YouTube’s ‘Dislike’ and ‘Not Interested’ Buttons Don’t Help Avoid Unwanted Recommendations: Report

A new report says YouTube’s buttons such as ‘Dislike’ and ‘Not interested’ mostly fail to help users avoid unwanted recommendations like misinformation and violent content.

The report found that this is ‘troubling’ because past research shows YouTube to be recommending videos that violate its own community guidelines on misinformation, violent content, hate speech and spam.

An accompanying survey also found that YouTube users who are experiencing unwanted recommendations and turn to the platform’s user controls for assistance prevent less than half of unwanted recommendations.

In a statement, Jesse McCrosky, data scientist with Mozilla said, “Our study found that YouTube’s user controls have a negligible impact on preventing unwanted recommendations, leaving people at the mercy of YouTube’s recommender system. As a result, YouTube continues to recommend videos that people have clearly signaled they do not want to see, including war footage and gruesome horror clips.”

The study included data of more than 20,000 participants who used Mozilla's RegretsReporter browser extension, and by data about more than 500 million YouTube videos.

“YouTube’s user controls should be easy to understand and access. People should be provided with clear information about the steps they can take to influence their recommendations, and should be empowered to use those tools”, said the report.