YouTube's algorithm can lead you to some very strange suggestions, suggesting videos that seem to be to your liking but also off-target at the same time. Today, Mozilla will introduce a new browser extension, RegretsReporter, that aims to create a study of YouTube's algorithm and its "strange suggestions" to users, to allow them to better understand how it works and give them details about the patterns it follows.
Mozilla began collecting user stories last year about videos YouTube recommended to them. One user searched for videos about Vikings and was suggested racist content about white supremacy. Another searched for videos about “failures” and began getting suggestions for videos of car wrecks from fatal car accidents.
However, there hasn't been a truly large-scale independent effort to monitor YouTube's algorithm to understand how it determines which videos to recommend, said Ashley Boyd, Mozilla vice president.
“ Facebook deserves so much attention when it comes to issues of misinformation,” Boyd said. “But there are other elements in the digital ecosystem that are being monitored, and YouTube is one of them.”
A YouTube spokesperson said the company is interested in seeing the research on its recommendation system. “However, it’s difficult to draw broad conclusions from anecdotal examples, and we update our systems on an ongoing basis to improve the experience for users,” the spokesperson said, adding that in the past year, YouTube has launched “over 30 different changes to reduce recommendations of controversial content.”
The Google-owned video platform has promised on multiple occasions to tweak the algorithm, Boyd points out, even when company executives knew it was suggesting videos containing hate speech and conspiracy theories.
The browser extension will send data to Mozilla about how often you use YouTube, but it won't collect information about what you search for or watch unless you choose to. You can send a report through the extension to provide more details about any "strange" videos you come across in the suggestions, which will allow Mozilla to collect information about the video you report and how you got there.
Mozilla hopes the extension will answer a number of questions about YouTube's recommendation algorithm. "I'd love for people to be more interested in how AI , and in this case, recommendation systems, are involved in their lives," Boyd said.
Mozilla stressed that privacy is protected throughout the process. The data the company collects from the extension will be linked to a randomly generated user ID, not your YouTube account, and only Mozilla will have access to the raw data. It won't collect data in private browser windows, and when Mozilla shares its research results, it will do so in a way that minimizes the risk of identifying users.
Mozilla doesn't have a formal agreement with Google or YouTube for its recommendation algorithm research, but Boyd says they have reached out to the company and have committed to sharing the information.
YouTube, however, said that the methodology proposed by Mozilla seems "questionable," adding that it is unable to properly control how a clip is defined as "weird.".
Mozilla plans to spend six months collecting information from the extension and then present its findings to users and on YouTube.
