Some say YouTube's algorithm has a life of its own. Others say there are hands in Mountain View adjusting it at will and convenience. Content creators' complaints are well documented, but we haven't heard from users. Gathering their opinions and experiences in some way. That is Mozilla's job with its new campaign "YouTube Regrets". The company shared 28 stories, some of them truly chilling about YouTube's recommendations and their consequences.
I admit this has happened to me more than once. One of the most recent cases involved the famous Area 51 raid. All I needed was a couple of videos about what happened at the gate of the base, but immediately after, videos of conspiracies and aliens walking among us appeared in my feed of YouTube.
Clearly, I'm not the only one. Stories about animal rescues leading to videos of abuse, dialogues of politicians and characters with a certain ideology, accompanied by short clips that insult and discredit each of them. Technical information about a firearm, transformed into a cascade of posts related to extreme patriotism and the right to bear arms.
Something is not quite right with YouTube's algorithm. Lack of information, excess of information, nobody knows exactly. Mountain View keeps its system well closed and isolated. The only option for users is to indicate that they are "not interested", but sometimes one video is enough to get them caught in a storm of junk content, fake news, and more.
That's how Mozilla launched YouTube Regrets, a portal where YouTube users can share their most negative experiences with the algorithm's recommendations. Why does Mozilla do this? First, because of its research on what it considers "trustworthy AI", dedicated to enriching users' digital lives, not harming it. Add to this articles like the one published by the New York Times last June, and statements from former YouTube employees about catastrophic failures in algorithm-made recommendations. The real problem is that these failures become dangerous in record time.
Correcting that behavior won't be easy. Why? First, because recommendations account for 70 percent of playback time on the site, 250 million hours a day. Mozilla contacted YouTube to find out what steps it is taking in the fight against hate and fake content on the platform, but we need the users' point of view. These are just three humble translations of the stories shared on YouTube Regrets:
- "I like watching videos about horse sports and horse care in general. YouTube keeps recommending stallions mounting mares, and I'm not interested. No one has watched porn on my personal computer, and having this recommended to me is annoying and degrading."
- "My ex-wife, who suffers from mental problems, started watching conspiracy videos three years ago and believed every one of them. YouTube kept feeding her paranoia, fear and anxiety, with one video after another. I begged her to stop, but she didn't - she couldn't. At one point she came to believe that a helicopter near the house was the government coming to take her and her daughter away (they were only checking the power grid), and she called me in blind panic. Now she is convinced the world is going to end one of these days, and she has become an extreme religious fundamentalist. She refuses to consider professional help because she trusts no one - especially doctors, the police and any government organization. And YouTube keeps feeding her more and more scary videos. My marriage is over. Her extraordinary terror has consumed her and our life together."
- "One day I started looking for tutorials on decorating a house, and the next day YouTube recommended videos about workplace accidents, people who died or suffered serious accidents while working on construction sites."
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