Youtube's 'Dislike' button barely works according to Mozilla report

[Spotty]

Does This Button Work? Investigating YouTube's ineffective user controls

 

 

Mozilla has released a report in to its investigation of the control users have over their recommended content on Youtube, expanding on their report from 2021, and finds that Youtube's user controls for managing content you want to see "barely functions". Using Mozilla's RegretsReporter browser addon Mozilla had 22,000 participants with over 500,000,000 videos analysed.

Mozilla blames the Youtube Algorithm and recommended videos for the majority of unwanted content people are served on the platform, with recommended content accounting for 71.1% of all Regret reports, compared to only 7.47% for videos from search results.

According to Mozilla's findings the user controls for removing bad recommendations is ineffective, with the Not Interested and Dislike button only 11% and 12% effective respectively at removing recommendations for similar or related content, while the Don't Recommend This Channel option was 43% effective at removing related unwanted videos.

 

Quotes

Quote

People feel like they don’t have control over their YouTube recommendations…

Our 2021 investigation into YouTube’s recommender system uncovered a range of problems on the platform: an opaque algorithm, inconsistent oversight, and geographic inequalities. We also learned that people feel they don’t have control over their YouTube experience — particularly the videos that are recommended to them.

YouTube says that people can manage their video recommendations through the feedback tools the platform offers. But do YouTube’s user controls actually work?

and our study shows that they really don’t.
 

Ultimately, we found:

People feel that using YouTube’s user controls does not change their recommendations at all.

and

They’re right. YouTube’s user control mechanisms don’t effectively prevent “unwanted” recommendations.

Quote

What is a bad recommendation?

In our experiment, a “bad recommendation” is when YouTube recommends videos to users that are similar to a video they had previously rejected (clicked “Stop Recommending”). We determined whether videos were similar by relying on assessments by our research assistants and our machine learning video similarity model.

Which method was most effective?

None of them really.
 

~43% Don’t recommend channel

~11% Not interested

~12% Dislike
~29% Remove from watch history

Percentage of bad recommendations prevented

^{https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/youtube/user-controls/}

 

 

Quote

YouTube’s dislike button does nothing for the algorithm, a new Mozilla study has found. We continue to see content we don’t want no matter how much we mash that thumbs down. The same goes for “Not Interested” and “Don’t recommend this channel” options.

Mozilla used a variety of tools in its research. It began with a survey of 2,758 RegretsReporter users, and 68% of them felt the YouTube algorithm completely ignored their interests. Then Mozilla used a qualitative method which confirmed the survey results. It did this by overlaying a Stop Recommending button onto recommended videos which would trigger the YouTube algorithm. The extension then tracked the videos which were rejected, and which were recommended again. A discouraging 67% of rejected videos resurfaced on the participants’ recommended feeds.

^{https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/youtube-dislike-not-working-mozilla/}

 

Quote

Mozilla tested the effectiveness of four different controls: the thumbs down “dislike” button, “not interested,” “don’t recommend channel” and “remove from watch history.” The researchers found that these had varying degrees of effectiveness, but that the overall impact was “small and inadequate.”

 

Of the four controls, the most effective was “don’t recommend from channel,” which prevented 43 percent of unwanted recommendations, while “not interested” was the least effective and only prevented about 11 percent of unwanted suggestions. The “dislike” button was nearly the same at 12 percent, and “remove from watch history” weeded out about 29 percent.

https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-recommendation-study-080006930.html

 

 

 

My thoughts

This is not a surprise to me. I've been complaining constantly about how Youtube keeps recommending me videos from categories that I'm not interested in and have never watched similar content for. I have hit "Not Interested" or "Don't Recommend This Channel" on every minecraft or makeover or pregnancy announcement video that pops up in my recommended feed but I cannot get rid of it. It's like playing whack-a-mole to get rid of it with every time I remove one video 3 more just like it end up in my recommended feed. I am actually now convinced that clicking "Not interested" signals to Youtube that they should find other videos similar to that one to show you instead, instead of "I AM NOT INTERESTED IN THIS TOPIC". From my personal experience It seems that any interaction with a video whatsoever, even a negative one like clicking "Dislike" or "Not Interested" will signal to Youtube that it should recommend more similar videos to you.

 

After finding a guide for it I now actually use filters in my adblocker to block out videos that contain certain keywords like "minecraft" "#shorts" "baby" and "Pregnant" as that's the only way I can remove those videos from my recommended feeds as the options within Youtube to express you're not interested in that content simply do not work.

Spoiler

www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="#shorts" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(#video-title-link[title~="#shorts" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="#shorts" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="#shorts" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="minecraft" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(#video-title-link[title~="minecraft" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="minecraft" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="minecraft" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="Beast" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(#video-title-link[title~="Beast" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="Beast" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="Beast" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="challenge" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(#video-title-link[title~="challenge" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="challenge" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="challenge" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="baby" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(#video-title-link[title~="baby" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="baby" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="baby" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="VLOG" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(#video-title-link[title~="VLOG" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="VLOG" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="VLOG" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="pregnant" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(#video-title-link[title~="pregnant" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="pregnant" i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(#video-title[title~="pregnant" i])

 

 

The only option which seems to work, backed up by this report, is the Don't Recommend This Channel option, which is actually effective at removing videos from that channel from your recommended feeds. The only problem is you have to do it for every channel instead of applying to categories and types of videos you're not interested in. I wish there was a "Don't show me videos about minecraft" option that worked to remove that topic of content from your feed, much like it works with Google's news feed on phones.


Mozilla's full report goes in to more detail and outlines how they gathered the data.

 

Sources

Mozilla's Release: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/youtube/user-controls/

Mozilla's full report: https://assets.mofoprod.net/network/documents/Mozilla-Report-YouTube-User-Controls.pdf

Mozilla's previous 2021 report: https://assets.mofoprod.net/network/documents/Mozilla_YouTube_Regrets_Report.pdf

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/youtube-dislike-not-working-mozilla/

https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-recommendation-study-080006930.html

[Lightwreather]

Anyone know the effectiveness of just not interacting with uninteresting videos?

It's worked pretty well with me.

[Eaglerino]

man I miss YouTube suggestions from the early 2010s era

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, Lightwreather JfromN said:

Anyone know the effectiveness of just not interacting with uninteresting videos?

It's worked pretty well with me.

Same here.  Unless I'm directly annoyed or disgusted by a particular video/channel, I just ignore them and go on my way.  I will say I'm actively trying to make myself use Rumble more, though their live streaming could be a bit smoother.

[BondiBlue]

Just now, Lightwreather JfromN said:

Anyone know the effectiveness of just not interacting with uninteresting videos?

It's worked pretty well with me.

It works well enough for me. I changed Google accounts several years ago, and from the time I started using the new one I just ignored things I wasn't interested in. For the most part my recommendations are things I'm actually interested in, or they're things that are very similar to something I've watched or searched for. Things that don't interest me don't usually show up for very long. 

 

There have been a few instances where things I don't care about keep getting recommended even after I finally indicate that I'm not interested in them, but that hasn't happened in about a year now. 

[Spotty]

7 minutes ago, Lightwreather JfromN said:

Anyone know the effectiveness of just not interacting with uninteresting videos?

It's worked pretty well with me.

Still going through the full report, but I believe the report from Mozilla looks at videos that people interacted with and then what they were recommended.
People participating in the study with the extension were split in to 5 groups, and depending on the group they were in when they dismissed a video they weren't interested in the extension submitted either a Dislike, Don't recommend channel, Not Interested, remove the video from watch history, or for those in the control group did nothing.

 

Interestingly according to the report, people in the control group were less likely to see bad/unwanted recommendations in the sidebar recommendation feed than people who disliked those videos. Meaning in some cases clicking Dislike on a video makes it more likely for Youtube to show you related videos!

[starsmine]

10 minutes ago, Lightwreather JfromN said:

Anyone know the effectiveness of just not interacting with uninteresting videos?

It's worked pretty well with me.

And then you find a subniche that you are strongly not interested in, but the clickbait is to strong and now your feed is all that subniche.
"X reacts to y song for the very first time"

Honestly other then the odd rabbit hole like this, I have not had issues with youtube?
even on the occasions I do, I get to a point where I mass hit dont rec this channel ever again, and it always works

I dont actually want dislike button to work right away for the algorithm, its a flag to the content creator first, its a 'this aint it chief' button. If a channel gets bad enough thats when I use not interested.

Of course not interested wont work the first time you hit it, it does not know what part of that subniche you took Umbridge to until you hit it enough times it can build a reasonable personal algorithm, but I have never had it NOT work at the end of the day.

[Kisai]

13 minutes ago, Lightwreather JfromN said:

Anyone know the effectiveness of just not interacting with uninteresting videos?

It's worked pretty well with me.

The problem is that even hovering over the video, or letting "auto play" play the next thing, causes that interaction.

 

As I mentioned when people were going nuts over the loss of the dislike counter. The dislike button NEVER DID ANYTHING. Without the counter it does even less. Placebo effect all the way.

 

And that's the way it should work. Hate-mobbing a video should have no effect on the algorithm.

Only two things should affect it. "Do not show me this video ever again (not interested)", in which youtube requires your watch history to be enabled. And "do not show me this channel ever again (don't recommend this channel)", in which it will pre-filter out channels you have blocked. Like any good social media site.

 

Unfortunately there are certain kinds of videos that are nothing short of click-bait/engagement-bait, which is especially prevalent in how shorts are now doing 100x better than long form videos. There are channels that do nothing but steal things off tiktok and twitch's clips. Youtube has been recommending me the SAME video's from at least a half dozen creators for the entire month. Like, just let them go.

[Spotty]

33 minutes ago, Kisai said:

As I mentioned when people were going nuts over the loss of the dislike counter. The dislike button NEVER DID ANYTHING. Without the counter it does even less. Placebo effect all the way.

 

And that's the way it should work. Hate-mobbing a video should have no effect on the algorithm.

Only two things should affect it. "Do not show me this video ever again (not interested)", in which youtube requires your watch history to be enabled. And "do not show me this channel ever again (don't recommend this channel)", in which it will pre-filter out channels you have blocked. Like any good social media site.

You would think the "Not Interested" button would work better than dislike, but according to the report by Mozilla clicking "Not Interested" on a recommended video was the least effective way of preventing similar/related videos from appearing, preventing only 11% of bad recommendations compared to 12% for Dislike.

"Not Interested" removes that particular video from your recommended feed, but it is according to Mozilla's report the least effective method of preventing Youtube from recommending related/similar videos. Mozilla gives a few examples in their report, but things like follow up videos to the same topic from the same channel are still just as likely to appear; for example a US talk show that was split up in to small segments uploaded to Youtube, the other segments are almost just as likely to still be recommended after clicking "Not Interested", or they might be extremely similar videos from the same channel "Top 10 horror movies that will shock you" and "7 more horror movies that will keep you awake at night!" that still get recommended after clicking Not Interested on the first video.

For example if Youtube is recommending a bunch of Tik Tok Compilation videos and you don't want to watch those, clicking Dislike on the videos or "Not Interested" will have almost no effect on removing those types of videos from your recommended feed. Youtube might not show you that particular video again but it will keep showing you other similar/related videos. If you click "Not Interested" on "Funny Tik Tok compilation 83" Youtube is still just as likely to recommend you the other 82 "Funny Tik Tok compilation" videos from the same creator.
 

Aside from the "Don't recommend this channel", Youtube seems to lack any meaningful way of removing unwanted or bad recommendations. There's no effective way to indicate "I'm not interested in this type of video". Whereas something like Google's news feed on phones gives a "Not interested in <topic>" option to dismiss related articles.

 

 

33 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Youtube has been recommending me the SAME video's from at least a half dozen creators for the entire month. Like, just let them go.

That's something I've been annoyed with as well. More and more videos seem to get stuck in the recommended feed for weeks until you interact with them, either watching them or clicking not interested/don't recommend channel. Dammit Youtube, if I didn't watch the video the first 29 times you recommended it to me I'm probably not going to watch it the 30th time.

Edited September 24, 2022 by Spotty

[SansVarnic]

Youtube pre-google was better. Change my mind.

[Beerzerker]

I guess they thought lack of a dislike button would change whether a video sucked or not..... News flash Youboob - It doesn't!

Really just their way of trying to keep vid posters happy and from bailing to another platfrom TBH.

You don't get views for ad revenue if you don't have new vids in the first place instead of repeating the "Same old" all the time. Old stuff doesn't create interest, new stuff/content does, gives more opportunities to sling ads around and that's the real reason behind it.

Gotta keep that sweet ad revenue up you know - Not that I can blame them from a purely business viewpoint mind you.

I'll say it too, some got their feelings hurt, complained about it and YT thought this was a way to help reduce the number of video content creators from jumping ship but it was really just a form of catering.

When folks like us don't have a way to directly just say "It sucks" or not, we say it in other ways as YT will discover one day, if they haven't caught the hint already.

[Fasterthannothing]

1 hour ago, BondiBlue said:

It works well enough for me. I changed Google accounts several years ago, and from the time I started using the new one I just ignored things I wasn't interested in. For the most part my recommendations are things I'm actually interested in, or they're things that are very similar to something I've watched or searched for. Things that don't interest me don't usually show up for very long. 

 

There have been a few instances where things I don't care about keep getting recommended even after I finally indicate that I'm not interested in them, but that hasn't happened in about a year now. 

This is my philosophy I don't even subscribe to channels and the algorithm gets recommendations right 98% of the time. I'm also the type of person who binge watches a particular topic all at once and I noticed it's gotten very good at quickly switching to showing me videos related to whatever I've been watching the most of. I also keep a pretty small group of YouTubers I watch regularly for different topics so that helps I think. As those channels as a whole tend to show up more than than a specific video. 

[Fasterthannothing]

Also I'm pretty sure we all have known that the dislike button doesn't work by now. I mean why would they go to all that trouble of getting rid of downvoted and hiding the count?? Remember when people went insane because the dislike button was gone but then like a week later people stopped caring and now no one even thinks about it anymore. The amount of fake outrage people have over the YouTube system is insane to me. If people hate it so much make your own. O wait absolutely nothing will be as viable as YouTube because contrary to people's feelings their algorithm actually generates interest. 

[porina]

Hmm, I used the "not interested in this video" button to remove recommendations from channels I want to continue to follow but just don't want to see a particular video, so in that sense it is doing what I want it to do. 

 

In my observation in what it offers me, I'd have to guess it uses what others watch when they also watch what you watch. If I watch something one-off outside my usual areas, it usually skews a bunch of random related results in the feed. Removing it from watch history stops that again.

 

I have a kinda different problem. I'm running out of things to watch within my interest areas. I'm sure I'm not seeing all the content possible, but without manually searching for it, I'm not getting it on my feed.

[Arika]

how completely unsurprising.

[Middcore]

I'm shocked. Shocked!

 

Well, not that shocked.

[dizmo]

On 9/23/2022 at 9:00 PM, SansVarnic said:

Youtube pre-google was better. Change my mind.

I'd rather Google had purchased them, than them trying to do it themselves, starting a subscription fee, and then ultimately flatlining. Google is one of the only companies that can, and would keep YT "free."

[Quackers101]

any interaction over none, but dam its sad with the spam and recommended spam or "bad content".

Sometimes take you into interesting places and sometimes it's just to fill spam content that gets millions of views by being pushed as "spam".

Just as seen with tech or news channels from lesser known parties or at times as seen with LTT, clickbaits and interactions over good content at times or sometimes just stealing others content.

[Theminecraftaddict555]

Same shit different day. 

 

Also someone mentioned alternatives, which brings up my question. Are there actually viable alternatives to YT? I'm sure there is at least 1 viable alternative...

[Kisai]

6 minutes ago, Theminecraftaddict555 said:

Same shit different day. 

 

Also someone mentioned alternatives, which brings up my question. Are there actually viable alternatives to YT? I'm sure there is at least 1 viable alternative...

There are not, and will not be any.

 

Niconico in Japan, Bilibili in China. Pretty much exist because of locale-specific situations. Most Japanese streamers and content creators also put their content on Youtube, and fans translate, or machine-translation does the work if the creators does it themselves. Bilibili on the other hand, mention taiwan, and you are dead to the platform instantly.

 

US-side, it's far more likely that "meta" will intrude into the space for gaming because they need a way to sell their "metaverse" product, and if they can't stream from the metaverse, the metaverse is dead.  It's pretty hard to convince people to use something without showing people having fun in them, and thus far VRChat is eating the lunch of everyone who clones it. But VRChat is also having the same issues early Youtube has... widespread copyright infringement, stolen content (not only videos, but other players avatars), which is something metaverse "nft" nonsense was supposed to solve, but ultimately does not.

  

So I think ultimately we're going to end up seeing some kind of resurgence of the torrent-like peer-to-peer structure as more censorship and greedy infrastructure (eg ISP's, data centers, backhaul, etc) try to kill youtube by a thousand cuts. It may not even matter ultimately, as it's the indexes that actually control the discovery process. People who got into making content will then get out of it, put the indexes to their video content behind patreon-like services, and the rest into their discords.

 

 

[Stahlmann]

The only way i use youtube is to have my sub-box as my landing page. Even after using it for years, the start page constantly recommends soccer and diy stuff even though i've always dismissed these recommendations in the past.

 

So i just set up my youtube bookmark to bring me to my subscriptions page. I'm living in my own little youtube bubble and that's the best way to use the site imo. The only problem is that it's hard to stumble across new creators i might be interested in.

[LAwLz]

On 9/24/2022 at 6:21 PM, that_dude said:

On 9/24/2022 at 6:00 AM, SansVarnic said:

Youtube pre-google was better. Change my mind.

That was 2008-2012?

Youtube was fun. Facebook was cool. Insta not a thing. Tumblr had porn and for eveything else there was snapchat.

Nope, Google bought Youtube in October 2006.

I think most people who say "Youtube was better before Google" are either joking, or are feeling nostalgic without realizing Google owned Youtube during that "golden era" they miss.

Google bought Youtube less than 10 months after Youtube officially launched.

[Brooksie359]

On 9/23/2022 at 10:24 PM, Kisai said:

The problem is that even hovering over the video, or letting "auto play" play the next thing, causes that interaction.

 

As I mentioned when people were going nuts over the loss of the dislike counter. The dislike button NEVER DID ANYTHING. Without the counter it does even less. Placebo effect all the way.

 

And that's the way it should work. Hate-mobbing a video should have no effect on the algorithm.

Only two things should affect it. "Do not show me this video ever again (not interested)", in which youtube requires your watch history to be enabled. And "do not show me this channel ever again (don't recommend this channel)", in which it will pre-filter out channels you have blocked. Like any good social media site.

 

Unfortunately there are certain kinds of videos that are nothing short of click-bait/engagement-bait, which is especially prevalent in how shorts are now doing 100x better than long form videos. There are channels that do nothing but steal things off tiktok and twitch's clips. Youtube has been recommending me the SAME video's from at least a half dozen creators for the entire month. Like, just let them go.

From what I heard dislikes don't do anything but help the video. Apparently youtube sees it as people interacting with the video and if a video has high interaction then the algorithm will likely promote the video. In some sense it makes sense as often times videos that have huge dislike ratios will still do fairly well in terms of views and viewing time as most of the people who disliked the video most likely still watched it. I guess hate watching is a thing. 

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

From what I heard dislikes don't do anything but help the video. Apparently youtube sees it as people interacting with the video and if a video has high interaction then the algorithm will likely promote the video. In some sense it makes sense as often times videos that have huge dislike ratios will still do fairly well in terms of views and viewing time as most of the people who disliked the video most likely still watched it. I guess hate watching is a thing. 

Hate-watching is a thing, just like hate-reading.

 

There are various forms of web-fiction that I've seen forums just dedicate themselves to hating the novel/comic. Hell the most profitable comic on one site is the one that is the most hate-brigaded, and the author knows this. Negative engagement is more attractive to advertisement revenue than positive engagement. When you know your viewership is engaging out of spite, that's more money. Advertisers aren't looking at your audiences comments, they're only looking at "Your content", and unless you make your audience, part of the content, it tends to not be a problem.

 

Hell, if advertisers really believed in the brand-safety BS, they'd never advertise on any site with comments.

[Jito463]

17 hours ago, Theminecraftaddict555 said:

Are there actually viable alternatives to YT? I'm sure there is at least 1 viable alternative...

17 hours ago, Kisai said:

There are not, and will not be any.

Rumble has some issues, but overall seems to be coming up as a viable replacement for YT.