Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Even when users tell YouTube they aren’t interested in certain types of videos, similar recommendations keep coming, a new study by Mozilla found.
Using video recommendations data from more than 20,000 YouTube users, Mozilla researchers found that buttons like “not interested,” “dislike,” “stop recommending channel,” and “remove from watch history” are largely ineffective at preventing similar content from being recommended. Even at their best, these buttons still allow through more than half the recommendations similar to what a user said they weren’t interested in, the report found. At their worst, the buttons barely made a dent in blocking similar videos.
To collect data from real videos and users, Mozilla researchers enlisted…
