as 'not interested' and 'do not show channel in recommendations' to change the recommended videos displayed on YouTube. increase. However, many users feel that these videos have not changed their recommended videos. 'Sometimes it would reappear as a recommended video the next day. Also, after blocking a particular channel, it would reappear as a recommendation after a while.'



Some users don't like watching a specific video and seeing similar videos appear as recommended videos, so they don't want to log out of their account before playing the video, or play the video on a different device. Some people do.

In addition, we conducted a quantitative survey to find out, 'Are YouTube's recommended videos really managed?' across the RegretsReporter community of participants. The results reveal that the 'how to manage recommended videos' that YouTube mentions in its help center does change the recommended videos to some extent, but this effect is marginal and most unwanted videos still remain. It also turned out to remain. In addition, 'unwanted videos' in this survey refer to videos with content similar to videos that users have clicked in the past, such as 'low rating', 'not interested', and 'do not show channel as recommended'. increase.

The graph below shows the percentage of unnecessary videos that are displayed as recommended videos after each action is performed. The actions taken by the user to change the recommended video are ``control (the act of intentionally selecting the video to be played)'', ``pressing the ``Low rating'' button, ``pressing the ``Don't display the channel as a recommendation'' button, `` 5 types of 'Press the 'Not interested' button' and 'Delete viewing history'. The most effective action is 'Press the 'Don't recommend channel' button.'



More specifically, 43% by pressing the 'Don't recommend channel' button, 29% by 'deleting viewing history', 12% by pressing the 'downvote' button, and 12% by 'interesting It is clear that it was possible to prevent 11% of ``videos that users do not like'' by pressing ``None'' button.

Therefore, the Mozilla Foundation said, ``The user's intuition was correct, and YouTube's ``How to manage recommended videos'' could not effectively change what was displayed as recommended videos.'' .

In response to the findings, YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez commented, ``These behaviors are intentional, as YouTube does not attempt to block all content.'' He continued, 'Importantly, our controls do not exclude topics or perspectives entirely, as having a system that blocks certain topics can have a negative impact on our viewers. YouTube welcomes academic research, which is why YouTube recently expanded access to its data API through its research program, and Mozilla's published report doesn't take into account how our system actually works. So it's difficult to gather a lot of insight.'

in Web Service, Posted by logu_ii