Mozilla launches browser add-on aimed at YouTube users

Sep 18, 2020 06:12 GMT  ·  By

Mozilla has announced a new Firefox extension called RegretsReporter and whose purpose is to help deal with the YouTube recommendations that are sometimes pointing to harmful content.

According to Mozilla, the purpose is to crowdsource research into this recommendation engine, conduct a thorough analysis of how everything works and then publish the findings online.

More specifically, the recommendations that YouTube offers would be collected and sent to Mozilla for analysis, but Mozilla guarantees that no private information, such as the video that you are watching, is submitted as part of the process.

“As you browse YouTube, the extension will automatically send data about how much time you spend on the platform, without collecting any information about what you are watching or searching. This may give us some insight into how often users are experiencing YouTube Regrets,” Mozilla explains.

“If you specifically choose, you can send us a report. The report form will ask you to tell us more about your YouTube Regret, and collect information about the video you are reporting and how you arrived at that video. This is important for understanding how YouTube's recommender system keeps people watching and what effects it might have on them.”

Available for Firefox on the desktop

If you browse the web in a private window, then no information is collected, and Mozilla also explains that your YouTube account isn’t collected. So technically, only a randomly-generated user ID is collected from your device, which means that personal stuff just stays on the computer.

“We ask users not to modify their YouTube behavior when using this extension. Don’t seek out regrettable content. Instead, use YouTube as you normally do. That is the only way that we can collectively understand whether YouTube’s problem with recommending regrettable content is improving, and which areas they need to do better on,” it says.

The extension is available for the desktop versions of Firefox today.