Tag: youtube’s
Mozilla: YouTube’s Dislike Button Largely Fails To Stop Unwanted Recommendations
This is especially troubling because Mozilla’s past research shows that YouTube recommends videos that violate its very own community guidelines, like misinformation, violent content, hate speech, and spam. For example, one user in this most recent research asked YouTube to stop recommending war footage from Ukraine — but shortly after was recommended even more grisly content from the region. The study, titled “Does This Button Work? Investigating YouTube’s ineffective user controls” is the culmination of months of rigorous qualitative and quantitative research. The study was made possible by the data of more than 20,000 participants who used Mozilla’s RegretsReporter browser extension, and by data about more than 500 million YouTube videos. These are the top findings, as highlighted in the report:
People don’t trust YouTube’s user controls. More than a third (39.3%) of people surveyed felt YouTube’s user controls did not impact their recommendations at all, and 23% felt the controls had a mixed response. Said one interviewee: “Nothing changed. Sometimes I would report things as misleading and spam and the next day it was back in […] Even when you block certain sources they eventually return.”
People take matters into their own hands. Our study found that people did not always understand how YouTube’s controls affect their recommendations, and so took a jury rigged approach instead. People will log out, create new accounts, or use privacy tools just to manage their YouTube recommendations. Said one user: “When the Superbowl came around … if someone recommended a particular commercial, I used to log out of YouTube, watch the commercial, and then log back in.”
The data confirms people are right. The most “effective” user control was “Don’t recommend channel,” but compared to users who do not make use of YouTube’s user controls, only 43% of unwanted recommendations are prevented — and recommendations from the unwanted channel sometimes persist. Other controls were even less effective: The “Not Interested” tool prevented only 11% of unwanted recommendations.
YouTube can fix this problem. YouTube has the power to confront this issue and do a better job at enabling people to control their recommendations. Our research outlines several concrete suggestions to put people back into the driver’s seat, like making YouTube’s controls more proactive, allowing users to shape their own experience; and giving researchers increased access to YouTube’s API and other tools. Further reading: YouTube Targets TikTok With Revenue Sharing For Shorts, Partner Program Expansion
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Study suggests YouTube’s dislike button isn’t doing what you want it to do
YouTube’s Creator Music marketplace will finally enable creators to license pop music
YouTube creators’ music woes many finally be coming to an end. For more than a decade, creators have struggled to soundtrack their videos with anything other than instrumental or stock music and still make money. If they wanted to use a pop song — popular or not — they’d have to do so knowing that all the revenue from their video would go to the rights holder for that track.
Today, Sept. 20, at its inaugural “Made on YouTube” event, YouTube announced Creator Music, a new marketplace for creators to browse and license music with clearly defined terms and rates all spelled out. They can also elect to share revenue with music rights holders.
Credit: YouTube
The marketplace is free to use, much like YouTube’s longstanding but outdated Audio Library, which offers free stock music and sound effect options to creators from within the Creator Studio.
It’s a huge step forward in a content creation landscape that has evolved faster than copyright laws have been able to keep up with it. Creator Music is in beta in the U.S. and will expand to more countries in 2023.
Sorry ‘Little Mermaid’ haters, YouTube’s dislike button doesn’t really do anything
YouTube’s removal of dislike counts in November 2021 led to a massive uproar from the community. But a new report from the Mozilla Foundation says that the dislike button doesn’t do much to change the YouTube experience anyway.
The report, released today, found two main problems with the tools that YouTube gives users to indicate that they no longer wish to see a certain type of content. First, it’s unclear what each tool does and second, using those tools doesn’t affect recommendations as strongly as users expect they will.
The foundation tracked the YouTube experience of 22,722 people and surveyed 2,758 of them about their experience with the content they saw on their feeds. More than 39 percent of those surveyed expressed feeling that YouTube’s user controls did not impact their recommendations at all, and 23 percent felt the controls had a mixed response.
The results of the research supported those sentiments, finding that clicking “don’t recommend channel” led to the prevention of 43 percent of bad recommendations, removing a video from your watch history led to 29 percent, clicking the dislike button led to 12 percent, and clicking “not interested” led to 11 percent.
Basically, users felt that YouTube didn’t listen to them because it doesn’t. That’s bad news for everyone except for the people who disliked the Little Mermaid trailer. In their cases, I hope they continue to get Halle Bailey content recommended to them until the end of time.
You can read Mozilla’s summary of the report at this link and access the full report here.