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According to a study by the Mozilla Foundation, YouTube “Dislike” and “Not interested” buttons not working as expected. A survey of more than 22,000 people that ended this
According to a study by the Mozilla Foundation, YouTube “Dislike” and “Not interested” buttons not working as expected. A survey of more than 22,000 people that ended this month proved that Google’s video platform insists on continuing to recommend the same types of content, even if they’re not interesting to the user.
The implementation is still in the testing phase. They have not announced a possible public debut date.
The study began precisely because of dissatisfaction users who regularly pointed out inappropriate YouTube recommendations in their feeds, according to a previous survey conducted by Mozilla between December 2021 and June 2022.
The results of the survey were surprising, demonstrating that, generally speaking, YouTube does not respect the feedback and wishes of its users.
Thus, these were the results obtained by the Mozilla team:
To conduct research and evaluate the effectiveness of YouTube’s feedback buttons, Mozilla researchers used the RegretsReporter browser extension (available for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox). Once installed, users will see a Stop Recommend button on top of all YouTube videos and recommendations.
In practice, the participants in the experiment were internally divided into several groups, and depending on which one they belonged to, the RegretsReporter button generated different interactions with YouTube, capable of triggering commands such as “Do not recommend the channel”, “Dislike”, or still not causing any reaction (in the case of participants who fell into the control group).
Based on this technique collected data on approximately 500 million interactions and recommendationswhich the researchers divided into more than 44,000 pairs of videos, the first of which is the content disapproved by the user, and the second is the next recommendation provided by YouTube.
Subsequently, these The data was analyzed by the researchers using machine learning tools., which gave unexpected (and rather disappointing) results. As we saw above, compared to the control group, the Not Interested buttons reduced the number of unwanted recommendations by only 11% and 12%, respectively.
The most effective tools were the removal of videos from the viewing history (which reduced the amount of inappropriate content by only 29%) and “Don’t Recommend a Channel”, resulting in a roughly 43% reduction in inappropriate recommendations.
It is important to emphasize that the story doesn’t seem intuitive as a way to form the platform’s suggestionsbecause the user is required to manually manage the content and remove it from his account, even after making it clear that he did not like what he saw.
The results contradict Google’s discourse, which claims that users control recommendations through feedback buttons. Mozilla itself emphasizes that ” YouTube must respect its users’ feedback on their experience.“.
Elena Hernandez, YouTube spokeswoman, told The Verge that this behavior is intentional as the platform tries not to block all content related to the topic, precisely because I don’t want to build echo chambers.
According to the report, Hernandez went even further, criticizing the study for “not taking into account how YouTube’s controls work.”
The dislike button reduces inappropriate recommendations by just 12%.
Even in her response, the press secretary emphasized that the “I’m not interested” button specifically removes the video from the recommendations, and the “Do not recommend the channel” option prevents it from being shown to the user in the future, but without any consequences. on a topic, topic, opinion, or even about a particular presenter.
Finally, Hernandez made it clear that “user feedback is not always the most important signal” for platform algorithmas YouTube strives to “balance the engagement and satisfaction of its users”.
To view the full survey, please follow this link. In fact, the platform has recently been the subject of another study, this time here in Brazil, pointing out the inconsistency of the video recommendations during the elections. Find out what happened in the following article:
UFRJ Study Suggests YouTube Recommends More Supporting Bolsonaro Videos
Poll still shows video against former President Lula
Via: The Verge Source: Mozilla
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Source: Mundo Conectado
I’m Maurice Knox, a professional news writer with a focus on science. I work for Div Bracket. My articles cover everything from the latest scientific breakthroughs to advances in technology and medicine. I have a passion for understanding the world around us and helping people stay informed about important developments in science and beyond.
