Google TV

[Update: Fixed] Google TV’s ‘Improve your recommendations’ page ‘likes’ everything you ‘skip’

Abner Li | Jul 9 2021 - 8:56 am PT

Google TV lets you like or dislike content in order to fine-tune homescreen recommendations. Last year, Google introduced an on-TV page to quickly improve recommendations, but it’s broken in a key way.

Update 7/9: Google has fixed the “Improve your recommendations” screen, with “Skip” no longer marking a film or TV series as “More like this.” The Reactions history online has also been cleaned up so all past content that’s been errantly “Liked” is gone.

Original 7/5: Every TV show and movie listing on the new Chromecast and other television sets lets you thumbs up/down content. Google TV in December introduced a quicker way to refine recommendations that’s accessible via an “Improve your recommendations” card in the “Top picks for you” carousel. It’s also available by tapping your profile avatar > Manage accounts > your account > Content preferences.

Once open, you enter a fullscreen interface where Google TV presents a piece of content in the middle and has users specify whether they want “More like this” (right) or “Less like this (left). There’s also a third option to “Skip” that would — presumably — let you jump to the next piece of media without rating.

Unfortunately, tapping up on the D-pad option is actually marking content as “Liked.” This is according to the google.com/search/contributions/reactions page that’s linked to in Google TV settings before entering the Content preference experience. This page should not even list content you’ve skipped in the first place.

In the example above, I skipped giving a rating to Molly’s Game but it’s marked as “Liked” by Google. That said, one possibility is that the webpage is displaying ratings incorrectly and that the underlying recommendation system remains correct.

This problem was just spotted today, and it’s unclear if it has been around since the inception of this feature late last year. There is no issue when thumbing up/down content directly on the listing page.

Fortunately, you can go to Reactions — which also surfaces articles you’ve given a ‘heart’ to in the Discover feed — and delete Google TV signals by tapping the three-dot overflow icon next to each item. Ideally, Google will be able to recognize those errant likes, which are really skips, and fix your recommendations.