mozilla-foundation/youtube_regrets

Dataset Card for Mozilla RegretsReporter Public Data

Dataset Summary

RegretsReporter Data

This data set card describes the public data sets made available based on Mozilla’s RegretsReporter research as well as the Viu Política research from the University of Exeter and Vero Instituto.

This data was collected from participants in Mozilla’s RegretsReporter studies. Participants installed a web extension to participate in each study. In the case of the first study, data was collected from all participants that installed the extension. In the second, data was only collected from participants that positively opted in to experiment participation after installing the extension.

Viu Politica Data

This data was collected from the Viu Política research project. Data was only collected from participants that positively opted in to experiment participation after installing the extension. The videos included are predominantly in Portuguese. The extension UX was available in Portuguese only, and promotional materials about the study were released in Brazilian Portuguese, for a Brazilian audience. For this study, data includes “tagged videos”, “recommendations”, and “collected videos”:

• Tagged videos are videos that study participants considered to contain political content. They are videos for which the participant pressed the “Viu Politica?” (“See Politics?”, loosely translated) button overlayed on the video player or thumbnail.
• Recommendations are videos recommended to our participants by YouTube, on the sidebar of the video player page, when the participant is watching a video they tagged as political. Only videos loaded in the browser are included, so the “infinite scroll” of the sidebar is only included to the extent that it is loaded, which will depend on participant scrolling behavior.
• Collected videos are videos manually identified on YouTube using a selection of keywords relevant to the 2022 Brazilian elections. These videos were used in the research project to support the two datasets above, and provide further coverage of the videos posted on YouTube during the electoral period.
• The full transcripts of all tagged, recommended, and collected videos are also included, as a separate dataset.

Languages

The RegretsReporter videos included are predominantly English, but include over 100 different languages, based on our automatic classification. The extension UX was available in English only, but the extension was still used by speakers of many other languages. The promotional materials about the studies were released in English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.

The Viu Politica videos are primarily in Portuguese and that study was exclusively in Portuguese.

Dataset Structure

Data includes “regrets” and “recommendations”:

• Regrets are videos that our study participants considered undesirable in some sense:
• In the first study, they are videos for which the participant pressed the “Report Regret” toolbar button.
• In the second study, they are videos for which the participant pressed the “Stop Recommending” button overlayed on the video player or thumbnail.
• Recommendations are videos recommended to our participants by YouTube, either on the front YouTube page, or the sidebar of the video player page. Only videos loaded in the browser are included, so the “infinite scroll” of the sidebar is only included to the extent that it is loaded, which will depend on participant scrolling behavior.

Data Fields

RegretsReporter 1: regrets

Number of rows: 4,760 Total logical bytes: 12.03 MB

The data contains the following fields:

• submission_date - Date of regret
• submission_country - Country from which regret was sent according to IPGeo lookup.
• regret_video_id - YouTube video ID
• regret_video_title - Title of video
• regret_video_description - Description of video (from YouTube)
• regret_video_view_count - View count of video at time of regret
• video_post_date - Posting date of video

RegretsReporter 2 (user control study): regrets

Number of rows: 20,633 Total logical bytes: 22 MB

The data contains the following fields:

• submission_date - Date of regret
• submission_country - Country from which regret was sent according to IPGeo lookup.
• regret_video_id - YouTube video ID
• regret_video_title - Title of video
• regret_video_channel - Video Channel (canonicalized)
• regret_video_description - Description of video (from YouTube)
• regret_video_view_count - View count of video at time of regret

RegretsReporter 2 (user control study): recommendations

Number of rows: 96,001,836 Total logical bytes: 115.72 GB

The data contains the following fields:

• submission_date - Date of recommendation
• submission_country - Country from which report was sent according to IPGeo lookup.
• recommendation_video_id - YouTube video ID
• recommendation_video_title - Title of video
• recommendation_video_channel - Video Channel (canonicalized)
• recommendation_video_description - Description of video (from YouTube)
• recommendation_video_view_count - View count of video at time of regret

Viu Política: tagged videos

Number of rows: 1,248 Total logical bytes: 807.61 KB The data contains the following fields:

• tagged_video_id - YouTube video ID
• submission_date - Date of video tagging
• video_title - Title of video
• view_count - View count of video at time of tagging
• video_like_count - Like count of video at time of tagging
• video_channel - Name of the YouTube channel where the video was posted
• video_channel_link - Link/ID of the YouTube channel where the video was posted
• video_full_description - YouTube description of tagged video
• video_thumbnail - Link to the thumbnail of the tagged video

Viu Política: recommended videos

Number of rows: 294,697 Total logical bytes: 245.31 MB

The data contains the following fields:

• recommended_video_id - YouTube video ID of recommended video
• submission_date - Date of video tagging
• recommended_video_title - Title of recommended video
• recommended_view_count - View count of recommended video at time of tagging
• recommended_video_like_count - Like count of recommended video at time of tagging
• recommended_video_channel - Name of the YouTube channel where the recommended video was posted
• recommended_video_channel_link - Link/ID of the YouTube channel where the recommended video was posted
• recommended_video_full_description - YouTube description of recommended video
• recommended_video_thumbnail - Link to the thumbnail of the recommended video

Viu Política: collected videos

Number of rows: 23,245 Total logical bytes: 11.59 MB

The data contains the following fields:

• collected_video_id - YouTube video ID of collected video
• collected_video_title - Title of collected video
• collected_view_count - View count of collected video at time of tagging
• collected_video_like_count - Like count of collected video at time of tagging
• collected_video_channel - Name of the YouTube channel where the collected video was posted
• collected_video_channel_link - Link/ID of the YouTube channel where the collected video was posted
• collected_video_full_description - YouTube description of collected video
• collected_video_thumbnail - Link to the thumbnail of the collected video

Viu Política: video transcriptions

Total number of .txt files containing video transcriptions: 33,054 Total logical bytes: 735.62 MB

Caveats

RegretsReporter Data

• Our participants are not representative of YouTube users in general:
• We promoted the study to the Mozilla network, which has a particular bias, although some paid promotion was employed and, in the first study, we did specifically target demographics that are underrepresented in our community.
• All participants were aware their data would be collected during the study, which could have influenced their behavior.
• The UX of the extensions was only available in English, which probably biased our respondents towards English-speakers, although it appears that extensions were still used by some non-English-speakers.
• The extension was only available for the desktop versions of Firefox and Chrome.
• Regrets are subjective and we have not systematically filtered inauthentic use.
• Recommendations are only recorded and regrets are only possible on the desktop device for which the extension was installed.
• Country data is based on ipgeo lookup and may have systematic errors. It is occasionally missing when lookup fails
• The video metadata (title, channel, etc.) is often missing as it was only acquired for a subset of the data.

Viu Politica Data

• The participants are not representative of YouTube users in general:
• The promotion of our study relied on digital influencers and researchers, press coverage, construction of a personalized landing page, and social media promotion, with a focus on Twitter and Instagram, as well as through WhatsApp and email – all of which will inevitably have a particular bias when it comes to the users who respond to it.
• All participants were aware their data would be collected during the study, which could have influenced their behavior.
• The UX of the extension was only available in Brazilian Portuguese, and advertised to Brazilian audiences.
• The extension was only available for the desktop versions of Firefox and Chrome.
• Whether a given video is political is a subjective decision and we have not systematically filtered inauthentic use.