[HN Gopher] YouTube to Remove Dislikes
___________________________________________________________________
YouTube to Remove Dislikes
Author : Jerry2
Score : 157 points
Date : 2021-03-31 21:07 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| retsibsi wrote:
| This seems rather user-hostile. The downvote count is useful for
| identifying videos that aren't what they claim to be. And how
| about DIY videos that give terrible advice? A big downvote ratio
| will get most people's attention in a way that critical comments
| may not.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Are people really using votes like that? You putting your trust
| in deciding quality in a vote count? There's so much wrong with
| that.
| TheTrotters wrote:
| It's the worst solution except for every other we've ever
| tried.
| EricE wrote:
| Your first mistake was thinking that you are the user they care
| about serving :p
| paulcole wrote:
| Can you clarify this for me? I have always assumed that since
| I'm the one watching the video I'm their customer/user?
| retsibsi wrote:
| Oh I know, I am pretty cynical and not exactly outraged here.
| But although they don't care about what's _good_ for us, they
| do care about what will keep us on the platform. And if it
| gets harder to find good stuff and filter out the dross, that
| could conceivably have negative consequences for YouTube in
| the long run.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| They hate us. The little guy. No criticism allowed
| EricE wrote:
| I'm not outraged - I'm amused. The ultimate admission the
| only way they can spread their messaging is through force,
| not honest competition of ideas. How superior.
|
| Nothing proves you have a worthy argument better than
| outright hiding from dissent.
|
| Again, they don't care if you stay on the platform. If they
| did, they wouldn't touch it. The disagreement buttons were
| added in the first place because they increase and maintain
| engagement. After a few decades it's _now_ all the sudden a
| problem?
|
| Ha! The real problem is their desired narratives are being
| soundly rejected and it's embarrassing. So here we are.
| retsibsi wrote:
| > Again, they don't care if you stay on the platform.
|
| Why not? Even if you're right that they care more about
| propaganda than money, what's the point of propagandising
| to an empty room?
| mancerayder wrote:
| .. combined with the idea that there's much of an
| alternative. If the content creators I like are there...
| retsibsi wrote:
| In the short run they can get away with ~anything. In the
| long run though, anything that upsets users makes the rise
| of a true competitor marginally more likely.
| munk-a wrote:
| Hrm - maybe this is deserving of some public health lawsuits
| for any anti-vaxxer videos that slip through their content
| filter and end up hitting trending.
|
| Youtubers have mentioned that up/down votes seem to have very
| little effect on video surfacing so I think Youtube has already
| figured out that folks are heavily biased in up/down voting and
| removed it from any algorithmic uses.
| motbob wrote:
| I agree that removing public dislikes is a pretty bad idea, but
| it's not that important of a tool in fighting misleading
| videos. I mean, there was once a HUGE glut of videos with
| misleading thumbnails/titles, and what stopped the glut was not
| dislikes, but rather Youtube's use of watch time as an
| important metric.
| retsibsi wrote:
| Fair point, but I think downvotes have been useful to me
| relatively recently. Fake videos may not show up in
| recommendation feeds, but they still appear in search results
| don't they? (And if you're searching for something relatively
| obscure, you can realistically hit the bottom of the barrel,
| rather than only seeing the more highly rated results.)
| mrkramer wrote:
| >Fake videos may not show up in recommendation feeds, but
| they still appear in search results don't they?
|
| Use report button
| retsibsi wrote:
| I would for anything truly extreme (like some horrible
| shock footage in the middle of a supposedly innocent
| video). But I don't know if all of these videos actually
| violate any rules; often they are of the kind <title:
| THING YOU'RE LOOKING FOR>, where the content is actually
| someone talking _about_ the thing I 'm looking for.
|
| edit: Or another relatively common type, not necessarily
| fake or even strictly misleading, just cynically low-
| quality: a video made by pulling some text content from
| the web, feeding it through a speech synthesiser, and
| playing that over over the top of some 'relevant' images.
| mrkramer wrote:
| When you are reporting a video there is "Spam or
| misleading" option but then again you are left with
| YouTube algorithm deciding whether video is really "spam
| or misleading" or it is malicious report.
|
| For the past couple of months I was regularly reporting
| group of spammers spamming links in comment sections but
| to this day I still see them running amok.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| From a YT standpoint, if I am looking for "interview of
| HenryBemis" and there are 10 likes and 1000 dislikes, it
| means that this is probably NOT the video, but someone
| commenting on the video (e.g. I wanted to see the Oprah-
| Harry-Meghan video).
|
| If YT removes the dislikes from the public eye, I will either
| have to scroll ahead, OR watch 5-10mins waiting for the thing
| to start, then go and try some other video.
|
| YT increases user engagement (I have already watched 10mins
| of one video and now heading for the next.. and the next..
| and the next..). So, for YT this is a win-win.. it's the user
| that gets tricked.
|
| Bravo YT, well played (not!)
| retsibsi wrote:
| > if I am looking for "interview of HenryBemis" and there
| are 10 likes and 1000 dislikes, it means that this is
| probably NOT the video, but someone commenting on the video
|
| This is the sort of thing I had in mind. Some of it is
| complete junk and some is probably interesting to some
| people, but the titles are sufficiently misleading to
| attract an eye-catching number of downvotes. I can't
| remember exactly when I last came across this kind of
| content, but it was definitely quite recently, so I don't
| think youtube has stamped it out.
| Sodman wrote:
| You see this _very_ frequently in DIY how-to videos.
| There 's usually about ~30-60 seconds of very helpful
| instructional content, buried somewhere towards the end
| of an 11 minute video of rambling and common knowledge. I
| suspect largely because the monetization gets better if
| your video is longer than 10 mins...
| duskwuff wrote:
| > I mean, there was once a HUGE glut of videos with
| misleading thumbnails/titles
|
| Oh, that's still happening. It never stopped.
| motbob wrote:
| If the problem still exists, it's way less noticeable than
| it was in 2010.
| retsibsi wrote:
| Oh if you're going back that far, then yes, it definitely
| still exists, though I don't doubt it used to be a lot
| worse. (I phrased my first response carefully in case
| there had been changes in, say, the past few months that
| I hadn't fully noticed.)
| tjoff wrote:
| The reason downvotes didn't solve that issue was because you
| couldn't see the ratio until after you had clicked.
|
| There was plugins that showed it when browsing and it made
| such a difference.
| aquadrop wrote:
| Dislikes are good not just for identifying bad videos, but
| also good videos. You can see it in the like/dislike ratio.
| The higher the better, videos with ratio around >98-99% have
| very high probability of being good etc
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Now that I think of it, Twitter doesn't have downvotes and I've
| never struggled to tell a bad tweet from its ratio.
| vkou wrote:
| A bad tweet is obvious because it's easy to digest.
|
| Unfortunately, the 'dislike' signal on a YouTube video
| doesn't tell me if it's because an expert disagrees with its
| content, or because the creator is being brigaded, or because
| the downvoters disagree with their politics (related or
| unrelated).
|
| The comments are a better signal, but looking through them
| requires reading... YouTube comments.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm not sure bad videos are any harder to digest than bad
| tweets. Maybe a bit more time consuming?
| hnick wrote:
| Yes, if I am trying to fix my dishwasher and I see a
| video with a high dislike ratio I will move on because at
| best it's probably a time waster and at worst dangerous.
|
| My options now would be to spend a minute or two watching
| it or reading the comments (engagement!), which may not
| exist on some niche videos you run across for things like
| this. This adds up when browsing. Don't forget creators
| can disable comments too.
| [deleted]
| mrkramer wrote:
| I think that YouTube algorithms are so smart right now that
| YouTube doesn't need dislike button anymore it can simply rank
| bad videos so low that you don't even know they exist.
|
| Edit: YouTube algorithms are so smart* I was exaggerating using
| hyperbole(figure of speech) in order to imply strong impression
| and feeling that YouTube algorithms are good enough for YouTube
| to afford dismissing dislike button.
|
| Instagram is doing fine with likes only so I don't see a reason
| why YouTube wouldn't. Go to comment section to say what is
| wrong with the video you are watching or use report button if
| the video is violating TOS.
| Answerawake wrote:
| Seems like an opportunity to create a browser extension to have
| crowd sourced upvote/downvotes kind of like Reddit masstagger.
| Wonder if there is a way to ensure that upvote/downvotes are
| not tampered with on the server side.
| causality0 wrote:
| Companies are only interested in user behavior that increases
| engagement. Everything else is on the chopping block.
| justaguy88 wrote:
| s/engagement/addiction/
| EricE wrote:
| Downvotes increase engagement. Otherwise they wouldn't have
| been put there in the first place.
|
| No, the real issue here is too many of the "right" things are
| getting downvoted. So when The White House, Disney or the
| Academy disable downvotes on part or all of their videos but
| other wide swaths of videos don't need to disable downvotes,
| the contrast causes them to stick out like a sore thumb.
|
| It calls attention (also known as engagement) - but not the
| kind of attention those who run social media companies want.
| Attention that is counter to the desired narratives is
| unacceptable. So here we go with the lame excuses that are
| all the sudden relevant when they weren't when the
| like/dislike stuff was instated decades ago?
|
| Give me a break.
| jetpks wrote:
| You are all over this thread claiming that the White House
| is explicitly pressuring Google to remove this feature of
| the site. Do you have supporting evidence, or did you just
| make this up? It seems more like you have a narrative and
| agenda to push.
| retsibsi wrote:
| Yep. I think this is the sort of thing that could potentially
| backfire on them, though. Engagement through addiction sadly
| seems to be a bottomless goldmine, but engagement through
| _deception_ can leave people dissatisfied and ripe for
| poaching by a competitor. If hiding downvotes does cause
| people to watch more bad and misleadingly-titled content,
| that could be profitable in the short term but dangerous in
| the medium-long term.
| lbarrow wrote:
| The content creators are also users. The announcement
| emphasizes that they're doing this to help improve the content
| creator experience.
| undefined1 wrote:
| looks like an appeal to safetyism;
|
| "Viewer feedback is an important part of YouTube, but we've
| heard from creators that the current experience can
| negatively impact their wellbeing. We also know that public
| dislike counts sometimes motivate targeted campaigns of
| dislikes on some videos."
|
| https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1376984850809380866
| gbolcer wrote:
| This is just a side effect of national politics. Federal courts
| rules that the public has a right to information.
|
| https://knightcolumbia.org/documents/a07ecc2a26
|
| Despite that, Youtube is trying to counter bad engagement.
| Several of Biden's content team's postings of youtube content
| have gotten tens of thousand of likes, but millions of dislikes
| resulting in a content "ratio". Downvoters have not been able to
| be discredited as bots or automated activity.
|
| This isn't a general policy. It's a very specific damage control
| and political advocacy cloaked in a generic policy.
| nigrioid wrote:
| It's because of what happens when the White House forgets to
| disable comments and dislikes.
|
| https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/359823/former...
| cbozeman wrote:
| It's because of Ghostbusters (2016). It just took this long for
| everyone else to catch up and realize that, "it can happen to
| you".
|
| We were all supposed to love that movie because it has four
| women in it! Turns out a shit movie is a shit movie no matter
| how many SNL alums you throw at it.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >We were all supposed to love that movie because it has four
| women in it
|
| I see this sarcastic quipping a couple orders of magnitude
| more often than I see the attitude it is skewering in regards
| to that movie (not that that attitude didn't exist). I think
| part of that is the normal overreaction to anything "SJW",
| but I think the bigger contribution might be because, after
| the incredible degree of hatred the black actress got, the
| reasonable backlash to that enhanced the perceived magnitude
| of the different-but-adjacent attitude you're criticizing.
| EricE wrote:
| I don't care if it was headlined by four white dudes - the
| "dialog" was crap, the plot was a lazy rehash of the
| original with zero lack of comedic timing or skill.
|
| Neither gender or race has anything to do with it being a
| lazy, uninspired and un-funny movie - but people are sure
| as hell desperate to use that as a shield from criticism :p
| cbozeman wrote:
| > the incredible degree of hatred the black actress got
|
| I really don't recall Leslie Jones receiving as much
| backlash as certain outlets purported. Part of that is
| because that, for these outlets (common offenders including
| _Slate_ and its ilk), _any_ amount of backlash or derision,
| or frankly, anything less than glowing praise is "racism".
| And now that the word "racism" is starting to lose power,
| they've moved on to "white supremacy", but that's another
| topic...
|
| I think you could be on to something, but the bulk of the
| backlash was because they butchered an absolute classic
| comedy that millions of people grew up watching (I myself
| have probably seen it over 50 times, my Mom said I watched
| it over and over as a kid).
| retsibsi wrote:
| It's probably hard for any of us to know the actual
| ratios, because only a filtered version of what's out
| there penetrates our bubbles.
|
| I think with hot-button topics like this there's usually
| a race-to-the-bottom spiral of reaction and counter-
| reaction, with each side being fed the dumbest or most
| offensive arguments from the other side and reacting to
| them; then the other side sees a (likewise filtered for
| stupidity or outrageousness) selection of the responses
| and reacts to _them_ , and so on.
|
| Everyone is constantly escalating in response to the
| extreme fringe on the other side, while seeing a more
| representative sample of views from their own side --
| which they are probably biased toward interpreting
| charitably, as well as no-true-Scotsmanning away the
| worst examples. So we're all constantly baffled by why
| the weirdos on the other side are overreacting so hard.
| argvargc wrote:
| There's a site tracking these, some of the stats on older
| videos with high views are crazy (down the page):
|
| https://81m.org
| nigrioid wrote:
| Thanks for that! I'm glad to see a few people here who can
| tell something's going on.
| thirtythree wrote:
| woah - that is very telling
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| It's interesting to compare this to the Trump Whitehouse
| Archive: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCITMedGC5PA-
| zMrLTH5-kg
|
| Almost the exact inverse like/dislike ratio.
|
| Biden received more votes than any other presidential
| candidate in history, _AND_ they should skew much younger
| than Trump voters. So why is it that the Biden White House
| channel struggles so much with likes vs dislikes?
| mrgill wrote:
| YouTube transferred all the Trump's WH subs to Biden's WH -
| while Trump's WH had started with zero.
|
| Very stupid idea and apparently requested by the Biden
| admin. Now you have millions of Trump subs just disliking
| every video.
| colaclanth wrote:
| Probably because Biden supporters are less 'online' and
| there aren't that many dedicated supporters of his (as in
| there are more people who simply think biden is better than
| the alternative than actually liking him). Contrasted to a
| personality like Trump who amassed an online dedicated cult
| following, in which they would literally try to decipher
| every word he said for hidden messages from the God emperor
| himself.
|
| In the same way that Twitter seems to be full of anti-
| capitalist anarchist communists, demographics of the real
| world turn out to be a lot different than social media
| makes it seem.
| drukenemo wrote:
| This is the correct answer to me. How coincidental, just as
| White House videos mostly receive dislikes.
| Schattenbaer wrote:
| Seems to be a visibility-only change to a small cohort of users.
|
| Tangentially, I've often wanted a third button, call it
| "disinterested".
|
| This would just tell YouTube not to recommend more of the same
| for me, without adjusting the ratio of votes up or down.
|
| There are many videos I don't actively dislike (I might not have
| any strong feelings) I just don't want YouTube to recommend more
| cats with laugh tracks after I click a some link in our #random
| Slack channel.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's weird, because they actually _have_ a "Not interested"
| option in the dropdown menu when you're browsing, but there's
| no way to click it for a video you're actually watching.
| mcpherrinm wrote:
| Youtube does have a somewhat-hidden "Not Interested" option -
| on the homepage, when looking at recommendations, under the
| three-dots kebab menu. It also has a "Don't recommend channel"
| option there too, which I aggressively use to remove content I
| don't want, like the compilation clip content farms.
| Epskampie wrote:
| It's under the three dots icons at your overview page.
| [deleted]
| kostarelo wrote:
| They kinda already did though. You don't see likes/dislikes when
| you search for a video so you only use it's popularity in order
| to decide to click on it.
| swagatkonchada wrote:
| well, time for someone to build a third party dislike count and
| release browser extensions
| jzymbaluk wrote:
| At least on comments, I'm not sure the dislike button actually
| did anything previously. The count didn't move when the dislike
| button was pressed.
| twic wrote:
| I have a much sillier reason for disliking this change, which is
| that there is a charming part of YouTube culture where people
| attempt to explain a small number of downvotes on an otherwise
| popular video in a witty way.
|
| For example, on a recent piece of Imperial propaganda [1] with
| 100K upvotes and 935 downvotes, we find the comment:
|
| > 930 heretics and counting...
|
| This one isn't laugh-out-loud funny, maybe raises a grin. Others
| are better. But it's a tiny artform which will be lost from the
| world.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWnQedD4BlI
| webinvest wrote:
| I remember a YouTube video of a local news reporter about to
| interview a teacher for making a eyes-closed backwards
| basketball shot from half court. The news reporter tries this
| and with amazing luck, makes the half court blindfolded
| backwards shot.
|
| In the top comment of the video jokingly said, "the 2 dislikes
| are from the teacher and her husband".
| EricE wrote:
| Ah, if we only were allowed to - gasp - have fun on the
| internet.
| joshuak wrote:
| It seems to me the platforms that have the most trouble
| maintaining a grasp on reality are the ones that don't allow down
| votes. Down votes are the cognitive immune system at work. Not
| that down votes are necessarily correct, but rather they provide
| increased resistance to propagation. Also you can hardly fix a
| problem by blinding yourself to it.
| bioinformatics wrote:
| I guess Amy Schumer feels vindicated now.
| SimeVidas wrote:
| The title is incorrect. This is not about removing dislikes but
| about now showing the dislike count.
| tubbyjr wrote:
| Use better alternative platforms such as Odysee
|
| Or if your fave content is only on Youtube, an alternative front-
| end such as Invidious
| l0b0 wrote:
| Targeted dislike campaigns are clearly a thing. I'm glad they are
| doing this.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| That title doesn't seem to be correct, they're just not showing
| the exact number to anyone but the creator.
| mrgill wrote:
| YT should work on preventing targeted dislikes rather than taking
| away the likes counter - which is so, so useful.
| SXX wrote:
| Okay it's seems like this is the time to create chanel of videos
| full of bad advice in them. Until Google start to determine
| whatever advice sounds bad to them so they can ban everyone based
| off this metric too.
| bitL wrote:
| Next, IMDB only allows ratings between 8-10.
| 0xy wrote:
| Rotten Tomatoes is already highly manipulated and
| editorialized. For example, the interpretation of whether a
| review was "fresh" or "rotten" is completely subjective and
| made by editors.
|
| You can see the agenda pushing and manipulation on such films
| as Ghostbusters (2016).
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| I don't think they document it, beyond being a "weighted
| average", but as I understand things, they already do give one
| stars a very low weight, in addition to a weight of zero in
| some cases.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| I think this is the appropriate analogy. Is a Hollywood movie
| studio being "harassed" if people give a movie negative
| reviews? No. Neither are youtube videos that get downvoted. And
| yet here we are. You will consume what the people who write the
| algorithm want you to, you will like it and you if you dont no
| one will know.
| greatgib wrote:
| This is the aseptic brand new world that is pushed by too
| powerful companies
|
| No more critic, no more negativity, just kool aid and fake
| positivity as this is good for business when every one pretend to
| live in a fairy world...
| haunter wrote:
| 'member when reddit removed the visible downvote count back in
| 2014, that was really one of the end of something there
| https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/28hjga/reddi...
|
| Just a random screenshot cause haven't found anything else in
| Google https://i.imgur.com/3y8W2mk.png
|
| You could see if a comment was highly engaging despite at the
| bottom, say 200/210 (upvotes/downvotes). Nowdays you only see the
| + or - number and that's all, only pushing that "meta" narrative
| that most people want to see.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Ironically YouTube feels a lot like Reddit to me - nothing
| really changed there the past 5 years, no matter what happened
| on the business side.
|
| Some of it is really weird. Like YouTube trying to get into
| streaming, but never actually implementing anything for it - no
| clips, no emotes really, but the weird "create a channel from
| your personal GMail account" thing is still there. It's like
| the people there were told nothing but a keyword.
| tester756 wrote:
| but youtube isn't some vc cash cow that has to change every 2
| weeks in order to get more moni from vcs
|
| i'm very fine with youtube *just working*
| jfrunyon wrote:
| It's supposedly about "creator well-being", which I basically
| read as creators get downvote brigaded and get upset. Which is
| simultaneously silly, and also will still happen because they're
| still going to show the dislike count to the creator. ???
| [deleted]
| tpmx wrote:
| Too many embarassing cases of large numbers of downvotes on
| Youtube-produced videos?
|
| (Edit: Boom, apparently this post was just flagged to page 2.)
| stolenmerch wrote:
| I'd love if they just remove Likes as well, honestly. I've been
| using the 'Hide Likes' Chrome Extension for over a year now. I
| have to say, not seeing Likes or Dislikes on YouTube and other
| social media is a huge quality of life increase. There is a
| perceptible difference in reaction when you don't know how
| popular or unpopular something on the internet is.
| davesque wrote:
| Honestly, it seems like there's no easy win here. I think people
| for and against this both have good arguments. For example,
| getting rid of dislikes could mitigate the effects of synthetic
| brigading campaigns. On the other hand, keeping them could in
| certain cases give a better view of the organic reaction to a
| video. I don't spend every day trying to solve these problems so
| I don't have a strong opinion.
| liaukovv wrote:
| Synthetic brigading is what exactly? Bands of synthetics
| downvoting videos to bring about downfall of humanity?
|
| Or do people's opinions count less if they are organized?
| davesque wrote:
| Not sure if that was hyperbole, but since you ask, yeah I
| think it could actually bring about the downfall of humanity.
| For example, what if climate science videos were being
| significantly brigaded by bots controlled by oil companies?
| Might not be that far-fetched. If we fail to communicate
| effectively about issues like that, we could very well see
| the downfall of humanity. Even "organic" brigading by the
| anti-vaxx crowd on related videos seems like an existential
| threat.
| lfti wrote:
| Bad news for the citizens of the Neutral Planet:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qump1X6OrEc
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Ayayya. Loooong past time to break Google up. They're a
| disgusting propaganda machine bent on manipulating everyone into
| their weird ideologies. Amazon and the rest of these social media
| platforms that are working in coercion need the same treatment.
| They might as well all be owned by the same umbrella corporation
| at this point.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| Wouldn't a more appropriate HN title be "remove public dislike
| count"?
| mikece wrote:
| If someone (companies included) is so sensitive to being down-
| voted perhaps the internet isn't for them. In the case of one
| campaign of which I'm aware, Lucasfilm and Disney has been
| hammered by Star Wars fans, down-voting their videos because they
| have no other way to send a message to Disney that the personnel
| actions of Kathleen Kennedy have thrown the plans for the
| Mandalorian -- and it's connected shows -- into delays and
| uncertainty. I'm pretty sure Disney (and their shareholders) are
| more upset by the fact that #CancelDisneyPlus is _still_ trending
| on Twitter, something that actually costs them share value. That
| YouTube would do this further shows that their platform is for
| big companies and brand-safe content free from negative
| perceptions and not "You" like their name implies.
| DavidVoid wrote:
| I'd be more for adding some kind of requirement for
| liking/disliking a video. I think that would be a decent way to
| get rid of shitty mass-dislikes from people who didn't even watch
| the video.
| [deleted]
| Ekaros wrote:
| I give 2 years before comments are entirely gone...
|
| It seems that all types of user-interaction is getting
| prohibited...
| sokoloff wrote:
| It doesn't look like they're _removing_ dislikes at all, but
| rather _hiding the count of_ dislikes from _viewers_ of the video
| (in a test).
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| While technically true, showing the Like/Dislike count provided
| valuable information for viewers. Determining whether or not a
| video is worth my time will become a lot more difficult.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'd argue that HN got _better_ after they hid the karma (net
| of 1 + up - down) on a per-comment basis (even though I was
| initially opposed to the change at the time).
|
| They can still use like/dislike metrics to decide which
| videos to offer you and in what sort order, so there's still
| some signal available.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| That's the opposite change. HN hid likes, while keeping the
| dislikes visible.
| gundmc wrote:
| HN still fades text if a comment is below a certain
| threshold.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Let's not fool ourselves here. The disklike-horde storming
| critical but good quality videos because they don't like the
| message was just as normal as overhyped videos with crap
| quality. Those systems are broken and this doesn't change
| much. It just hides which horde likes the vid at the moment.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| It would be interesting to know if there is an effect where
| users are more likely to dislike a video with a bad ratio. If
| the public perception of a like ratio influenced the viewer's
| opinion.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| This does not seem to me like a move to "improve the user
| experience", but rather to hide the public opinion about certain
| topics, such as politics or consumer media. Others name examples
| here in this thread, such as Ghostbusters (2016) and their
| trailers and recent Biden administration videos on the White
| house channel.
|
| I am curious __in a genuine way__ if someone who might consider
| themselves "woke left" (at the lack of a better word) here on HN
| who sees this as a positive development? (I.e., someone who views
| both aforementioned examples very positively)
|
| Or actually, anyone regardless of political leaning for that
| matter?
|
| Because personally I find it hard to construct even a simple
| argument for the viewpoint that hiding this information in any
| improves the website and/or society at large, with youtube being
| an important piece of infrastructure for the entire world right
| now. This instead would just seem like google continuing down
| their path of abandoning their "don't be evil" slogan.
| tyingq wrote:
| It is interesting how YouTube seems to maintain the mainstream
| video moat. The only competitors that make any inroads are in
| sub-niches, like Twitch.
| ravenstine wrote:
| How else is the mainstream supposed to spin reality?
| Entertainment giants used to more easily create the illusion of
| consensus, but web platforms like YouTube completely mess with
| their power by showing downvotes.
| Covzire wrote:
| Smells political alright.
|
| The Biden admin disabled comments on all official The White
| House channel videos pretty quickly into their administration.
|
| Most videos have a tremendously high dislike to like ratio, the
| most recent is 3.4K dislikes to 205 likes. I don't know who
| they expect to consume their Youtube content but it apparently
| isn't the establishment's voter base.
|
| This is another brick in the wall that is Youtube that just
| fell out if you ask me. Content creators of all stripes are
| absolutely desperate for an alternative platform.
| panny wrote:
| To me this sounds like,
|
| Right: Cancel culture is bad!
|
| Youtube: You're right, so we are removing downvotes!
|
| Right: NOOOOO!!! I want to downvote Biden videos and cancel
| him!
|
| It is a little silly. YouTube was removing the downvotes
| manually as "spam" anyway. Removing the button is just easier
| for them. The view count is much more telling. It seems like
| they'd have to pay out more ad money to artificially pump
| those numbers, so they don't do that.
|
| >Content creators of all stripes are absolutely desperate for
| an alternative platform.
|
| I'm working on something like this. If you have features you
| think are must have, please list them.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| YouTube was a free speech platform only as long as it took to
| establish dominance. Now it's just another corporate
| megaphone with an inconvenient independent creator problem
| they are slowly solving by making it an intolerable place to
| have dissenting opinions.
|
| Can't question the election, can't question coronavirus. Big
| Google decides what is acceptable and keeps the rules and
| process vague, inscrutable, and opaque so they can
| selectively enforce them.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| You think Youtube is removing dislikes because of white house
| vids that average out less than ~25000 views each?
| bko wrote:
| Why wouldn't you entertain this possibility? Both political
| parties have been very vocal about regulating or breaking
| up big tech. I think it's embarrassing to White House. Do
| you believe that Google would be above doing this for
| political reasons? Or do you Democrats would be above
| wanting to suppress this small dissent?
| michaelt wrote:
| White house video: 3.4K dislikes
|
| YouTube Rewind 2018: 19 Million dislikes
|
| I don't see any reason you'd attribute removing dislikes
| to the former rather than the latter.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I think, in order to spend engineer time on something
| this tiny, there would need to be a really strong
| strategic justification. Big tech generally doesn't want
| their product teams doing something that only affects a
| few of their users.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| A lot of people think their particular political angle is
| of great importance to everyone else.
| EricE wrote:
| And have thin skin and zero tolerance for dissenting
| opinions. Hence the blanket removal of the disagree :p
| Covzire wrote:
| It's one of the few ways that the online public square can
| still show visible discontent of what their government is
| doing in a way that is easily visible to all others.
| ciex wrote:
| They are removing dislikes because dislikes bring
| negativity to the YouTube space. Imagine what getting
| dislikes feels like when you have put your heart into a
| video. People expressing their disapproval without a
| qualifying comment is not constructive.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| Dislikes are not meant to be constructive. They're meant
| to warn others that a video may not be worth watching.
|
| I'm not sure why you're expecting your viewers to be your
| reviewers.
| ttt0 wrote:
| You're trolling, right? Just want to make sure, because
| you never know nowadays.
| EricE wrote:
| Not just the white house. There's wholesale rejection that
| is embarrassing and counter to the messaging being pushed
| my the media and cultural elites.
|
| Disney with the Gina Corano firing has been a huge source
| of continued embarrassment. Widespread rejection of woke
| takeovers of popular culture in general are problematic so
| no, I'm not surprised downvotes are getting remove
| universally. Much easier to hide reality when you pretend
| it doesn't exist.
|
| Social media is a propaganda machine at this point. They
| don't give a crap about free expression. Too many plebs
| expressing their displeasure with propaganda can't be
| tolerated so here we go.
| undefined1 wrote:
| what makes it worse is how many plebs are not only going
| along with it, but actively enforcing it for the ruling
| elites. as though they are the Red Guard.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Do you have a better explanation? I wouldn't say that's the
| entirety of their reasons but part of a bigger picture
| ideology they want on their platform.
|
| Obviously, views aren't enough. There are multiple channels
| that get demonetized/de-platformed that have a lot of
| viewership but they don't fit in with the YouTube/Google
| agenda.
| riffic wrote:
| > Content creators of all stripes are absolutely desperate
| for an alternative platform
|
| Peertube exists
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube
| crocodiletears wrote:
| This was my first thought as well. There have been several
| occasions (News content and Youtube Rewinds comes to mind)
| where youtube actively suppresses or promotes content in-line
| with it or its advertiser's interests, and hides anything with
| a countervailing sentiments. The like ratio in conjunction with
| the view count has always been a good signalling mechanism for
| the purposes of identifying these instances.
| kowlo wrote:
| Let's hope it's an early April 1st joke...
| SergeAx wrote:
| Dislike button is a viable instrument of social pressure. About a
| year ago popular Russian rapper appeared in a government-funded
| propaganda-like video. After 1MM dislikes he addressed the
| public, said he was unaware of the real purpose of video and
| apologized. The video was eventually taken down.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| This seems deceptive more than anything else. If a content
| creator doesn't want their videos to be rated they can disable
| like/dislike ratings entirely. But to remove public dislikes
| across the entire site takes away a valuable indicator of video
| quality. Like/Dislike ratio can also express approval and
| disapproval for the subject itself, which is also valuable.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > But to remove public dislikes across the entire site takes
| away a valuable indicator of video quality.
|
| Indeed. Which means you'd have to watch the ads (oh, right,
| there's also a video involved) to determine that the content
| was garbage.
|
| If you can tell without watching a video that it's trash, you
| might not watch it - which is opposed to YouTube's goal of
| increasing total video hours watched. Or, at least, their short
| term goal of making sure people watch stuff (I suspect the long
| term effects of making people watch more low grade nonsense
| won't show up in this quarter's growth numbers, which means
| it's Someone Else's Problem - get promoted and go do something
| else, it's the Google Way).
|
| Despite all the claims from Google and YouTube about how
| they're trying to promote certain content and reduce exposure
| to others, it's a reasonable bet that their algorithms still
| don't understand much of anything about a video beyond "Oh,
| hey, people who watch this video watch more related videos
| later, so the more people I show it to, the more those people
| will watch, which increases hours watched!"
|
| So, presumably, "dislikes" interfered with people watching more
| video. Remove the dislikes, problem solved. At least for their
| definition of "problem" and "solved."
| EricE wrote:
| lol - YouTube and most social media is no longer for us
| plebs. It's all about pushing propaganda, and unfortunately
| plebs mass rejecting politically motivated BS is too
| problematic.
|
| Instead of trying to engage/change minds it's just easier to
| pretend "problems" like people having the temerity to call BS
| don't exist. Double plus good.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Even "pushing propaganda" is a bit higher minded than
| social media seems to be.
|
| It's all about the money. ALL about the money. How do
| social companies make money? They sell ads.
|
| How do you make more money selling ads? Either you show
| more ads (increase ad density, or increase eyeball-time-on-
| platform), or you make more money per ad (I used to see
| plenty of scam sites - new Kobota tractor for $1500, free
| shipping, domain registered last week - and far as I can
| tell, Facebook only cared that their credit card number was
| good).
|
| More eyeball-time-on-platform requires "engaging" users
| more - weaponizing psychology, notifications, and A/B
| testing against them.
|
| Facebook's guiding principles are simple: "What's Good For
| Zuck is Good For Zuck." The rest are no different.
| EricE wrote:
| Don't believe message is more important than ads? Even
| though everyone is locked down sheltering in place due to
| COVID pro sports and Hollywood award show ratings are
| abysmal. If they were all about chasing the almighty
| dollar there would have been messaging changes well
| before now.
|
| BTW - there is no better driver of traffic (engagement)
| to something than a good like/dislike war. This has zero
| to do with money or they wouldn't be touching it.
| SuboptimalEng wrote:
| Seeing 1k likes "hits different" from seeing 1k likes and 2k
| dislikes.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Downvotes have been weirdly wonky and aggressive all over the
| internet for, say, a year or so.
|
| Maybe we could work harder on the root causes and worry less
| about people "kicking the dog" all over the internet because life
| simply isn't working across the entire planet for various
| reasons.
|
| /Random thought from a random internet stranger
| battles wrote:
| April Fools?
| auroranil wrote:
| That's what I was thinking. It is April 1st in certain parts of
| the world.
| amelius wrote:
| I dislike this joke.
| goatcode wrote:
| I wonder how long it will take until the anti-?ism apologetics
| come out to justify this to headline-readers.
| swiley wrote:
| It's quickly getting to the point where being exposed to youtube
| at all just opens you up to a ton of intentional manipulation
| from an organization who's entire product is manipulating people
| for pay.
|
| It's probably best to completely avoid all of it.
| cbozeman wrote:
| There's entirely too much good stuff on YouTube to ignore. I
| learn so much there, all for free.
| Syonyk wrote:
| But what are the opportunity costs of learning stuff on
| YouTube, especially if you're watching hours of content?
|
| There is good stuff in there - don't get me wrong. It's just
| that the good stuff you want to find is often quite hidden,
| and I've on occasion spent more time trying to find some
| video that actually shows a tricky part of some bit of
| equipment maintenance than it would take to just do things
| the slow way (think "If you know the exact sequence of steps,
| you can slip the alternator out this hole between the engine
| and suspension - or you can just unbolt the exhaust and lower
| the alternator out that way" sort of tasks - if it takes
| longer to find a video with the steps clearly displayed than
| to just drop the exhaust, you've taken longer).
|
| I've also found that YouTube leads to a very poor, surface
| understanding of most issues - and this isn't the fault of
| YouTube specifically, it's just a limit of video. If I want
| to learn about a new topic, I'll typically try to find three
| or so books on it and read those. A single book can have
| biases and misunderstandings, but by the time you've read a
| few, it's usually clear enough what the consensus is. Does it
| take more time than an hour or two video? Certainly. But I
| also get a far, far better understanding of the material
| (which, if it's an area I care to learn about, is probably
| useful) than I would through videos. Plus, I use an awful lot
| less data in the process.
|
| I'm perfectly happy to be called a curmudgeon or such with
| regards to my preferences for text and images over video, and
| there may be part of it that's true - but I've weighed video
| versus the alternatives, and outside entertainment (which
| there's certainly some value in), I find video coming up
| wanting.
|
| Also, books don't keep (buy this!) interrupting the content
| (buy that!) to feed me ads for (vote for this person because
| their opponent eats babies!) whatever happens to (watch this
| movie!) be paying the best rates (check out this new online
| bank and stock trading app!) at the moment.
| cbozeman wrote:
| I consider YouTube a tool. It gives me, as you pointed out,
| surface level knowledge. Once I'm armed with that, I can go
| dig deeper and find the books or resources I need to gain
| expert-level knowledge.
| II2II wrote:
| > I'm perfectly happy to be called a curmudgeon or such
| with regards to my preferences for text and images over
| video, and there may be part of it that's true - but I've
| weighed video versus the alternatives, and outside
| entertainment (which there's certainly some value in), I
| find video coming up wanting.
|
| I agree with your preference for books, but I am going to
| add a caveat: the quality of books varies considerably,
| with a good video being better than a mediocre book.
|
| That was not much of a problem when I lived in a big city.
| It was easy to walk into a bookstore or library to pick out
| something of value. Living in a small city limits the
| options. Buying online means buying sight unseen. In the
| worse case, ratings can be misleading. In the best case,
| recommendations are likely coming from someone with
| different needs. YouTube avoids the problem since there is
| no financial risk involved in making a choice, and decent
| quality content isn't too hard to find.
|
| (To give you an idea of what I mean: I live in a city of
| half a million people. The public library system's most
| advanced text on electronics is an old edition of the ARRL
| Handbook. The rest are projects books directed towards
| amateurs. Book sellers aren't much better since few want to
| stock technical titles. University libraries offer much
| better books, yet they are nearly impossible to borrow
| during the academic session.)
| sokoloff wrote:
| I feel like I often have time saved on almost exactly the
| situation you described. Changing the alternator on our
| Honda CR-V, there's a method to remove the fan and fan
| support and pull the alternator out the front of the car
| and top instead of doing a lot more disassembly on the
| front of the engine (side of the car) and draining the
| coolant. I wouldn't have thought to do it that way if I
| hadn't been in the habit of watching 2 or 3 videos of new-
| to-me car repairs.
|
| I find myself watching zero mass-market television and a
| lot more YouTube (tech, electronics, machining, mostly) and
| think it a lot better value for entertainment time spent
| than TV ever was. (Sure, it's not as dense as reading a
| technical book, but after a day of work, I'm more up for
| the casual experience.)
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I could not repair half the things I have learned to repair
| without Youtube. 100% worth having to look out for manipulative
| antifeatures, in my book.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| I dont think thats true. If people stopped using youtube
| people would upload to other sites. Google hasnt taught you
| how to repair anything.
| toast0 wrote:
| I'm happy for the content in any form, but a bunch of things
| woulr be easier with a wall of text and a couple pictures I
| could scroll through.
|
| Don't forget to like and subscribe and support me on patreon.
| flukus wrote:
| This is certainly true when I want to sit down and repair
| something. There are other times when I just want to see
| what's involved and how complicated something will be
| first, maybe have dinner at the same time. This sort of
| higher level overview is where I find youtube fits in well,
| same for programming related videos.
|
| I wish there were more hybrid approaches, video with the
| accompanying wall of text.
| Syonyk wrote:
| What sort of stuff, and what alternatives have you tried?
|
| If it's a vehicle, the Chilton's or Haynes (I'm sure there's
| a difference but I sure couldn't tell) manuals will cover
| just about anything you'd want to do.
|
| If it's a piece of consumer electronics, iFixit usually has
| good teardown and repair guides (in the "annotated images and
| text" style) that cover a lot, though for some brands you can
| actually find factory repair manuals.
|
| Home, property, etc, there exist plenty of books out there,
| and often enough, plenty of slightly bored retired people who
| have been doing whatever the task is forever, and who are
| happy to help someone learn the ropes.
| thelean12 wrote:
| So I buy the Haynes book for my car, wait for it to be
| shipped and delivered, then finally figure out how to do
| what I need to do. Then I put it away for 1-5 years until I
| need it again, and hope I don't forget where I put it.
|
| Or you want me to build a friendship with a retired fridge
| repairman? I don't understand that one.
|
| With youtube I get to watch a pro do it right in front of
| me for free instantly. There's nothing like it.
|
| ifixit is good, though, I'll agree to that.
| tryonenow wrote:
| >the Chilton's or Haynes (I'm sure there's a difference but
| I sure couldn't tell) manuals will cover just about
| anything you'd want to do.
|
| Chilton and Haynes both generally consist of vague
| instructions like "unscrew bolts and remove part x".
| They're good for identifying which components need to be
| removed for access, but they often offer very little in
| terms of where bolts are (sometimes there are pictures), or
| how to deal with problem areas (e.g. sometimes you need to
| wiggle or turn things a certain way).
|
| Their limited instructions don't compare to watching
| someone actually do it and walk you through problem points
| simultaneously.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| I replaced a 12V battery on my car this morning, thanks to
| a youtube vid. I didn't try any alternative sources,
| because the 2 minute video was perfect! And I didn't get
| sucked into any other vids or see any ads or anything.
|
| My recent experience with iFixit was not great. I replaced
| a battery on a 2012 MacBook Pro Retina, and the tutorial
| included about 40 extraneous steps (that only mattered if
| you were using a certain, optional, glue removal goo). I
| saw speculation that they intentionally made it seem more
| difficult so people would be more inclined to bring the
| laptop into a shop. It wasn't until I checked youtube, and
| saw a very similar procedure, that I realized the steps
| were unnecessary - via the comments! A few people noted
| that you could skip all the steps prior to 11 minutes in.
| And they were right.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| They'll be charging you to view those repair vids within the
| next decade. I guaranteeeee it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Newpipe -> disable comments, disable recommendations. I only
| see what I search for and I don't have to see the opinions of
| morons in the comments.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I stopped using youtube regularly a while back. It's still good
| for how-to videos, and niche searches. Useless for current
| events.
| fasteo wrote:
| Related - and maybe off-topic.
|
| I have never participated in any change.org campaign for a
| similar reason: You cannot sign to oppose, so you end up with an
| extremely distorted view of a given matter.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-31 23:00 UTC)