New research has found that pressing the 'Dislike' or 'Not interested' buttons on a YouTube video may not make a big difference in terms of what's recommended to a user. YouTube is the world's largest crowdsourced video platform that offers billions of videos in dozens of different genres. According to Statista, there were an estimated 2.24 billion YouTube users worldwide in 2021, with India said to be the largest market for the platform in terms of viewership, followed by the United States.
However, with popularity comes controversies, and YouTube has faced its fair share of it over the years, mainly related to misinformation. Faced with multiple allegations of allowing vaccine-related misinformation to thrive on the platform, YouTube last year announced that it would ban all content that spreads false information or FUDs related to vaccines for diseases like measles, flu and Hepatitis. The company had announced plans to delete all videos spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.
Over the years, many users have complained that despite 'disliking' certain videos on YouTube, the site keeps recommending similar videos repeatedly. However, new research from Mozilla has confirmed that YouTube's user control mechanisms "don't effectively prevent unwanted recommendations." According to the study, YouTube recommendations largely ignore the 'Dislike,' 'Not interested,' 'Stop recommending channel,' and 'Remove from watch history' buttons. This means users keep getting similar recommendations despite making it clear that they do not want to watch similar videos in the future.
YouTube's User Controls Do Not Work As Well As Expected
The study is based on inputs from 22,722 volunteers who installed Mozilla's RegretsReporter browser extension that is available for major browsers like Chrome and Firefox. The volunteers were tracked between Dec. 2021 and June 2022, helping the researchers analyze over half a billion video recommendations. According to Mozilla, the 'Dislike' button only reduced unwanted recommendations by 12 percent, while the 'Don't recommend channel' button was 43 percent effective in reducing unwanted recommendations. The 'Not interested' button was only 11 percent effective, while removing a video from watch history was 29 percent effective.
YouTube has reacted to the report, saying that the buttons are not meant to stop all video recommendations related to a particular topic. Talking to The Verge, the company's spokesperson Elena Hernandez said that YouTube's algorithms intentionally "do not filter out entire topics or viewpoints as this could have negative effects for viewers, like creating echo chambers." She also argued that Mozilla's research did not consider how YouTube's systems work and has therefore failed to offer any insights into how its recommendation affect general users.