The buttons “Not interested,” dislikes, “Stop recommending a channel,” and “Remove from browsing history” have little effect on the recommendations of YouTube users. It became known from Mozilla research.
The study was conducted based on more than twenty thousand accounts working with the RegretsReporter extension. From these data, the following became known:
- The dislike button works about 12% of the time;
- “Not interested” affects only about 11% of search results;
- the “Delete from browsing history” button is much more effective. It works in 29% of cases;
- The most effective button was “Do not recommend videos from this channel” — 43%.
The study recommended that YouTube pay more attention to the desire of users:
YouTube should respect user feedback on their experience. Their actions are meaningful signals of how people want to spend their time on the platform.
From Mozilla Research
The authors of The Verge turned to YouTube for a comment, where they criticized the study under discussion:
Our controls do not filter topics or points of view, as this can have negative effects on viewers, such as creating a vacuum effect.
Elena Hernandez
YouTube Representative
Ms. Hernandez says Mozilla researchers don’t understand how YouTube’s recommender system works. For example, the “Not interested” button affects only a specific video, while “Do not recommend a channel” affects the entire channel. After clicking the last button, the channel does not appear in the user’s recommendations. However, this does not mean that the channel’s author will not appear in the recommendations. Also, this will not affect the issuance of all content related to a given topic or opinion.
All this is very good, YouTube, but how long can our viewers show a video about the iPhone 7, which is gaining inadequately many views in 2022?