[HN Gopher] Making the dislike count private across YouTube
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Making the dislike count private across YouTube
Author : minimaxir
Score : 1356 points
Date : 2021-11-10 17:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (support.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.google.com)
| [deleted]
| oleglustenko wrote:
| Well it seems as a social group we must show the power of our
| union.
|
| So let's report this official announcement!
|
| Click 3 dot -> Report Abuse -> Submit Report.
|
| Maybe Hacker News effect could change it! Yes we can!
| joshsyn wrote:
| Bye bye youtube. Wokeism ruining everything.
| [deleted]
| rpz wrote:
| Navigate to the cdc's youtube channel and click through their
| recent videos, most of them have more dislikes than likes,
| especially if the video is related to the covid vaccines.
|
| Search "covid vaccine" and have a look through those as well.
| Plenty of them have many more dislikes than likes, especially if
| the video is about mandates and or from MSM.
| canbus wrote:
| Cool, now I can't dislike a video, instead I'll just commment
| "this video sucks" on every video that I don't find useful.
|
| Surely this change doesn't solve anything?
| VanillaCafe wrote:
| Hilarious the visceral response here to the apparent and
| inevitable decline of YouTube content quality with the removal of
| a dislike count -- when Hacker News itself doesn't show a down
| vote count nor even a down vote button for a large portion of its
| population.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| You are missing the mark very, very widely on an obvious
| difference.
|
| Upvote and Downvote are NOT the same thing as Like and Dislike.
| kevinh wrote:
| In theory? Yes. In practice? I'd be very surprised if there
| was any distinction at all.
| Jensson wrote:
| If youtube gradually greyed out videos everywhere in the UI if
| they got a lot of dislikes instead of the current count then I
| don't think people would mind as much. But then dislike bombing
| would probably get even worse than now since greying out the
| content is a much more powerful signal to users.
| ameyv wrote:
| For me dislike speaks volumes. Googles reasoning seems to
| misguide people to drive more ads. Plain simple and effective.
| Decision to protect content creator masquerading as earn more at
| the expense people times. Well now we need to create new Chrome
| addon something for this shit.
| rStar wrote:
| this is obviously so advertisers don't have to deal with ratio'd
| videos. advertisers like phizer who pay for content on all
| advertising platforms, and who pay for content like rachel
| maddow, tucker carlson and meet the press. that content must be
| seen as legitimate by users who don't already know that it isn't.
| it's mind control, and it's at the behest of the monied interests
| so good luck with your toddlers all you parents. as someone who
| escaped/survived a cult i figured out a way around mind control,
| but that's beyond the ability of most people. I'm Glad I Don't
| Have Kids.
| inChargeOfIT wrote:
| The like to dislike ratio on their video is exactly why we need
| to see the counts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxOuG8jMIgI
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| _> We've also heard directly from smaller creators, and those
| just getting started with their YouTube channel, that they are
| unfairly targeted by dislike attacks._
|
| ah yes, google looking out for the little folks...
|
| someday, a technical solution like not allowing downvotes until a
| channel gets so many views or subscribers may be feasible, but
| until then, this will have to suffice
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Which is bullshit - the reason they're removing it is _BRANDS_
| that are sick of having their poorly thought out, poorly
| produced, cynical cash-grab trailers be disliked.
|
| Probably told Susan that they'd stop advertising and start
| suing unless they did this.
| asdffdsa wrote:
| Why someday? This is a simple solution.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Reminds me of when Garth Brooks was pushing for laws that would
| ban the resale of CDs. After receiving a lot of criticism, he
| said it wasn't to protect his album sales but to keep
| struggling artists with a small number of CD sales from having
| to compete with used CD stores. Of course the odds that any
| given used CD store would have your favorite obscure band's CD
| were quite low but they were guaranteed to have all of the
| Garth Brooks CDs.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Statistically speaking there are much more small creators than
| large ones, so "we heard directly from smaller creators" can be
| used in every situation!
| OOPMan wrote:
| I'm sure all the advertisers will be very happy when their ads
| for garbage content get downvoted.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| The more serious problem is when organized mobs , which may be
| politically motivated and even organized by oppressive states,
| use the report button to flag videos as inappropriate, which , as
| i understand, do not appear in recommendations and other
| listings. And youtube is very happy to remove those.
| crmd wrote:
| It's not clear from the article, and the linked _manage your
| recommendations page_ , if and how dislikes affect the
| recommendation algorithm.
|
| I want the dislike button to send a negative signal to the
| recommendation algorithm, but it seems to act more like an
| elevator door close placebo button. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.quora.com/Does-the-close-door-button-in-U-S-
| elev...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This kills YT for me. I use ratings-preview extension to tell me
| if the video is worth watching. I can't imagine using YT without
| it.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| I'm confused. How do you judge the results of an election between
| two candidates if you know the number of votes cast for candidate
| A, but not the total number of votes?
| azth wrote:
| Ah, they want to create a "safe and inclusive space", so all is
| good /s
|
| What's this world coming to?
| Covzire wrote:
| First it was the complete corporate takeover of their search
| algorithm in the last few years, now they're removing the final
| way that users can express displeasure from political
| organizations and content creators.
|
| This is yet another nail in the coffin of Youtube, it's almost
| ready to go into the ground as Rumble and Odysee take off and
| Youtube slides into corporate/censorious irrelevance.
| advisedwang wrote:
| If we are already at a point where we are reduced to using
| dislike button on YouTube is a significant political outlet,
| democracy is already gone.
| 0des wrote:
| Im curious if this has anything to do with the mountain of
| dislikes on anything COVID or US presidency related content.
| wpurvis1 wrote:
| If anything I'd assume its about the YouTube rewind getting
| massively downvoted year after year
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I also wonder if it has to do with the notorious Win11
| announcement video: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Damage-
| control-Microsoft-delet...
| hammock wrote:
| There has been no clear evidence showing that to be the case,
| and an independent factchecker concluded that was
| misinformation. Please refer to youtube.com/help for the most
| accurate updates.
| Covzire wrote:
| Is this non-ironic?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| _Of course_ it is.
| capybara_2020 wrote:
| What about cases where the dislikes are against a gov figure and
| the count gives you confidence in numbers. Plus now authoritarian
| governments get to serve out even more propaganda talking about
| videos that are liked and the opposition has no way to see that
| the opposite also happens.
|
| So the opposition grows even more silent. Afraid to act because
| it might lead to negative repercussions and there is no scale of
| the dislike for a propaganda piece.
|
| Not to be conspiratorial but after Facebook's reaction to
| propaganda from certain parties in countries that are not
| America. It feels like Youtube is bowing to pressure but hiding
| it behind a "helping small creator" facade.
| cute_boi wrote:
| And the sad thing is there are no competition to youtube. In
| facebook people at least can do angry reaction.
| gpt5 wrote:
| There is definitely competition to YouTube. TikTok appeared
| out of nowhere and surpassed YouTube installation numbers.
| With that said, TikTok is even worse when it comes to
| dislikes.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| If an opposition needs google videos dislike buttons to exist,
| it's already too late and already too silent.
|
| What they can do is make opposition videos and get their own
| support, it'll be just as useless but it wont be brigaded
| visibly by the massive dictatorial support.
| autokad wrote:
| actually, facebook would rather not censor. they have to do so
| because Google and Apple makes them. if both of those companies
| ban facebook ap, FB is gone, completely. if just 1 of the two
| ban fb, facebook is barely alive.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| "And it was to be foreseen that with the passage of time the
| distinguishing characteristics of Newspeak would become more
| and more pronounced -- its words growing fewer and fewer, their
| meanings more and more rigid, and the chance of putting them to
| improper uses always diminishing."
| apostacy wrote:
| > Plus now authoritarian governments get to serve out even more
| propaganda talking about videos that are liked and the
| opposition has no way to see that the opposite also happens.
|
| Well, yes, that is their agenda. The web as it was was not
| nearly as friendly for those with money and power.
|
| Now, authoritarian governments and scumbag celebrities will
| project power over us, just like in the real world.
|
| There are secret whitelists so that influencers like Logan Paul
| can fully monetize commuting crimes on YouTube (like
| desecrating a corpse)[2].
|
| Celebrities are permitted to engage in targeted harassment or
| fraud, and people that call them out are banned.[1]
|
| And of course, governments can engage in all sorts of war
| crimes, and big tech will censor anyone that tries blowing the
| whistle[3].
|
| Facebook is happy to censor anything for dictators, but perhaps
| they will soon go the extra mile and just report people
| directly to the secret police. They could have a nice dashboard
| that shows up for local death squads of anyone that questions
| the leader.
|
| And frankly, this is the future most of us welcomed. We
| defended all of this because muh private platforms. We
| consented to letting these big tech platforms set the rules. We
| welcomed anyone with an incongruent opinion banned.
|
| The internet used to be a domain where scumbag fatcats didn't
| control everything, and you had some chance of speaking truth
| to power.
|
| It will only get worse. Find out Dupont is dumping toxic waste
| in your back yard? Just a word from their PR dept and all of
| your accounts will be banned. Think you can speak directly to
| the people? Your domain name will be seized, your Cloudflare
| account closed, and any app permitted on peoples devices will
| have to ban you if they don't want to be removed.
|
| [1]: https://www.aroged.com/2021/10/09/whitelisted-streamers-
| foun... [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42538495 [3]:
| https://www.engadget.com/facebook-turkey-emails-200407588.ht...
| coolso wrote:
| Gillette / Proctor & Gamble are having a mega celebration today.
| LanceH wrote:
| The infuriating thing is they don't even address the loss of the
| count as a tool to identify crap videos.
| mach1ne wrote:
| Google must have done A/B testing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I
| don't think they mentioned an increase in total consumption in
| the article.
|
| If they did not mention it, the test results were likely not
| promising, meaning that implementing the move regardless is
| motivated by something else than an increase in ad revenue.
| Covzire wrote:
| Like unpopular politicians or corporations who can't produce
| content people want anymore and lobbied for a leg up from
| Google/Alphabet to keep people ignorant and foolish.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The more often a user dislikes videos, the less it should count.
| nobody0 wrote:
| hidden negativity is depressing.
|
| "Sans la liberte de blamer, il n'est point d'eloge flatteur"
| AnonC wrote:
| This seems one sided. Why not hide the "like" count too and make
| both like and dislike counts visible only to the creators while
| using the individual action of each viewer for recommendations?
|
| I don't understand why a dislike brigade could be harmful but a
| like brigade couldn't be (like propaganda and/or misinformation).
| They seem to have considered only the impact on creators, who are
| a small percentage of the population, and not the impact on
| susceptible viewers, who are much larger in number.
| kristopolous wrote:
| It's like they took the advice from the book "Nudge" a little
| too seriously. Also, this is a great example of why using that
| advice doesn't work. It presumes known intent, prescriptive
| purpose, characterizable frame of mind, homogeneity of these
| attributes, and that you have perfect, infinite information
| without any externalities. Classic silicon valley-brain and a
| great example of how these approaches are limiting and self
| defeating with the same smell every time
| mrpopo wrote:
| Exactly. Hiding the like + dislike count would actually have an
| interesting impact on the experience, where you can choose to
| like/dislike based on your own opinion only. The result will be
| more relevant for algorithms and more meaningful for creators
| who will receive honest feedback.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| So funny that a lot people still tries to pass down votes or
| dislikes as something essential. It is already more or less
| proven that it does not work the way it is sold in many contexts.
| unpopularopp wrote:
| >we believe this is the right thing to do for our platform, and
| to help create an inclusive and respectful environment
|
| I don't even know what does that mean. Just cringe
| aww wrote:
| I have never ever looked at the dislike counts to judge a video.
| I am baffled by most of the top comments here, that express
| frustration or outright anger about this. I don't think like
| counts are relevant to me either. When I consume YouTube (and I
| have a premium membership which I am happy with) I either know
| the creator well or I have to trust the search and recommendation
| algorithms to give me good content for my current interest. I
| don't find it hard to skim a video and judge for myself if it is
| worth my time. I'm betting I'm part of the silent majority on
| this.
|
| You can interpret these like and dislike interactions in two
| ways: in absolute terms or in personal terms. "Is this video
| good?" or "Is this video good for me right now?" We can debate
| what most users are trying to express* or if they are brigading,
| but it is mostly irrelevant. As soon as the platform stops
| showing everybody the same videos or at least random videos and
| it starts recommending specific videos to specific users then
| like/dislike interactions are a function of how well the
| algorithm is working, not some absolute measure of sentiment.
| Dislikes just indicate that the video was recommended to the
| wrong people. Netflix doesn't show the number of likes and
| dislikes and I haven't heard of anyone demanding that this
| change.
|
| * The label "like" certainly suggests a personal judgment. On the
| other hand, the like/dislike placement and other feedback options
| suggest an absolute judgement. When I have (very rarely) used the
| dislike button it was more about a bad recommendation. Often the
| video wasn't bad in any absolute sense. In my experience I have
| to go looking for videos I truly dislike in some absolute sense.
| YouTube does occasionally ask me to rate a recommendation and
| there is a "Not Interested" option which are alternatives that
| are even more explicitly about recommendations. Unfortunately
| these are only offered before you even try to watch a video or if
| you are very intentional about returning to your recommendations
| feed and finding "Not Interested" in the three dots menu.
| subsection1h wrote:
| You must watch very simple, popular content, in which case,
| yes, you're part of the majority. Congrats.
|
| I rarely watch videos, but when I do, it's complex technical
| material relating to a niche subject. A high dislike-to-like
| ratio is a clear indication that the content is inaccurate. Not
| offensive or boring or too long, just inaccurate. And because
| the content is complex, I can't just skim it and identify
| inaccuracies.
| [deleted]
| petey283 wrote:
| This is exactly my experience and I also have a YouTube premium
| account. I use YouTube religiously and have my own system of
| improving the algorithm so that the vast majority of content
| recommended is something I might watch.
|
| If I don't like a video, I hit dislike and will maybe even
| remove it from my watch history.
|
| I suspect that most who are against this change are not heavy
| YouTube users.
| throwawaywindev wrote:
| Agreed, my first thought was why don't they remove the Like
| button too?
| bsdetector wrote:
| Think about the worst of the worst ideologies.
|
| Previously if you were linked their videos it might have 1000
| upvotes and 100,000 downvotes, and it would be obviously
| terrible. Now you just see 1000 upvotes and it would look
| like it has substantial support.
|
| Google can and does remove videos they simply dislike by
| using nebulous policies against 'hate' or 'meanness' or
| similar. Removing dislike then, by and large, helps push
| those unpopular views that Google themselves approve of.
|
| Does removing likes let them accomplish that? They can still
| remove videos that trigger them, but without a like count
| they can't push their ideology with the appearance of
| support.
|
| I believe this is the actual reason why they will show
| upvotes but not downvotes, and as prediction I expect them to
| remove total views since that allows for estimating the
| viewer sentiment based on likes per view (or make it useless
| for estimation, for example replacing a count with big
| buckets like "thousands" or "millions").
| joemaller1 wrote:
| RIP Neutral Response.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussCHoQttyQ
|
| A brilliant example of very-large-scale spontaneous cooperation:
| 12 years and 10.4M views, and the like/dislike ratio has been at
| equilibrium the whole time.
| deadalus wrote:
| Youtube Alternatives :
|
| Centralized : Dailymotion, Bitchute, Rumble, DTube, Vimeo,
| Vidlii, DLive, Triller, Gab TV
|
| Decentralized : Odysee(LBRY), Peertube
| sss111 wrote:
| Sadly, none of them come even close to the amount of content on
| Youtube
| gyosifov wrote:
| A little experiment: on a limited sample of random videos, it
| seems like around 1 of 30 people watching will use the
| like/dislike button. Seeing that a video with 3.6 mil views that
| has only 9.5k likes would give you a rough estimation of how many
| people disliked it. Is there a real study on the subject? It
| seems like it could be used as some sort of heuristic if there is
| nothing better.
| supernintendo wrote:
| Don't blame YouTube for this, blame the hordes of reactionary
| assholes who brigade videos with dislikes, trolling and hate
| comments because they disagree with someone's personal identity,
| political views, past Internet drama, or whatever reason they can
| find to express some grievance against someone they don't know.
| Most YouTube users (and people on the Internet in general) do not
| conduct themselves respectfully or demonstrate any sort of
| intellectual curiosity when engaging with these sorts of feedback
| mechanisms. They just want to make other people feel bad so they
| can feel morally superior with their useless arguments that do
| nothing but waste disk space and bandwidth on your server.
|
| If you're building a platform that allows user engagement, you do
| not want the equivalent of the YouTube comments section on your
| platform. Do not build features for anonymous posters or allow
| open, unmoderated discussion. Your users will destroy the thing
| you spent all of your time and money building, and they'll spit
| in your face here on Hacker News if you ever try to do anything
| to salvage it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| These businesses were built from pseudonymous comments (and
| posts) and open, lightly moderated discussion. The question is
| whether _what Youtube is doing_ will kill the golden goose,
| which has somehow easily weathered the owner-demeaning attacks
| from its disgusting users for its entire existence.
| avs733 wrote:
| >Most YouTube users (and people on the Internet in general) do
| not conduct themselves respectfully or demonstrate any sort of
| intellectual curiosity when engaging with these sorts of
| feedback mechanisms.
|
| You nailed how I feel about this entire conversation. The
| author of the blog PopeHat summarized it really eloquently:
|
| Stop pretending bad faith is good faith for the purposes of
| "politeness" or "dialogue."
|
| https://twitter.com/Popehat
| [deleted]
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Of course bad faith just coincidentally happens to be
| something my ideological opposites do and good faith is what
| people who agree with me do. Strange how it works out that
| way but I assure you, it has nothing to do with my
| ideological values and is merely a coincidence.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Stop pretending bad faith is good faith for the purposes of
| "politeness" or "dialogue."
|
| Assuming others argue in bad faith is even worse than arguing
| in bad faith. If you argue at all you should assume that the
| other party argues in good faith, otherwise just stop as you
| only hurt your cause by assuming bad intentions in an
| argument.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| It depends on the video.
|
| Say you and your band from college found one of your old
| recordings and posted it on YouTube. 5 years later a friend you
| lost contact with finds the video and comments, hey I saw you
| guys live. I
| esics6A wrote:
| Finally someone posted something logical and well reasoned,
| thank you!
|
| Content creator protections and guardrails go both ways and can
| protect both the producers of propaganda but also the small
| independent voices of dissent too. People don't realize that
| voices of dissent can be shouted down or terrorized by trolls
| and harassment. Imagine a scenario where a small content
| creator speaks out against powerful governments. These
| governments have their online propaganda farms troll that users
| content with dislikes and hateful comments designed to scare
| them into deleting it. The dislike ratio is then used to
| downvote the content so it doesn't appear in people's
| recommended watch lists a form of censorship in itself.
|
| I'd rather have a platform both protects the powerful and the
| vulnerable equally well than a platform that protects neither
| or only one of them.
| geuis wrote:
| Another reason this is a terrible idea:
|
| Video creators have always been able to disable the
| upvote/downvote ratios and comments.
|
| Every single time I have encountered a video where the counts
| have been disabled by the creator, it's because the video has
| something objectively wrong with it. It's inaccurate, misleading,
| poor quality, offensive, or some has some other generally
| negative attribute.
|
| This happens less so with comments being disabled. Videos with
| high up to down vote ratios but with disabled comments are
| usually because the creator is being attacked by trolls. These
| videos are usually pretty interesting to watch.
|
| So yeah this is an incredibly short sighted change and is
| removing an important quality signal to viewers.
| silent_cal wrote:
| I guess we are not allowed to dislike President Poopy Pants and
| Comrade Kamala
| cs702 wrote:
| dang -- have you guys experimented with _not_ graying out
| downvoted comments?
| dang wrote:
| Related: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/update-to-youtube/
|
| (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29177460, but we merged
| that thread hither)
| penjelly wrote:
| wow even developers lose access to this data. i cant say om
| thrilled with this. "for our platform" seems so odd when youtube
| is by far the most popular streaming video website.
| buhd wrote:
| The true tragedy in all of this is that the Neutral Response will
| no longer be True Neutral:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussCHoQttyQ
| phatfish wrote:
| Liking is overloaded, you "like" a video and it also adds it to
| your favourites. Which if public could be a reason not to "like".
|
| Dislike has no other effect that I am aware of. For this reason
| it was always broken as far as I'm concerned.
| canjobear wrote:
| My experience is that lots of dislikes signals a video which is
| not what it is claimed to be. For example a video that advertises
| itself as relaxing sleep music and halfway through you suddenly
| hear a loud voice screaming "AND HIS NAME IS JOHN CENA!!!"
| TheFreim wrote:
| > relaxing sleep music and halfway through you suddenly hear a
| loud voice screaming "AND HIS NAME IS JOHN CENA!!!"
|
| You're making it hard for me to be against this change, haha.
| Richard_Kayala wrote:
| Holy shit, who even asked for this? A bunch of woke adult cry
| babies who are concerned about hurting people's feelings? Who
| want to dodge criticism at every turn? Hmmm... what political
| leaning could they have? I wonder what kind of ideology this
| favors.... perhaps a certain belief that preaches that one sex is
| equal to another whilst doing everything they can to harm one of
| the sides and prevent them from speaking out?
|
| Also if YT really did care about their creators, how about they
| stop allowing hate raids to occur? People mass dislike and report
| a video when it hurts their feelings and this is more detrimental
| to creators since not only does the creator get hit with the same
| impact as the dislike button, their livelihoods also get
| threatened.
|
| Literally a bucket of marketing and 0 impact.
| ghalvatzakis wrote:
| Now they can successfully release this youtube rewind video that
| everyone disliked!
| hstan4 wrote:
| > Creators: You'll still be able to find your exact dislike
| counts in YouTube Studio for each video-only if you'd like to.
|
| What creator that wants to produce high quality content wouldn't
| want to see how their videos are performing? Total lunacy. All
| this in response to "dislike attacks" which are likely extremely
| uncommon.
|
| > it's an important step to reduce behavior that aims to silence
| and harass creators
|
| Can someone legitimately get behind the fact that pushing a
| button that says you dislike the content is silencing or
| harassing the creator? If they had targeted specific comments
| that would maybe make sense but literally by pushing a button
| this is the case?
| kf6nux wrote:
| > [can you reasonably say rallying a mob against someone
| harasses or silences that person?]
|
| Metrics would support that. A large number of humans speak less
| when they see their speech is unpopular.
| humanistbot wrote:
| > A large number of humans speak less when they see their
| speech is unpopular.
|
| This is a good thing. Some videos are bad.
|
| People who make content in the public sphere should expect
| others to engage with it.
| kf6nux wrote:
| > This is a good thing
|
| That's controversial. Determining correctness by popularity
| is one of the most common logical fallacies.
|
| What isn't controversial is that allowing targeted
| harassment of creators is bad for YouTube.
| humanistbot wrote:
| What I mean is that up and down votes are also speech.
|
| If I call myself a baker and open up a bakery, my
| customers will either like my cakes, dislike my cakes, or
| not have a strong opinion either way. They will express
| their opinions in a variety of online and offline forums.
| Some of them might be cranks and trolls. Others might be
| discriminatory towards people who look like me. Those
| people are jerks, although it is sometimes hard to tell
| at first. It is even harder to have formal rules for
| fairly and efficiently filtering out the jerks.
|
| But the point of having a public business is that you're
| putting yourself out there. If you don't want to get the
| feedback, maybe you should be able to disable the
| up/downvote feature on your videos, just like you can
| disable comments. And I completely get why some people
| disable comments on YouTube, for the same reason I get
| why some companies will want an active presence on
| Facebook and Twitter but not reddit.
|
| But if you're going to take away up/downvotes site-wide,
| then YouTube's same rationale should apply to disabling
| comments site-wide. The harm that you can commit through
| paragraphs of text is so much more than you can in a
| single bit. Coordinated harassment campaigns can use
| comments to doxx, to spread misinformation, to send
| viruses and malware, and more.
|
| And you know what, we need to get rid of elections too.
| That's just a single bit you flip for a candidate or an
| issue. If the concern isn't the harm of the downvote but
| the danger of compressing discussion into such a lossy
| format (like how people critique Twitter's character
| limits as to why it is a bad platform for nuanced
| discussion), then voting for elections seems to be just a
| problematic, right?
| kf6nux wrote:
| I think you're right, YouTube will probably disable
| comments by default in the future as well.
|
| > The harm that you can commit through paragraphs of text
| is so much more than you can in a single bit.
|
| That's whataboutism. It's an important topic as well, but
| not what's being discussed.
|
| I'm not sure why you raise elections, but the premise
| ("if the concern isn't the harm of the downvote") is
| antithetical to the discussion (which is concerning the
| harm of targeted downvote campaigns).
| XCSme wrote:
| Also, how does this stop "dislike attacks"? If someone wants to
| bulk-dislike a video, the button is still there and can still
| affect the recommendation system.
| akersten wrote:
| > pushing a button that says you dislike the content is
| silencing or harassing the creator?
|
| Part of the toxic positivity movement recently has been to re-
| frame everything disagreeable as a personal attack against
| them, using words like "silence" and "invalidate" to
| manufacture outrage. It's concerning to see this terminology
| permeate into corporate lingo now too...
| josteink wrote:
| Also verbal disagreement is presented as equal to physical
| violence. It's been going on for quite a while and getting
| increasingly absurd.
|
| Surely the pendulum must start turning soon?
| aprinsen wrote:
| Floored and pleased by this. A social media company making a real
| attempt to curb harassment by re-examining fundamental features.
| Obviously there's more these companies could do, but this feels
| significant.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Wow, someone disliking your video is "harassment" now...
|
| Jesus Christ, we're doomed as a species. The meteor can't come
| soon enough.
| dongcarl wrote:
| A moment of silence for "Neutral Response", which, after 12 years
| and 10M views has still maintained a 50/50 like-to-dislike ratio.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussCHoQttyQ
| supperburg wrote:
| This is terrible. The dislikes are often a source of ground truth
| and sometimes even comfort. Like when Gillette created an
| advertising campaign that promoted the idea of male original sin,
| the idea that men are intrinsically bad. Seeing that video in the
| wild might make you feel crazy but seeing that I was not alone in
| how I felt about that commercial made me feel like I wasn't
| crazy.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Subscriber count is unfettered capitalism
|
| The dislike button is for the people
| mindcrime wrote:
| It's funny how differently people react to things. I look at this
| and think "there is nothing about Youtube that I find more
| useless than the dislike count, and I think this probably - on
| balance - a Good Thing." Everybody else seems to think it's an
| attack on the fundamental essence of all that is Right, Good, and
| Just in our universe. Weird... I never would have expected so
| much consternation about a dislike count.
| leppr wrote:
| Many people probably felt the same with Google Reader or any
| feature Google killed.
|
| If you read the comments in detail you will see that people
| describe how they used the dislike count. It's therefore not
| useless.
| mindcrime wrote:
| I didn't say it was useless, I said that I find it useless.
| Not the same thing at all.
|
| It's not my intent here to comment on the utility of the
| feature in any universal sense - my comment is about the
| _disparity_ between the reactions of different people. And it
| 's just a casual observation, I'm not trying to argue for any
| thesis or anything here.
| mike741 wrote:
| Here is an easy example to understand the utility of the
| dislike count:
|
| Imagine you are looking for a How-To video on something very
| common but specific, such as changing a car part or Windows
| setting, and that when you search for this you are given dozens
| of options. All of these options are 20 to 30 minutes long and
| 90% of them are either inaccurate, out-dated, or automated
| click-bait. This lower 90% will have a disproportionate number
| of dislikes. Each time you click one of these videos the
| dislike ratio can save 20+ minutes of your life and this
| benefit is multiplied by dozens of videos and tens of thousands
| of viewers.
| mindcrime wrote:
| I don't have any problem understanding that some people find
| it useful. I'm just surprised that _so many_ people seem _so
| worked up_ over this, given the comparison to my own
| subjective experience, which is that the dislike count has
| almost zero utility. I suppose it comes down to the nature of
| how one uses YT. Relative to the things I watch, I can 't
| remember a single time I ever used the dislike count to
| influence whether or not to watch a given video. _shrug_
|
| Not saying those other people are _wrong_ mind you. Your
| lived experience is your lived experience and no one really
| has any standing to contradict that. Just expressing surprise
| at the degree of just how differently different people are
| reacting to this.
| vgb2k18 wrote:
| YouTube Rewind <--- an annual video event with some of the
| highest dislike counts in the history of the platform. I feel
| like the timing on YouTube's decision here is suspiciously
| convenient.
| justintime2002 wrote:
| Rewind was already cancelled, so the timing doesn't matter for
| that reason.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| It seems like YouTube just shuts off any interaction whenever a
| problem crops up. The "fix" for issues with comments on
| children's videos was to disable all comments on the videos.
|
| Which works, I suppose, but if you take it to it's logical
| conclusion we'll end up with there simply being no user
| interaction at all.
| blunte wrote:
| For the viewers (us), this is the opposite of what they should
| do. For us, they should be showing the up/down count ratio on the
| video preview link itself so we could easily identify the garbage
| videos without even having to click on them.
|
| Of course this would reduce the amount of ads and pages they
| would serve to users, so it's in their interest to do everything
| they can to prevent users from being warned of time-wasting
| content.
| Hugsun wrote:
| The corollary is that wasting users time more aggressively is
| more likely to instill resentment and platform abandonment.
| Definitely a two edged sword.
| blunte wrote:
| Indeed it does instill resentment, but as with many other big
| companies there's really no alternative. Someday youtube will
| fall second to a service that better meets the users' needs,
| but I suspect that will be many years from now.
|
| I think a lot of the behaviors companies exhibit like this
| are related to US stock markets and the fixation on quarterly
| earnings per share. So much executive compensation is
| stock/options that it's a wiser bet for execs to optimize for
| the short term. Planning for 5+ years is no longer reasonable
| from their perspective because even with the best intentions,
| unplanned events can ruin everything. They might as well do
| whatever they can to cash in as quickly as possible.
|
| I don't see this changing for any reason. So what will happen
| is that every 5-10 years some upstart company will gain
| enough funding to replace the tired old leader, and then
| within 5-10 years it will become that same tired old leader.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| Cuz they dont want rewind to becone the most hated video again
| streamofdigits wrote:
| Its a simplistic solution to a serious problem that plagues all
| social platforms. If anything we need more qualifiers not fewer:
| The like/dislike choice is creating an artificial binarity that
| doesn't exist in real life.
|
| Organized like/dislike campaigns motivated by whatever commercial
| or political or other reasons are facilitated by a sense of
| impunity and unaccountability.
| nickjj wrote:
| Bummer. I often use like vs dislike ratios as a gauge on whether
| a video is worth watching. If I see a 3,000 up / 48 down video on
| a topic I'm interested in there's a really good chance the video
| is great.
|
| I'm a small time creator (~13.5k subs) and don't care at all
| about upvotes or downvotes being public. There's only been a
| handful of videos out of hundreds that received more downvotes
| than expected because the video was posted on a place out of my
| control and folks didn't like that. Almost always if a video
| naturally gets downvoted it's because you either released
| something bad or unrelated to what your channel normally expects.
| ridaj wrote:
| > There's only been a handful of videos out of hundreds that
| received more downvotes than expected because the video was
| posted on a place out of my control and folks didn't like that.
|
| Yes. People downvote based on their expectation. So you can
| have content that you would probably find bad that has a lot of
| upvotes because it has a niche that likes it, and my sense is
| that the excursions in dislike ratio are more often driven by
| distribution channel or brigading than the intrinsic value of
| the content.
|
| > Almost always if a video naturally gets downvoted it's
| because you either released something bad or unrelated to what
| your channel normally expects.
|
| Doesn't this directly contradict your experience as a creator?
| But if it was true, wouldn't it be a good thing that creators
| no longer feel as much pressure to conform to fan expectations,
| eg in pursuit of bigger opportunities/audiences?
| nickjj wrote:
| > But if it was true, wouldn't it be a good thing that
| creators no longer feel as much pressure to conform to fan
| expectations, eg in pursuit of bigger
| opportunities/audiences?
|
| I'm not sold on that idea personally. The videos I create are
| based on what I'm doing in my day to day as a developer or if
| someone comments with a video suggestion since that's almost
| always in my wheel house of video topics which I greatly
| appreciate when this happens. I don't really make videos with
| intent to optimize for views / upvotes or get upset when a
| video gets a few downvotes. Lots of them have 100% upvote
| ratios and almost all have 95%+.
|
| YouTube does let video creators disable voting but whenever I
| see that on any video I almost always think the channel owner
| is trying to do something nefarious. Maybe they're trying to
| avoid transparency by hiding downvotes or they are super self
| conscious about making videos and my internal bias suggests
| the video will be worse quality when compared to others.
| That's not always the case but it's true more often than not,
| at least for my own subjective take on video preference
| (mainly tech and hardware, no news).
|
| I always strive for maximum transparency and let the results
| figure themselves out naturally.
|
| In the end, this is mainly a huge downgrade for consumers of
| videos. It sounds like the algorithm will still take
| downvotes into account and video creators can still see the
| downvotes. It's the viewers who can no longer use this as a
| metric to quickly gauge a video's quality. In a world with so
| many amazing videos to watch, losing this quick filter hurts
| a bit.
| oooooooooooow wrote:
| You have always been able to hide the like/dislike count on
| your published videos.
|
| Let's not be stupid about this. The only people benefitting
| from this change are the shady ones.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Controversial videos aren't necessarily shady.
| Jensson wrote:
| They do it so the likes can be displayed while hiding the
| dislikes. This encourages controversial videos, which is
| good for youtube since "all engagement is good engagement".
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| I just canceled my premium subscription. I'm not taking this
| lightly, YT has been an important part of my life for as long
| as I can remember. But at this point it feels like the
| responsibile thing to do is to vote with my wallet. Not that a
| change in course is likely; their leadership has been hell bent
| on ruining the platform for years.
| yc12340 wrote:
| Google will just stop showing statistics on cancelled
| subscriptions during shareholder meetings.
| sMarsIntruder wrote:
| Brilliant!
| JetAlone wrote:
| I've cancelled mine as well.
| inChargeOfIT wrote:
| I still see dislikes but will be cancelling my premium the
| second they go away.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| With YouTube Vanced, there's no reason for premium
| moonchrome wrote:
| On HN ? Unless you are a student you are making enough
| money to afford premium without thinking much about it
| and if you are using it enough to notice ads it makes
| sense to pay for services you use.
|
| This is exactly why the internet is in the situation
| where it is - nobody wants to pay for stuff so they have
| to monetise tracking and advertising.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _This is exactly why the internet is in the situation
| where it is - nobody wants to pay for stuff so they have
| to monetise tracking and advertising._
|
| This is just as oblivious as the "nobody wants to work"
| rhetoric that's currently popular. It ignores the fact
| that a lot of products wouldn't be used, and content
| wouldn't be consumed, if they weren't free.
|
| No, the reason people wouldn't use Facebook if they had
| to pay for it isn't because they're cheapskates, it's
| because Facebook isn't offering a product that's actually
| worth paying for.
|
| Netlfix et al. show that people are willing to pay for
| things on the internet if they're actually worth spending
| money on.
|
| Besides, even when you pay for things on the internet,
| most companies will still show you ads and track you.
| moonchrome wrote:
| >It ignores the fact that a lot of products wouldn't be
| used, and content wouldn't be consumed, if they weren't
| free.
|
| This is why I said we are on Hacker News. People here
| should probably value their time more than 15$/month if
| they spend nontrivial amount of time watching YT, yet
| still refuse to pay, freeloading is a common thing
| unfortunately.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm no more a freeloader watching ads on YouTube than I
| am a freeloader watching broadcast TV or listening to FM
| radio in my car.
| mitigating wrote:
| Maybe he meant to say freeloader while complaining or
| blocking the ads.
| monkeywork wrote:
| I think you missed the point the person you are replying
| to is talking about - if you are watching youtube
| normally and seeing ads you aren't a freeloader. They are
| saying those that would use apps like vance or newpipe
| instead of just paying for premium are the freeloaders
| sokoloff wrote:
| Ah. You're right and thanks. I had read that post, but
| from the use of the trademark assumed that YouTube Vanced
| was some other YouTube offering that I also didn't care
| about, not that it was a 3rd party app that bypassed ads.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I put a book on a table in a library and every time
| someone reads it, it costs me a penny.
|
| However, every time someone reads it I am also paid 2
| pennies by a dude that wants to tell people about his new
| book.
|
| People were fine with that, so I also found another guy
| to pay me 2 pennies to talk about the book he wrote as
| well.
|
| A negligibly small fraction of those people have started
| wearing earplugs. How unfair!
|
| So I found a third guy to pay me 2 pennies to talk about
| the book he wrote as well, and more people started
| wearing earplugs! What the heck!?!
| yesenadam wrote:
| I'm imagining someone in 1990 hearing you say that being
| able to instantly start watching almost any music video
| or filmed lecture/talk ever made isn't "a product that's
| actually worth paying for". I would've given anything to
| have that.
| k20CuozQmk wrote:
| >I'm imagining someone in 1990 hearing you say that being
| able to instantly start watching almost any music video
| or filmed lecture/talk ever made
|
| Imagine going back and mentioning that this would also be
| a way for the company (Google) to snoop on your
| conversations and censor dissenting thougth.
|
| A free way to stream any video sounds nice, but it
| doesn't once you mention the fact that it actually limits
| the type of content you are able to enjoy.
|
| We should be trying to build a better infrastructure for
| FOSS video streaming instead of trying to rationalize
| shitty business models.
| austinthetaco wrote:
| No one is censoring thoughts and any conversations that
| are snooped on are ones you allow to be snooped on by
| using a free service.
| k20CuozQmk wrote:
| >any conversations that are snooped on are ones you allow
| to be snooped on by using a free service
|
| I don't think the innocence of the people who don't know
| the difference between proprietary and free software
| should be the thing we attack here, specially since the
| company in question has gone through great efforts before
| to restrain the spread of the FSF.
| kortilla wrote:
| You just described what the internet enables.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| > you are making enough money to afford premium without
| thinking much about it
|
| This is a broad assumption, what makes you think
| everybody on this site can afford PS12 a month for
| something they can get completely for free with uBlock
| Origin and YouTube Vanced?
| Cederfjard wrote:
| Not all HN users live in the West. I know YouTube Premium
| is available in some low-income locations as well,
| although I concede I don't know how much they adjust the
| price.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| So stop tracking and use good old-fashioned sleuth work
| like "he's watching a video about fixing plumbing, let's
| show him some tools or possibly DIY products for
| homeowners".
| temporaryi3 wrote:
| "On HN ? Unless you are a student you are making enough
| money to afford premium without thinking much about it
| and if you are using it enough to notice ads it makes
| sense to pay for services you use."
|
| That's simply not true.
| behnamoh wrote:
| People _want_ to pay for stuff in exchange for not being
| tracked. But the business of tracking users and selling
| their data is much more profitable. Even when small
| businesses and startups create attractive tools to gain
| market share, they are (sometimes unknowingly at the
| moment) following their main agenda which is to get
| users' data and sell it multiple times to other buyers.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| I spend exponentially more money on content now than I
| ever did in the past. Both in digital services and
| physical media.
|
| Not everything is worth my money and Google can kiss my
| ass.
| forgotmyoldacc wrote:
| Supporting creators?
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Not my problem to solve.
| ekianjo wrote:
| This always comes back. It's supporting creators as much
| as the pennies creators get on Spotify. Only creators
| with millions of views make money. The rest, if you want
| to support them, you use alternative channels for that.
| The main profit maker is Youtube in any case.
| Aerroon wrote:
| That's not true. YouTube gets 45% of the money your
| videos generate and you get 55%. If a viewer buys a
| YouTube subscription then 55% of the price of that
| subscription gets shared among the channels that the
| viewer watches.
| MiSeRyDeee wrote:
| Any source for this?
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _Under YouTube's standard revenue-sharing terms for
| YPP, partner channels keep 55% of the money generated
| from ads on their videos._
|
| https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/youtube-partner-
| progra...
| myohmy wrote:
| Yeah exactly. I hate ads and 15$ is nothing to me. I'm
| not a poor college student anymore.
| penjelly wrote:
| adblocker? exception being mobile..
| gpm wrote:
| Ublock origin + Firefox seems to block ads on mobile fine
| for me, the mobile browser interface to youtube does
| leave something to be desired though.
| ekianjo wrote:
| NewPipe on Mobile all the way
| pongo1231 wrote:
| Yup, I was surprised when I found out it had Sponsorblock
| integration. Immediately ditched Youtube Vanced in favor
| of Newpipe at that moment.
| raro11 wrote:
| YouTube Vanced also has it integrated btw. You have to
| enable it in your settings
| pongo1231 wrote:
| I'm aware. I simply prefer Newpipe because it has roughly
| the same functionality, is more lightweight and is open-
| source (+ it's on F-Droid so I can easily update it along
| with all my other apps).
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Anything you're aware of for iOS?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I only use a phone for watching stuff if I don't have a
| monitor or laptop around. That said newpipe is fantastic
| when mobile is the only available platform.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| And TV
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > I hate ads
|
| Then you should definitely use Vanced. It eliminates
| sponsored parts within videos, which are not removed even
| if you pay for youtube red.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| Side note, what's the etymology of "Vanced"? Is it meant
| to hint at "advanced"?
| BizarroLand wrote:
| They are so anti-ad that they even removed the ad from
| their own app's name.
| austinthetaco wrote:
| that is one horrific way to guarantee the content
| creators you enjoy don't get money.
| account42 wrote:
| If content creators don't provide ways for paying them
| besides ads then that's on them.
| jquery wrote:
| How does it manage that? Crowdsourcing?
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Yes, people click a button to indicate start and end of
| sponsored segments in a video. Those time markers are
| sent to a DB, and every subsequent viewer will use that
| to skip the ad portion.
| Lhiw wrote:
| So many better ways than funnelling your money through
| Google.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The Patreon or buying merch route doesn't really work for
| wide scale though. I can do that for a handful of the
| very top channels I watch regularly but I can't chip in a
| buck a month for all 400ish channels I'm subscribed to.
| Supporting a few creators is easy but giving a trickle
| the a wide field is kind of the sweet spot for ads.
|
| It'd be really nice to have a way to say spread say $10 a
| month among the channels I watch, with maybe some options
| to weight towards smaller channels too.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Like if Humble Bundle and Patreon had a content creator
| baby together.
| forgotmyoldname wrote:
| Most people who post more than once a year seem to have a
| Patreon or something set up.
| pc86 wrote:
| Seems great for Android but no iOS or desktop versions
| sort of limits it as a replacement for Premium, no?
| augstein wrote:
| Is there anything similar for iOS/Apple TV.
|
| Still seeing downvotes in my country, but if they remove
| this imo important metric, I'll have to cancel my
| subscription.
| taylus wrote:
| Same, subbed for years and just cancelled. Was hoping they'd
| ask why but they don't care.
| anonu wrote:
| Seems like a bit disproportionate reaction. Most of YouTube's
| value is in the videos.. not the dislike counter. Help me
| understand the trade-off here...
| rgrs wrote:
| Video's value is in dislike counter. It helps in assessing
| content from new/smaller studios.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah, I'm actually behind this one. There's enough
| negativity on the internet, if youtube lose 0.25% of their
| premium subscribers they'll still be just fine. I doubt if
| much more than that will drop their subscriptions as the
| main value is lots less ads and premium-only content.
| MMS21 wrote:
| If you cant deal with the negativity then stop making
| videos, its that simple.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| By the same token, if you can't deal with people who
| don't want to deal with negativity then stop using
| YouTube. It's that simple
| MMS21 wrote:
| Have you ever tried watching a tutorial and come across one
| that has a ton of dislikes? Its a clear indicator that the
| video is a waste of time. Removing this is going to waste
| peoples time.
| arch-ninja wrote:
| Same, companies can only be influenced by their financials
| these days. I even buy subscriptions I don't need with the
| intention of cancelling them 2-3 quarters later (need to make
| sure the money shows up on the books first).
| mcphage wrote:
| So basically if a company you don't pay currently makes a
| decision you don't like, then you send them 6-9 months
| worth of subscription fees?
|
| Then if they keep making decisions you don't like, do you
| stay subscribed?
| happytiger wrote:
| Same.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Honest question... why do you pay for Premium when you still
| get in-content ads?
| behnamoh wrote:
| You can use SponsorBlock on Firefox to skip those in-
| content sponsorships/ads/etc.
| Retric wrote:
| You only get in content ads on specific streams which are
| easy to avoid unless you think the content is actually
| worth it.
| k4rli wrote:
| Sponsorblock with browser extension and on mobile with
| Vanced Youtube works quite well for more popular videos.
| rocqua wrote:
| Those are skipable, non-algorithmic, and fully at the
| discretion (and for the profits of) the creator.
|
| Its the non-skipable 1 minute adds on youtube on my TV
| (where addblocker does not work) that make my happy to have
| YouTube premium.
| Sophistifunk wrote:
| At least host reads are usually somewhat related to the
| genre of the channel, and skippable.
| djxfade wrote:
| SponsorBlock
| abdulmuhaimin wrote:
| what do you expect?? for YT to cut and sew the video that
| the creator make?
|
| just use your forward skip button ffs
| LegitShady wrote:
| so I can watch youtube on my ipad without ads every 3
| minutes driving me crazy. It was either get premium or give
| up on youtube, or maybe the ipad.
|
| I was already using google music, and then youtube music
| family (which sort of sucks at least in terms of app
| development), so this was more an incremental add-on.
| paulirwin wrote:
| I have Premium and watch almost daily and can't remember
| the last time I saw an ad. Isn't that the whole point of
| Premium?
| shmde wrote:
| It says in-content advertisement. Like the famous
| Squarespace advertisement. YouTube premium doesn't skip
| the in-content ads which content creator put in the
| videos.
| zerd wrote:
| I press Right arrow key 3-4 times and it skips it.
| closetohome wrote:
| I use it for the same thing, though most videos seem to fall
| into one of three categories:
|
| -Millions of views, 99% liked
|
| -Videos without ridiculous view counts, where the like/dislike
| ratio actually helps
|
| -Brigaded with dislikes
| ravenstine wrote:
| Similarly, I also like watching videos that have a high
| dislike-to-like ratio because that tells me the video might be
| about something I'll appreciate that the rest of the public
| doesn't.
| bserge wrote:
| Yes, good move to increase view count. If you don't have a
| like/dislike ratio to judge, you're more likely to play it and
| watch at least a bit. Everyone wins (at Google): more ads, more
| money.
| gremloni wrote:
| The problem is people also use it as a propaganda tool to bury
| videos they don't politically agree with. Normies have much
| lowered like/dislike button engagement so it's a disservice to
| the vast majority.
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| There's another side to this too - downvote the authoritarian
| state propaganda. When I see a 99% disliked video and click a
| "Dislike", I feel that I am not alone. When all forms of
| political participation are verboten, you use what you have.
| Now we have even less.
| gremloni wrote:
| The problem is only the "disenfranchised" like you use it
| and more often than not your views are verboten for a good
| reason.
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| Not everyone on HN lives in the US or EU. The views that
| are forbidden here are rule of law, democracy, political
| representation, freedom of speech, freedom of faith,
| human rights and so on. People who try to oppose this are
| regularly imprisoned, tortured, killed, repressed or
| forced to leave the country.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Sure, but many "Normies" are aware of this dynamic and adjust
| their expectations accordingly. If some video critical of
| gamers, anime fans, or WoW players gets piled with downvotes
| it's no mystery. Same with political content. It's well
| understood that controversial things get more negative
| reactions.
| slightwinder wrote:
| And this makes the system useless. Removing it is the
| healthy solution to interrupt the game.
| ralusek wrote:
| Healthy solution? It's hammering a needle with a
| hydraulic press.
| naasking wrote:
| Useless for controversial content maybe, not for non-
| controversial content. What percentage of content on
| YouTube is controversial do you think? Probably very
| little, so this "solution" seems like a serious overreach
| that removes something that's useful 90% of the time to
| appease some minority.
| chelical wrote:
| The system is fine. What if we applied this logic to
| elections? Just get rid of them altogether since they're
| prone to brigading.
|
| There's plenty of clickbait videos that have horrible
| like to dislike ratios and you can save yourself time by
| seeing the dislike bar. This is just removing an
| important piece of functionality and making the site less
| functional and less user friendly.
| gremloni wrote:
| The same mechanics are at play when people don't
| participate in the democratic process. It's a vocal
| minority rule. This is why a certain political party in
| the US tries to disqualify so many people from voting. If
| we had a mandatory voting system in the US with a federal
| holiday our government would look very, very different.
| Nesco wrote:
| No, because if the US had a better voting system it would
| also require voter ID for example
| slightwinder wrote:
| > The system is fine. What if we applied this logic to
| elections? Just get rid of them altogether since they're
| prone to brigading.
|
| Yes, elections suck, but that's their purpose. Mankind is
| not able to act smart on scale, but there is the
| interesting effect that we will act sane enough on scale.
| Elections usually aim to utilize this balance, because
| all other known solutions are sucking even more.
|
| And not to forget, in a healthy working democracy, you
| can't game elections like you can do it with (dis)likes.
| With online-services, it's relative easy to get thousands
| of alt or hacked accounts, which you can use to
| manipulate the numbers as you like.
|
| > There's plenty of clickbait videos that have horrible
| like to dislike ratios and you can save yourself time by
| seeing the dislike bar.
|
| How do you know? How many of those horrible videos are
| you actually watching yourself to confirm their quality?
| And on how many of them does your own bias comes into
| play?
| pc86 wrote:
| How does it make the system useless? It simply means the
| bar for "should I watch this" re: [dis]like ratio changes
| at least in part based on video content. If I see a
| technical video with more than 10-15% dislikes, I
| probably won't watch it or will be skeptical. But a video
| about abortion can be 50/50 and still have great content.
|
| It seems unlikely that giving someone _more_ information
| makes something worthless.
| slightwinder wrote:
| This system is useless because it does not communicate
| the reasoning behind a downvote, nor is it objective in
| the first place. People downvote for many reasons, and
| quality is the seems usually to be the most likely. You
| could make the most informative and objective correct
| video, and toxic communities could downvote it because
| they feel triggered for some absurd reasons, or because
| it competes with their favored content-creator, or
| because of reasons which are independent of the video
| itself
|
| You must be pretty deep inside the bubble of the topic,
| as also the bubble of the content-creator, to be able to
| evaluate the value of the rating. And that makes it
| worthless, because most people can't be that deep and
| follow everything. And the people who are, are more
| likely re-enforcing their own ignorance.
|
| The Ratio is one of those tools which are making sense
| when they are fresh, but become corrupted over time,
| making it useless after a while.
| propogandist wrote:
| recent political pushes aren't being well received, with
| sentiment being very negative on WhiteHouse media pushes,
| mainstream narratives around vaccines and the like (on YT).
| Normies are swayed easily by dislike bar, so the elites at YT
| are trying to hide it -- just like reddit hid the downvote
| count, to enable astrotrufing campaigns and overall shill
| activity many years ago.
| oscribinn wrote:
| This site is also pretty retarded and shill-friendly with
| its "you can downvote if you've accumulated enough good boy
| points" setup
| maest wrote:
| What is a "normie"? Sounds like a vaguely
| inflammatory/derogatory term, but not 100% clear on what you
| mean by it.
| djbusby wrote:
| Persons in the center of the bell curve; not the
| outliers/zealots
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| It's not necessarily derogatory, it depends on the context.
|
| "Normie" just means "ordinary", "average", or
| "uninitiated". It usually means someone with very
| conventional political or cultural views but it can also
| mean "someone who isn't part of a subculture or group" ie
| developers talking about laptops might say "normies don't
| usually need more than 8GB of memory but some development
| tasks require more to be comfortable". Other times it's
| used in a more derogatory sense to imply that someone is a
| bit too credulous towards the establishment of the day ie
| "normies think that corruption and inequality only exist in
| developing countries".
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| The alternative is that you're only allowed to like things
| and increased consumption must be fostered at every turn.
|
| Can't have anyone being critical bc the very nature of that
| is contrary to consumption or promotion
| jjcon wrote:
| But youtube isn't removing the button or the signal from
| their algorithms - they are just removing the optics of
| having a disliked video (which a lot of users including
| myself found useful)
| rvba wrote:
| How can you know?
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| This is to kiss the ass of big corporate creators and
| protect their brand when it becomes unpopular
| mikeyjk wrote:
| This, imo. Netflix did the exact same thing.
| gremloni wrote:
| Like I mentioned somewhere else, for recommended videos I
| see two binary paradigms
|
| - videos with >95% like ratios
|
| - political videos that have obviously been brigaded
|
| Assuming most normies don't have great engagement rates
| with the like/dislike button based on view count, this
| change is doing the vast majority a service.
| [deleted]
| hulahoof wrote:
| If it is easy to believe some videos get a natural >95%
| rating; isn't it just as likely some content would evoke
| a <5% rating without 'brigading'? I am not saying that
| this doesn't sometimes occur, but I also don't believe
| it's the only case.
| mikeyjk wrote:
| Agreed, people made the same argument for removing 5 star
| ratings from Netflix ('people only ever vote 1 star or 5
| stars'). If this were an input for the decision making,
| these platforms could very easily present that evidence.
|
| I do miss the Netflix of years gone past.
| decremental wrote:
| Because the channels they want to protect are politically
| aligned with YouTube.
| gremloni wrote:
| It's a business decision. Based on view count vs
| like/dislike ratio a lot of these videos are obviously
| brigaded. Most people aren't engaged enough to represent
| themselves in the like/dislike ratio. It doesn't make
| sense to bury them for the vast majority.
| Lhiw wrote:
| What if they are?
|
| Why is this a bad thing exactly?
|
| Smells a lot like democracy and a platform worth of
| people telling the creator they aren't welcome.
|
| Maybe YouTube doesn't like that but that doesn't make
| them right.
|
| Sometimes the users are right, it's their platform to.
| Going against them just drives them away further.
|
| With the hostile actions of YouTube over the last couple
| of years YouTube is asking for disruption.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| >Based on view count vs like/dislike ratio a lot of these
| videos are obviously brigaded.
|
| That's your belief but you have no evidence to prove
| this. And even if true, why does the entirety of content
| of YouTube need to be punished for the undesired
| behavioral patterns that YouTube has cultivated on
| controversial videos they've pushed on everyone?
| gremloni wrote:
| View count vs like/dislike ratio is an incredible
| accurate metric for my point.
| educaysean wrote:
| Can you please elaborate? You have a way to compare a raw
| metric (counts) against a ratio (like vs. dislike) that
| yields useful insights as to whether the like vs. dislike
| ratio was the product of brigading?
| mikeyjk wrote:
| This makes me think of how steam does indeed have some
| smarts to warn users when a game may be getting review
| brigaded. I think it's a combination of volume of reviews
| by time, and perhaps the referrer (?). It does seem to
| work fairly well afaict.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not the worst idea but it also triggers when
| developers do something to the game and many players want
| to review that change.
| pitay wrote:
| Steam also allows a user to view the raw information if
| they want. At least the last time I looked. The option
| could definitely be more obvious though. Giving the user
| the ability to see the like/dislike data over time gives
| them their own ability to decide whether likes/dislikes
| come from an external source to the page. This
| information should include a graph of the total views
| over time as well as likes and dislikes over time in
| parallel.
|
| Not giving users this information and removing like
| dislike counts just makes it so that a small number of
| people at YouTube have even more ability to control what
| is pushed on that site. With this change users have even
| less ability to check the validity of a video; validity
| means different things to different users here. People
| who stay at YouTube will just have to deal with the fact
| that they will have videos pushed to their screen for
| reasons that are hidden to them, that they don't have the
| ability to check out anything other people think about
| the video, and can't even signal that there is something
| wrong to them about the video (sure, they could comment,
| but any comment can be deleted by the video author and
| there is the fear of losing your Google account, which
| can include their email contact to everyone and
| authentication information also, which can have huge
| consequences for their ordinary life).
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| What fraction of videos on YouTube are political in nature?
| Seems like a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater
| in this. Why should videos about replacing the alternator on
| a 1999 Ford Ranger have the Like/Dislike buttons removed
| because YouTube wants to protect a very small number of
| accounts from criticism?
| gremloni wrote:
| It's definitely not small. I'm not particularly political
| and anecdotally my recommendation bubble has atleast 30% of
| politically "triggering" videos. These videos don't have to
| be explicitly political but just involve a person that can
| be considered a "trigger". I mostly watch videos on wood
| and metal working.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| What YouTube recommends to you is just that, their
| recommendations. It doesn't reflect the actual amount of
| content that exists, it reflects what YouTube wants you
| to watch to drive engagement. It might be 0.001% of
| content but make up 30% of the recommendations YouTube
| gives you.
| naasking wrote:
| > It doesn't reflect the actual amount of content that
| exists, it reflects what YouTube wants you to watch to
| drive engagement.
|
| Exactly. And what drives engagement more than enraging
| political content? Of course they're going to shove
| politics in your face even if you've never watched a
| single one before.
| yesenadam wrote:
| The fraction of political videos on Youtube is
| "definitely not small"?! I'd be surprised if it's more
| than 0.01%, i.e. if more than 1 in 10,000 videos are
| political.
| NavinF wrote:
| I too mostly watch woodworking/metalworking. If I ignore
| the "current events" row of videos that I haven't clicked
| on in years (because they are incredibly boring and
| oversimplify complex topics), less than 1% of my
| recommendations are political. I wonder how YouTube
| decides which videos to allow in that special row. Most
| of them don't have nearly as many views/hour as my usual
| recommendations.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Interestingly we have similar hobbies. I have to actively
| hit the don't recommend this to me button on all the
| political stuff. It generally works for a while and then
| I accidentally watch something close to controversial and
| I get another flood.
| hnzix wrote:
| The algo loves some ragebait. I ruthlessly remove bad
| recs and yet I watch one self-help video and suddenly the
| algo shows me far-right suggestions.
| jquery wrote:
| It's pretty incredible how hard the recommendation
| algorithm is trying to make me become right wing. It must
| assume I am because of my interests and watch history.
| Not interested, YT.
| epolanski wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| The example you make is fantastic, because if such a video
| had 4 times more dislikes you know you'll probably not find
| anything useful there, generally confirmed by skimming
| comments fast as " this is a 1997 model ", etc.
| rvba wrote:
| In last months comments often just disappear randomly.
| Youtube outsourced their spam filter and it was messed up
| - randomly deletes comments on basis of poorly set
| machine learming model and wrongly set keywords.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| And Google uses it as a propaganda tool to remove votes on
| unpopular videos they want to boost, whether there's actual
| money changing hands its an undeclared in-kind contribution.
| adminscoffee wrote:
| that's exactly what i do, i think youtube is messing up big
| time. this is almost as bad as onlyfans trying to go completely
| wholesome
| epolanski wrote:
| Exactly, how will I figure now that a 20 min video has no
| content promised in the title?
|
| How many times I looked for guidance on YouTube on some
| software, or cooking recipe or some rare clip, just to find out
| it was not what I was looking for by the dislikes?
|
| Now I'll have to watch "fix your xxx with this easy trick" at
| 2x speed to know it was crap.
| sdk16420 wrote:
| SponsorBlock has a video highlight part option now, as more
| users start submitting it, you could use that to judge.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Exactly, how will I figure now that a 20 min video has no
| content promised in the title?_
|
| Both Google and rights holders don't care. The more of the
| video you sit through, the more ads they get to shove in your
| face. It's a win-win situation for both parties.
| gadrev wrote:
| Shut up and swallow some more ads!
| propogandist wrote:
| is there a reliable way to block YT ads with a browser add-
| on?
|
| I'm using Ublock + Umatrix and still seeing a huge surge in
| ads across all videos.
|
| Youtube is also injecting pre-rolls at the beginning of
| content I've uploaded to a new youtube channel that is not
| monetized (I have no interest in putting ads in front of my
| content)...so I have zero interest in supporting their ad
| empire.
| bhrgunatha wrote:
| Enhancer for youtube which makes youtube much better in
| my opinion. Ironically there is now a large, prominent
| sponsor logo on the add-ons settings page.
|
| https://www.mrfdev.com/enhancer-for-youtube
| travoc wrote:
| AdGuard on iOS or Brave on Windows reliably removes
| YouTube ads for me.
| tester756 wrote:
| what the hell?
|
| What are ads? Ublock Origin on Firefox on PC, here.
| propogandist wrote:
| are you subscribed to any unique lists? Ublock is the
| first thing I install and it's been on my machine for
| many many years, but the YT ads seem to be pushing
| through
| hasbot wrote:
| Ublock Origin on Firefox on PC here too and I don't see
| ads either, thank Zeus!
| tester756 wrote:
| no, default settings
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Are you using Firefox? If not, it blocks additional
| resources when compared to Chrome.
| 3np wrote:
| Piped + Privacy Redirect
| sixothree wrote:
| Don't you worry about that metric to help you decide what to
| watch. Let google worry about it for you. /s
| netcan wrote:
| Unfortunately, at least unfortunately for your preferences,
| YouTube (and the modern web broadly, perhaps) does not really
| prioritize ways for users to find content.
|
| They're committed to recommendation and such.
| gadders wrote:
| >> I'm a small time creator (~13.5k subs) and don't care at all
| about upvotes or downvotes being public.
|
| Yes, but you're not someone YouTube is trying to protect.
| grammarnazzzi wrote:
| > I often use like vs dislike ratios as a gauge on whether a
| video is worth watching.
|
| That's the problem. You had a tool to judge a video was worth
| watching without having to watching the ads.
|
| Now you have to watch ads to find out if the video is crap.
| This is a very good thing. for Google
| ren_engineer wrote:
| the fact it isn't optional is the biggest red flag, why not
| just let channels choose if they want to show dislikes?
| jjice wrote:
| Absolutely. This is exactly the kind of thing that creators
| should be able to opt-in to, just like disabling comments.
| Very disappointed to see this shielding of everyone's eyes
| from videos. If a creator wanted to opt to hide it, sure, but
| flat out hiding it is unfortunate.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Why would be poster of a video receive special privilege
| for videos that they post? That would be like a seller
| being allowed to remove unfavorable reviews of their
| product. That the reviews are not under the control of the
| seller/poster is the only reason that they would be useful
| at all.
| jowsie wrote:
| Uploaders have had this ability for a while now already.
| MereInterest wrote:
| As others have pointed out, uploaders had the ability to
| block voting entirely, but couldn't adjust visibility of
| positive/negative votes separately. There's a huge
| difference between a video with +10k/-10 and a video with
| +10k/-100k. Displaying both identically gives a
| deliberately false equivalence.
| tempestn wrote:
| I suppose we still have upvotes as a percentage of views
| to fill in some of the gap.
| MereInterest wrote:
| True, though that still makes it ambiguous whether
| content in a video is heinous, or merely boring.
| ddingus wrote:
| Because hidden dislike numbers is information that compares
| people who hide dislikes to people who show likes
| unfavorably.
| water8 wrote:
| Lessco Brandon isn't getting many upvotes these days
| csee wrote:
| I wonder how correlated the like/view ratio is with the
| like/dislike ratio. If that correlation is very high we might
| not be losing much info. It'd just take an annoying extra
| second to calc the ratio.
| ollien wrote:
| This would be interesting to scrape together before that part
| of the API goes away in December. I wonder how correlated the
| like/dislike ratio is to the like/view ratio. I'd imagine not
| very. I don't like very many videos, but I don't know about
| others.
| kingcharles wrote:
| That's an interesting point. Why can this feature not be video
| or channel specific so that a creator who is being targetted
| could switch off the count if they wanted?
| alpaca128 wrote:
| That's already possible. Content creators can turn off
| comments and/or votes for any video.
| Aachen wrote:
| Not just dislikes though, or?
| tlear wrote:
| Because it has nothing to do with it. Explanation is a fig
| leaf. Check White house videos and see the real reason
| politician wrote:
| Plausible deniability. If a creator turns off dislikes on a
| particular video, that's a strong signal that they're
| producing propaganda or have a thin skin. If YT does it for
| them, for everyone, then affected creators can just shrug and
| pretend like they definitely would never turn off dislikes.
| winternett wrote:
| That's not the only reason for turning off downvotes... I'm
| a musician, and have dealt before with competing musicians
| downvoting me in hopes of driving my videos below theirs.
| Or occasionally someone can share a video publicly and
| initial response is based on brigading or just not well
| received. The display of lots of downvotes before views are
| properly accumulated can cause bias towards the content.
| Things were just fine when creators had the control over
| whether or not to show dislikes.
|
| Many creators use Youtube for different purposes. Youtube
| does a big injustice because they don't fairly separate
| content based on the type of entity that's posting content
| enough (i.e. an indie music producer versus a big industry
| music company or indie vlogger living in their parent's
| house versus a well funded TV news channel).
| cruano wrote:
| "Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong."
| mrslave wrote:
| > I'm a musician, and have dealt before with competing
| musicians downvoting me in hopes of driving my videos
| below theirs.
|
| This implies there are more competing creators than total
| viewers.
| winternett wrote:
| Well there are also several individual niches where the
| competition can play out in very personal ways as well. I
| work within a specific sub genre of music, and more often
| than not that entire niche sometimes operates based on
| "small town" politics.
|
| I still do it for the passion, not much profit has ever
| been there... har.
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| would you mind sharing a link? there's no youtube link in
| your bio.
|
| I promise not to give a thumb down XD
|
| always interested to check out other's work :)
| winternett wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/RuffTuffRecordings/videos
|
| Sure friend, fair warning though, I'll probably delete
| this in a day or so to avoid an ID trail of people that
| might scan my posts later on... The Internet can be
| vengeful a times even if I am not so. :P
| [deleted]
| johnisgood wrote:
| Perhaps you could use views and the like count. If the video
| has 10M views, and only 10k likes, then perhaps it sucks? I
| dunno. You would really have to sit through it I suppose, which
| is the point of this move.
|
| That said, it does not affect me much as I use YouTube
| exclusively for music. I used it for other videos as well, but
| Google is making YouTube a worse platform day by day.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| It depends, stuff like videos critical of foreign countries
| political regime end up spammed by politically sponsored
| griefers to delegitimize them, exactly playing to your
| heuristic.
|
| edit: :^)
| totalZero wrote:
| Canada is no paradise, but I haven't seen any indication that
| sponsored agents are gaming the system on videos critical of
| them.
| mjcohen wrote:
| No, no, no! They are referring to Cambodia or Catalonia or
| Castlevania. Maybe even California or Carcinoma.
| [deleted]
| avodonosov wrote:
| Unless a different county was meant. Although I've been
| thinking for a minute - nothing except Canada came to mind.
| nindalf wrote:
| That's a serious charge to level against Cuba. Could you
| share evidence of it?
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Ok found it! Everyone can mark off 'China' on their HN bingo
| cards.
| avodonosov wrote:
| China starts from Ch, it's not intuitive to say, for me at
| least, it starts from C. Single consonant sound Ch.
| ape4 wrote:
| What about... number of views : number of likes ... ratio
| iszomer wrote:
| I _feel_ like the like-dislike button needs to be expanded
| instead to encompass various the nuances on why you might like
| or dislike a video.
|
| Something I liked could be as trivial as an enjoyment of said
| content or a dislike because of it's presentation, or liking
| content that was presented in poor tastes yet recognizing it's
| comedic value.
|
| That's not to say I don't recognize that the like-dislike ratio
| can also be gamed however.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Before facebook, reddit and such I imagined discussion
| platform where you'd have 3 options, upvote for agreeing with
| the content, downvote for disagreeing and third option for
| spam and incomprehensible things and things devoid of any
| value positive or negative.
|
| Yes! No! Garbage!
|
| System would recommend you the content based on your
| adjustable levels of tolerance for adversarial views,
| contoversy and tolerance for garbage.
|
| I even considered supporting mixed vote by placing a dot in
| Yes! No! Garbage! triangle. Basically two axes, agreement and
| quality, with range of possible agreements narrowing down to
| zero as quality goes down.
| [deleted]
| jtwebman wrote:
| From what they said it is to protect creators as groups go
| around creating games to dislike different small creator
| videos.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > I often use like vs dislike ratios as a gauge on whether a
| video is worth watching
|
| You summarized why Youtube is doing it. Sure harassment is one
| aspect of it, but this drives up the clicks for Youtube and
| therefore the ad revenue. I'd be curious to see if people get
| overly annoyed by how many unworthy videos they watch and
| thereby reducing overall engagement.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I 'd be curious to see if people get overly annoyed by how
| many unworthy videos they watch and thereby reducing overall
| engagement._
|
| A popular streaming service inflates the ratings of the
| content offered on its service to the point that I'm hesitant
| to use it that much.
| epolanski wrote:
| Harassment could be solved in way saner ways, like detecting
| unusual peaks of dislikes at some content.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Then why not keep counts and ratios optional?
| flyingchipmann wrote:
| That's the f*** up part. It's already optional. The owner
| can choose not to show it
| pharke wrote:
| The changes they've made over the years have made a huge
| difference in the amount I use it. I used to often spend a
| lot of time discovering new channels and videos and overall
| just enjoying entertaining content. Compared to today, I've
| uninstalled the YouTube app from my phone and when I visit
| the site in a browser I generally ignore the homepage and
| just search for updates on the content I'm interested in,
| watch one video if I can find anything that looks relevant
| and then close the page. If their goal is to show more ads,
| they're shooting themselves in the foot.
| chelical wrote:
| Without the like vs dislike ratio, I'm less likely to use
| Youtube. I'm already using Bing and Google to search for
| videos b/c they absolutely botched their search experience.
| pharke wrote:
| I've started using Bing more and more as well. I never
| thought I'd see the day.
| enaaem wrote:
| Channels can already disable the like and dislike bar.
| simias wrote:
| I always found this information rather useless myself, so I
| don't see it as a huge deal. More often that not when I see a
| video with tons of dislike it's because it's been brigaded by
| an adversarial community and not really an indicator of the
| value of the content. In my experience it's more of a
| "controversial opinion" indicator than a "bad video" indicator.
|
| >There's only been a handful of videos out of hundreds that
| received more downvotes than expected because the video was
| posted on a place out of my control and folks didn't like that.
|
| My point exactly. So if I get what you say, most of your videos
| have a fairly inconsequential amount of downvotes, and those
| that do are not because they're poor quality but rather because
| it's been disliked by people who weren't your target audience.
|
| If that's your experience as a content creator how can you, as
| a viewer, consider the like/dislike ratio a good indication of
| the quality of the content?
| radmuzom wrote:
| > More often that not when I see a video with tons of dislike
| it's because it's been brigaded by an adversarial community
| and not really an indicator of the value of the content.
|
| Strongly agree. For example in HN itself if someone poses a
| fact-based positive opinion about China, it is down-voted
| whenever Americans are online and voting (does not happen
| when Europeans are online).
|
| So dislike/down-vote has 0 value. In fact, majority of the
| comments in this thread are against Youtube, which tells me
| that Youtube has made the correct decision.
| rgrs wrote:
| > brigaded by adversial community
|
| Not necessarily. There are other cases where consumers could
| use dislike as form of brand boycott
| mitigating wrote:
| Isn't that similar because the dislike value isn't related
| to the specific video but a person's opinion of the brand.
|
| For example if you wanted to watch a video on how to setup
| WSL 2 on Windows 10 and you see one by Microsoft has 100000
| dislikes however it's amazing video that doesn't help you.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > In my experience it's more of a "controversial opinion"
| indicator than a "bad video" indicator.
|
| There are tons of non-controversial topics for which
| like/dislike is extremely valuable.
|
| Actually, I don't see the like/dislike on my android TV box,
| and for that reason, I don't even watch new content on it.
| supernovae wrote:
| What's funny is I avoided a lot of content i feel in love
| with because of when TV and netflix had like or stars or
| dislike buttons.
|
| Just have a brief preview and if i'm interested, i'll watch
| it.
| MonaroVXR wrote:
| >More often that not when I see a video with tons of dislike
| it's because it's been brigaded by an adversarial community
| and not really an indicator of the value of the content.
|
| Like the new Nintendo Switch Online Expansion pack video.
|
| There's a huge community, that instantly dislikes the video.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I'm not sure. Reddit, Hacker News, etc. all offer ways for
| content to be downvoted. This allows for user moderation,
| which has pros and cons, but seems to work better against
| disinformation than platforms like Facebook which only allow
| "likes."
| DavidWoof wrote:
| It works on Hacker news since the vast majority of people
| here share the same interests. The same is true in theory
| on reddit, where the voters on a single subreddit share the
| same interests, and importantly reddit has rules against
| brigading to at least try to enforce that limitation.
|
| The basic problem is whether a downvote on a cat juggling
| video means "this is a bad example of juggling cats" or
| does it mean "I don't like cat juggling"? On YouTube, it's
| much more likely to mean the latter, but it's the former
| that's actually useful.
| yesenadam wrote:
| > the vast majority of people here share the same
| interests
|
| What are those interests that the vast majority of people
| here share?
| adrianN wrote:
| HN is a self-selecting echo chamber for people who like
| the content that is posted to HN.
| yesenadam wrote:
| Ok well, you didn't answer the question, you just
| repeated something generic you've heard here, I guess.
| Whether it's true or not, who knows. I'm not sure what it
| means exactly. How would you go about testing whether
| that's actually true?
|
| I dislike a fair percentage of the topics posted here
| regularly, or have no interest in them, and I suspect
| that's not uncommon. A survey on that subject would be
| fascinating.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I wouldn't say there is anything here that I personally
| 'dislike', stuff that doesn't interest me, sure, but then
| I just don't read about it. I don't feel the need to down
| vote it though.
|
| That's the difference I think
| austinthetaco wrote:
| That makes me wonder why you choose to stop by HN. Surely
| there are a large number of other tech-based feeds that
| would suit you better.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Pendatry:D
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > On YouTube, it's much more likely to mean the latter,
| but it's the former that's actually useful.
|
| What makes you say that? Why is the person that doesn't
| like cat juggling even clicking on the video?
| mitigating wrote:
| This is an excellent point. A dislike value is a single
| number but represents a large variety of reasons, only
| some might relevant to if you would think the video is
| good, and you don't know the breakdown.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Raw votes are pretty bad at moderation. Voting features are
| there primarily to help engage visitors so they will
| return.
|
| HN and some subreddits avoid becoming tools of
| disinformation because they are managed by dedicated
| moderators who remove posts, comments, and participants who
| are acting in bad faith. (Facebook does not do this.)
| [deleted]
| Seanambers wrote:
| I've always used the like / dislike ratio as a measure on
| the quality/controversiality of the video in question.
|
| Removing it makes paid content so much more attractive for
| starters...
|
| I am almost laughing as I'm writing this, but reality is
| moving towards 1984 much quicker that I ever imagined.
|
| The dislike button is like the booo's at a stadium.
| Removing all negative feedback removes the public ability
| to respond negatively to a video. Which obviously is the
| point. Damn Google got really evil real fast.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| _reality is moving towards 1984 much quicker that I ever
| imagined_
|
| Nothing says "If you want a picture of the future,
| imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever" like
| removing the 'dislike' count from YouTube videos.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Perhaps a smelly sock instead of a boot?
| mcphage wrote:
| > The dislike button is like the booo's at a stadium.
| Removing all negative feedback removes the public ability
| to respond negatively to a video.
|
| They neither removed nor disabled the dislike button.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's moving the goalpost. They're removing all negative
| feedback in public.
|
| And even then, saying they didn't disable the button is
| only arguably true. The button no longer performs its
| primary function.
| darkerside wrote:
| They just silenced the audio of the telecast
| LanceH wrote:
| There are way too many 15 minute videos along the lines
| of "How to do X in Y" which should be 30 seconds long.
| The downvotes are telltale for these, then the most
| upvoted comment tends to be, "actual answer at 13:30".
|
| Or the video just isn't what the clickbait title says.
|
| I get that some things get brigaded sometimes, but in my
| experience that's few and far between compared to false
| junk.
| lucumo wrote:
| > I get that some things get brigaded sometimes, but in
| my experience that's few and far between compared to
| false junk.
|
| Ans quite frankly, things being brigaded probably means
| it's a political hot take, that's even boring when you
| agree, and just stupid when you don't. If you remove
| those from the downvoted video list, you're probably left
| with only a few actually insightful and useful videos.
| black3r wrote:
| > There are way too many 15 minute videos along the lines
| of "How to do X in Y" which should be 30 seconds long.
|
| This is why I stopped using YouTube a few years ago and
| heavily prefer text+image tutorials to videos nowadays.
| YouTube is pushing longer videos, because they show you
| more ads in the middle of them and creators are also
| rewarded with more money for longer videos + they can
| insert their "sponsor messages" a.k.a. even more ads.
| greggman3 wrote:
| I'd argued before that dislikes should be removed from hn
| and i've removed them myself from my own view.
|
| further, YouTube only said the dislike count is private so
| the moderation still happens
| belval wrote:
| And what's the argument? Legitimately asking, I use it to
| downvote comments that are low quality in my opinion and
| I don't think that has a negative impact on HN at all.
| jorvi wrote:
| I often see completely factual comments get downvoted
| once (to 0), and since it then gets a little greyed out,
| people turn off their brain and blindly ram the downvote
| button on it. It just leads to bandwagoning.
| tempestn wrote:
| I find the opposite. Fairly often one of my comments will
| get a quick downvote or two, but they quickly then get
| enough upvotes to get back into the black, I expect as
| reasonable people, who might not have bothered upvoting
| the comment otherwise, do so because they can see that it
| didn't deserve downvotes.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| I've noticed on occasion that comments that border on
| political speech can really go either way, even if they
| argue the same point in the same way. HN is, at least
| according to dang, an unusually diverse community, so
| leaving it up to a dice roll and timing for a comment to
| survive its first 10 minutes seems not great.
| greggman3 wrote:
| downvotes on HN are, by official policy, for disagreeing
| with ideas. They are not just for low quality posts. And,
| even on sites where downvotes are supposed to be for low
| quality/off topic, etc enough people still use them as "I
| don't like this idea and don't want you to spread it even
| if it's arguably valid".
|
| Further, they're a form of violence against the poster.
| Not sure what other word to use to be told in a single
| click "You Suck!". It is or arguably can be a form of
| bullying.
| PixyMisa wrote:
| "Further, they're a form of violence against the poster."
|
| You suck.
| strogonoff wrote:
| > downvotes on HN are, by official policy, for
| disagreeing with ideas
|
| Care to link to that policy? I was always of the
| impression that short low-quality comments that don't
| further the discussion are prime examples of acceptable
| downvote targets here. Disagreeing with a constructively
| expressed idea is best done by expressing your own
| argument in a reply.
| ampgt wrote:
| > I was always of the impression that short low-quality
| comments that don't further the discussion are prime
| examples of acceptable downvote targets here. Disagreeing
| with a constructively expressed idea is best done by
| expressing your own argument in a reply.
|
| Amen to that. Not how it always works around here though.
| belval wrote:
| They are not, the guidelines are linked in the footer and
| don't mention anything about downvotes aside from "not
| talking about downvotes".
| belval wrote:
| > Further, they're a form of violence against the poster.
| Not sure what other word to use to be told in a single
| click "You Suck!". It is or arguably can be a form of
| bullying.
|
| Your point before that part was something I could engage
| with, but if you really see any form of disagreement as
| "violence" or a "form of bullying" then I don't
| understand how you can even function online.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I personally upvote posts I disagree with that
| nonetheless improve my thoughts and productively
| challenge my assumptions. I prefer a voting convention
| that increases the probability that I give my attention
| to worthwhile content rather than trendy sentiment.
|
| [clarification: I suspect you agree and do not mean to
| imply otherwise, though I do not know]
| csee wrote:
| They are not a form of violence. That's concept creep in
| order to force home a rhetorical point that you're trying
| to make.
| rhizome wrote:
| Howto videos have a wide range of qualities and the up/down
| ratio is indispensible so you aren't sitting through 18min of
| someone practicing their English or another rattling off a
| cocaine bender about washing cars.
| ataylor32 wrote:
| Agreed. Here is a video titled "How a simple Django
| application works" that is 8 minutes long. It has 29 likes
| and 27 dislikes. It's a pretty poor quality video, in my
| opinion.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU2SeliQvMM
| greggman3 wrote:
| 56 total votes is a signal to me that is not a good
| tutorial. No need for a like/dislike ratio
| fouc wrote:
| it's a video with low number of views though, 56 total
| votes is probably not a signal in that case.
| londons_explore wrote:
| 56 samples on a stochastic process gives a pretty narrow
| normal curve...
| nameisname wrote:
| On a video with 45,000 views I think the number of votes
| total doesn't matter as much as how many are up and down.
| dsizzle wrote:
| So if there was a similar video with the same views and
| likes but 0 downvotes you think it'd be significantly
| better? I'd guess the difference was noise.
| rhizome wrote:
| I mean "maybe," right? It just seems like a sample-size
| problem rather than indicating any bias one way or
| another. And of course, as far as these things go, you
| only find out the quality after you watch some or all of
| it.
| dsizzle wrote:
| Yes, I agree. (I was just using the example given, which
| probably wasn't the best example for illustrating the
| value of public downvote counts.)
|
| BTW, I should have known that if I questioned the value
| of public downvotes on a thread of downvoting enthusiasts
| that I would... get downvoted.
| OJFord wrote:
| Take away the dislike count and you take away the total
| count too.
| supernovae wrote:
| Perhaps youtube is the wrong medium for a lot of things
| and dislikes may not be the best way to express that.
|
| Youtube is borderline stupid right now for most channels
| that don't have organic growth... what they should do is
| re-open monetization and live streaming to everyone as
| its creating its own hell hole if you ask me with the 9
| minutes of smash the like button and 1 minute of content
| we're seeing on every channel that isn't organically
| growing or making money through other means.
| rhizome wrote:
| They've changed the sidebar algo/design in the past six
| months or so and I tell ya, I used to actually use it,
| but not anymore at all. It's basically been remodeled
| into the same "front page" business case as Soundcloud,
| Amazon, and any other "choose from a variety of things
| that may or may not be sponsored (but almost always are)
| and only ever relate to your watch history by chance."
| simias wrote:
| Ah, I guess it depends on the type of content you watch on
| youtube. I find video howtos/tutorial very annoying to
| watch because they're invariably too slow or too fast, I
| vastly prefer text-and-images-based guides for that stuff.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| And for people who are sensitive to downvotes, there's already
| the option to make them private.
|
| I really don't understand this move... this will seriously
| limit our ability to filter bad content. I hope that they'll
| provide an alternative.
| mysterydip wrote:
| > I really don't understand this move... this will seriously
| limit our ability to filter bad content.
|
| I think that is entirely the point.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| To me the point is to remove the negativity. They don't
| want to be the targets of the same criticism as FB. It's
| also seem to be a cultural trend in the US that only
| positive comments are accepted.
| Nesco wrote:
| A lot of comments here already point out that YouTube's
| own videos are regularly downvoted to oblivion. Also that
| in this very sensitive political climate across the
| western world gouvernements and big corporations don't
| want to appear rejected by the opinion. I tend to think
| it was an important argument for this decision
| oblak wrote:
| Can't even remember the last time I looked at likes/dislikes of
| any video I watched. Play count stopped having meaning (to me) at
| least a decade ago.
|
| That said, a couple of years ago I somehow ended up on a channel
| with literally hundreds of videos. I swear, the average view
| count of this woman's session was way below one. I just wonder
| how is that even possible. Spent about 10 minutes clicking on
| random videos and well, it was sad. Real sad. I wonder if she
| would've kept going if numbers were hidden. I think she would've
| bailed long time ago.
| blumomo wrote:
| Who is afraid of what and why?
|
| Here's my view: Removing down voting is FAANG's (=big corps) and
| MSM's reaction of many users down voting (in my eyes rightfully
| so) videos from public institutions who spread nothing else than
| propaganda. FAANG and MSM are now afraid that this sentiment
| contaminates other citizens.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Ding ding ding! This is right on the money. The next time that
| some admin hack comes out talking about "transitory inflation",
| there will be no high dislike count to undermine the message.
| It's all about keeping us unquestioning and obedient. Anyone
| who thinks this is remotely related to "protecting creators" is
| delusional.
| bigyellow wrote:
| Predicable after seeing downvote ratios on White House and other
| "official" channels. Another step closer to dystopia. Fuck
| YouTube.
| [deleted]
| entaroadun123 wrote:
| Ha... They pretend like this affects small creators when really
| it's to prevent people from voicing dissent with state
| propaganda.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| I remember using dislike counts to identify math tutorials of low
| quality, wrong information. Now that's gone for future
| generations. Thanks YouTube.
| 3princip wrote:
| I watch a lot of DIY and gardening videos. Occasionally a video
| gives bad or even dangerous advice and a high dislike ratio can
| at least indicate that something is off. Comments are also
| useful to figure out what the creator is doing wrong, but the
| dislike ratio is a big indicator. This is a terrible move.
| Nition wrote:
| I went back to look at when they first changed from star ratings
| to like/dislike, and it seems like they were thinking about going
| even further and removing the dislike option entirely even back
| then.
|
| They made some comments[1] before that change:
|
| > Seems like when it comes to ratings it's pretty much all or
| nothing. Great videos prompt action; anything less prompts
| indifference. Thus, the ratings system is primarily being used as
| a seal of approval, not as an editorial indicator of what the
| community thinks about a video. Rating a video joins favoriting
| and sharing as a way to tell the world that this is something you
| love.
|
| > We're glad there are so many awesome videos on YouTube, but all
| of this begs the question: if the majority of videos are getting
| five stars, how useful is this system really? Would a thumbs
| up/thumbs down be more effective, or does favoriting do the trick
| of declaring your love for a video?
|
| [1]https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/five-stars-dominate-
| rat...
| registeredcorn wrote:
| I'm still disappointed that they removed that feature. The star
| rating was superior.
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| At least in my personal observation, it seems like star
| ratings elsewhere on the internet (I'm thinking particularly
| of Airbnb and Google Maps reviews) are probably pretty close
| to bimodal: by and large, people essentially use five stars
| as a "like" button and one star as a "dislike." Assuming this
| is the case, a rating of 4.8 stars is essentially a way of
| saying "95% liked this": why not just strip out the extra
| abstraction and complexity and instead use a simpler
| like/dislike model, just like that YT blog post argues?
|
| Of course, there are other situations where ratings between 1
| and 5 stars _are_ informative: think critic reviews of
| movies, video, etc. But I think most crowdsourced reviews
| have kind of converged organically to a like/dislike model.
| [deleted]
| registeredcorn wrote:
| > why not just strip out the extra abstraction and
| complexity and instead use a simpler like/dislike model,
| just like that YT blog post argues?
|
| This is a perfectly reasonable question. (Please forgive me
| for the length of my response. This is something I take
| incredibly seriously because of my role in the industry.)
|
| Even if there is a trend for _some_ users to use a specific
| function in an unexpected way, it does not mean that _all_
| , or even necessarily a majority of users use it in that
| way. To be super honest: I don't wish to give YouTube the
| benefit of the doubt. I actively despise every new change
| they have made, each more aggravating than the last
| "improvement", but, I will begrudge the fact that they
| probably did do _some_ amount of research before breaking
| the existing setup. It was probably a noticeable portion of
| the userbase who was doing this, even if I was not one of
| them.
|
| The fact of the matter is, a majority opinion on a thing
| does not necessarily make it the correct decision.
|
| For example: let's assume that BBS's are first starting to
| take hold in the modern internet. Let's also assume that a
| quote function is included into this system. After 3 to 4
| years time, the maintainers of the BBS notice that (a
| certain percentage of) users are abusing the quote
| function. These malicious actors are "quoting" other users,
| but inserting words and phrases to make the original user
| sound stupid or ridiculous.
|
| Therefore, the solution is to instead remove the quote
| function entirely and force people to manually copy and
| paste text of other users. A feature of the BBS that
| existed previously is now gone. It's a *significantly*
| higher barrier to communicate effectively with other users
| quickly and effectively. Basic things like seeing who it
| was that someone has quoted is now effectively much harder
| to determine.
|
| Problem solved!
|
| Except
|
| 1) It doesn't solve the problem.
|
| 2) It negatively impacts (a certain percentage of) users
| who were using the quote function as intended
|
| 3) It makes interaction and feedback considerably more
| clunky
|
| 4) It puts arbitrary restraints on the userbase - a user
| base who is *fully aware of*, and *already accustomed to*
| the previous function
|
| I think the question should not be:
|
| > Why shouldn't they change this, if (some of the) users
| are doing it?
|
| But instead something closer to:
|
| > _If_ we were to do this, how is it going to impact the
| social features of the service?
|
| or
|
| > Are the problems this is trying to solve still going to
| exist?
|
| or
|
| > How is this going to improve the reliability, useability,
| and speed of our service?
|
| or
|
| > Do our customers even _want_ this to change?
|
| or
|
| > How much do we want to meddle in the affairs of our
| users?
|
| I very much get the impression that Google employees - if
| not a majority of the tech industry - feel some misguided
| need to decide _on behalf of_ their customers what is best
| for them. It 's a very weird, gross pseudo-motherly role
| that these companies masquerade as. I can't imagine where
| this belief came from, but it disgusts me viscerally that
| some faceless clump of people who I've never so much as
| seen or spoken to, is to determine what is best for me and
| several million other people, based on some abstract metric
| they queried yesterday afternoon. Their business is service
| and support, not judge and jury. This is something I have
| had to hammer into the skulls of a lot of employees. We are
| not the defenders of truth, justice, and human knowledge.
| We make software.
|
| It just seems like someone got bored one day and went
| looking for a problem to solve, and was dead set to
| "fixing" a "problem", without too much forethought.
|
| (I couldn't find a good spot to bring it up, but I also
| dislike the like/dislike system for at least one other key
| reason: It implies that the user consumed much more of the
| product. A low star rating _could_ indicate that someone
| didn 't bother too much with a product because the product
| was of especially low quality. To "dislike" something
| indicates that the user used the product for a
| significantly longer amount of time, gave it a fair chance,
| and then rated it poorly. There is much less nuance which
| grates on me like a cheese grater on a compound fracture.)
|
| Overall, I totally get where you're coming from. Seriously.
| I do understand what you mean, I just have to disagree
| because of what such a change _means_ , not because of what
| the outline of it might _indicate_. If you 've made it this
| far, good on you and thanks for your patience! :)
| eitland wrote:
| Whenever I look at a product that I am in doubt about I
| look into the reviews that gave it two or three stars.
|
| It's like a secret communication channel were you don't
| have to listen to the paid raters at 5 or the angry mob
| shouting about how it didn't <something completely
| irrelevant> or how it arrive late because of customs.
|
| In the same way I write a two star rating when I really
| dislike something so other smart people can easily find my
| message ;-)
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I think there's an interesting nugget of sociology in
| that. Perhaps segmenting populations (not necessarily
| through ML, just a star rating or a ladder ranking or
| Likert scale could be enough) when rating something
| offers better visibility to people in that cohort about
| their shared attitudes in the matter.
| calimac wrote:
| Look at how hard wh.gov got ratio'd
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TheBidenshitshow/comments/qr2bfg/yo...
| austincheney wrote:
| From reading the other comments I am clearly in the minority
| here, but this is absolutely the right way to go. It's the first
| and most simple means of destroying echo chamber bombing.
|
| Visibility of voting only reinforces agreement ahead of any
| independent consideration.
| JadoJodo wrote:
| > Our experiment data confirmed that this behavior does occur at
| a higher proportion on smaller channels.
|
| Why not simply hide the vote count (either way) until a certain
| threshold of votes is reached? This could be set higher for
| channels that are just starting out. Below a certain vote count,
| I personally don't see much value anyway.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Unfortunately, like Facebook before it, this change signals to me
| that YouTube is for an older generation now and is on its way to
| being irrelevant in the future. It was a nice ride, though.
| varelse wrote:
| Sounds like a call to duty to hit the dislike button if even
| slightly inclined to do so going forward.
| Supermancho wrote:
| As long as you don't mind how it will affect the suggestion
| algorithm. The most maddening thing is when a video is of the
| correct topic of my interest, but I know it includes
| misinformation as well. If I dislike, it biases against seeing
| more of this topic. If I like, it _might_ bias toward the
| misinformation. In practice, regardless, it seems to default
| rely on "leftwing vs rightwing" tags until it gets confused
| enough it just doesn't recommend the topic at all.
|
| What a world we live in.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Just mash that dislikes until there is no more content
| creators with anything remotely uncomfortable to you.
| Unsarcastically. Let the algorithm designers spend their life
| struggling to deduce what they could ask you in plain human
| language for immediate response. I'm guessing that is how
| engineer performance is measured and rewarded for there.
| varelse wrote:
| Why do you assume a priori that my youtube experience must
| include recommendations from a biased source and why are
| you against viewers taking matters into their own hands to
| craft the youtube experience they wish?
|
| They could craft a set of hot button keywords to deliver a
| much better experience (i.e. if I say I don't like sports,
| then don't recommend sports videos) but they choose
| otherwise and handwave a bunch of mumbo jumbo just like
| what you wrote.
|
| Imagine if you could no longer choose what to watch on your
| TV but instead it chose for you. Are you good with that?
| varelse wrote:
| I just installed an extension to block all the
| recommendations because it wouldn't stop recommending Jordan
| Peterson and Ben Shapiro videos to me. And they have nothing
| new to say to me.
|
| Edit: Oh no! I admitted that because I don't want to those
| videos I got rid of all recommendations. So off-topic I know!
| wolpoli wrote:
| > We understand that some of you have used dislikes to help
| decide whether or not to watch a video-still, we believe this is
| the right thing to do for our platform, and to help create an
| inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the
| opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves.
|
| It's very sad that this is the only instance in the announcement
| where they mention viewers, and the reasons cited has nothing to
| do with viewers' interest.
| city41 wrote:
| YouTube has shown the viewers's interests are not very
| important to them. About a year ago they greatly increased the
| number of ads, and it does seem over the past few months they
| have tweaked the algorithm to merch more clickbaity/mainstream
| videos. Helping me find interesting content just doesn't seem
| to be what YouTube cares about at all.
| oleglustenko wrote:
| To show power of our Hacker News community and the power of
| union.
|
| I suggest to report the post at Google page.
|
| So click 3 dot button -> Report Abuse -> Submit Report.
|
| These small 3 steps can show the power of our will! Yes we can!
| Spivak wrote:
| I like this. It _perfectly_ illustrates how when you give the
| public a negative signal it will be turned into a weapon for
| angry people to hurl at you whether it makes any sense or not.
| clusterfish wrote:
| No, that perfectly illustrates what happens when you censor
| free expression by only putting an upvote button on a post,
| and no downvote button.
| Spivak wrote:
| You take out your anger using whatever outlet you think you
| have available by spamming the report system?
|
| So in response to YT taking away downvotes because it's
| abused by angry trolls and brigaders you decide to abuse
| and brigade a different system. Surely nobody can predict
| what will happen.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Dislikes should be shown for government-affiliated political
| videos, e.g. speeches of politicians.
| rullelito wrote:
| In 10 years we will have forgotten that internet was mostly
| bidirectional.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Google is currently undergoing antitrust legislation proceedings
| against them.
|
| YouTube has removed dislikes from White House videos in the past:
| https://cnnbc.com/youtube-deleted-2-5-million-dislikes-from-...
|
| Connect the dots.
| dartharva wrote:
| If they are so against brigading, why not remove Like counts as
| well?
| cute_boi wrote:
| Whenever rich powerful people or companies says "Helping Small
| Creators", "Investing millions in small business", "Helping
| Small Companies", "Donate to support this cause" its almost a
| sign that something is shady. By removing the like count user
| will probably not engage that much which means loss of revue
| through adverts. However if they remove dislikes there is high
| probability of engagement because you don't know if the video
| is bad.
|
| And this feature is not even required AFAIK. Creators can
| simply disable like & dislike if they think they are being
| targeted.
| alexeiz wrote:
| I guess Brandon must be getting too many dislikes.
| otrahuevada wrote:
| I mean, if a multi-month, google-scale experiment says it helps,
| it... probably does? But I'd personally like to see more get done
| to the robot likes/dislikes thing than this.
|
| You know, that thing where a video has 100 views but 150
| likes+dislikes? It's simply too annoying to me.
| yellowbanana wrote:
| This is attacking a problem that happens 1% of the time to ruin
| experience for the 99% of the time.
|
| => I mean, if a multi-month, google-scale experiment says it
| helps, it... probably does?
|
| Helps who?
|
| Youtube user incentives are not necessary alligned the with
| company incentives. If it helps by making you a "peaceful"
| consumer who can't assess on average how other people think.
|
| Maybe it is good for youtube but is it good for you.
| otrahuevada wrote:
| Given that they've decided to go ahead and remove it, I'd
| wager that the amount of people for which the public dislike
| count of a video is _the one thing that makes their visit
| worthwhile_ is not huge.
|
| Also, publishers still get to see it, it's only viewers that
| won't. Which probably means we'll all have to engage a lot
| more with the algorithm to route around garbage, but I kind
| of do that already so I'm not convinced it's a dealbreaker.
|
| > Helps who?
|
| >> "Earlier this year, we experimented with the dislike count
| to see whether or not changes could help better protect
| creators from harassment, and reduce dislike attacks - where
| people work to drive up the number of dislikes on a creator's
| videos"
|
| Creators, apparently.
| trts wrote:
| The dislike button on YouTube videos is one of the few remaining
| signals that what you are seeing is propaganda.
|
| It hadn't occurred to me that this would happen (although it
| seems obvious) and it is unexpectedly frightening to me.
|
| I suppose the fallback will be videos with comments enabled,
| where people can 'like' a comment who is saying something common
| sense and reasonable in response to the content.
| pcwalton wrote:
| > The dislike button on YouTube videos is one of the few
| remaining signals that what you are seeing is propaganda.
|
| It is a dangerously noisy signal and this change is long
| overdue. Every COVID-related video on the front page of YouTube
| is spammed to high heaven with dislikes and "PLANDEMIC"s and
| "let's go Brandon!"s from right-wing antivaxxers. It's gotten
| to the point where YouTube is the premier distributor of
| antivax propaganda--only YouTube puts it one click away from
| the top of the fold even when not logged in--and it's a major
| threat to public health.
| varnaud wrote:
| I think that seeing a overwhelmingly positive like to dislike
| ratio might hide signals that what you're viewing is
| propaganda.
|
| "If so many people like this, it probably has value." "There is
| always a few dislike from haters, safe to discard them."
| farias0 wrote:
| Yes! I'm against this decision, but dislikes are so
| unreliable as indicators of propaganda that they might as
| well not be there. All they indicate is how the video was
| received by its audience (duh), and decent propaganda is
| designed to rig this game.
|
| The only times I remember seeing a high dislike-to-like ratio
| are on things that went viral in the wrong circles, so
| internet decided to mass-downvote the for inconsequential
| reasons, like Rebecca Black's Friday or the announcement for
| some video game that isn't made to appeal to the "core gaming
| public".
| Pxtl wrote:
| Except that groups have a proven track-record of assembling
| masses to brigade things they loudly hate. And since most
| people don't downvote, a determined group of downvoters can
| send a hyper-loud signal.
|
| Personally, I think this is all flowing from a fundamental
| problem: there is no concept of "credibility" with upvotes and
| downvotes. As conservatives are fond of saying "facts don't
| care about your feelings", but all our social media use
| feelings to determine which "facts" get the loudest boost.
|
| Any system that uses a raw number of votes (be they up _or_
| down) as a weighting score is basically encouraging botnets,
| brigades, etc. Like, every climate activist has a swarm of
| climate-change deniers following them around online and I
| consider their opinions worse than useless.
| pcwalton wrote:
| Exactly. Public opinion polls show that the COVID vaccine is
| widely accepted. Yet every COVID-related video on the front
| page has an 80% or more dislike ratio. Antivaxxers have
| hijacked the dislike tool to spread their propaganda, and the
| correct response is to take their toys away.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Yes, but my feeling is that we go a step further. And I
| suspect most social media companies are already doing this
| under the hood:
|
| Just as Google graphs the relationships between sites and
| uses that to rank them, also graph the relationships
| between users and use that to rank them.
|
| Like, important figure who's followed by numerous media
| experts and is consistently upvoted by respected people?
| Their opinion has weight. 1000 score per updoot.
|
| Crank who has few followers, gets all their news from
| extremists on youtube, and does nothing but hurl insults at
| politicians all day? 0.01 score per updoot.
|
| It's not democratic, but information isn't a democracy.
|
| Let them keep upvoting and downvoting. And take that
| information for what it's worth.
| throwawaythekey wrote:
| Controversial videos, or those by controversial creators,
| are the ones that get brigaded. If you're inside a filter
| bubble and can't see a dislike count how will you know what
| you're looking at is controversial? Yes, the ratio is not
| representative of the general population but it's the
| signal that matters.
|
| Would you rather not know something is controversial? What
| mechanism would you prefer for nudging people outside of
| filter bubbles?
|
| I'm happy to be generous and consider all videos with heavy
| dislike ratios as victims of brigading and not of public
| sentiment.
| [deleted]
| nbardy wrote:
| You're making a lot of assumptions. I'm one of the 80%
| accepts the covid vaccine.
|
| I also disagree with the mandates and downvote all of the
| covid vaccine propaganda video I see on youtube.
|
| Regular people are tired of the lying whether they agree
| with the vaccines or not.
| pcwalton wrote:
| If you think mainstream COVID vaccine-related info is
| "propaganda" and "lying", then you don't "accept the
| vaccine". Additionally, most people agree with the
| mandates: https://news.gallup.com/poll/354506/update-
| american-public-o...
|
| It's statistically impossible for the like/dislike ratio
| on COVID-related videos to be representative of public
| opinion.
| josephh wrote:
| > then you don't "accept the vaccine"
|
| What does that even mean? What makes you think saying yes
| to vaccine but no to vaccine mandates means they don't
| "accept the vaccine"?
|
| > Additionally, most people agree with the mandates
|
| From the latest poll [1] (conducted between 11/05-11/07):
|
| > Table POL11: Even if neither is exactly correct, which
| of the following comes closest to your opinion?
| Government mandates to receive a COVID-19 vaccine
|
| 44% of registered voters say they violate the rights of
| Americans
|
| 45% of registered voters say they protect the rights of
| Americans
|
| 1. https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017d-0982-d3c9-a77d
| -0b9a9...
| pcwalton wrote:
| > What does that even mean? What makes you think saying
| yes to vaccine but no to vaccine mandates means they
| don't "accept the vaccine"?
|
| Most videos about the COVID vaccine that we're talking
| about are simply stating that the vaccines are effective
| and safe. Calling those "propaganda" and "lying" is not
| accepting the truth about the vaccine.
|
| > From the latest poll [1] (conducted between
| 11/05-11/07):
|
| Vaccine mandate support is ahead by 1 point in this poll,
| yet COVID videos with correct information about the
| vaccine on YouTube are 80%+ dislikes. Precisely my point.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I wonder if someone can produce an extension like SponsorBlock
| to add the functionality back. Surely this must be coming after
| this announcement.
|
| For people that don't know SponsorBlock is a magical extension
| that uses crowdsourced data to automatically skip in video
| advertisements/end title/start tile junk that youtubers tend to
| do. What an amazing show of the power of software and intuitive
| thinking.
| WriterGuy2021 wrote:
| It's a signal that people don't like what they are hearing. If
| the propaganda aligns with their interests, the majority will
| like it. It's not a good signal for gauging propaganda in my
| opinion.
| aeternum wrote:
| I find it is an incredible indicator for low view-count
| videos. If dislikes are greater than likes it's a pretty good
| indicator you should just skip.
|
| Seems like it'd be useful to hide the dislike count only
| after the video gets a certain number of likes.
| emkoemko wrote:
| video creator can delete comments....
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| In my experience, if a video has comments disabled, it's
| probably bad. The lack of signal is itself a signal.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| Sometimes but it often happens when a comment section gets
| brigaded as well.
|
| Negative feedback is not always given in good faith.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| I have seen a lot of education videos having comments
| disabled, e.g. Oregon Programming Languages Summer School.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9dO_XBt0k8
|
| I believe it is because they see themselves as 'above'
| YouTube. They don't take the risk of having a Emacs/Vim flame
| war in the comments and detracting from the points in the
| video. By disabling comments, the conversation is kept civil,
| because it isn't there.
|
| They are not resourceful enough to curate a forum, so they
| prefer no forum at all.
| nitrogen wrote:
| I know K-12 educators who post videos primarily for their
| students and fellow local teachers, and they disable
| comments and voting because bored kids will fill the
| comments with crap, and scammers will target the kids.
| Wistar wrote:
| Yep. This sabotage is exactly why K-12 teachers disable
| comments.
| sam-2727 wrote:
| In your case, this is because all videos "made for kids"
| must have comments turned off per YouTube policy:
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9706180
| nitrogen wrote:
| Yes, but cause and effect are reversed from the teacher's
| perspective. They mark the video as "made for kids"
| because that's the easiest way to disable comments.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| It's required to mark the video as made for kids if it's
| for kids.
| Nitrolo wrote:
| My first thought was that comments in many online spaces,
| including youtube, can simply be mean. If I was responsible
| for the online presence of a course I wouldn't want my
| lecturers to have to deal with random people commenting on
| their bad haircut or annoying voice, for example.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It's because they want to reap the benefits of a social
| platform without actually participating in a social aspects
| of said platform. It's an expense to have someone going
| through comments.
|
| Most organizations (education, government, for-profit, NPO,
| you name it) that use Twitter rarely if ever interact with
| any other Twitter account except for preplanned promotional
| stuff. If you noticed, Twitter added the ability to limit
| replies. That was solely to please the corporate world who
| don't like it when someone jumps on the stage that is their
| platform.
|
| McDonalds doesn't like it when they tweet about their
| "green initiative" and PETA replies to the tweet with
| something about beef using x amount of land and y water
| compared to other food sources, or just a GIF of a cow
| getting slaughtered. BMW doesn't like it if they tweet
| about how much they spend on training techs for "world
| class service" but someone replies with a picture of an
| engine with a hole in the block because a dealer tech
| forgot to tighten the oil plug properly after an oil
| change. Limiting tweet replies means that tweeting for
| corporations is now a "safe space."
|
| There's an entire business segment dedicated to providing
| tools to social media teams to alert them if someone who
| actually is "important" interacts with their social media
| account. Patrick Stewart tweets about his Juicero blows a
| fuse? He gets a replacement hand-delivered by a young
| marketing intern in a star trek uniform who gushes about
| how she grew up being a fan of "Bev."
|
| You tweet about your juicero blowing a fuse? Nobody at
| Juicero even sees the tweet, because their social media
| monitoring tool looked at your profile, saw you rarely get
| more than 30 views and 2-3 engagements, and knew you
| represented zero threat to the brand.
| chongli wrote:
| _It 's because they want to reap the benefits of a social
| platform without actually participating in a social
| aspects of said platform._
|
| If by they you mean Google then I agree. Google reaps the
| benefits, to the tune of billions, while deflecting as
| much accountability as possible. Google's entire m.o. is
| to build enormous scale through software automation
| without providing any human-level support to its users.
| Large changes (like the removal of dislike counts) are
| made only under pressure from powerful groups, unless
| Google deems such changes to be profitable.
| [deleted]
| Quekid5 wrote:
| You must not frequent the same subset of videos I watch.
|
| The amount of trolling (or just outright stupidity, hard to
| tell sometimes) on e.g. CS conference videos or lectures by
| women is insane. I entirely understand that the organizations
| putting those videos up don't want to deal with that
| nonsense.
| sireat wrote:
| Usually that is a signal but not always.
|
| Official Rammstein videos have comments disabled but for a
| different reason.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeQM1c-XCDc would attract
| ugly comments from all extremes
| chana_masala wrote:
| I figured it was Deutschland oder Auslander that you would
| link. I agree
| globular-toast wrote:
| Aren't the channel owners allowed to delete comments? So
| comments being enabled could mean it's a good video or it
| could mean the author is removing comments. You can't tell
| which it is.
| erickhill wrote:
| Many young content creators have comments disabled (or by
| parental decree) so they don't have to experience
| intentionally hurtful or negative trolling some comment
| sections are well known in spawning.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Not exactly young here, but I disable contents for this
| reason among many others. I will not make my own videos a
| platform for intentionally hurtful comments, off-topic
| arguments between commentators, or rants.
|
| Some other reasons:
|
| I find it irresponsible on Youtube's part, to maintain a
| commenting platform with such a tremendous budget, and yet
| without meaningful discussion moderation tools that could
| be found on much lower-end platforms. These tools are a
| minimum bar for basically not promoting abusive behavior.
|
| Also, disabling comments helps me to communicate that they
| are not a channel I monitor for feedback or questions. I
| just don't have the time to monitor them, and in Youtube's
| case this means I either have a potential commenting
| cesspool on my hands or no comments at all.
|
| To some people this is a huge red flag maybe, but I would
| wonder if they really understand what it's like to be a
| publisher on the platform. Again and again I have seen good
| channels derailed by the absolutely broken commenter-
| publisher feedback loop...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > I find it irresponsible on Youtube's part, to maintain
| a commenting platform with such a tremendous budget, and
| yet without meaningful discussion moderation tools that
| could be found on much lower-end platforms. These tools
| are a minimum bar for basically not promoting abusive
| behavior.
|
| It is not in the interests of almost any site or platform
| operator to limit drama, trolling, etc. They want the
| page views, the time spent in-app/on site, the emotional
| energy and investment.
|
| Look at celebrities. The job of their publicists is to
| negotiate with other publicists to manufacture some
| inconsequential tiff that puts the names of their clients
| in the media.
| peakaboo wrote:
| Hurtful comments vs censorship vs no discussion.
|
| You picked no discussion. So now nobody learns anything
| new from eachother and you turned YouTube into a TV
| channel with one way communication.
| eropple wrote:
| You say this like it's a bad thing, and not a person
| setting boundaries for how they are willing to interact
| with an audience.
|
| But you drop "censorship" front and center about some
| random dude's YouTube channel and you're doing some
| sterling fearmongering throughout the thread in general
| so I'm going to be honest, I gotta think this is less
| about any sort of freedom to speech and rather about the
| privilege of being granted time on somebody else's
| soapbox--the _demand_ to listened to.
|
| Get your own.
| ngngngng wrote:
| There are quite a few tame religious videos that attract a
| lot of trolls and turn the comments off.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Or, the author doesn't want to bother with a brigade of
| trolls and spammers descending on it.
| orangeoxidation wrote:
| It's a signal that the creator does not want do engage in
| moderate / discussion on YouTube. There's perfectly valid
| reasons for that (e.g. topic is controversial, video is only
| for embedding or archiving on YouTube, there's no social
| media manager, the video is for kids). It is not a good
| signal for the video being not worth your time.
|
| Otoh creators can delete comments. So the comments existing
| and being positive about a video is not a good signal for the
| video being good either.
| thrashh wrote:
| While I personally haven't noticed comments being on or off
| as useful, just because a signal could have multiple
| factors doesn't necessarily render it useless.
|
| For example, a Yelp rating itself is useless until you also
| combine other signals such as the number of reviews, the
| type of restaurant, and the popularity of Yelp use in an
| area, and then I find Yelp ratings potentially very useful.
| Same with Amazon reviews, Rotten Tomatoes scores, or any
| scoring or review system.
| downandout wrote:
| The issue with depending on comments is that the next step is
| to disable them whenever the sentiment turns decidedly
| negative.
|
| Your use of the word "frightening" is an understatement in my
| opinion. Using the dislike button to add to the dislike count
| is a form of speech, and YouTube is silencing it. Given the
| growing disconnect between reality and content produced by the
| mainstream media, politicians, etc., YouTube should be
| increasing options for the masses to warn others about content,
| not decimating them.
| age_bronze wrote:
| The media had ruled and controlled the western world with
| propaganda for the whole 20th century, from newspapers in early
| 1900s to TVs in late 1900s. We had a very brief period of
| people escaping the matrix through the internet and
| communicating through alternative channels, that little blip of
| media sandbox escape brought Trump and the Brexit and the
| corporates and media have been working hard to regain control
| of means of communication ever since.
|
| Be glad you got to live through this very brief period of
| awakening because they are about to return everyone back into
| the darkness again.
| gorwell wrote:
| I'm surprised you're getting downvoted. I thought HN was well
| aware of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. Maybe not?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
|
| See also Revolt of the Public, which explores the
| consequences of the internet breaking monopoly control over
| the flow of information. As you point out, it's the
| alternative channel that gave rise to unauthorized voices.
| What we're seeing play out is a fight between the dissenting
| public and the ruling elites. Removing dislikes is just the
| latest in a series of moves to reassert control over
| information.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-
| Millen...
| k20CuozQmk wrote:
| >I thought HN was well aware of Noam Chomsky's
| Manufacturing Consent.
|
| I did too, it is pretty depressing to see people here
| applauding efforts to thwart dissenting opinions.
| thoms_a wrote:
| You'll find that HN, just like any other community, is
| largely conformist on major social/political issues.
|
| It came as a shock to me at first, but now I simply accept
| that people are wired for self-preservation via cognitive
| compartmentalization.
|
| People here will argue vim/emacs for weeks, but will
| happily repeat mainstream media talking points on every
| major social/political issue.
|
| This is why I restrict my usage of online communities based
| on expertise now. I will find world class
| programmers/scientists on HN, but those same geniuses will
| be hilariously ignorant on history/politics.
|
| Such is life. HN is definitely not a one-stop shop, but
| it's unrivalled for anything STEM related.
| defaultname wrote:
| I suspect that your notion of what qualifies as propaganda
| differs significantly from most people.
|
| Some subgroups -- motivated groups who seem to have endless
| free time and a lot of passion to click little arrows and leave
| comments -- brigade and basically remove any functional utility
| of likes, dislikes and often even ratings. _Hateful_ groups
| tend to particularly dominate, and weird agendas dominate.
|
| The ultimate solution is, sadly, even more of a filter bubble:
| If I could click a button and have every like/dislike by
| pernicious players (in _my_ opinion) completely removed from
| any measure shown to me, I would respect online ratings better.
| And maybe, eventually, given that the majority of people are
| rational and have better things to do, the bores might get
| bored of trying to manipulate every measure.
| datenarsch wrote:
| > Some subgroups -- motivated groups who seem to have endless
| free time and a lot of passion to click little arrows and
| leave comments -- brigade and basically remove any functional
| utility of likes, dislikes and often even ratings. Hateful
| groups tend to particularly dominate, and weird agendas
| dominate.
|
| And who exactly are these nebulous people? This sounds like
| something O'Brien from 1984 would say about Emmanuel
| Goldstein and his followers.
| defaultname wrote:
| Any asymmetrically engaged group is going to lead to
| metrics that _aren 't generally useful_. In little bubbles,
| sure, but to everyone else it's just digital pollution.
|
| Imagine that there was a group that really, really hated
| the color green, and they're so passionate that they fly
| "We Hate Green" flags outside their house, completely tie
| their identity with hating green, go to we hate green
| rallies (imagine having that little respect for your own
| time?), wear we hate green shirts, make up childish "We
| Hate Green" code words (e.g. Let's Go Purple!) for when
| they are among the greenies, and these people seemed to
| have endless idle time to sit brigading every bit of
| content to downvote it or leave nasty comments because
| something in the video was green. That is just _noise_ to
| everyone else. Everyone else -- the majority of the public
| -- finds no value in their hyper-polarized, agenda-driven
| contributions.
|
| And I'm not just talking about people who like green, but
| people who are indifferent or even anti-green but they
| don't find any value in having a review bombed because this
| idle group was mad that they thought it was "green woke".
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >The ultimate solution is, sadly, even more of a filter
| bubble: If I could click a button and have every like/dislike
| by pernicious players (in my opinion) completely removed from
| any measure shown to me, I would respect online ratings
| better. And maybe, eventually, given that the majority of
| people are rational and have better things to do, the bores
| might get bored of trying to manipulate every measure.
|
| We have this problem with movie reviews as well. I lost all
| faith in Rotten Tomatoes when I saw Knock Down the House's
| viewer ranking go from the upper 80s to single digits over
| the course of two years. As more and more people found out
| that AOC was a star in the film, the score went down. It is a
| great film in my opinion. I wrote a script to scrape the
| reviews and provide details about the reviewers. So many 1
| star reviews were new accounts that had just rated this film
| + maybe the Ilhan Omar film. Furthermore most of them don't
| even explain why they rated it that way(we all probably know
| why). This led me to think, what else is being manipulated?
| Are studios just buying up good reviews?
|
| Recently they have introduced "Verified Reviews". This
| attempts to link your Rotten Tomatoes account with the movie
| theater so you can get a Verified Review checkmark if they
| have confirmed that you actually bought a ticket to the
| movie. Users can then filter on Verified reviews. This is a
| good first step and will probably help to curb abuse.
| er4hn wrote:
| I think the problem is that the dislike count itself is too
| aggregated. What you really want is to know if people similar
| to yourself like / dislike certain content.
|
| This is very similar to the problems where YouTube fits you
| into filter bubbles, and Netflix struggles to tell you good
| recommendations. TikTok supposedly does a better job then
| others at this, likely due to having lots of signals from
| short videos.
| k20CuozQmk wrote:
| >What you really want is to know if people similar to
| yourself like / dislike certain content
|
| For the most part no, I really don't.
|
| Maybe this would be something useful for videos on topics
| like programming, cooking, travelling etc. but I'm not at
| all interested in knowing if the people with the same
| worldview as me enjoyed the content, doing so for certain
| topics (politics, philoshophy, science) creates echo
| chambers and is overall unhealthy for everyone who is
| influenced by that content.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| How does the dislike button indicate propaganda?
|
| It seems most people are engaging with YouTube in the same
| bubbles as any other social media platform.
|
| The "propaganda" videos I see (when searching for them) on
| YouTube don't have large dislike ratios, they are very much
| liked by the people who consume that content. An example is
| PragerU videos.
| coolso wrote:
| > How does the dislike button indicate propaganda?
|
| Take the Gillette ad as a great example. No dislike button?
| Now the "lack of downvotes" can be used to indicate the
| normalization of such propaganda and imply people support the
| message.
| defaultname wrote:
| While everyone has a bubble, a subset of the right wing in
| the US [1] is *far* more motivated than any other group to
| actually spend their time and effort trying to manipulate
| these measures. As you said, right wing content generally
| sees little to no "dislike" activity because people have
| better things to do in their lives (yet we know that the
| majority of people are not aligned with the content). Yet
| anything that threatens or counters the right tends to see
| overwhelmingly negative attention as it is brigaded by that
| minority.
|
| You can see this outright reflected throughout these
| comments. People claiming that YouTube is protecting the
| White House (people actually go to White House videos? Not
| unless they have literally nothing else in their lives and
| their sole intention is to click a little arrow down) or
| their "favored party" are delusional, given that these people
| are the bread and butter of social media because they have
| such empty lives it defines their purpose.
|
| The guy at the root of this thread is, it seems from his
| comments, is anti-vax adjacent. The overwhelming majority of
| people disagree with anti-vax content, yet you see these
| people having a grossly outsized effect on ratings (https://w
| ww.imdb.com/title/tt13984924/ratings/?ref_=tt_ov_rt...),
| likes, dislikes, etc.
|
| [1] - In Canada as well. If you went by Facebook comments on
| political news posts in Canada, the country is overwhelmingly
| far right. In reality these people are a small minority.
| Online engagement has little correlation with real
| representation.
| trts wrote:
| here's the comment you're mischaracterizing where I
| describe my efforts to convince unvaccinated people to get
| vaccinated:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28698230
| defaultname wrote:
| Am I really misrepresenting?
|
| The "you made me do this!" tactic is as old as time. In
| your case, the claim is that YouTube not hosting ignorant
| anti-vax content, and Biden making a _factual_ claim
| about the unvaccinated, made people (at least proxies
| that substantiate your story) not get vaccinated.
| Therefore, YouTube and Biden are actually to blame!
|
| Nonsense.
|
| I was _going_ to put the cart back in the corral, but
| then I saw the sign asking me to put the cart back and
| that offended me because now it 's a demand and not a
| courtesy! The store is to blame that I left it rolling in
| the lot.
|
| Whatever terrible, selfish thing people do, there is an
| argument they make where actually it is everyone else's
| fault.
| trts wrote:
| These are not my words or sentiments. I'll leave it at
| that.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into ideological
| flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and your comments
| in this thread have moved the thread noticeably in that
| direction.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| defaultname wrote:
| Fair enough, though I'm a little confused at the gigantic
| threads that have remained unflagged that basically make
| the same statement (albeit from the "other side" - that
| YouTube is defending Democrats, the White House, etc).
|
| It is impossible to discuss this without it becoming
| ideological, and the asymmetry is exactly why it is a
| massive problem.
| dang wrote:
| I'm not sure which threads you're talking about, but it's
| probably a combination of (a) they're not breaking the
| site guidelines as much and/or (b) they haven't gotten
| moderator attention (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=al
| l&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) - we don't come close to
| seeing everything and we don't necessarily read the
| threads in sequence.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Maybe some content is just bad?
| ep103 wrote:
| Reddit did this same thing, for the same reason. Can't have
| people disliking an advertisement posed as a submission! that
| would hurt Reddit's appeal to advertisers.
|
| This was one of the major inflection points for worsening
| quality of content on reddit, and it will be for Youtube too.
| For exactly the reason you've described.
| varenc wrote:
| Notably, HN does this too for the YC company job ads shown on
| the HN front page. Allowing users to comment on your job ad
| will inevitably lead to negative content so HN disables it.
|
| (Though compared to reddit ads, these job listing have a very
| light touch. And they're just a free perk for YC companies)
| [deleted]
| the42thdoctor wrote:
| It's sad to pay for a service, Youtube Premium, and see they
| pulling shit like this without no clear competitor to switch to.
| mike741 wrote:
| Since it's about to be hidden and unverifiable: Susan Wojcicki's
| "Freedom of Expression Award" (sponsored by Youtube) video
| currently has 227 upvotes, 56000 downvotes, and 185000 views.
| That's a 99.6% downvote ratio.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Btw, they removed this from google search and also google video
| search.
| [deleted]
| peter422 wrote:
| So in defense of keeping the dislikes pubic you are pointing to
| a video in which the dislike count is gamed by an Internet mob?
| Zamicol wrote:
| For whatever reason, I see a large majority down voting a
| video. I can then use my own judgement to speculate on the
| reasoning.
|
| What's the "game"?
| peter422 wrote:
| You don't think it is odd that the average video on YouTube
| gets 1-5% reactions to views and this one is at 33%?
| jjcon wrote:
| >gamed by an Internet mob
|
| What game? People almost universally didn't like a CEO giving
| herself an award.
| gjs278 wrote:
| it wasn't gamed. she's obviously full of shit. why do you
| think everyone disliked it? they know that they don't stand
| for that. not everyone is stupid.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Why do you considered that ratio "gamed"? Seems like a normal
| reaction to deplorable behavior. Calling it "gamed" kind of
| proves the point that this is about silencing actual
| criticism of actual bad behavior rather than some poor
| innocent creator getting slammed by random internet mobs
| looking for scalps. How do you defend her buying herself an
| award in a transparent attempt to paste over her behavior?
| [deleted]
| octocop wrote:
| Perfect change that just so happen to help out large companies
| trying to avoid being criticized in the public eye. Just a
| coincidence that Google put out this change to help the everyday
| you-tubers receiving harassment online, it probably has nothing
| to do with large corporations wanting to silence peoples
| opinions. Lucky I guess
| eranima wrote:
| It's sad to see Hacker News defending vote brigading. If you're
| like me and watch a lot of history YouTube videos, it's obvious
| that this is happening. Watch any video on African history and
| it's plainly obvious that this is a problem.
|
| The ratio was _never_ a good indication of anything other than a
| video being targeted. If you believe it was, I can only assume
| that you agree with the targeting.
| HappyMans wrote:
| Does there exist a Chrome (or otherwise) plugin that could keep
| track of its own like/dislike counts and display them on any
| given page? You could even have your own separate comment
| threads. Key everything out on video URL. Wouldn't work on walled
| gardens, but would 100% on desktop.
| ncfausti wrote:
| I wonder if Likes / Views is a good proxy for dislikes?
| stjo wrote:
| It doesn't differentiate between unengaging and "bad".
| unknownOrigin wrote:
| End of the site. There were many changes but this one will kill
| it in the long run. Aaaanyways, there competitors brewing up.
| Recently I visited Rumble, thinking "meh, one of these youtube
| clones again" only to be shocked that plenty of videos seem to be
| getting hundreds of thousands of views there. Odysee and Bitchute
| seem to be doing OK too? I don't know. On one hand it's sad to
| see Youtube go just because of Google disliking (no pun intended)
| that people can dislike their corporate messaging (rewind...
| anything biden related etc.), on the other hand Google can go to
| hell.
| darkhorn wrote:
| It was one of the best things about YouTube. This is very shitty
| move. YouTube is going to the next Facebook shit.
| lenkite wrote:
| Looks like there is a lot of heavy political pressure to remove
| dislikes. We are now rapidly moving to a post-orwellian society.
| tmule wrote:
| I'm pretty cynical. There are a number of deeply unpopular
| progressive causes for which dislikes would dominate likes on
| YouTube. My sense is that YouTube wants to mask such information.
| That's a good way to not reveal the chasm between elite opinion
| and popular opinion.
| bagacrap wrote:
| will Google remove ratings under 4 stars from Places to protect
| new restauranteurs from 2-star attacks?
| mesozoic wrote:
| Ah follow Facebook's path so you can better brainwash your
| masses.
| jarek83 wrote:
| How this is useful to people wanting to watch meaningful content?
| Like many wannabes post football games highlights that just turn
| out to be some fake content. I can quickly figure that out by
| seeing 95% dislike ratio. Now I'll be forced to experience it by
| myself (and watch ads before it of course)
| emkoemko wrote:
| what about all the crazy stuff on Youtube? conspiracies? fake
| bs etc etc now it will just have likes? sounds like a good idea
| :) and lots of people watch Youtube on smart tvs with no way to
| see comments, what on earth is Google doing
| jarek83 wrote:
| Seems like Google does not know internets. No wonder, they
| are like a cancer to Internet for long time now.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| Removing the dislike count is the worst possible thing YouTube
| could do. Youtube is not just people talking about their day or
| political content. It is practical content, like how-to videos,
| and entertainment. When you search how to do something the number
| one indicator it will be useful or helpful video is the dislikes.
| This is critical for sifting through all of the garbage videos
| that don't work or aren't related who are just trying to make a
| buck or get views. Even in entertainment dislikes offers the same
| feedback, and while it's not a perfect measure, it absolutely
| provides a good indicator.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| I am in support of dislike/downvote buttons being removed
| across all platforms, for the sole reason that people and
| groups misuse/abuse them. Legitimate opinions get silenced and
| squelched by the hivemind, or hidden by propaganda machines
| such as the JIDF.
|
| You can make the same argument that like/upvote buttons also
| get misused and abused, but the consequences are not the same.
| You might disagree with this and justify your opinion by saying
| that misinformation is dangerous. But that's why you have a
| brain, so that you can make that decision for yourself! When
| you censor an opinion by downvoting something, you are making
| an unfair decision for future viewers of that content who would
| rather make that decision on their own.
|
| Moderation/censorship of content that doesn't break the law
| should be illegal.
|
| Edit 1: I should clarify that I wasn't necessarily referring to
| YouTube here. Likes and dislikes on YouTube are just for
| measuring engagement and don't reduce access to content. On
| other platforms, such as HN, hitting the downvote threshold
| removes it view (or makes it otherwise more difficult to read).
| To me, this is a weak form of censorship, making it harder to
| view the content, if not impossible for some people who have
| poor eyesight or mobility skills. If you have to explicitly
| toggle on a setting (i.e. showdead) or use JavaScript hacks to
| make this content visible, I think that's a big problem.
|
| Edit 2: I'd love to continue contributing to the discussion,
| but ironically and unfortunately, I'm rate limited on this
| website by the moderators to 5 comments per day. So maybe now
| you can understand where I'm coming from with my seemingly
| absurd ideas. I don't even know why I continue to use a website
| that limits my ability to comment and use it effectively. Maybe
| I'll request deletion and become a permanent lurker, watching
| all you model citizens engage from a safe distance.
| Bud wrote:
| First: So anything that can be misused or abused should be
| abolished? That's your argument? I think I would prefer a
| more nuanced view and a more nuanced response.
|
| Second: You claim here that downvoting an opinion "censors"
| it. All I can say to that is, you need to look up "censor" in
| the dictionary.
|
| Third: You are seriously arguing that moderation should be
| illegal? Please tell me that was a joke.
| [deleted]
| Fogest wrote:
| Yeah this doesn't make sense. I don't know if they don't
| understand how YouTube works, but downvoting something
| doesn't remove the content from view. On sites like reddit
| and hackernews downvoted comments become less visible but
| they are still there. I don't think anywhere that
| implements downvoting ends up "censoring" that content
| based on just downvotes.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| Making it harder to read is tantamount to censorship. It
| also erodes the user experience. Why do I need to
| highlight or squint at something a ton of ignorant people
| disagreed with?
| Fogest wrote:
| Okay but we are talking about YouTube. YouTube doesn't
| even do this. Nothing changes about your experience
| watching a video if it has a lot of dislikes.
| owisd wrote:
| Deciding which content to promote and which to bury is
| censorship however you do it. There's more content than
| human attention, if you promote one piece of content,
| whether you choose to do it chronologically or with
| updoots or Google bosses deciding what's true, you're
| "censoring" something else by crowding it out.
| Bud wrote:
| You seem to be yet another person who needs to get a lot
| more acquainted with the definition of "censorship".
| Words have meanings. Comparing the mere promotion of some
| content over other content with "censorship" is gravely
| ignorant, for starters, and also, it's an insult to all
| those who have suffered from _actual_ censorship.
|
| Please learn the difference and don't gaslight people
| about this.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| Yes, although it could be mitigated, by having different
| sort order options and allowing users to adjust scoring
| options, including to accept or disable scores put in by
| others. (Local scoring is something often done in NNTP.
| Some NNTP clients also support global scoring, although a
| better more simplified and general format suitable for
| many programs might be helpful, and must ensure that
| users can easily disable that feature if it is not
| wanted, as well as to adjust weights that apply to it.)
| kortex wrote:
| A) you can click on the time / hours ago to link to the
| comment without lightening
|
| B) text selection
|
| C) I think HN is one of the _least_ ignorant communities
| out there on the net. Occasionally downvoted comments are
| merely controversial or against the grain, but more often
| then not, they are flawed in some way. In fact their
| rarity makes them neat to read (high surprisal) if only
| to understand where they might be coming from.
| [deleted]
| kazinator wrote:
| What definition of "censor" are you using, which allows
| downvotes to be framed as censorship, yet the concealment or
| elimination of downvotes to escape that branding?
| water8 wrote:
| The illogical left is never wrong even when caught in a
| catch 22
| codetrotter wrote:
| > When you censor an opinion by downvoting something, you are
| making an unfair decision for future viewers of that content
| who would rather make that decision on their own.
|
| The value of the downvotes on HN, Reddit and YouTube is to
| save time when trying to find signal among the noise.
|
| Still, I agree that some people may end up unfairly not being
| heard/seen.
|
| But removing downvotes seem one step closer to surrendering
| to The Algortihm.
|
| Then again, perhaps that is the general idea. And perhaps it
| will work out. YouTube can transparently use watch time
| instead of vote counts when deciding how to rank stuff.
| That's what TikTok does, from what I understand. Maybe
| YouTube already does as wel. And in that sense, video content
| is a bit different from text.
|
| So even though my initial impression of this change was
| negative, I think it may work out when we consider the
| difference between HN, Reddit on one side and video streaming
| services like YouTube and TikTok on the other side. (Also, I
| am aware that Reddit hosts videos too, but I am talking about
| the text and external link content here).
| Sohakes wrote:
| A counterpoint is that at least on reddit the downvote
| button is rarely well used. It's always a "I disagree"
| button, so both bad and controversial things are pushed
| down. It's not the case here in general I think, but I
| actually think this is a good argument in favor of removing
| dislikes. It filters some bad things but also just
| controversial things for one reason or another.
| robmccoll wrote:
| > But that's why you have a brain, so that you can make that
| decision for yourself! When you censor an opinion by
| downvoting something, you are making an unfair decision for
| future viewers of that content who would rather make that
| decision on their own.
|
| Would you make the same argument in favor of getting rid of
| upvotes?
|
| Also, expressing disagreement isn't censorship. The
| availability of the content is unchanged. YouTube doesn't
| eliminate content from their platform based on some number of
| downvotes.
| noobly wrote:
| Here on HN, downvoted comments become so hard to read I
| don't even bother. That's effectively censorship. On
| Reddit, they become automatically hidden and subject to
| removal. On YT, I'm not sure what happens, but it's
| possible downvoted videos get treated less favorably by the
| recommendation and search algorithms.
|
| I enjoy 4chans model of posts with more replies generally
| attracting more attention (similar to sorting by
| controversial on Reddit). I also like that the dialogue
| graph there isn't necassarily 'tree shaped' and it's easier
| to reply to comments across a thread.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Downvoting on HN is poorly implemented. It should take an
| hour or so after the initial flood of votes before
| showing to the rest whether it is upvoted or downvoted.
| It is essentially encouraging 'bandwagoning' phenomenon -
| "Others have thought this out for me, I'll just downvote
| it and move on" instead of giving the comment a fair
| chance especially if it is disagreeing with
| constructivism and civility.
|
| The most eggregious abuse on HN is flagging things that
| don't deserve it. Comments about inflation a few months
| ago were being flagged constantly or categorized as
| 'right-wing'. That's straight up censorship since the
| content disappears for most users who don't know the
| show-dead option in settings.
|
| Flagging is great for spam and rude comments - I am down
| for that.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| On HN, if you click on the timestamp -- voila -- it's
| perfectly readable again, no matter how greyed out.
|
| They grey it out because they don't show the count. They
| used to, back in the early days, and it just promoted
| stupid arguments.
|
| Greying it out is an elegant solution that plays well
| with local culture where some people will provide
| _corrective upvotes_ if they think the comment doesn 't
| deserve that.
| noobly wrote:
| I didn't know that, thanks. It does still require
| following the link to view it plainly, which is a slight
| deterrent, but that's a lot more balanced than I
| initially thought.
| throwamon wrote:
| Let me introduce you to this amazing technology called
| text selection. It works amazingly well for making text
| readable.
| sweetbitter wrote:
| Are you aware that dislikes have the same effect as likes on
| YouTube? Both of them increase exposure- dislikes don't
| decrease visibility of a video at all, much to the contrary
| actually.
| kwolff wrote:
| Is there anyway to re-enable this on your own channel?
| TedShiller wrote:
| Brandon must be pleased
| pricci wrote:
| > You can apply for an exemption (to have dislike data on non-
| authenticated calls) as long as you don't display or share
| dislike data with end your users.
|
| Peertube/NewPipe + own API key with the exception will be the way
| to go now.
| adam12 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this all started when the Biden campaign started
| using YouTube back in 2019.
|
| Boycott YouTube.
| ddingus wrote:
| Hiding the dislike info on POTUS seems important now.
|
| Hiding the dislike info on CNN seems important now.
|
| Public trust in government is low.
|
| Public trust in corporate media is low.
|
| It's been policy to manufacture consent in the US for quite a
| while now.
|
| Hard to say this move isn't more of the same, and it's equally
| hard to say it helps more than it hurts too.
| rStar wrote:
| it helps the advertisers
| judge2020 wrote:
| Are you saying the administration itself was involved in
| getting this done, or that Google et al. are, of their own
| accord, interested in going out of their way to burn PR (and
| real premium subscriber dollars) to aid the administration?
| ddingus wrote:
| I'm not saying either of those things.
|
| Look at the recent move to make auto manufacturers
| responsible for reducing drunk driving.
|
| There is a growing trend to regulate through corporations. I
| am saying that.
|
| I am also saying we should be questioning that trend.
| coolso wrote:
| > or that Google et al. are, of their own accord, interested
| in going out of their way to burn PR (and real premium
| subscriber dollars) to aid the administration?
|
| Given that after Trump won in 2016, a video leaked of a
| Google meeting of higher-ups literally in tears that their
| side didn't win, I'm thinking it's this.
| aprinsen wrote:
| I guess I've been pretty skeptical of these numbers. Maybe it's
| wishful thinking on my part but I am unconvinced that the like
| dislike ratio on a YouTube video is really reflective of public
| opinion writ large.
| ddingus wrote:
| I see it differently. Where there are very unfavorable
| ratios, there usually are questions.
|
| On that basis alone, hiding the data hurts more than it
| helps.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Yeah, this is pretty obvious. The government is getting very
| unpopular right now, just take a look at the like/dislike
| ratios for any vaccine related announcements or inflation
| related announcements. They are just gonna shut the whole party
| down if they can't spin it the way they want. Very
| authoritarian. It's not a huge change, but these things happen
| bit by bit - the US is slowly converging with China.
| ddingus wrote:
| Yup.
|
| It's manufactured consent and managed down dissent in action.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| The other thread was deleted, but wanted to comment this:
|
| Personally I wonder if it is even possible to meet all the
| demands being placed on governments. The country is
| composed of such different groups pulling in opposite
| directions... something could snap at some point.
|
| The US's own intelligence apparatus is pessimistic about
| the ability of the government to adapt to these changes in
| the next 20 years. Check out the IC's Global Trends 2040
| report[1] to see what I'm talking about: a particularly
| salient quote is as follows:
|
| "At the state level, the relationships between societies
| and their governments in every region are likely to face
| persistent strains and tensions because of a growing
| mismatch between what publics need and expect and what
| governments can and will deliver. Populations in every
| region are increasingly equipped with the tools, capacity,
| and incentive to agitate for their preferred social and
| political goals and to place more demands on their
| governments to find solutions. At the same time that
| populations are increasingly empowered and demanding more,
| governments are coming under greater pressure from new
| challenges and more limited resources. This widening gap
| portends more political volatility, erosion of democracy,
| and expanding roles for alternative providers of
| governance. Over time, these dynamics might open the door
| to more significant shifts in how people govern."
|
| I think the key phrase here is "expanding roles for
| alternative providers of governance". It seems like these
| people expect parts of the government to wither away and
| for the free market to step in with solutions.
|
| [1] https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Gl
| obalT...
| ddingus wrote:
| That info you linked dodges around a couple things,
| potentially more, but these two in particular are
| illuminating:
|
| First: Washington Economic Consensus --And this is both
| parties being aligned with and giving priority to the
| interests of people and corporations of significant
| means. (more money and more command of resources)
|
| Second, and root cause of the first: Money in politics.
| We allow transactions here that are called bribes in many
| nations, and that's just getting started. John Oliver did
| a segment on fundraising some while back. New Congress
| people brought into a grim room with desks and phones and
| books of people willing to fund their re-election, given
| just a few minor commitments
|
| To sum up: We have a priority problem, and ordinary
| people just are not a priority.
| lostgame wrote:
| Wow. Crazy people still exist on HN. Good reminder.
| ddingus wrote:
| First, you didn't really need to judge anyone.
|
| Second, you could have contributed a rebuttal and I wish
| you had. :(
| uejfiweun wrote:
| I am not an anti vaxxer or anything, I am just stating what
| I have seen on youtube on these videos. For example this
| was after 10 sec of searching:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0z3sLYvxX4
|
| Thanks for the insult, though. Intolerant closed-minded
| assholes still exist on HN. Good reminder.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The fact that the number of crazy people who are voicing
| their opinions is surging is exactly why Google needed to
| dump the dislike button. The toxicity is clearly causing
| what will soon be irreparable harm, and political
| bandwagoning is the main cause.
|
| I really don't think pointing out that the number of
| crazies is on the rise helps your point.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| I agree that the youtube like/dislike ratio is obviously
| not the best metric to gauge sentiment towards the
| government. I think it's better to look at opinion polls,
| which DO back up my point - for instance see
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/09/inflation-concerns-
| democrats... or many other similar articles.
|
| I understand where you are coming from, I just wish there
| was a way to solve these issues other than censorship and
| removing functionality. Perhaps some sort of reputation
| score, that would weigh any vote according to your
| credentials and reputation to roll into some combined
| metascore... but that might be too close to social
| credit. Tough problems without obvious solutions.
| ddingus wrote:
| The obvious solution is to serve the people. That's not
| happening and the sell job is getting increasingly
| harder.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Personally I wonder if it is even possible to meet all
| the demands being placed on governments. The country is
| composed of such different groups pulling in opposite
| directions... something could snap at some point.
|
| The US's own intelligence apparatus is pessimistic about
| the ability of the government to adapt to these changes
| in the next 20 years. Check out the IC's Global Trends
| 2040 report[1] to see what I'm talking about: a
| particularly salient quote is as follows:
|
| "At the state level, the relationships between societies
| and their governments in every region are likely to face
| persistent strains and tensions because of a growing
| mismatch between what publics need and expect and what
| governments can and will deliver. Populations in every
| region are increasingly equipped with the tools,
| capacity, and incentive to agitate for their preferred
| social and political goals and to place more demands on
| their governments to find solutions. At the same time
| that populations are increasingly empowered and demanding
| more, governments are coming under greater pressure from
| new challenges and more limited resources. This widening
| gap portends more political volatility, erosion of
| democracy, and expanding roles for alternative providers
| of governance. Over time, these dynamics might open the
| door to more significant shifts in how people govern."
|
| I think the key phrase here is "expanding roles for
| alternative providers of governance". It seems like these
| people expect parts of the government to wither away and
| for the free market to step in with solutions.
|
| [1] https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/
| GlobalT...
| ddingus wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29184492
|
| Free markets aren't really about solutions as much as
| they are as complete economic freedom as possible.
| Markets are regulated and business operates under
| license, and the intent is more "fair" markets than free
| ones.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Fair markets are free markets. Markets that are distorted
| by failures are not free.
| ddingus wrote:
| I cannot agree at all.
|
| Free markets are distinctive in that the economic freedom
| of all participants is maximized, regulation is
| minimized.
|
| These markets, by definition are not fair due to
| inevitable outcomes where a few winners essentially rule
| and can exploit their favorable position in ways that
| prevent competition.
|
| The single most valuable idea in markets is the idea of
| competition. Where it is robust and meaningful, a solid
| case can be made for buyers getting very high value for
| the dollar.
|
| Having that condition be true means reducing economic
| freedom to a degree so competition cannot be avoided.
|
| The idea of a free market runs in conflict with it being
| fair, and even more importantly, a market that serves us,
| not us being enslaved and exploited by it.
|
| Insuring robust competition requires regulation and
| increasing regulation as well as reducing economic
| freedom mean fair markets are simply not free ones.
|
| In addition to that, the idea of governing being markets
| is not universally applicable.
|
| Government, and the Civic needs of the population are not
| the same as business, and running everything the same as
| business, actually does more harm than good in the areas
| of our society that are not appropriate for markets.
| cbozeman wrote:
| This is such a lazy, garbage take...
|
| America has stopped working for 50% of the population,
| and they know it. The "toxicity" results from media and
| government telling these people to shut the fuck up and
| get back to work and stop trying to look behind the
| curtain.
|
| Well the American people aren't falling for the myriad
| bullshit any longer.
|
| The toxicity will go away when ultra-progressive politics
| aren't shoved down people's throats, when people can
| actually get a job working 40 hours a week that'll allow
| them to own a home and raise a family with the partner,
| and when members of the government stop lying not only to
| us, but even to Congress.
|
| That's how you "fix" these problems... or it's at least a
| good start.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I think you are largely right, America is no longer a
| place where a white family can own a house and raise a
| family on a single blue collar income. We've returned to
| productivity levels on par with the rest of the world.
| Does that mean the government has stopped working? No, it
| means the the rest of the world caught up. The sooner
| rust belt types accept that they're no longer on top of
| the world the sooner we can start trying to solve
| problems that are actually solvable.
| [deleted]
| mindslight wrote:
| This is also a lazy take, in that it just assumes the
| marginalization constitutes a justification for lining up
| behind disinformation.
|
| The problems you reference are real, and are indeed
| driving discontent. But echo chambers of red herrings and
| big lies do nothing to actually address the source of
| those problems - it's just another system of control,
| driven by a different wing of the same political class.
| And so if we care about discussing the real issues,
| rather than just cheering on societal destruction out of
| spite, we're right back to viewing disinformation
| promoters as a problem.
| ddingus wrote:
| They are a problem!
|
| CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and friends produce tons of
| misinformation.
|
| Part of this hiding of dislikes boils down to attempts to
| establish these and other sources as authoritative, and
| qualified to judge what is misinformation and what is
| not.
|
| A lot of perfectly valid, informative dissent is being
| lumped in as disinformation, and it's not easy to
| differentiate. Said dissent often focuses on basic issues
| impacting many ordinary Americans, or more generally
| labor.
|
| The authoritative sources, as defined by other
| authorities, all of whom are economically elite, simply
| do not produce information from the labor point of view.
| That same point of view has almost no meaningful
| representation in Congress due to how money in politics
| works right now too.
|
| I do agree with you on calling out a different wing being
| unproductive.
| twofornone wrote:
| Tell me, have you been following the drastic divergence
| between the media reporting on the rittenhouse trial and
| the actual courtroom testimony that has been livestreamed
| from day one?
|
| I bring this up in particular because it is an especially
| egregious display what is otherwise typical partisanship
| - and effectively these outlets have spread
| misinformation, with sophistry and by lying through
| omission, such that relying on their collusive reporting
| on the matter would completely obfuscate the fact that
| even ignoring the original videos of the incident
| (conveniently scrubbed from the polite corners of the
| internet), the prosecution had absolutely no case - not
| to mention their star witness was shown to have lied
| repeatedly in his testimony to police, withheld evidence,
| etc.
|
| Point being that the word "disinformation" at this point
| is a manufactured buzzword designed to dishonestly
| suppress dissent - and if your views on any politically
| charged topic, including the "safe and effective"
| vaccines, align at all with the consent that these
| blatantly partisan outlets have been manufacturing, I
| would urge you to at least consider that you are the one
| who has been lining up so virtuously behind
| disinformation. At the very least you are participating
| in just as severe of an echo chamber as that which you
| perceive your opposition to be taking part in.
| mindslight wrote:
| No, I haven't. The Rittenhouse trial is solidly in the
| political entertainment category, which I try to avoid. I
| would be surprised if there weren't massive distortions
| going on, since the core of the disinformation machinery
| is the political machine manufacturing wedges to drive
| engagement.
|
| > _being that the word "disinformation" at this point is
| a manufactured buzzword designed to dishonestly suppress
| dissent_
|
| Except that the term really does capture the dynamic.
| Based on your description of the Rittenhouse trial, would
| you _not_ describe that reporting as disinformation? From
| what you 've said, it sounds like people will be better
| informed if they don't tune into such reporting. Hence
| "disinformation".
|
| I'm a libertarian who generally views both political
| machines as hostile entities. But what really destroyed
| my symmetrical view (suspension of disbelief of bad
| faith) is seeing the anti-mask disinformation bubble play
| out. Here is a topic that is directly applicable to
| everyone, easily understandable, and quite objective [0].
| Yet the establishment party raised a political banner
| that directly contradicts common sense while harming its
| followers. And yet supporting that political movement is
| seemingly more important than self preservation (memes
| are a hell of a drug). That's objectively straight up
| "disinformation" - anybody spreading anti-mask nonsense
| is actively undermining our society in a very clear way.
|
| Now of course this "disinformation" label can't help but
| be used with a bias, to further drive disinformation
| bubbles in either team's forums. On the original topic I
| do think hiding downvotes is a poor change (I'd love
| richer semantic criticism that doesn't just collapse a
| person's opinion into for/against). But my comment was
| addressing the self-righteous responses pigeonholing the
| entire dynamic as a political play by one team, ignoring
| the real objective reality being overridden.
|
| [0] The only argument of substance I've seen against
| masks is that ersatz cloth masks don't do anything. Which
| would be a worthy critique to support wearing proper
| equipment instead. But instead it's being used to indict
| the entire concept of respiratory protection.
| ddingus wrote:
| This is circular and incomplete as an argument.
|
| Google did not need to dump dislike buttons. Google, and
| or others who want them to dump the button, wanted to
| dump the button.
|
| "had to" has no place in this discussion.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I disagree. Youtube is about to face huge regulatory
| pressure along with Facebook. They need to get ahead of
| it if they want to come out unscathed. Sure, you can say
| that no one "has to" do anything, but this was absolutely
| something that will help them avoid regulation, which
| seems close enough to "has to" for me.
| ddingus wrote:
| How does no dislike button help?
| cryptonector wrote:
| > crazy people
|
| Translation: opinions I don't like need suppressing.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Unfortunately, a large percentage of our country seems to
| be too stupid to distinguish fact from fiction.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Let's see. 20 years ago you wouldn't have said this. Now
| you do. Did "a large percentage of our country" go
| "crazy" as you said two comments up, or "stupid" as you
| say now, in 20 years? When did this incredible phenomenon
| start? In 1992, with Bill Clinton's election? In 1994
| with that year's Republican wave election? In 2000 with
| Bush's election? In 2006 with the Democrat wave election?
| In 2008 with Obama's election? In 2010 with that year's
| Republican wave election? In 2016 with Trump's election?
| ...
|
| Please tell us.
|
| Or does it go back to 1980, 1976, 1968, ...? When did the
| country go nuts?
|
| Or is it just that you dislike one very large set of the
| polity's opinions so much that you are willing to go to
| great lengths to have them quashed?
| chrissnell wrote:
| He made a point and added some speculation. You made a
| cheap, ad hominem attack. You are breaking the rules here
| and you are the one that's out of line.
|
| CC @dang
| aww_dang wrote:
| It was funny when Baidu censored Winnie-the-Pooh memes. When YT
| censored "Let's go Brandon" videos, I chuckled, but the humor
| was darker.
|
| Now they are hiding downvotes. On the US "National News" YT
| channel, almost all of the promoted videos are downvoted.
|
| I'm always amazed at the discrepancy between what's promoted in
| the MSM and where popular opinion is. Meanwhile top podcasters
| routinely trounce MSM viewership ratings.
|
| Perhaps these are the death throes of a dying propaganda
| machine?
| lovethyenemy wrote:
| >Perhaps these are the death throes of a dying propaganda
| machine?
|
| This is my thought as well.
|
| Its funny how quickly we've gone from people trying to
| redefine censorship, i.e.: "it's not censorship if a
| corporation does it!", to just blatantly pathetic attempts to
| squash dissent like this latest move.
| ddingus wrote:
| Here's the thing about that:
|
| The propaganda machine is not dying at all!
|
| It's running just fine, and will be well funded. You can
| count on that, even if the losses are sustained over a
| longer period of time.
|
| And it's all about basic economic policy, and it's about
| the war machine. Ever increasing economic freedom using the
| miliary as a world police and defense system is very
| unpopular. People see it as unjust, unnecessary, and
| painfully expensive use of their hard work and tax dollars.
|
| Back in the 70's as a grade school kid, we had a media week
| that I remember vividly. It was about bias in media and
| also understanding advertising as propaganda.
|
| (I know, crazy to think about as a class room topic for
| young people today, right?)
|
| We went through the various propaganda forms using ADS for
| context.
|
| Plain Clothes
|
| Bandwagon
|
| Cherry picking
|
| Etc...
|
| We were required to find one AD for each form and explain
| how the propaganda is used to sell a product by advocating
| for it in what appears to be authoritative and favorable
| ways, but really is a lie, or at best, hiding of what would
| be obvious downsides.
|
| In media, the idea of there always being bias was
| introduced, and I believe we had these weeks (and there
| were two, one for media, one for propaganda / ADS) in
| response to the controversial decision by President Reagan
| to repeal the fairness doctrine.
|
| (That doctrine required equal time be given to opposing
| views and did not allow one point of view to dominate the
| broadcast and print media and this was seen as important to
| the concept of a public commons and a robust body politic.)
|
| Yes, 8th grade discussions. Simplified from what I put
| here, but the core elements were definitely in the
| material. I was very interested and thought about this
| often as I grew up, but I digress.
|
| The media part, this idea of their always being bias
| centered around the idea of objectivity and just how hard
| that is to actually do. It takes larger numbers of us,
| working together over a sustained time to be objective. A
| single person, or even small team however motivated and
| funded they may be will flat out have bias.
|
| Secondly, that bias is?
|
| OK!
|
| Given how expensive and time consuming objective material
| is, the idea of us having to have it for the news and other
| public commons type discussions on policy, war, economics,
| and such does not make any sense.
|
| So far so good, until some problems showed up, and those
| problems are:
|
| Clarity - where fact and opinion are well differentiated
| and easy for the reader to discern
|
| Honesty - where the bias of the piece is clear, authors
| disclose conflicts of interest
|
| Side bar: A related thing is this concept of "always two
| sides to every story." and by including both sides the
| material is somehow more better!
|
| It's not.
|
| Fact is, there are the hard facts, who, what, where, when,
| why and how type stuff, and there is opinion as to what
| those facts might mean.
|
| Sky is blue, many say it's orange, heads up debate tonight
| at 11! We report, you decide!
|
| End side bar.
|
| Back to the media and advertising weeks of education.
| Regarding media bias, we were required to find news media,
| written from different points of view, and to determine
| whether the stated bias, or point of view, is accurate.
|
| To prep us for this activity, they gave us news paper
| clippings, magazine articles and mentioned broadcast media,
| radio and news programs we could watch as time permits and
| they highlighted various points of view as examples.
|
| The big ones was labor / populist vs big business and State
| vs Local government.
|
| What stuck with me was this statement from our teacher at
| the time:
|
| "There is less from the labor point of view today and many
| expect that to continue." Was something along those lines
| anyway. I do not recall exactly, but I do recall the idea
| of labor being sidelined in the discussion and wondering
| why that is happening when so many do labor.
|
| Today, we get almost zero news and commentary from big,
| corporate media written from the labor / populist point of
| view. Everything is business or state point of view
| framing. Nearly everything! I have watched it decline,
| until pretty much gone, and then the Internet happened!
|
| One last thing to say on all this:
|
| Big media branding is not accurate. FOX won in court
| asserting it's right to force journalists to lie and
| misrepresent. For profit news is not fair, does not serve
| the public interest, and frankly does not inform people
| very well at all!
|
| Is there any wonder it's unpopular and widely disliked?
|
| Similar dynamics are in play for government.
|
| When people produce and deliver news and commentary from
| the labor / populist point of view, and it is at all
| reputable, the ratings flat out crush big media all day
| long.
|
| When policy is floated out there to address basic issues
| seeing clear majority support are then walked back, mixed
| in with obscure, unpopular policy, disapproval spikes in a
| day almost.
|
| These moves are almost laughable, if they were not so
| serious in nature.
|
| We are moving into increasingly tough, authoritarian and
| potentially expensive, high risk times, in my view.
|
| And back to my original point:
|
| The machine is not dying at all!
|
| Dissent is widespread yet seemingly appearing to be tepid
| and it's difficult for ordinary people to get an accurate
| view. In particular, minority, contrarian views are
| amplified consistently whether they have merit or not. A
| great example is the talking heads, where an otherwise
| obvious thing is literally debated into being questionable!
| All it takes is a few, or even two talking heads, one
| rational and one full bat shit put on repeat for a few
| weeks in a row and suddenly, "many say..." is a thing!
|
| For decades now, long overdue policy has somehow failed in
| an amazing number of ways, leading people to believe our
| government is packed chock full of idiots, when the fact is
| more grim: those people are being paid to do what they are
| doing far more than they are simply bat shit, or wrong
| somehow. They understand what they are doing.
|
| So no.
|
| The machine is not dying, in my view. What we are seeing is
| a far more overt, aggressive move toward authoritarianism
| and fascism as clear evidence of it's ongoing success
| requiring more be done because having more people worse off
| every year tends to add right up.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > When YT censored "Let's go Brandon" videos, I chuckled, but
| the humor was darker.
|
| They did what?
|
| Oh, this song? Okay that's _video_ rather than videos which
| makes a big difference. Not great, agreed.
| jeffalo wrote:
| > Those in the experiment could still see and use the public
| dislike button, but because the count was not visible to them, we
| found that they were less likely to target a video's dislike
| button to drive up the count.
|
| I don't understand this part. So, hiding the dislike count means
| less people will dislike.
|
| Then what's the point of disliking a video? It provides much less
| feedback to a creator than just commenting, it's more often used
| as a signal to other viewers. If it's hidden, there's really no
| point of including it at all. In fact, why not remove likes too?
| And while we're at it, let's remove the view count too.
|
| This is a really strange change, and I'm not sure that I'm happy
| about it.
| smitop wrote:
| BTW, you appear to be shadowbanned: many of your comments and
| all but one submission show as [dead] to me (although some of
| your comments have been vouched for, which unkills them).
| gverrilla wrote:
| Maybe Zuck payed for it? His meta videos had quite a high ratio
| of dislikes.
| vlunkr wrote:
| People are weirdly outraged here. Likes/Dislikes on really public
| platforms like reddit and youtube are just a game, they tell you
| nothing about the quality of something, only whether it matches
| the agreed upon view of the core audience. Barely anyone thinks
| about dislikes on youtube until there's a big event like youtube
| rewind.
| kf6nux wrote:
| of the core voters*
|
| There's a Venn diagram of audience and voters. Hard to know how
| large any of the three are, but apparently YouTube thinks the
| group of non-audience voters is large enough to take action
| against.
| ncann wrote:
| You are wrong. Every now and then I need find and watch
| instruction video on how to do something, like how to install
| my old ancient printer on Windows 10, or how to disassemble my
| laptop, or how to flush my water heater. If I see a bad
| like/dislike ratio I can know right away the video is useless.
| spentu wrote:
| I have same way of estimating tutorials and similar content.
| There are quite many people posting videos without real
| understanding what they are teaching..
| asciimov wrote:
| This is a damned shame. I use dislikes to gauge if a video is
| relevant to the topic at hand.
|
| For example, I like fixing stuff and use Youtube for unfamiliar
| items. Often videos with a high number of dislikes are Spam
| (usually a bot reading text from some website), Videos where the
| person handwaves through the steps, videos where the fix is
| improper, or videos where the creator spends more time monetizing
| than working through the problem.
| simonsarris wrote:
| In the past I have used dislikes to tell if chain sawing
| tutorials are good or if the operator is insane. It works well
| for things like that.
| gremloni wrote:
| For recommended videos I see only two paradigms
|
| - videos with >95% likes
|
| - mostly political videos that have obviously been brigaded
|
| imo this is a reasonable change
| ryanisnan wrote:
| Really?
|
| At least when you search for a video topic, you are likely to
| get a wide range in quality. Regularly surfaced content has a
| variable amount of dislikes, and almost always the dislike
| count is signal and not noise.
| educaysean wrote:
| I rarely engage with YT recommended videos so I can't verify
| the accuracy of your claims. Either way, however, it sounds
| like reworking their recommendations algorithm would be a
| more reasonable way to deal with this issue than simply
| hiding the like/dislike ratio. How is this change going to
| meaningfully affect which videos show up as recommended?
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Seems like a combination of top-rated comment and likes divided
| by viewcount will yield similar information, though...
| asciimov wrote:
| With this move I expect non-positive comments days to be
| numbered. Any feature that doesn't align with brand
| positivity is fair game to be removed.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Big assumption, have you run the data? I doubt it would be a
| good proxy.
|
| Make a video on a taboo topic. During the first wave you end
| up with tribal zealot commenting and liking with low/medium
| viewership.
|
| This pushes the video in the mainstream which causes more
| views but smaller likes counts. The top comments increase
| with flamewars in the comments.
|
| Without the dislike the popularity could be negative.
| CorruptedArc wrote:
| Same thoughts I had, the more niche the topic the more
| important this feature was for finding a workable solution. A
| year back I was fixing a microphone and 9 of the 10 videos I
| looked at on it were convoluted expensive or ineffective work-
| arounds while one actually showed how to fix the issue
| relatively easily.
|
| I'm really gonna miss this feature.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Another example of this: pronunciation videos.
|
| Downvotes are a _massive_ indicator if a chosen video is
| inaccurate.
| sseagull wrote:
| Which is kind of funny when you think about it. Who would
| watch a pronunciation video if they already know how it's
| pronounced?
|
| Not discounting what you said. Just found it amusing :)
| SomewhatLikely wrote:
| I suppose it could be people checking multiple sources
| and coming back to downvote after assessing which is the
| right one. At least that's the world I want to live in. A
| guy can dream.
| hda2 wrote:
| > people checking multiple sources and coming back to
| downvote after assessing which is the right one
|
| I do this on stackoverflow. I wouldn't be surprised if
| this is what happened here as well.
| eozoon wrote:
| Often time when I look up a pronunciation video, it's for
| a language I'm learning and I have a vague idea of how
| the word is supposed to sound, but not sure on things
| like tonality and stress.
|
| So, if I were to look up how to say "ramen", I might not
| know if it's supposed to be ra-MEN or RA-men, but I'd
| know it's wrong if they say it like "r-amen".
| echelon wrote:
| Some heavily downvoted videos are great.
|
| Here's a classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXmv8quf_xM
|
| Currently rated 3.7k likes, 15k dislikes. It's so good.
| milofeynman wrote:
| That's exactly when dislikes are so useful. This screams of a
| bad/easy product decision by someone who doesn't use YouTube
| this way. Facebook, ebay, etc went to this so I guess that's
| the future. No negative reviews to maximize time-on-site.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Oh fuck off.
| Hermel wrote:
| What a surprise: if you disable a feature, the abuse of that
| feature is reduced...
|
| For a balanced assessment, you also need to take the destroyed
| value of disabling the feature into account.
| randyrand wrote:
| Why not let creators choose?
| princetman wrote:
| As a complete novice in life in everything that is not Tech, I
| rely on a lot of how-to videos on YouTube from small unknown
| creators. Likes and Dislikes ratio is one of the key filter to
| weed out less helpful or outright misinformed videos. This may be
| shrewd move for YouTube to boost engagement but at the greater
| cost of utility and UX. Very disappointing.
| r5Khe wrote:
| This is sure going to make YouTube a whole lot less useful for
| gathering information about a subject. I can't tell you how many
| DIY home improvement and exercise form demonstration videos I've
| been protected from because a lot of dislikes pointed me to the
| fact that something is terribly amiss in the content. Who knows
| how much money those ratios have saved me over the years.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| This your punishment for disliking the YouTube rewind video!
| kyle_martin1 wrote:
| Sounds like they're taking "you're not allowed to disagree" from
| 1984 to heart.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Oh nice, I was just thinking this morning that YouTube isn't
| nearly "corporate bullshit" enough. /s
| hndamien wrote:
| Why not just hide it from accounts that show dislike attacking
| behaviour? Surely this is trivial to detect from Google AI/Deep
| Mind?
| MattGrommes wrote:
| I've never understood why they even have a downvote feature. It's
| almost always like 10,000 likes to 43 dislikes. What information
| is that getting across? Even if it were 10k to 1k, that doesn't
| even indicate anything real because of so many people disliking
| stuff because the host is a woman or they were told to by some
| other Youtuber.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| There are tons of "product review" videos that are little more
| than an automated voice reading scraped product descriptions
| along with a slideshow of images from a web search for the
| item. They have nearly no value but for products with few video
| reviews, view count is not a useful metric. These faux review
| videos get downvoted and it serves as a good signal that the
| video isn't worth watching.
|
| The people who make these automated videos aren't looking for
| millions of hits per video, they're looking for a few hundred,
| which when multiplied by hundreds of thousands of this type of
| video, means millions of clicks for them. Since actual reviews
| of older products have a small number of views, the automated
| ones float to the top of search results. Dislikes was a way of
| separating the two. Few people click Like for the good videos
| but there were enough clicking Dislike on the shovelware videos
| to help filter them out. Expect to see an increase in these
| automated garbage videos as they're now allowed to drown out
| actual content.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think recommendation centric architecture that YouTube has
| changes meaning of upvotes/downvotes from a global content
| value judgement into a clustering signal. The platform can
| correlate that signal to the content to cluster users,
| creators, content, into groups and cohorts. Those
| characterizations can be further used to optimize platform for
| ad clicks.
| naiwenwt wrote:
| In my experience the information getting across is just a pulse
| check of how others feel about the content. Tells you something
| about what to expect from the video.
| newbie2020 wrote:
| Lol cause Biden's videos have so many dislikes . So funny how
| much Trump and his movement have affected tech policy these last
| few years.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Orthogonal to the article itself, I find it interesting how the
| word "Update" gradually came to be the official corporate-speak
| for "Cancel".
| renewiltord wrote:
| The interesting thing about this is that I'm clearly occupying a
| different demographic for YouTube. Brigading isn't a big deal for
| the kind of content I watch, but people often upload fake videos.
| I have an extension that displays the like/dislike ratio on
| recommended videos and search results and that helps filter out
| fake uploads.
|
| By fake uploads I mean reuploads that do not contain the actual
| example. For instance, I might want to watch a Brahmos or Oniks
| launch (I find the way the missile orients itself very
| entertaining) and there'll be a bunch of videos which are
| 'reaction' videos. They'll use a thumbnail of the content but
| mostly be some guy talking about the content. Or for a football
| goal, it's some guy recreating it in FIFA. I don't want to watch
| these things and the dislike bar warns me of the stuff.
|
| This is a pity.
| eftychis wrote:
| If they are worried about dislike attacks why don't they blind
| the data with delayed effects?? Like update of a dislike appears
| days later but you can still see a ratio of likes vs dislikes for
| the last year or so...
| cardosof wrote:
| This is bad for us users because we will get less information and
| won't know what contents are being rejected and what's being
| accepted. This is good for their ad business department because
| more users will click on play, incrementing the view count and
| generating more ad impressions. This is good for their PR/Law
| departments because famous people and politicians will be less
| likely to complain about mass rejection.
| Liwink wrote:
| It makes me curious why HN does not support "dislike". Will
| "dislike" make HN more informative?
| [deleted]
| ronsor wrote:
| HN allows downvoting of comments once you reach a certain
| amount of karma (500, I think). You can't downvote comments
| that are direct children of your own, however.
| crowcode wrote:
| Wildly disappointing but not surprising. The dislike count is the
| most helpful indicator for users to know if a video is a scam,
| complete clickbait, a fake tutorial, etc. I'm sure it's also very
| inconvenient for large media corporations and powerful groups
| when their videos get disliked into the ground.
| Drblessing wrote:
| Terrible decision as someone who uses YouTube a lot...high
| dislike rate is a key signal for creators lying or shenanigans in
| a video...guess people are going to start leaving more negative
| comments. Thanks YouTube!
| bob229 wrote:
| Who cares. YouTube is cancer
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Up votes could also arguably be seen as harmful to mental health
| and the 'fear of missing out' phenomena.
| u-rate wrote:
| ,,I sm your dislike button" comments shall return
| omoikane wrote:
| I wonder if they tried a different alternative where anyone can
| upvote, but only content creators with certain karma (say, 501
| upvotes) are allowed to downvote. Some news sites do this and I
| wonder if things worked out better this way.
| thenews wrote:
| just in time for youtube rewind, although they did mention they
| were not going to do it this year
| Inu wrote:
| Years ago on zeit.de, the online version of the German newspaper,
| you could sort the user comments by upvotes. But the most upvoted
| comments often happened to be quite critical of the articles or
| what might be called the political mainstream. Then at some point
| the button for sorting by upvotes was removed, and has been
| absent ever since. I felt somewhat reminded of this sudden
| disappearence.
| AHappyCamper wrote:
| AKA: We need to stop a metric that puts Democrats, Joe Biden, and
| Kamala Harris in such a bad (horrible) light. This has nothing to
| do with content creators or audience. This is all about
| elections, politics, and most of all Joe Biden/Kamala Harris.
| josh_today wrote:
| When videos counter to their narrative are disliked... dislike
| must be hidden. Time to give their algo some fun and massively
| like random videos
| beckman466 wrote:
| why isn't YouTube a public utility yet? or forfeit it for
| stewardship by archive.org. having the power to monopolistically
| decide on the design and technical choices for billions of people
| using proprietary/black box tech is absurd.
| etchalon wrote:
| If the metric is "anything used by X people should be a public
| utility", we'll need to have a talk about nationalizing Coca
| Cola.
| chungy wrote:
| Coca-Cola doesn't have the same sway as YouTube. You can
| drink it or not, and it ends there.
|
| YouTube is trying to manipulate people in order to remove
| dissent.
| etchalon wrote:
| You can watch videos on YouTube, or not, and it ends there.
|
| Nothing about this "removes dissent" since comments still
| exist. And you know, the entire mechanisms of government
| and public protest which predated YouTube.
|
| What it removes is the ability for people to gamify a
| metric. The metric still exists. It's still used for
| ranking and personalization.
|
| But a brigade of leftists swarming a button on a video that
| mentioned nuclear energy isn't useful.
| beckman466 wrote:
| yes you're right, who cares about our digital infrastructure,
| it's not like it is an industry where some of most valuable
| companies in the world are in, right? /s
| etchalon wrote:
| The problem isn't our digital infrastructure, it's people
| who think our digital infrastructure is a handful of
| websites.
| topspin wrote:
| What public service allows citizens to rate each others
| contributions? A public service would be even more adverse to
| this feature.
|
| YouTube doesn't need to be nationalized. It needs thriving
| competitors.
| blakewatson wrote:
| I'm gonna miss dislike jokes (eg, "13 people just want to watch
| the world burn.")
| tialaramex wrote:
| Right, this is actually the only remaining purpose "dislike"
| had on Youtube.
|
| It was nice to have a universal Youtube meme, if you post that
| the person who failed at Mario Kart "Never had the makings of a
| varsity athlete" nobody knows what you're talking about, or if
| you comment on a board game Let's Play video that "I didn't
| know this was a Red Coin level" again, straight over their
| heads. But everybody knows a number of dislikes reference.
| Whether it's "13 people just want to watch the world burn" or
| "9 Yoshis watched this video".
| EnlightenedBro wrote:
| Time to switch to Rumble, everyone. https://rumble.com/
| bamboozled wrote:
| Potential useful idea: a third party like / dislike extension?
| SnoozyBreak wrote:
| On google maps the most informative reviews are the negative
| ones... even if the ratio is highly biased to 5-star ratings, the
| few negative ratings usually leak the more honest opinions which
| help you qualify the positive reviews.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| With each year the internet becomes less and less about
| individual voices being heard. Dystopia here we come.
| [deleted]
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Could someone make an external index and review site for yt
| videos?
|
| yt doing this is essentially yt putting their thumb on the scale,
| telling you that their product is good, and hiding anyone saying
| it's not.
|
| Generally, you must _always_ have an outside party to review and
| judge a thing, not the thing itself.
|
| Probably yt would try every trademark and copyright legal attack
| in the book to take down any such site, but it seems obvious that
| in common sense terms, the only _possible_ way to have reviews of
| yt videos is for them to be provided by anyone _other than_ any
| Alphabet property.
| nojs wrote:
| > Could someone make an external index and review site for yt
| videos?
|
| Yes, but gaining any sort of widespread traction would be
| really hard. The vast majority of YT viewers won't have your
| chrome extension or whatever installed and without a critical
| mass of ratings on the long tail of low-view videos, people
| will lose interest fast.
|
| Maybe if you seeded it with scraped vote counts now people
| would use it.
| [deleted]
| smolder wrote:
| This is just stupid and their rationale is nonsense. Google
| demonstrates again how they are bad stewards of the web.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| They should also remove comments at this point.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Youtube once again siding with IP hoarders, advertisers and
| propagandists over their audience.
| blibble wrote:
| that's fine, I'll just use "report" instead to express dislike
| swayvil wrote:
| A browser plugin that fills in the missing functionality.
|
| Surely that exists.
| zthrowaway wrote:
| I'm sure the White House videos getting disliked into oblivion
| influenced this.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Soooo I guess I just write a quick grease monkey script to just
| show views/upvote ratio?
|
| It's not ideal as upvote/downvote for filtering trash, but it
| should still help.
| louissan wrote:
| I find this pathetic. As if the removal of the "dislike button"
| helps in any way, shape or form to create a more "inclusive"
| environment.
|
| This reeks of the silencing of what is perceived as dissident
| voices, is all.
|
| I've personally never hit a like or dislike button in my life,
| never will ... but found it interesting as a viewer to see the
| ratio. Even knowing this ratio is probably at least partially the
| outcome of bot farms and the like.
|
| Disney, DC Comics and the like must've complained about bad
| ratings/unfavourable like/dislike ratios I guess..
|
| Let's try and see this as a tangent/bastard child of Newspeak.
| What better way too have people forget about something than to
| remove its linguistic manifestation from the dictionary? Same
| thing here, except people's way of expressing their
| approval/refusal. Google and the like are literally after the
| ultimate "macdonaldification" of people - cattle unable to say
| "NO".
|
| (edit typos :-) )
|
| Have a great day all :-)
| woah wrote:
| I know we're not supposed to tell people to RTFA on here... but
| i feel like i should tell you that they are not removing the
| dislike button
| IceDane wrote:
| Maybe you are right and he didn't read the article, but I
| think his points still stand.
|
| This is a ridiculous decision. When someone puts something
| into the public space and everyone dislikes it, that should
| visible to anyone. This is just going to make ridiculous
| conspiracy videos and other harmful material like racist
| propaganda seem more legit than it is viewed by the rest of
| the public.
| yakkityyak wrote:
| I think like/dislike ratios suck and promote mindless
| dogpiling.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Now tell me more about the gray comments here on HN. If
| this system wasn't designed to promote brigading and hive
| mind reflex... well... unintended consequence?
| yakkityyak wrote:
| HN and reddit have a similar problem of conflating
| accuracy with "I (dis)agree with this"
| shadowgovt wrote:
| In general, that's the risk of crowdsourcing signal on
| anything... You get the wisdom of the crowds.
|
| What that means depends on the crowd.
| kelnos wrote:
| And even then, HN's guidelines say the downvote button is
| for comments that don't add to the discussion. Even a
| comment with incorrect information can add to the
| discussion (though admittedly much less often than an
| accurate comment), so it's not really about accuracy,
| either.
|
| (But I will admit that I often downvote things simply
| because they are inaccurate.)
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Often people will post comments which are inflamatory,
| off-topic, advertising, etc. and 'the community' can mark
| them down.
|
| The parent poster saying "I've never hit a like or
| dislike button in my life" is a little bit like saying
| "I've never thrown litter or picked up litter in my
| life". Both understandable, one respectable, the other a
| bit weird - if you like the environment you are in but
| leave all the litter collecting to others and don't
| contribute to it, what's that saying about you and your
| one-sided use of the environment?
|
| If you want HN or YouTube to have stuff you like, and not
| be overrun by the wild west of the internet, and there
| are no paid editors like the newspapers of old, not
| adding to the collective voting is like saying "everyone
| else, moderate this for me into a place I like, thank
| you".
| adolph wrote:
| > "I've never hit a like or dislike button in my life"
|
| _The Prime Directive protects lesser-evolved, unprepared
| civilizations from the dangerous tendency of well-
| intentioned starship crews to introduce advanced
| technology, knowledge, and values._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive
| [deleted]
| jonnyone wrote:
| I think they're a great way to tell which two minute "how
| to remove [x] from your computer" video actually works.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Why should that be up to the viewer to deduce from likes
| or dislike count?
|
| The videos that people fully watch, have a positive
| comment section, and receive many more likes than
| dislikes are the videos that should result from searches.
| paganel wrote:
| It will also help legitimate politicians look more popular
| than they really are. That's what brought us "Let's go
| Brandon".
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > that should visible to anyone. This is just going to make
| ridiculous conspiracy videos and other harmful material
| like racist propaganda seem more legit than it is viewed by
| the rest of the public.
|
| Report videos that violates Youtube's guidelines, and start
| your own platform if you take issue with the engagement
| tools they offer. Arguably, the data shows that outrage
| drives unhealthy engagement [1], and this appears to reduce
| outrage driven engagement, no different than HN flamewar
| detection and other mechanisms to encourage more civil
| discourse.
|
| EDIT: Youtube isn't the internet, nor "commons", it's a
| single web property. Lots of other forums for your speech
| (including your own Mastadon, Discourse, or Peertube
| instance).
|
| [1]
| https://www.google.com/search?q=outrage+drives+engagement
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| This downvoted comment reminded me of HN's compromise
| which is to reduce the color contrast on disliked
| content. I think it works well.
| 14 wrote:
| Ah the old just rebuild the entire internet and all your
| hardware from the ground up if you don't like what you
| see argument.
| politician wrote:
| The ole just move to a different country instead of
| trying to influence the government.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The ole just move to Denver if the public polices you
| support aren't working out as expected.
| [deleted]
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Did they remove comments?
| 14 wrote:
| Or how about repair videos. There are countless diy fixes
| for cars, computer, cell phone repair, and countless
| others. I use the dislike count to see if I am wasting my
| time watching a bad repair video. That doesn't mean I won't
| watch it but that I am more aware I may need to skim
| through or fast forward to key parts like the actual
| removal of a part or something. Anyways I think this is a
| negative change.
| [deleted]
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| I think this is the common problem with rating systems
| though. Youtube is saying that the dislike count and
| ratio are used to unfairly pile on and reduce the real
| signal of the video. Instead some videos get brigaded for
| various reason ("I don't like this person" gets conflated
| with "I don't think this content is useful")
|
| There was a user-submitted recipe app that had a similar
| problem, where rating system on recipes is challenging
| because does it imply that the recipe was incorrect, the
| food tasty, the writing poor? It is too hard to get that
| signal from a single point of "average rating"
| [deleted]
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Don't be silly. Of course YouTube can be relied on to
| properly censor videos themselves. They will make sure you
| never see anything that may make you uncomfortable. Your
| complete lack of faith is astonishing. (sarcasm)
| politician wrote:
| Remember, discomfort is literally violence now.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Agreed, but, moot point.
|
| What use is a gun if you remove the bullets?
| angelzen wrote:
| Helps to know who are the people that don't buy whatever it
| is that Google is pushing. At the very least serve them
| carefully selected content to change their ways.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > What use is a gun if you remove the bullets?
|
| It turns out YouTube didn't see much benefit in providing a
| way to (metaphorically) shoot content creators. Taking the
| bullets out seems like a positive step for the community as
| a whole.
| sva_ wrote:
| Google wouldn't want to miss out on that data.
| benmw333 wrote:
| I chuckled - but so very true.
| AlanSE wrote:
| In the update, the reason they give is:
|
| > You can still dislike videos to further personalize and
| tune your recommendations
|
| Not long ago in history, such a statement would have been
| totally incomprehensible, I mean completely nonsense.
| Even linguistically, there's so much baked into this. For
| starters, that there is an algorithm which which the
| viewer has a relationship with, and that the viewer
| wishes to further refine that relationship by expressing
| preferences. Yet, the interpretation of those preferences
| (by servers) are held within a black box.
| sva_ wrote:
| It is interesting to put things into perspective like
| that, but I'm not quite sold on the idea that you need to
| know these background details (of algorithms and black
| boxes) to understand that expressing your preferences
| (dislikes) to a business may lead them to tailor what
| they serve you.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| The way they tell it, the perceived relationship between
| dislikes and bullets is the sort of thing they're trying to
| end.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| I think OP may have been using a literary device known as
| an analogy.
| tomxor wrote:
| Yes, the analogy they are intentionally trying to
| break...
| addingnumbers wrote:
| Aren't analogies a comparison of two things based on
| their being alike in some way?
|
| Ok, I'm being disingenuous, that is the Webster
| definition.
|
| Do you think Google is satisfied that people will readily
| associate dislikes with metaphorical bullets?
| mikojan wrote:
| Certainly not killing people.
|
| Which is good or bad depending on whether or not you're in
| possession of functioning moral capacities
| rileymat2 wrote:
| To be fair, most of his comment is about the count and not
| the button itself. Which they are removing.
| wrycoder wrote:
| To be clear, they are making the count visible only to the
| creators.
|
| The button itself will remain.
| peakaboo wrote:
| They want to hide how many people are agreeing with the
| user, so the user feels he is the minority.
|
| The power of resisting something comes from feeling like
| many other people are also resisting it. Removing the
| dislike count means the user can't see if he is alone in
| his opinion or not.
|
| It's a shit move designed to promote further self
| censorship and control over the minds of the users.
| louissan wrote:
| I have RTFA'd. Yes they are not indeed, which is nice.
|
| but as I wrote a few minutes ago ..
|
| ./dislike > /dev/null
| Grakel wrote:
| RTF comment. He found the count informative, as do many
| people.
| duxup wrote:
| Is the dislike button "dissident voices"?
|
| That seems like an absurd idea.
|
| If your idea of being a dissident is a dislike button ... I
| don't know what to tell those folks.
|
| Those dislikes are pretty irrelevant.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| as the post itself points out this has nothing to do with
| dissident voices but with preventing dislike attacks and
| 'ratio-ing' as is common on websites that have these mechanisms
| in place. Downvote bombing content if anything distorts
| discourse and makes it harder to figure out what people
| actually think. There's a reason this very website caps
| downvotes at -4.
|
| What I find cringeworthy is this keyboard warrior mentality of
| likening an incentive change on YouTube videos to dissident
| activity, as if downvoting some cat video on the internet is
| like publishing Samizdat in the underground of the Soviet
| Union, maybe pipe down a little bit
| louissan wrote:
| Oh I could not give a dead flying flamingo about likes and
| dislikes on YT.
|
| It's the intent behind all this that I find repulsive. As
| someone justly mentioned above, this all comes down to
| uninterrupted flow of content towards (less) able to resists
| psyches.
|
| End result: $++;
| CoryAlexMartin wrote:
| If you think cat videos are the most impactful videos on
| Youtube, you must have stopped paying attention to the
| website 15 years ago.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > maybe pipe down a little bit
|
| like downvoting a cat video is the only type of video being
| downvoted. If a "tutorial" is bad, people can downvote it. If
| the next view sees lots of downs, they can avoid it and go to
| the video saving them time, and no longer rewarding with ad
| share for a worthless video.
|
| > maybe pipe down a little bit
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >If the next view sees lots of downs, they can avoid it
|
| the exact point is that this is terrible because the
| downvotes aren't representative of anything. two examples.
| Go to Youtube right now, pick a 5 minute daily covid
| update. I'm not talking about op-eds, just factual
| reporting about the stats. Chances are it has been
| downvoted 80% because there's a bunch of crazies on that
| site downvoting every news video.
|
| another example, Thandiwe Newton years ago made some
| political comments 4chan didn't like, so they started to
| bombard every westworld video with her in it. I saw those
| ratios and decided to not watch the show for months. Turns
| out is actually great and it was just some right-wing
| internet mob being angry about her.
|
| Nobody ever downvotes shitty tutorials, because the only
| people who passionately downvote youtube videos are crazy.
| I can't tell you how many crappy tutorials with wrong info
| in it i've seen, entirely upvoted.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >the exact point is that this is terrible because the
| downvotes aren't representative of anything.
|
| The video owner can disable comments. Why not allow them
| the decision on showing/hiding this data? Clearly, there
| are people that are in favor and some that are against.
| Allow the "publisher" to make the decision. Seems like a
| decent compromise.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| > this is terrible because the downvotes aren't
| representative of anything
|
| Speak for yourself?
|
| I watch football highlights on YouTube. Due to copyright
| many videos are just clickbaits with perhaps a few
| seconds of real footage, or are missing games or
| whatever. The up/downvotes are a reliable measure in that
| niche.
| paganel wrote:
| > Disney, DC Comics and the like must've complained about bad
| ratings/unfavourable like/dislike ratios I guess..
|
| I think it was mostly about politics.
| adminscoffee wrote:
| you nailed it on the head. some players want to control
| public opinion rather than changing their business model or
| philosophy closer to what the people want
| tpoacher wrote:
| I think you're probably reading too much into this. It's far
| less likely to be politically motivated, and much more likely
| to be profit-motivated.
|
| Quoting from the article: "We understand that some of you have
| used dislikes to help decide whether or not to watch a video."
|
| Remove negative counts, make people more likely to click on
| videos, serve more accompanying ads, profit.
|
| Simples.
| saltminer wrote:
| This...unfortunately makes sense.
|
| If I can tell just by the dislike count if a video is a fake
| tutorial or w/e, I'm likely to leave immediately. If I'm on
| my phone (don't have adblock), I'll have closed the video
| before the preroll ad even lets me skip it.
|
| Now, I'll have to sit through it and make youtube some money
| before I can determine if a video is any good or not.
|
| Edit: Think about all those scam channels on YT. Disabling
| likes/dislikes looks fishy, but now they don't have to worry
| about that since only the likes are visible. This is a
| massive win for the "GTA online free money"-type channels.
| rabuse wrote:
| This was such a terrible move for the way I sift through
| shit on Youtube to find a quality video for a topic I'm
| looking into.
| Guvante wrote:
| You have to load the page to see the dislike count. They
| already got ad revenue by the time you see it.
|
| I am sure they have better data than anybody as to how often
| a video is loaded for the first time and disliked within a
| few seconds of starting.
|
| While once in a while this could be caused by a bad video
| start it probably mostly isn't caused by the content of the
| video.
|
| By looking at behavior of users and pattern matching it
| probably wasn't hard to see that certain users were "making
| the number big".
|
| Additionally as the article details they likely targeted
| those users with a new "don't show the number" feature and
| saw an improvement in the unwanted behavior (unnecessary
| dislikes).
|
| The reality is that while dislike is fantastic from a quality
| filter standpoint human behavior likes making numbers big and
| sometimes they do weird things you have to correct for.
| quotemstr wrote:
| No, that's just not believable. YouTube (and Google more
| generally) are full of people who believe they need to
| control the public conversation for the public's own good.
| They've gone to the best schools, lived cosseted lives in
| safe, sparkly clean neighborhoods, and never had to shower
| after work instead of before work. They're totally out of
| touch with what regular people think, yet believe they know
| better than regular people and have not only a right, but a
| duty to guide the public conversation in what they see as the
| right direction.
|
| YouTube people have spent years censoring inconvenient
| thoughts (e.g. the lab leak hypothesis), juicing rankings in
| favor of mainstream media, and outright banning their
| ideological opponents.
|
| If they believe that they're just making the internet less
| "toxic", it's because they don't differentiate between people
| with different value systems and monsters to be silenced.
|
| There is zero chance this lately instance of censorship is
| profit driven. It's yet another favor Google is doing for an
| establishment that's rapidly losing credibility with the
| public and control of the narrative.
| mach1ne wrote:
| Politics and profit tend to go hand-in-hand. I don't see how
| removing the dislike count will in any way increase the click
| rate.
|
| Be the true reason whatever, but this is another concrete
| step into the direction of censorship initiated by the Big
| Tech during the pandemic.
| tpoacher wrote:
| > I don't see how removing the dislike count will in any
| way increase the click rate.
|
| The rationale is, Google noticed that people use the
| dislike count to help decide whether or not to watch a
| video.
|
| If you can't use dislikes to decide whether or not the
| video you're considering is actually worth watching, you're
| more likely to click simply to find out.
|
| In order to find out, you first need to watch the ads.
|
| That's all. Someone at Google simply just put two and two
| together and realised that the visible dislike count was
| costing them in ad clicks.
|
| Was it politically motivated? Probably not.
|
| Will it have profound political effects? Absolutely!
| mach1ne wrote:
| That's one argument, but on the other hand if you can't
| vet the videos by yourself before watching, the average
| quality of the videos you watch will drop, decreasing the
| incentive for you to spend time on the site.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| > Remove negative counts, make people more likely to click on
| videos
|
| How were you seeing the dislike count before clicking videos
| before?
|
| I might be mistaken but I thought under normal circumstances
| you couldn't see the dislike count until the video was
| already starting anyway.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You allow autoplay on videos you are not familiar? If I
| load a YT video page, I can see the stats before I push
| play.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| Isn't autoplay the normal, default setting? Do a
| significant percentage of users have autoplay disabled?
|
| Disabling autoplay on an ongoing basis isn't an option
| for me because I won't log into Google services, except
| to check who is still mailing my gmail address on the
| long tail of de-googling.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Isn't autoplay the normal, default setting?
|
| Not in my world it's not. I'm pretty sure FF has disabled
| autoplay as well as default. The only time autoplay is
| allowed is when listening a "full album" play list. But
| that's only after I've scrolled the list to make sure
| some asshat hasn't pushed in a rando video below the
| first page.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| Well, to me it doesn't sound like you are a typical
| YouTube user.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm not a typical anything.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I think you could see it on the page, even before the video
| started playing (i.e. while you're still watching the ads).
| But maybe I remember wrongly.
|
| Still. Far more likely to quit in the first 10 seconds than
| you would be to stick around for a couple of minutes and
| find out. Let alone click a related link.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| There actually are browser extensions and userscripts that
| show a like/dislike bar on the thumbnails. Let's say
| goodbye to them. Likes per view will be the only metric
| they'll be able to calculate.
| politician wrote:
| Nothing is stopping anyone from storing likes and
| dislikes offsite. Now that YT is opting-out of being a
| source of record for dislikes, it's pretty
| straightforward for those sorts of tools to step in.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| In reality they have been moving towards this for a while. I've
| been hit by one of their A/B experiments that turns off the
| visual ratio bar, so it takes a second to figure out the ratio
| (if it's bad, I normally skim over the comments).
| bronzeage wrote:
| It's not Disney / DC comics, they have good ratios.
|
| This is coming from the white house and the FDA / CDC, which
| have horrible ratios, and which have been caught removing
| dislikes several times leading people to question YouTube.
|
| this is in my opinion violation of the first amendment if it
| really comes from the government - which makes it even worse.
| winternett wrote:
| It's the exact same move that reddit made years ago, and it
| enabled a new era of online brigading and fake
| credibility/popularity for content shown on pages.
|
| If you can't see downvotes on content, there is no way of
| determining how misleading the content may be.
|
| It also disguises cases where a creator may be getting harassed
| or bullied by others.
|
| The beginning of the end of being able to trust YouTube stats
| (as if that wasn't already an issue).
|
| Goodbye old useful web... _sigh_
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| > _If you can 't see downvotes on content, there is no way of
| determining how misleading the content may be._
|
| Why are dislike counts more credible than like counts?
|
| > _It also disguises cases where a creator may be getting
| harassed or bullied by others._
|
| How would you discern that from a creator producing genuinely
| disliked content? And, what difference would it make if you
| could? Genuinely asking.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Why are dislike counts more credible than like counts?
|
| Nobody said they are. I'd be about as upset if like counts
| went away but dislike counts remained. The point is having
| both counts gives you a very useful signal.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| > _I 'd be about as upset if like counts went away but
| dislike counts remained._
|
| Interesting thought: why do you never just see a dislike
| button anywhere?
|
| > _The point is having both counts gives you a very
| useful signal._
|
| No. The point is that you really don't know how useful
| the signal is.
|
| Dislike buttons actively encourage bad behavior, so can
| create skew in the signal. That's intuitive, and also
| backed up by YouTube's research; hence the change here.
| nomorecommas wrote:
| > Goodbye old useful web... sigh
|
| I did warn years ago that the gamification of the web would
| lead us here. The mere existence of voting systems on social
| media sites encourages the kind of behavior they claim to be
| addressing. In fact, I'm guessing they already know that.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I'm confused, as I see downvotes on other user's comments on
| Reddit. Did they walk back that move?
| wetback wrote:
| The total upvotes and downvotes used to be explicit, so
| you'd see (+100, -15). They've only shown an aggregated
| score for a while now.
| peakaboo wrote:
| They can set that number to whatever they want anyway.
| Many users have reported cleaned up numbers and censored
| downvotes.
|
| Not to mention they delete entire subreddits, like
| r/nonewnormal that was going against the narrative about
| covid from the start.
|
| We now have an online social media where you will never
| see anyone disagreeing with you, because the mods take
| care of that.
| [deleted]
| cgriswald wrote:
| > If you can't see downvotes on content, there is no way of
| determining how misleading the content may be.
|
| There are many ways of doing so, with their own pros, cons,
| and time requirements. At best you're losing a relatively low
| quality way of quickly filtering out some videos.
|
| > It also disguises cases where a creator may be getting
| harassed or bullied by others.
|
| You seem to want it both ways. It is judging videos by this
| ratio that allows the harassment to have an effect.
|
| There may also be an emotional component to it; a private
| downvote likely stings a lot less than a public one. It
| prevents people from piling on or joining in the harassment.
| And it can allow YouTube to shadowban harassing accounts.
|
| For the people who could actually affect change, it hides
| nothing. YouTube and the creator both get to see the numbers,
| and in extreme cases, they'd be available for law
| enforcement.
|
| > The beginning of the end of being able to trust YouTube
| stats (as if that wasn't already an issue).
|
| These stats were never trustworthy for viewers.
| warning26 wrote:
| This is incorrect; Reddit still shows downvotes, as well as
| upvote/downvote ratio, even if you're on the "new" Reddit.
|
| If you're on the old Reddit, some subreddits used CSS to hide
| the downvote button, which I think is dumb, but you can
| easily get around that by going to the new Reddit long enough
| to downvote.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| On posts, but not on comments.
| warning26 wrote:
| You can't see the ratio, but if a comment has a negative
| score you'll see it, which I would count as downvotes
| being "visible" -- certainly better than YouTube's
| terrible choice here. Downvotes are also surfaced when
| the ratio is ~50% with a "controversial" marker.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| You don't even need to suffer through "new Reddit" long
| enough to hit the downvote - you can just disable custom
| CSS on old Reddit (to be clear this is an account-level
| setting on Reddit, not some browser hack you need to do
| yourself).
| foogazi wrote:
| > If you can't see downvotes on content, there is no way of
| determining how misleading the content may be.
|
| Really ? There's always your own evaluation of the content -
| as well as snopes, comments, other opinions, other media
| sources
| [deleted]
| paulpauper wrote:
| misleading/bad content can get up-votes too though
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| The key is the ratio between the votes.
|
| 5:1 upvotes to downvotes is a lot better than 25:21
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Even with the same ratio, 5:1 can still be considered
| better than 50:10 because the confidence is lower and the
| true value could still be better:
| http://simplemlhacks.blogspot.com/2013/04/reddits-best-
| comme...
| blowski wrote:
| That might tell you something, but it's not always clear
| what. Could be brigading, sock-puppets, tribalism, or
| lots of other causes.
|
| In the end, pretty much all such voting mechanisms are
| flawed in some way or another. More interesting are the
| comments left by known experts in the field.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| > _pretty much all such voting mechanisms are flawed in
| some way or another. More interesting are the comments
| left by known experts in the field._
|
| Agree with this. I think downvoting is net-negative, as
| it encourages bad actors. Let relative upvotes determine
| quality. For disagreement, use comments. For content that
| violates terms or is misleading, etc, use flagging.
| criley2 wrote:
| I don't believe reddits obfuscation efforts did anything but
| significantly hamper spammers who relied on accurate counting
| to be able to determine when their spam accounts were
| shadowbanned and the reach they had.
|
| Reddit has always had a significant problem with downvote
| meaning "disagree" or "dislike", which according to
| redditquette is incorrect usage. In practice, the downvote is
| about enforcing groupthink on reddit and enforcing subreddit
| culture, and it is just as powerful today as it has ever
| been. Sort by "controversial" and you'll see.
| nomorecommas wrote:
| > In practice, the downvote is about enforcing groupthink
| on reddit and enforcing subreddit culture, and it is just
| as powerful today as it has ever been. Sort by
| "controversial" and you'll see.
|
| Exactly this, and of course it is. People who don't want
| their opinions challenged are the ones who most need
| challenging.
| josefresco wrote:
| From the article..
|
| "What we learned from the experiment: Those in the experiment
| could still see and use the public dislike button, but because
| the count was not visible to them, we found that they were less
| likely to target a video's dislike button to drive up the
| count. In short, our experiment data showed a reduction in
| dislike attacking behavior 1. We've also heard directly from
| smaller creators, and those just getting started with their
| YouTube channel, that they are unfairly targeted by dislike
| attacks. Our experiment data confirmed that this behavior does
| occur at a higher proportion on smaller channels."
|
| It's not about appeasing Disney, it's about discouraging shitty
| behavior.
| dmonitor wrote:
| If nobody can see the dislike number, what is the point of
| disliking a video? It doesn't make the video less likely to
| appear on feeds. Having the number makes disliking a video
| feel like you've actually done something rather than just
| piss in the ocean.
| toqy wrote:
| Without knowing how any of it actually works, I would
| assume that I would not be recommended similar content in
| the future.
| gameman144 wrote:
| > because the count was not visible to them, we found that
| they were less likely to target a video's dislike button to
| drive up the count
|
| How is this any different than users targeting a video with
| lots of _likes_ to drive _up_ its count, though?
|
| If YouTube were hiding both the public like and dislike
| counts, I wouldn't give this a second thought. But to say
| "seeing counts influences people" as a reason for hiding
| dislikes, and _not_ extending that same argument to _likes_
| as well just seems a bit shallow.
|
| Public counts are useful because they provide a gauge of
| perceived quality. If I see a video with lots of likes and no
| dislikes, it's fair to assume I'll like that video. If I see
| a video with lots of likes _and I can 't see the dislikes_, I
| have absolutely no idea whether I'll like it or not; maybe
| it's a really good video and everyone liked it, or maybe the
| majority of people disliked it but I just can't tell. If
| you're removing my ability to gauge quality anyway, then why
| not just remove the _like_ count as well?
|
| This change is essentially shifting from "three out of five
| dentists prefer Trident" to "three dentists prefer Trident".
| The loss of information is so substantial that the
| _remaining_ information is essentially useless.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >How is this any different than users targeting a video
| with lots of likes to drive up its count, though?
|
| Perhaps, it's hard to fake enough ups to really make a
| difference to the ranking, but it was easy to bury things?
| tshaddox wrote:
| > How is this any different than users targeting a video
| with lots of likes to drive up its count, though?
|
| What do you mean? It's different because it's literally the
| exact opposite.
| Zak wrote:
| I don't think the ratio of likes to dislikes is a reliable
| indicator of quality. It probably will be for certain
| categories of video, but not for anything polarizing like a
| review of an Apple product or anything even remotely
| politics-adjacent.
| gameman144 wrote:
| Totally agreed, that's why I wanted to call out that it's
| a measure of _perceived_ quality.
|
| If there's really great documentary about the
| International Space Station, I'd expect flat-earth
| believers to think that it's rubbish, that's just part of
| being human.
|
| Conversely, if I saw a documentary about abortion (or
| some other very polarized topic) which had a 9:1 like-to-
| dislike ratio, the difference between that ratio and my
| expected 1:1 ratio would tell me that lots of people
| thought that the video was high-quality, even those who
| didn't share the same ideological views.
| gregmac wrote:
| This seems like the wrong target to me. Why not go after the
| user?
|
| If there's a user that is going around disliking a ton of
| videos, especially on a single channel, and/or without
| watching some minimum time or % of that video, it seems
| likely that user is being abusive; so perhaps shadow-ban that
| user's votes?
|
| Similar with new users.. disallow use of dislike completely
| until they've been around a while and built up some
| reputation/history (by watching, upvoting, etc). If the user
| is possibly a bot (I assume there's algorithms to determine
| confidence of bot vs real user), require more verification.
|
| I'm sure there's a reason they're not taking this approach,
| but I find it hard to believe they're choosing they way they
| are based on the reason they're giving here.
| jaywalk wrote:
| "Dislike attack behavior" could just be a video that is
| widely disliked. It doesn't necessarily mean there's any sort
| of coordinated attack on it, so your "shitty behavior"
| comment doesn't really fly.
| watwut wrote:
| Brigading is a real thing that really happens.
| jaywalk wrote:
| What part of my comment makes you think I'm saying
| anything different?
| weego wrote:
| So people watch it without the prejudgement and bias of
| knowing what the wider group thinks and dislike on their
| own judgement. That seems like a simple solution to
| coaching people into good curation patterns and behaviour.
|
| It will likely so give some good results in the background
| for YT and media partners but it is allowed to be both.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| It's a bit obvious that removing the visible effects of an
| interaction will discourage that interaction.
|
| Would you write a comment if it was only visible to the
| creator?
| Strom wrote:
| > _Disney, DC Comics and the like must 've complained about bad
| ratings/unfavourable like/dislike ratios I guess.._
|
| The most disliked video on YouTube happens to be a video made
| by YouTube themselves. [1] I guess they really didn't like
| that.
|
| --
|
| [1] YouTube Rewind 2018
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-disliked_YouTube_...
| felistoria wrote:
| The White House has one of the worst ratios. I would imagine
| thats likely why it happened.
| LarrySellers wrote:
| The change was being explored years before Biden was
| president
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/youtube-doesnt-
| like-...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| This is some next-level conspiracy. Like most, it's feasible
| and perhaps in the realm of possibility, but there are
| probably 30 explanations above it in the "that makes sense"
| queue.
|
| Notably, their rationale they posted. Isn't it possible that
| they _both_ see a positive outcome for creators not to get
| votebombed, _and_ remove negative publicity from corporate
| partners like Disney?
|
| I challenge anyone to tell me they do NOT think that
| brigading downvotes/dislikes is a thing on forums and
| Youtube.
| fuckcensorship wrote:
| > I challenge anyone to tell me they do NOT think that
| brigading downvotes/dislikes is a thing on forums and
| Youtube.
|
| The discussion is about whether YouTube should be hiding
| the existence of these occurrences and the potential
| ramifications of such a policy. I haven't seen anyone
| denying the existence of brigading.
|
| Out of curiosity, what is the criteria for dislikes to be
| considered brigading? If I share a video containing hateful
| comments towards a community of people and they share that
| video amongst their community, what do you think the
| outcome of that will be? I would bet a high percentage of
| viewers from that community will dislike the video. Is this
| brigading? Why or why not?
| ufmace wrote:
| I 100% believe that high dislike counts on ideologically
| favored videos is the real reason. This includes both White
| House sources and official propaganda regarding Covid-19
| and vaccines. (It is undoubtedly propaganda IMO, though
| note that that does not necessarily make it wrong)
|
| The question to ask is not what reasons could they have
| done this for, but why did they do it in this particular
| way at this exact time?
| native_samples wrote:
| It's because their explanation is nonsensical on its face.
| How is a dislike "harassment"? How are genuine groups of
| people downvoting something an "attack"? YouTube isn't like
| HN where likes and dislikes are summed. People disliking a
| video doesn't change how many people liked it, both are
| visible.
|
| This seems to come from a culture in which disliking
| someone, disagreeing with them or telling the they're wrong
| is the worst offense possible. In no way is it comparable
| to actual harassment, so of course people speculate about
| alternatives.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| If someone seeks out content that they wouldn't
| ordinarily interact with just so that they can
| dislike/downvote it or post nasty comments - that's an
| attack.
|
| If someone gets recommended a video and they don't like
| it, disliking is then constructive criticism.
|
| But there are groups out there that actively look for
| particular types of content to dislike - without even
| watching it.
| native_samples wrote:
| YouTube knows how someone arrived at a video - if they
| wanted to, they could only count likes and dislikes from
| people who had the content recommended to them. Or they
| could drop likes/dislikes from incomplete views. Actually
| I think they already do that, I recall reading something
| to that effect years ago.
|
| It's all irrelevant anyway - their stated justification
| puts "harassment" _first_. Given the poisonous cancel
| culture that exists inside Google it 's very obvious what
| their real motives are and the rest is thus all open to
| question. If it was 10 years ago Google's only
| justification for this sort of change would have been to
| improve the utility of the site, and we'd have believed
| it because that'd have been consistent with their other
| actions. In 2021? Not so much.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Saying that an openly leftist corporation is doing
| something to help out fellow leftists is pretty far from
| "next-level conspiracy."
| zuminator wrote:
| It's a hypothesis completely unsupported by any evidence,
| but confidently stated as if it were self-evidently true.
| This is how conspiracy theories start. Later, someone
| vaguely remembers reading somewhere (here) that "the
| White House asked YouTube to get rid of dislikes," then
| still later it becomes a story on Fox and Friends: "Why
| is Biden making YouTube get rid of the like button?" By
| that time, someone's off the cuff supposition has become
| part of the dank ocean of fact-free memes that have
| polluted our discourse.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| Why didn't they remove OAN's video saying that Trump won
| the election to help out fellow leftists?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4c5dYDD9xw
|
| Why did they start exploring this feature when Trump was
| still in the White House and _suing_ Alphabet? Is he a
| "fellow leftist?"
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > openly leftist corporation
|
| I'm really curious where you see a corporation run by
| billionaires advocating for the workers seizing the means
| of production.
| kingTug wrote:
| I haven't hit the like button since 2013 when I learned that it
| was publicly visible on my google account.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| The activity feed is no more, I think, and liked videos only
| end up in a private playlist now.
| [deleted]
| adolph wrote:
| The new ratio will become likes to views. I wonder if likes or
| views will be next to disappear?
| politician wrote:
| Or upvotes on comments that contain the message "Dislike".
| havetocharge wrote:
| Hacker News does not have a downvote button for the majority of
| its users.
| dontcare007 wrote:
| which means the ones that do have it wield wield an
| inordinate inordinate amount of power
| elondaits wrote:
| Actually it was Sony who recently had their trailers spammed
| with dislikes by Spider-Man stans complaining for the delay in
| the release of the second trailer for "Spider-Man: No Way
| Home".
| [deleted]
| louissan wrote:
| ha!
|
| dislike > /dev/null
| gadrev wrote:
| It is pathethic, I can't put it a better way.
| [deleted]
| annadane wrote:
| Hey, Google/Youtube product managers. If you're here, read the
| comments and see how wrong you are and how much people will
| detest this change
| [deleted]
| varispeed wrote:
| What's next? Extra views for underrepresented YouTubers? Ad click
| air drops?
|
| Maybe if Google wants to do something good, they should stop
| avoiding paying right amount of tax for starters?
|
| How about anti-competitive behaviour?
|
| The fake virtue signalling from big co is nauseating...
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| I will miss the ratio:
|
| likes / (likes + dislikes)
|
| I used this quite a lot for determining if a video was decent or
| not.
| WriterGuy2021 wrote:
| Stop using YouTube. Support smaller services while you still can.
| We don't need to keep feeding these monolithic beasts.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I very rarely hit dislike; I mainly do it for misinformation or
| clear manipulation.
| topspin wrote:
| I've found myself doing it for clickbait; lots of videos
| claiming to be one thing and are instead something else.
| tristor wrote:
| I don't understand the rationale? I spend a lot of time (probably
| more than I should) on YouTube, since it's full of interesting
| videos that teach me new skills. My experience has been that mass
| dislikes only happens on videos that are 1. bad quality in
| multiple dimensions 2. false / misinformation 3. politically
| contentious. For most videos, they have a positive like/dislike
| ratio, and you can use this as a strong signal about quality on
| the topic in the description/title.
|
| I fundamentally disagree with the idea that a dislike is
| "harassment" or an "attack". This really reads to me like Google
| is upset by the politically contentious videos that do get
| ratioed, and this is politically motivated on their part.
| Generally speaking, YouTube content creators trend left on US
| political issues, but YouTube's audience reflects the mainstream
| and trends slightly to the right on US political issues, which
| means that left-leaning politically contentious videos tend to
| get ratioed, and that includes left-adjacent issues that aren't
| strictly political but have been politicized.
|
| Either YouTube is a place for creators to put themselves out
| there and engage with their audiences... or it's another place
| that is corporately whitewashed to be as inoffensive (and thus
| uninteresting and shallow) as possible. Historically it's been
| the former, and I see this as another in a long string of moves
| by Google to turn it into the latter... despite that being
| exactly what people fled from when they started spending more
| hours watching YouTube than they did television. It seems Google
| doesn't know or doesn't care what their audiences actually want.
| alex_c wrote:
| This change is very upsetting. Ever since becoming a parent, I've
| been baffled by a mystery.
|
| I noticed that - unlike most other popular content - children's
| videos on YouTube almost always have roughly a 2:1 like to
| dislike ratio no matter what channel or type of content. Why?
| Where do all the dislikes come from?
|
| Is it from kids mashing touch screens at random? Parents taking
| what small revenge they can at being subjected to the same songs
| on repeat thousands of times? Some shady underground power
| struggle between kids' content creators sabotaging each other?
|
| I always assumed I would eventually find an answer, but now if
| dislike counts are going away I am unlikely to ever find out. I
| will probably have to carry this unanswered mystery with me for
| the rest of my life.
|
| Thanks, YouTube.
| phh wrote:
| Maybe the reality is all those votes are purely random, but
| somehow the dislike button has half the chance of random click
| than like button. Which would be pretty interesting.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| My uneducated guess is that children's videos are a highly
| competitive category, and that buy disliking competitors, you
| can raise your own status.
| rrll22 wrote:
| Many kids knowingly hit dislike and many kids randomly hit
| either, to best of my knowledge.
| mahart wrote:
| I have found videos that were marked disliked by me that I
| never intended to dislike. Pretty sure it was all from trying
| to scroll on mobile and a click accidentally getting
| registered.
| vhold wrote:
| My hunch is that it's because children tend to consume YouTube
| voraciously without much thought put into what video they
| select. I could scroll for a minute before I decide a video
| that feels worth spending my time on, I've seen kids select
| videos in less than half a second.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| People would rather watch whatever validate their biases, and
| would rarely dislike something that does not. And the engagement
| algorithm would work towards that.
|
| For those reasons, the dislike button is not going to be a great
| loss for anyone but those who were using it quite seldomly, and
| they are a minority.
| [deleted]
| poorjohnmacafee wrote:
| This is not what users want and it's not surprising having now
| observed multiple rounds of YT censorship campaigns. One way ppl
| fight back against annoying political narrative videos is to
| downvote them to the mantle. That also gives everyone solace to
| know that most everyone else believes the opposite of said
| political narrative videos. Make no doubt about it, YT and their
| partners have gotten as political as hell in recent years.
| crackercrews wrote:
| This is like Amazon letting anyone review a product, but only
| showing you how many 5-star reviews there are. Completely
| useless.
| Spivak wrote:
| The usefulness of data depends on its quality. If people are
| submitting lots of thoughtful 1-star reviews then yeah, it's a
| stupid move.
|
| But if when you looked at 1-star reviews, and they were
| basically the junk ramblings of trolls then you might get a
| better signal of quality buy just ignoring them.
| crackercrews wrote:
| Viewers can judge for themselves whether the downvotes are
| signal or noise. For me, it's been a clear signal.
|
| And this move is a clear signal also, of whose pocket Google
| are in.
| [deleted]
| throwaway2077 wrote:
| the writing was on the wall for a while.
|
| this was probably the final nail in the coffin:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k
|
| go glimpse it in all its glory before it gets memoryholed
| bitwize wrote:
| Marvel movies aren't generating the buzz they once were, and
| Disney is an important YouTube partner that has earnings
| expectations to met, so... gotta do something about the "review
| bombing from bigots".
| kenjackson wrote:
| I'm always surprised at how often dislike is used on YouTube. I
| don't think I've ever clicked it. I probably should more for
| clickbait videos, but it just doesn't seem like a big problem
| otherwise. Like, why do people click dislike on a Justin Bieber
| video. I'm confident that 95% of those are people that just hate
| Justin -- but why then even go to the video to watch it? Just to
| voice your displeasure?
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| Well, at least they didn't blame the weather for this. The levels
| of dishonesty are just rather breathtaking at this point ... and
| really concerning, because nothing at all good ever comes from
| dishonesty.
|
| Anyone who has paid any attention at all knows exactly why they
| are doing away with the down vote count and it has nothing really
| to do with any sham experiment that is post hoc rationalization
| for a foregone conclusion.
| Decabytes wrote:
| Take this with a grain of salt, but in one of Devon Nash's videos
| on YouTube, he mentioned (without a source) that YouTube did a
| study that looked at likes and dislikes. They tweaked the
| algorithm based on videos that were heavily liked or disliked,
| and what they found is that likes and dislikes don't matter (for
| them). It's all about engagement.
|
| So... People will hate watch someone they don't like, and comment
| on the video about how stupid that person is. These videos with
| high engagement end up serving lots of ads, and YouTube makes
| money either way. So my tinfoil hat is that when YouTube
| recommends a video, before if I saw the heavy dislike bar I might
| think, "Why is YouTube recommending this bad video to me?" But
| with dislikes private, I might just engage with the video and
| think less about why the algorithm recommended it to me.
| winternett wrote:
| The problem with promoting/ranking disliked content is that it
| may be disliked for valid reasons, like low production quality
| or annoying elements like bad music etc...
|
| I think that when it comes to engagement, Youtube should just
| police content fairly, apply countermeasures to prevent gaming
| the system, and allow valid/trusted user accounts to have merit
| in rating content. There is no easy answer ultimately.
| invalidusernam3 wrote:
| Whether this is good for creators is one thing, but it's
| definitely bad for viewers. Likes to dislikes is an indicator of
| the quality of the video, and how well it matches the
| title/description.
|
| This will fundamentally change what I use YouTube for. If I can't
| determine the quality of a video without having to waste time
| watching it, I will just look somewhere else.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| Maybe they were trying to do a little something for the
| creators, so they stop complaining about the rampant abuse of
| Youtube's automated copyright systems. Seeing as YT is
| completely unwilling to curb copyright strike trolling, or if a
| queef accidentally sounds like a Danny Elfman score, the good
| people at YT can stuff that thumb button and call it a day's
| work. Yay.
| grammarnazzzi wrote:
| Whether it's good or bad for creator or viewers is irrelevant.
|
| It's good for Google. That's all that matters. More crap videos
| will be clicked and more ads will be watched before the content
| starts and the user can judge wheather or not to watch.
|
| More ads watched. That's the only consideration.
| sircastor wrote:
| I feel completely opposite about this. I have never (and I mean
| never) viewed the dislikes as an indicator of the quality of
| the video, or it's content. It's only ever been a number that
| some arbitrary set of people have incremented. To me the
| video's quality is self evident, pretty quickly.
| mgr86 wrote:
| Have you ever done a DIY project around the house? There is a
| lot of trash out there, and the dislike to like ratio is a
| great way to quickly parse out the crap without 1) reading
| bottom barrel youtube comments or 2) watching 22 minutes of
| nonsense at 1.75x speed.
| WhiskeyMarmalad wrote:
| Not to mention the multitude of unsafe practices by
| inexperienced DIY youtubers, that are more often than not
| highlighted (and easily visible), in the like/dislike
| ratio.
| thread_id wrote:
| Funny thing about that.... I never pay any attention to the likes
| or dislikes or even the comments. I sample the video and if I
| like it I watch and if not move on to the next. Can't be even the
| leaset bit bothered by the social interaction noise. I'm
| surprised to here that others actually take meaning from it.
|
| So I read through the comments more and many deal with quality of
| content - for example instructions that are flat out wrong. I
| viewed a video on how to change spark plugs in Honda 6 cylinder
| car. The content creator gave the instruction to put dielectric
| grease right on the tip of the spark plug. I found a comment that
| pointed out how utterly stupid this was. Yet the comment was
| pushed lower by many comments praising the contect creator for
| his helpful video. So I have to conclude that down votes are a
| usefull tool. Even if they are misused.
| Maksadbek wrote:
| Didn't know that exists .youtube domain.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| I used to not understand why videos had dislikes even when they
| haven't premiered yet. But then one day, I realized that in order
| for YouTube to stop recommending me some channels, I had to press
| the dislike button.
|
| YouTube recommendation is so bad. Even when you aren't interested
| in something, they keep on showing it until you click on it. For
| example, I watched a few Squid Game videos a few weeks ago.
| Suddenly, because Ben Shapiro did a video on Squid Game, it kept
| on showing me that thumbnail for days.
|
| The algorithm should have realized that his channel was much more
| about right wing news than Squid Game and shouldn't have shown it
| every single day on my recommendation. I don't watch any politics
| on YouTube.
|
| The worst part was if I clicked on the video, it would re-enforce
| the algorithm that I wanted right wing news. So the only option
| was to click the dislike button. It feel like I was force to
| click the button.
| goostavos wrote:
| (fyi) The ... button has an "I'm not interested in this option
| / channel" which you can to remove the video without having to
| click on it + downvote.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| I only see "Report" and "Open transcript". I don't see the
| button you are mentioning. I am using Firefox.
| aijeq wrote:
| Seems obvious:
|
| 1. Current administration's videos are downvoted heavily. These
| likely aren't brigades but rather upset constituents.
|
| 2. People don't want videos with low dislikes.
|
| (1) probably has to do with the white house being "in close
| contact with" social media, to paraphrase Psaki.
|
| (2) almost certainly has to do with ad revenue. Without a dislike
| count you're forced to watch some nominal amount of the video.
|
| I suppose we all saw this coming when Google bought Youtube. It
| became obvious after "covid misinformation" became the new way to
| censor anything and everything the ruling party does not like.
|
| edit: lmao downvotes you practically need a throwaway to post an
| opinion contrary to the lay masses.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| I personally rarely vote up or down nor do I notice the voting
| numbers. So I don't feel this will make a difference to me.
| vezycash wrote:
| And when people stop hitting the dislike button cos they feel it
| doesn't count, Youtube would retire the dislike button, citing
| low usage.
| bko wrote:
| It doesn't really matter if they remove it or not. Perceptions
| are what matter. People will be able to upload videos that are
| disconnected from what most people believe or actually want and
| there's no way to show that you don't agree with the video. And
| I begin to believe its me that's wrong, when I might be in the
| silent majority. Then YT can control the algorithm further
| obfuscating popular beliefs and culture.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Or the opposite will happen and they'll hit it more because
| they won't feel as guilty because the count isn't public
| deelowe wrote:
| They have been steadily moving towards recommendation engines
| that rely more on inferred behaviors than direct feedback for a
| long time. I'm surprised they didn't just completely eliminate
| dislikes.
|
| That aside, timing sure is interesting given the recent
| Nintendo fiasco. Wonder how much they spend on ads each
| quarter.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| There have been many other high-profile examples of fiascos
| dealing with the 'dislike' button on YouTube.
|
| Most notable, I think, would have to be the Biden
| administration's [0] challenges they're facing with the
| official White House YouTube account.
|
| [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/mczlz7/wha
| ts_...
| qqtt wrote:
| It's probably not so much about Nintendo specifically as one
| advertising partner, as much as it is about encouraging the
| advertiser ecosystem to be comfortable with continually
| spending money on Youtube as a platform.
|
| If Youtube removes dislikes, there is less risk for these
| viral "dislike" moments to happen, which can make content
| producers and advertisers nervous.
|
| Additionally, Google probably puts way more resources than
| you might expect into things like moderating the usage of the
| dislike button and making sure it isn't exploited by bots,
| nefarious actors, etc.
|
| Not much downside from the business side of Youtube in taking
| steps to sunset the button.
| oxplot wrote:
| Looks like a very good fit for a ML model to filter out dislikes
| that are part of an attack based on frequency, age of the video,
| etc.
| 83457 wrote:
| I wonder if the catalyst was the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion
| Pack video dislikes. Many said Nintendo wouldn't even notice but
| maybe they did and advocated for the change.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Awesome -- more positivity at gunpoint
| pricci wrote:
| Let's create a browser extension to record dislikes then!
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Somebody should make an extension that brings back dislikes and
| comments on videos where they're disabled. Just store it all on a
| different server but seamlessly integrate it into YouTube.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Dislike
| grej wrote:
| There is a video on YouTube in which YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki
| received the Free Expression Award (which were sponsored by
| YouTube).
|
| At the time of the check I just did, that video currently has 227
| upvotes and over 56,000 downvotes, making it the worst ratio'ed
| video on YouTube I have ever seen.
|
| That incident may have played a role in this decision.
| [deleted]
| tester756 wrote:
| It's popular take, yet I dont believe she cares about it, lol,
| why would she?
|
| Just unfortunely she won in contest that YT sponsored, or maybe
| I'm naive?
| franciscop wrote:
| On a similar note:
|
| Youtube Rewind 2018: most disliked video on Youtube history
|
| Youtube Rewind 2019: top 10 of most disliked videos
|
| Youtube in 2020: no Rewind video
|
| Youtube in 2021: you know what? we are just gonna remove
| dislikes
| ehsankia wrote:
| People keep giving these examples as ironic reasons for
| removing the dislike button, but to me, every one of these
| examples are perfect examples of how the dislike button is used
| more as a meme or bullying tactic than a real signal anyways.
| tester756 wrote:
| Indeed, Youtube gave voice to many people.
| scottmcdot wrote:
| For reference after they remove the downvote count:
| https://imgur.com/a/A0J0yKG
| muzani wrote:
| > wins Free Expression Award
|
| > gets downvoted
|
| > removes downvote button
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| This is really unfortunate. Since pretty much any youtube video
| will have likes, seeing the corresponding number of dislikes is
| really the only thing that provides any meaningful information.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| If the reason was honestly for the stated reason, then why isn't
| this feature selectable by creator or even by video?
|
| The stated reason, as ever, is bullshit.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| My take is that YouTube is intending for this to increase
| engagement, by removing signals that might push away viewers from
| consuming more content.
|
| If excessive social media use is correlated with damage to mental
| health, then framing this as beneficial sounds contradictory. Now
| that social media platforms have reached a critical mass, they
| should be judged not just for being toxic and user-hostile, but
| also for being too effective at accepting and retaining people
| for excessive amounts of time.
| kiryin wrote:
| I wonder what likes and dislikes are even for. They don't
| generate income for channel owners afaik, nor do they affect the
| recommendation algorithm for users, also afaik. Only views
| "matter." Especially if the other half gets hidden now, they
| should just get rid of the whole thing. It doesn't seem to
| provide anyone with anything, except useless bandwagoning
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Try finding reviews for older fitness equipment. 90% of them
| are generated by scripts pulling images and text from Amazon
| and image search. The other 10% are either old commercials from
| when the product was released or long term owners of the
| product doing real reviews. None of these videos get very many
| views so that's not a useful metric. The automated videos
| probably only get viewed for a minute or so before they exited
| but that's enough time to register a view. The automated videos
| tend to accumulate dislikes from people angry they got tricked
| into watching. Now that signal is gone and actual product
| reviews will no longer be able to rise above the automated ones
| by having a favorable Like/Dislike ratio. Because these reviews
| are for old products, even the legitimate reviews have only a
| small number of views and doesn't serve as a useful way to
| separate the clickbait from the actual content.
| not2b wrote:
| Read the article. They specifically say that they will still
| use "like" and "dislike" to help figure out recommendations for
| videos to recommend to you, and that the publisher of the video
| will still see the dislike count, so the creator gets the
| feedback.
| csee wrote:
| > I wonder what likes and dislikes are even for
|
| It's useful for users to figure out if it's worth spending time
| watching the video.
|
| That usefulness degrades for politically charged content but
| holds for things like how-to guides, lectures, etc.
| [deleted]
| CryptoLich wrote:
| we can complain all we want about this but it's going to change
| nothing -- we'll get our frustration out here and then comply
| with whatever they decide to do to further their agenda
| mike741 wrote:
| Some have already cancelled their Premium subscriptions, others
| have discovered alternatives to Youtube such as Odysee. So
| complaining does lead to change, even if it isn't a change in
| Youtube's agenda.
| _nothing wrote:
| > We understand that some of you have used dislikes to help
| decide whether or not to watch a video - still, we believe this
| is the right thing to do for our platform
|
| So basically, "We understand that this feature is useful in
| helping you determine where to spend your time and attention, but
| we're going to do it anyway because it benefits us."
|
| > and to help create an inclusive and respectful environment
| where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to
| express themselves.
|
| "Because we need our creators to get views and keep making
| content regardless of whether or not our users think it's worth
| watching."
| [deleted]
| dvhh wrote:
| I think there is an opportunity here for a browser extension to
| rate content.
| summerlight wrote:
| As usual, HN users are making lots of interesting assumptions
| (some comments to a conspiracy level) on the intention here...
|
| But in the reality, there are many smaller creators who is
| frequently being harassed by trolls (have you heard about those
| young Chinese patriots trolling over Korean and Japanese
| channels?) and one of their tool is the dislike button. And
| creators have been complaining about this for many years, so I
| would say in fact YT was super lazy on this particular issue, but
| at least better late than never...
| t-writescode wrote:
| And Reddit handles this, in general, by giving vague ideas of
| vote counts and not showing the real number. Why can't YouTube
| do something similar?
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Vague vote counts is a mitigation against bots, it does not
| protect against human brigading which is what YouTube is
| trying to address here.
| bgro wrote:
| Sometimes people say mean things to me. I guess the solution is
| to revoke everybody's ability to speak, because that could be
| used to hurt my feelings.
|
| People keep complaining about harassment at work. I guess the
| solution is to revoke the ability to file complaints.
|
| The results of elections will now be hidden, because knowing
| one person got more votes than another might hurt the losing
| party's feelings.
| emkoemko wrote:
| this ain't the solution.... because some people where effected
| we need to disable a feature used by everyone ? now what? we
| have to waste time watching a video to find out that it teaches
| your bs? flat earth is now 5k likes, Earth is now flat guys..
| no dissent
| Spivak wrote:
| I can understand the frustration about being affected by a
| change that feels like "punishing the class" but sometimes
| there aren't really any better options. The problem is that
| the _existence_ of a button that hurts the creator means that
| there is a natural incentive for people to weaponize it as
| such. Every forum has had to come up with a solution to
| brigading and review bombing are there are really only two
| answers -- identify and police downvote brigades and review
| bombs or eliminate downvotes altogether.
|
| The forces that push a platform to the latter is there being
| a constant stream of outrage when platforms identify a
| brigade and delete their votes to avoid poising the the data.
| It's easier to just change the system to eliminate the
| problem entirely. This isn't really an isolated incident,
| even in the tech space people have been rallying for
| "removing comment sections" because they've been a cesspool
| since their inception. YouTube is one of the last platforms
| to make this change.
| markmark wrote:
| I'm just surprised by how many people apparently looked at
| dislike counts. I read this headline and thought "who cares"
| then saw there were 900 comments and only came in to see what
| the controversy was.
| albeebe1 wrote:
| But creators have always been able to hide the like/dislike
| counts on their videos
| summerlight wrote:
| That's not really meaningful unless you can change the
| trolling dynamic as whole, which needs a platform level
| change.
| desmosxxx wrote:
| Why do you need you change the "trolling dynamic" for
| people that aren't affected by it / don't care?
|
| And how does this really even address the issue at hand,
| won't they just move to the comments?
| mike741 wrote:
| "trolling dynamic" is not really meaningful
| zkldi wrote:
| Nonsense, Creators have been able to hide their likes and
| dislikes for years. This is a global change that cannot be
| opted out of.
| notriddle wrote:
| The problem with that is, as mentioned in other comments
| here, most of the people who hide likes/dislikes are just
| propaganda outlets and fragile jerks whose videos are crap.
| YouTube is a success because normally the system works.
|
| But, unfortunately, the system doesn't _always_ work, and
| when it fails, it 's usually because you're being actively
| targeted and the system isn't doing anything to stop it. So
| you're stuck between "leave the like bar visible, and nobody
| watches my videos because state actors are using bots to
| dislike my videos" and "hide the like bar, and nobody watches
| my videos because most people who hide their like bar are
| asshats." Either way, nobody watches your videos, and it
| doesn't necessarily mean your videos suck.
|
| In other words, nobody hides the like bar unless they are
| either being massively downvoted, or they expect to be
| massively downvoted. Which means that a hidden like bar might
| as well be 100% red.
| zkldi wrote:
| > "hide the like bar, and nobody watches my videos because
| most people who hide their like bar are asshats."
|
| Why do you think that is the case? It's probably because
| the actual cases of people being dislike mobbed are *way*
| rarer than the case of people wanting to hide that their
| content is garbage.
| notriddle wrote:
| Yes, that's true. It's literally what I said.
|
| But that doesn't mean dislike mobbing doesn't happen, or
| that it shouldn't be addressed.
| summerlight wrote:
| As I stated in a follow up comment, this change explicitly
| targets the trolling dynamic _as whole_ , not just giving
| individual some controls. Most creators (and trolls as well)
| don't even know that option exists, so that option alone
| doesn't do anything meaningful. As always, the default option
| is what really matters.
|
| I personally suspect that this is a step toward removing the
| dislike button at all (which is an obvious way to eliminate
| this attack vector) but they're just not ready to remove the
| button due to some other factors.
| choward wrote:
| > Most creators (and trolls as well) don't even know that
| option exists, so that option alone doesn't do anything
| meaningful.
|
| So we're going to fix a UI fail by censoring dislikes on
| every video? How about just making the option more apparent
| as your posting a video? Why should everyone be deprived of
| a feature just because some people don't know another
| feature exists? This logic is baffling to me.
|
| > I personally suspect that this is a step toward removing
| the dislike button at all (which is an obvious way to
| eliminate this attack vector) but they're just not ready to
| remove the button due to some other factors.
|
| And now you just admitted you don't think it's just because
| people don't know that option exists. I honestly don't know
| what you're position is besides that whatever Google does
| must be right.
| summerlight wrote:
| > How about just making the option more apparent as your
| posting a video?
|
| Of course, the option will still have a default setting
| even with that modification. That doesn't change
| anything. I'll say again; in an amortized platform level,
| only default option matters. Other "choice" won't make
| any dent. One counterfactual scenario: YT decided to make
| # of dislike visible only for creators who opts in and
| now 99.999% of videos don't show it. If you're 100% happy
| with that situation, then I can respect your opinion.
|
| > Why should everyone be deprived of a feature just
| because some people don't know another feature exists?
|
| It's not because some people don't know some feature
| exists. It's because the platform is the one who make the
| overall incentive structure for user behaviors. YT
| completely failed in this area and now they're trying to
| fix that. Of course you have your right to complain, but
| to me the trade-off seems obvious given that creators
| have been being harassed for years while you have a minor
| inconvenience.
|
| > And now you just admitted you don't think it's just
| because people don't know that option exists
|
| Where does this baffling logical jump come from? In many
| studies, dislike buttons have been proven to be a strong
| source of negative user behaviors, so it's a fairly
| natural conjecture that YT is trying to get rid of that
| button in the end state. And the fact that most users
| don't really know or care about the visible dislike #
| options simply refutes "but they had a choice and it's
| their choice!" argument. I don't know what you're trying
| to achieve by connecting two logically unrelated
| sentences. Isn't this a textbook example of straw man
| fallacy?
|
| > I honestly don't know what you're position is besides
| that whatever Google does must be right.
|
| Obviously this is something I would expect from HN
| comments, but outside of HN please don't make this kind
| of low level mockery on someone else you don't really
| know. It only makes you miserable, especially when you
| demonstratively don't understand my arguments.
| yellowbanana wrote:
| > As usual, HN users are making lots of interesting assumptions
| (some comments to a conspiracy level) on the intention here...
|
| > But in the reality, there are many smaller creators who is
| frequently being harassed by trolls (have you heard about those
| young Chinese patriots trolling over Korean and Japanese
| channels?) and one of their tool is the dislike button. And
| creators have been complaining about this for many years, so I
| would say in fact YT was super lazy on this particular issue,
| but at least better late than never...
|
| That would be an escuse.
|
| The solution to that problem is not changing that option for
| the whole platform
|
| Make targeted changes but not just change everywhere.
|
| Removing the ability to assess how other people think of all
| the videos is big
| jquery wrote:
| Not sure when HN took such a turn to the conspiratorial. The
| signal to noise ratio is getting really low these days, might
| finally be time to give up on this site, because dang seems
| uninterested in the problem.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Seriously, the level of conspiracy-theory replies to this post
| is shocking. Like, this is below-reddit-level discourse. This
| is borderline Q stuff. And I know HN _has_ moderation because I
| 've been told off for flamewars. What gives?
| krapp wrote:
| You're allowed to be batshit insane on Hacker News so long as
| you maintain a civil tone, and don't bore the mods (don't be
| crazy and repetitive - be a quirky new kind of crazy every
| time you rant about whatever triggers you.)
| astura wrote:
| Hacker News has been like this for a while now, maybe a
| little less than a year, and it's getting rapidly worse every
| day. I've found myself spending significantly less time here
| as a result, hacker news seems like it's not for me anymore.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I'd noticed it too in the COVID-related threads. I wonder
| if the owners have noticed? The shift seems pretty fast, to
| me.
| krapp wrote:
| >I wonder if the owners have noticed?
|
| They'll notice if you complain about it, chide you for
| "sneering at the community"and imply that you're simply
| falling prey to some cognitive bias or prejudice.
|
| > The shift seems pretty fast, to me.
|
| I've seen it gradually picking up speed ever since
| Snowden and the death of Aaron Swartz. Trump and Biden's
| elections were inflection points as well, pointing to a
| large influx in alt-right and conspiratorial posters from
| 4chan and Reddit.
|
| I'd strongly suggest getting a plugin or userscript that
| lets you block users, and start doing so aggressively.
| Confronting the problem, or even pointing it out, falls
| afoul of the guidelines (at the very least it isn't
| considered "substantive") and will only eventually get
| you filtered or banned.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| Next time you see someone talk about how high quality the
| discussion is at HN and how it isn't like the rest of the
| internet.... Just remember this thread.
| mike741 wrote:
| your comment amounts to name-calling and adds little to no
| value to the conversation in comparison to the comments you
| want censored.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Unsubstantiated allegations that democratic party activists
| are manipulating voting counts are kind a proven problem in
| 2021, bud.
| Nesco wrote:
| To use dang words, not only your comment didn't bring
| anything new to the discussion but you also took the best
| example possible for starting a flame war.
| gfodor wrote:
| What you're seeing could be a sign that the audience of HN
| has changed, or it could be that what you are referring to as
| "conspiracy theories" aren't that.
| godshatter wrote:
| I'm usually of the opinion that the more information the better,
| but I also think that the dislike/downvote button adds a lot to
| the toxicity levels, mainly for comments. It's much better for a
| group to get excited about something and over-like it than for a
| group to get angry about something and over-dislike it.
|
| So I guess I'd rather see the dislike button be removed more than
| I would like to use that information to inform me about the video
| in question. I don't tend to even look at how many likes vs.
| dislikes something has, anyway. My tastes are different enough
| from the norm that it isn't really that helpful of a statistic
| for me.
| haunter wrote:
| >It's much better for a group to get excited about something
| and over-like it than for a group to get angry about something
| and over-dislike it.
|
| Toxic positivity is not a good thing, and not "much better"
| godshatter wrote:
| What are the downsides to toxic positivity?
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| Flanders from the Simpsons might be a good fictional
| exemple
| beezischillin wrote:
| It's interesting that the Internet took the YouTube Rewind
| dislike thing as a win, meanwhile YouTube themselves took it as
| an opportunity to learn about the negative side effects of their
| users' free will.
| artdigital wrote:
| So I have never clicked a like nor dislike button on YouTube
| after they switched from stars to the thumbs. I always wondered
| who actually puts in the extra few seconds to do so, but I'd
| guess it's people that have a very strong opinion.
|
| Especially the "Don't forget to smash that like button below"
| became so much noise that it's getting auto-filtered in my head
|
| This change feels like the next step of positioning YouTube as
| something like a TV alternative, encouraging more long-form
| content and series over one-off videos.
| [deleted]
| xtat wrote:
| Youtube is over
| [deleted]
| amznbyebyebye wrote:
| We could all use a little more "thinking for yourself" in this
| age or social media. I laid the move. The dislike button should
| be used to share what I dislike and use that genuinely to
| recommend content that I will like. Seeing the number only biases
| me one way or the other and doesn't even give me the opportunity
| to consider how I really feel in the first place.
| Tucanix wrote:
| This is a terrible decision. It also feels very undemocratic and
| a way to undermine trust and hide public opinion on a topic. Like
| a company made a screw up, before it was easy to see public
| opinion on the matter, but this just allows companies to hide
| everything, it feels like this decision was only made for
| companies and people with a controversial opinion like the
| feminist movement or a racist right wing movement.
|
| I mean read the text "dislike attacks", this reads deeply like
| some disgruntled femminist who's community keeps getting dislikes
| because they have extremely controversial opinions. The
| femminist/SJW community really dislikes democracy and want more
| censorship it's no joke they are called "Feminazis".
|
| I deeply dislike this decision and I feel like there is some
| hidden money or power or intent behind this decision to undermine
| democracy, this is deeply concerning.
| muglug wrote:
| The overwhelming sentiment to the decision here is negative, but
| I don't quite understand that reaction.
|
| If YouTube was just looking out for big brands and/or
| advertisers, they could have restricted the change incredibly
| simply. By making it a global change they're saying "ok now we
| understand how our UI actually led to some pretty bad outcomes in
| ways we failed to anticipate, and we're fixing that".
| HappyMans wrote:
| It's because they aren't objectively bad outcomes. For the
| content creators it may be bad. But if the content creator is
| creating, say, authoritarian propaganda, the outcome for the
| audience is good when the dislike count goes through the roof
| and helps spread the message that whatever has been published
| is being rejected by the audience.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| The dislike count was useful to pick up on
|
| * clickbait headline videos that don't deliver - ie, content in
| thumbnail never shows
|
| * obviously some political content has been getting dislikes
| which is embarrassing and risks govt coming after them. Trump
| threatened this and dems are also now making noise here, so
| these platforms are vulnerable.
|
| * Dislikes were pretty rare, usually in my case I had to be
| really annoyed at something to dislike it. I didn't mind scams
| that were properly described, but some stuff is annoying
| because it's a bait and switch.
| netcan wrote:
| The trend continues...
|
| Tiktok pushed the passive user experience further, and youtube is
| following. The ideal is user launches app, the app takes care of
| everything else. Looking at the downvote count is just an extra
| thing the user can, might or should do. The trend is to reduce
| these. Youtube's being trendy.
| bigyellow wrote:
| That's a charitable interpretation. I posit these products are
| actually designed to further diminish the range of thought and
| serve to eliminate discontent, resistance and ultimately
| political opposition.
| sharklazer wrote:
| The only videos I have seen with downvotes that outweigh
| upvotes are politically controversial.
|
| I'm surprised they didn't do this sooner to be honest,
| thought they've been letting news outlets turn them off for
| some time now.
| azth wrote:
| Look at the downvotes on videos from the white house. It's
| obvious what's going on.
| [deleted]
| spicyramen wrote:
| I'm a big soccer fan, dislike button is the best metric to gauge
| a game summary
| robmccoll wrote:
| I don't think this is a good idea. To me one of the biggest
| problems with social media that propagates disinformation to
| large unquestioning audiences is that there are easy ways to
| reinforce the message and to see how much it resonates, but it is
| hard to gauge when an idea is controversial or if there are many
| people who disagree. It is worth way more to see dislike counts
| and ratios on dangerous content than to protect creators from the
| internet being mean at all costs.
| cyberpsybin wrote:
| Google has been on a roll lately. Most obnoxious web corpo.
| Pxtl wrote:
| So, to clarify how HN's moderation works:
|
| Disagreeing with people vociferously: you get told off and soft-
| blocked from HN.
|
| Rampant conspiracy theories? Totally hunky dory.
|
| Seriously, look at the mayhem in these comment threads. This is
| Q-level madness.
| Jensson wrote:
| You can't attack others in a discussion, no.
|
| About conspiracy theories, assuming that policies created by
| known democrat supporters are influenced by what issues
| democrats faces isn't any more far fetched than assuming that
| policies created by known republican supporters are influenced
| by what issues republicans faces.
| mike741 wrote:
| It seems OK to me, care enough to give a specific example of a
| comment you'd prefer disallowed?
| hstan4 wrote:
| If people want to actually argue that a creator can be harassed
| by a dislike button, why not give the creator the option to
| disable dislikes for that specific video rather than pushing this
| onto every video out there?
| mard wrote:
| It was never about creators or dislike attacks. There's a
| reason why they didn't adopt an opt-in solution.
|
| It's about corporations complaining about their ads running on
| unpopular content. It's about making people waste more time on
| low quality content, scam and disinformation across the
| platform.
|
| What you hear from them are pure PR lies. They don't care about
| small creators and they never did. All they want is to make you
| watch more ads at the expense of your time and welfare.
| kf6nux wrote:
| That's a great point. Hiding the number is a sensible default,
| but allowing the creators to show it sounds good too.
| Especially for the common use-case of "how to" videos where a
| creator may be proud of the ratio.
| twirlock wrote:
| Everyone understands that this is to protect corporate news from
| negative feedback. _Everyone_ understands this.
| tomklein wrote:
| Official blog post: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/update-
| to-youtube/
| AdrienBrault wrote:
| That feels like a change that will help misinformation
| tjpnz wrote:
| And crypto scams.
| kyle_martin1 wrote:
| And hide the White House's like to dislike ratio. Check out
| some videos-- the ratio is horrible:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/WhiteHouse/videos
| slackfan wrote:
| Can't let people see the plebs getting rowdy.
| rossy wrote:
| > _and reduce dislike attacks - where people work to drive up the
| number of dislikes on a creator's videos._
|
| Why not just hide dislikes from people until they've seen a
| certain percentage of the video?
| nigrioid wrote:
| This is because of all the COVID-19 mainstream media videos with
| far more dislikes than likes.
| anonu wrote:
| I like the concept of chrome extensions as overlays on pages,
| adding a new dimension to the page. Seems like one would be
| useful in this case...
| TheFreim wrote:
| Reminds me of Gab's "dissenter" extension which added comments
| and live chat to any web page. I don't know if it still exists
| since it got removed from extension marketplaces.
| josteink wrote:
| > As always, I'll be monitoring questions and feedback in the
| comments below. -Meaghan, TeamYouTube
|
| Let me guess... Except for dissenting or _disliking_ comments?
|
| This move is all about removing users ability to voice
| disapproval in a simple and effective way when big corporations
| stumble.
|
| Think PC movie remake-trailers, out of touch YouTube rewind
| videos, etc.
|
| All heavily disliked, and users were allowed to _say_ that.
|
| I guess only corporate praise is allowed from now on?
| l0b0 wrote:
| Piling onto the anecdotes, I always do a rough maths of likes vs.
| dislikes before watching any video from unknown creators. For
| pure entertainment, a 100-to-1 ratio or better means it might be
| watchable. For science, maths or computing maybe 20-to-1. If a
| woman, black person or LGBTQ* person is presenting I assume that
| the haters have already got to the downvote button, so I give
| them about a 10x slack.
| ddingus wrote:
| Also, coming soon:
|
| User comment: DISLIKE
|
| Other users click like button on comment a ton of times...
|
| Next official move?
|
| Making comments visible to subscribers and premium users only...
|
| Google is going against basic human nature here and it's
| Orwellian as fuck.
|
| Next unofficial move?
|
| Censor comments containing, "DISLIKE" because the ones doing it
| will stand right out same as they did before and having them not
| stand out is what is being attempted here.
|
| And?
|
| Yeah, DISLIKE
|
| Edit:
|
| I realize this is part of a bigger trend and that is to avoid
| mass signaling of any kind.
|
| The major players do not want large numbers of people
| communicating because those lead to large actions, which are
| expensive and risky from their point of view. While this is
| perfectly understandable, a functional society allows for these
| things and it bears those costs and risk because of the even
| greater costs and risks associated with clamping down on dissent
| like this.
| geitir wrote:
| I was trying to put this into words and I like your
| explanation. People don't seem to realize that yes as long as
| you can trust the mediating party it may be a net benefit to
| avoid negative signaling, but the problem is once those
| precedents are in place it only takes one bad actor to send it
| all crashing.
| cyberpsybin wrote:
| How is it a "trend"? Facebook never had dislike. So does
| instagram. Even Twitter never had a downvote as far I can
| remember. Issue is that Google is removing it after entire
| YouTube culture was built around it.
| ddingus wrote:
| The issue is it being removed for hand wavy reasons.
|
| The trend is increased control through corporations and a
| reduced mass signal potential. This action is but one of
| many. Reddit modified r/All a while back to avoid mass
| signalling and or prioritize "authoritative" front page
| material.
|
| Others have done similar things.
|
| Twitter put features in for "authorities" to be marked in
| ways, verified users. Also, provided for broadcast only type
| posts, where comments are limited to a select few, or not at
| all allowed.
|
| It's worth a deeper look back too:
|
| Prior to the Internet, and prior to the actions of Reagan and
| Clinton to deregulate media, we had many independent
| publishers doing news, commentary (with fairness requirements
| on said commentary), and other works. No one was allowed to
| own a significant portion of all that, and the check and
| balance was all the peers questioning one another as well as
| the targets of their journalism.
|
| Additionally, news was done as a public service, in the
| public interest, and that's what broadcast licenses were all
| about. They get a magic money machine in return for helping
| us all in a civic way by doing news.
|
| After Reagan repealed the fairness doctrine, we got the likes
| of Rush Limbaugh.
|
| Side bar: Limbaugh was an exemplary broadcaster. His unusual
| talent essentially unbridled by the lack of the fairness
| doctrine allowed for intoxicatingly good political talk. Just
| saying, his own skill was a factor in all this. End side bar.
|
| After Clinton relaxed ownership rules, mega networks were
| born, and very quickly gobbled up a lot of news networks and
| also began doing news for profit, made possible by the larger
| network size as well as no need to be fair, or even accurate
| in news and or commentary.
|
| Side bar: Fox won in court when challenged on it's right to
| force journalists to lie and or produce material they
| themselves do not believe in. This can and is a condition of
| employment. End side bar.
|
| With the rise of the Internet came "new media" and the most
| striking quality was the population once again getting news
| and commentary produced from a labor, or populist point of
| view. This has naturally proven quite popular, and quite
| painful for big corporate media who is not used to having to
| deal with both feed back and competition not playing by the
| same rules it plays by.
|
| Populists shot right to the top of the charts and captured
| younger media consumers, starting with a lot of Gen X and
| younger. Corporate media, big networks saw aging
| demographics, and the trend was clear.
|
| They either need to find a way to compete, or new media was
| gonna have to be handicapped before it was too late!
|
| And that's one trend, biasing mass signaling away from that
| which could challenge, or dissent from the establishment
| narrative.
|
| Removing likes is straight up hiding the fact that big media
| being called authoritative, allowed to fact check without
| itself being fact checked to the same standards, or by those
| it has some authority over, is all very unpopular and not
| trusted very well at all and the demographics on that extend
| all the way up through old age today.
|
| The young people don't even bother watching. Older people are
| questioning it all with increased frequency.
|
| Putting it all on You Tube went like most of us thought it
| would: Yawn.
|
| Bundling it with entertainment pulled the numbers up a
| little.
|
| Modifying the recommendation algorithm pulled numbers up a
| bit more, while at the same time stunting the growth of new
| media in a painfully obvious way.
|
| Still? No joy.
|
| Now, hiding the data needed for the general public to
| understand those things along with increased censorship and
| rule changes intended to further hobble popular news and
| commentary that challenges the establishment is common and
| growing increasingly overt.
|
| This brings us to present day "trends" and I hope a bit of
| context helps to understand what I am getting at here.
| TheFreim wrote:
| Video creators can censor comment sections as they wish, so
| this really won't work.
| ddingus wrote:
| See edit:
|
| It will, and the ones who allow it will stand out just as
| they do now by allowing comments when others do not. Fact is
| most creators actually delivering value stand to gain from
| both robust comments and feedback. It's just not a big deal.
|
| In a more general sense, it's turning a comms medium into
| broadcast. In broadcast nobody really gives a fuck what
| ordinary viewers, listeners have to say. Their job is to eat
| ADS and shit CASH.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Honestly I think this will encourage people to post negative
| comments instead, which if you've seen YouTube comments can be
| pretty "colourful".
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Worth noting that this is merely an "update to."
|
| Were it "An update on," we'd know dislike counts were being
| deleted and every API that ever mentioned them would be breaking.
| Zamicol wrote:
| This is an astoundingly cowardly decision. It's akin to holding
| an election and only revealing the votes of the winner. Shame on
| Google.
|
| A far better solution would be allowing more metrics into
| downvotes. How many of the downvotes come from a Twitter or
| Reddit post? What's the age of the dislikers? The solution is
| more transparency, not the suppression of information.
|
| I hope there's new solutions, like browser extensions, to fill in
| the gap. Centralized and unilateral decisions like this only
| further prove online liberty must fundamentally empower
| individuals.
| prvc wrote:
| By referring to the act of disliking the video as an "attack",
| they are framing this change as one which protects users, when in
| fact, only a small minority post videos, and a smaller portion
| among them are bothered by dislikes. In fact, the change is user-
| hostile, removing one channel for users to see whether a video is
| of low quality (inaccurate description, containing false
| information, etc.), and improving advertiser metrics artificially
| (this, by their own description).
| [deleted]
| emmelaich wrote:
| You're right about the "attack" thing, but it would be no loss
| to remove the "Dislike" entirely.
|
| I've seen random harmless videos (bit of classical music for
| instance) with many dislikes.
|
| Same with Facebook btw. They should never have added anything
| over a mere "Like".
| brushfoot wrote:
| YouTube complicated things by having the dislike button
| double as a literal "I don't like this" and an "I don't want
| to be recommended videos like this in the future." When you
| dislike a video, it stamps it with a public seal of
| disapproval, even if you're just trying to avoid a
| recommended piece of music on YouTube Music.
|
| It's a clunky, confusing UX that gave rise to the inevitable
| highly upvoted "Who in the world would dislike this?" threads
| on so many popular videos.
| m0llusk wrote:
| That isn't what they said at all. They are talking about actual
| attacks where a group of people share their objections to a
| video and encourage everyone to click on dislike. Do you really
| think that this kind of group objection should be sponsored and
| enabled?
| remram wrote:
| But this is still possible. And it will still affect the
| ranking of the video, keeping it from being recommended.
|
| They are keeping all the harmful implications and removing
| the only other use case, which is the quality signal to
| potential viewers (noisy as it is).
| prvc wrote:
| >They are talking about actual attacks
|
| This is a fallacy known as "begging the question".
| cruano wrote:
| The same happens with all those like-for-like groups instead
| it's the other direction and they don't bat an eye there
| ernst_10 wrote:
| So criticism and encouraging people to consider the
| criticism? What is wrong with that?
| cole-k wrote:
| The hope with youtube videos is that the likes/dislikes
| represent a random sampling from the ratings of everyone
| who would watch the video. A brigade is purposefully adding
| to the sample ratings from only one side. So from an
| objective standpoint it makes the like/dislike ratio lower
| quality.
|
| But from a less objective standpoint, it's just rude. Even
| if the rankings are purely cosmetic, why go out of your way
| to leave a dislike on one person's video if you wouldn't
| interact with it otherwise?
| ernst_10 wrote:
| There is always bias in the userbase, people usually
| watch content on their side of the political agenda for
| example. How do you know the so-called "brigade" isn't
| actually bringing things closer to public opinion?
|
| Also are we talking about global opinion? A lot of people
| outside of the western world aren't as big fans of LGBT
| for example, so if we want to make things more objective
| those videos should have even more downvotes and hateful
| messages. And if we're being consistent with what google
| currently does, these videos should be banned sometimes
| for hurting others (ex. religious) feelings. People are
| ok with downvotes and banning, but only if it panders to
| their current subjective moral fashions.
| cole-k wrote:
| > There is always bias in the userbase, people usually
| watch content on their side of the political agenda for
| example.
|
| I agree, but as a user I am used to assuming a baseline
| of support for a video coming from the channel's
| subscribers. So even if the pie-in-the-sky random
| sampling is biased, I can usually account for that. What
| I would like to be able to assume is that likes and
| dislikes come from the "usual" traffic a video receives.
|
| > Also are we talking about global opinion?
|
| No. I think it can be assumed (like you said) that videos
| typically receive views from certain people. My point is
| more that brigades disrupt the helpfulness of ratings for
| viewers like myself. I think we should not offend the
| sensibilities of the homophobes in this world (lmao) by
| asking them to watch LGBT-friendly videos. Conversely, I
| think said homophobes should refrain from brigading such
| a video just because they dislike LGBT people.
|
| I also will reiterate my claim that it is rude for the
| hypothetical homophobe to exercise targeted downvotes on
| LGBT videos.
|
| As for myself, I'm not all too pleased with downvotes
| being straight up removed from Google (edit: YT). But
| acting like brigades are constructive and normal use of
| the platform is silly to me.
|
| Edit: clarified some points
| arrrg wrote:
| Clicking a dislike button is not, in any sense of the word,
| criticism.
| ernst_10 wrote:
| It is in the english language.
|
| > the expression of disapproval of someone or something
| based on perceived faults or mistakes.
|
| Regardless the parent was talking about someone sharing
| more detailed criticism.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Do you think the only solution for that is to just delete the
| button, rather than do analysis on the downvoters and undo
| brigaded downvotes?
|
| Isn't Google literally an AI company, and wouldn't this be
| entirely in their wheelhouse to work on?
| Causality1 wrote:
| Absolutely. Getting ratio'd is one of the few ways users have
| to express displeasure. They took away video replies,
| comments are often disabled, but they can't pretend everyone
| likes their video. At least they couldn't until now. That
| Verge PC build that would destroy your parts if you followed
| it? That horrible soulless YouTube Rewind? Logan Paul's
| "sorry I exploited suicide victims for views" video? Dislikes
| are a force for good. I can count the videos I've seen
| unfairly disliked on one hand.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep... but the most disliked videos are certain political ones,
| that youtube supports, and well... youtube rewind.
| loosescrews wrote:
| I think they still might be upset about that.
| vjancik wrote:
| Next, they'll come after sarcastic comments and they won't stop
| until everybody in the world is smiling and happy :) :) :).
| jamesfe wrote:
| TL;DR "People watch fewer videos if they see more dislikes which
| means we make less ad revenue, the result of this A/B test is we
| will continue to optimize for ad rev"
| dingle_thunk wrote:
| There's a like button and no dislike button on the freaking blog
| post. Can you imagine the dislike ratio on this if they allowed
| it?
| gnicholas wrote:
| There's a flag button. Also, there's no way to disable
| comments, so people can easily express their opinions in long
| form as well.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| What's stopping me posting "Upvote to dislike this" as a comment
| on every video I dislike.
|
| Cowardly move that's being presented as one thing but really
| there is a deeper message here.
| [deleted]
| datenarsch wrote:
| Their comment system will bury or shadow ban your comment
| because it has the word _dislike_ in it.
|
| That's why you only ever see positive, happy high-five comments
| under videos anymore. The dystopian crackdown started sometime
| after the 2016 US election.
| yellowbanana wrote:
| They can just disable comments ( the poster of the video )
| tinyhouse wrote:
| That's not a feature we need. We need to know like/dislike ratio
| BEFORE clicking on a video so that we can avoid clicking on it. I
| end up clicking on so many spam videos cause Youtube doesn't tell
| you that simple number. For example, looking for sports
| highlights right after a game usually ends up with tens of spammy
| results with fake titles trying to take advantage of trendy
| topics.
| swayvil wrote:
| YT's aim, with this move, is to make a friendlier environment for
| propagandists, advertisers and anybody else who's pushing an
| ideology. They are the #1 source of cash after all.
|
| For comparison, Reddit posts advertising that looks exactly like
| a user post. With voting and discussion turned off.
| truly wrote:
| I am really just starting out my channel, so I am not sure I
| really understand what is the (real) purpose of this change. A
| dislike hurts somewhat, but it is unavoidable this to happen when
| you have a large public. I have not seen dislike attacks (not to
| say they don't exist), but I'm pretty sure they can be avoided
| with other tactics.
|
| I suspect that not showing the dislikes drives up engagement, but
| in my experience as a user I rarely look at the number of
| dislikes to judge a video.
| qwertox wrote:
| Hmm. For me the dislike button was informative. If feels like
| they are trying to create a world where everything can only be
| good, better, even more better, which just doesn't represent
| reality.
|
| Imagine Stack Overflow only having the option to upvote Questions
| and Answers. The ratio of likes vs dislikes of a TED talk does
| help me to decide if I should stop watching a video which just
| isn't getting better.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Imagine a News site for Hackers that only had the option to
| upvote stories. How horrible would that be?!
| xg15 wrote:
| To be fair, you can downvote comments here, which is often
| used effectively. Comments with a high dislike count are even
| specifically highlighted.
| curtis3389 wrote:
| Hacker News has a downvote button, but you need enough karma
| to unlock it.
| Shared404 wrote:
| They were mentioning stories, which afaik has no way to
| downvote - though I may just have not unlocked that yet!
| vadfa wrote:
| Stories can never be downvoted. Only comments can be
| downvoted.
| badRNG wrote:
| HN has a downvote button, but only for those who've engaged
| on HN for a bit prior to downvoting. It helps prevent abuse.
| scrooched_moose wrote:
| Just for comments though, right?
|
| Stories can only be flagged, which as I understand can lead
| to bans/losing the privilege if it's abused.
| spurgu wrote:
| Yes. I think you need 500 karma and it's only for
| comments.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I've been on HN for nearly 10 years and can't downvote
| stories. Not a complaint, just an observation.
| aeternum wrote:
| The flag button serves as a downvote for stories. Seems
| like a good system since people are less likely to hit
| flag just because they disagree.
| blendergeek wrote:
| You need a "score" of at least 500 to get to use
| downvotes.
| [deleted]
| rnd0 wrote:
| > Not a complaint, just an observation.
|
| Same. It feels like a passive-aggressive elitism, and not
| simply an anti-abuse feature.
|
| Given the site we're on, I don't have a problem as much
| with the elitism (I'm not the target demographic, after
| all -I'm older and not working in tech) as much as with
| the "passive-aggressive" part of the rhetoric behind
| withholding downvote capability.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| It _IS_ an anti-abuse / anti-sockpuppet feature. I can
| see why you think it is elitism since, in a way, it is.
| But I don't understand why you think it's "passive
| aggressive".
| Cd00d wrote:
| You have a karma > 4k... I don't understand. Maybe you
| haven't noticed the little down arrow next to the
| poster's username?
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I can't downvote _stories_ , but can downvote comments.
| Just to clarify. I edited my original comment so perhaps
| you replied before my edit.
| runevault wrote:
| No one can downvote stories as far as I know, flag is the
| downvote at the story level.
| mike_d wrote:
| You should be able to downvote comments, since you have
| more than 501 karma. The analog for downvoting
| submissions is the "super downvote" of flagging (and in
| turn vouching), which requires 31 karma.
| rnd0 wrote:
| What's "a bit"? I've been here since 2017, 371 karma, still
| no downvote option.
| TravisHusky wrote:
| If I am not mistaken, it is an option at 500 karma.
| [deleted]
| phaedryx wrote:
| I gave this comment an upvote. Let's get you over the
| threshold.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Trust me: that strategy only works on April 1st.
| rnd0 wrote:
| It's the thought that counts -and I appreciate the
| thought!
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I was poking fun at myself. I'm probably the only one who
| thinks it's funny.
| phaedryx wrote:
| haha, I lost some points on that comment.
| rnd0 wrote:
| "Karma is meant to be spent" -which is a bit of a
| conundrum to me because I can't figure out how to "spend"
| karma without simply spamming every thread I see in hopes
| of getting up-votes (which I'm pretty sure is the
| opposite of what the karma system's intent is).
| lrem wrote:
| 9 years and 2500 karma in, still no downvote button on
| stories... I believe it is documented somewhere that the
| button does not exist.
| [deleted]
| bogota wrote:
| HN does have a downvote button you just don't have enough
| reputation to use it yet.
| pizza234 wrote:
| There's a significant difference - misleading/malicious
| content.
|
| A fake trailer can for example be spotted by the number of
| negative votes. If the negative votes concept is gone, using
| a low number of positive votes as indicator is less
| effective.
| epolanski wrote:
| And comments can be censored.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It would be MetaFilter, a site with a noticeably higher level
| of discourse than HN.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Not too horrible but a bit annoying. Fortunately, HN is not
| that site.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| It'd be a lot better, actually. Downvotes are social poison.
| sytelus wrote:
| It is horrible, you just don't know it it. There is always
| people like dang dedicating his life to fight all the spam.
| Look at "new" page and see how many dead links are being
| submitted each hour.
|
| When you put dislike button, you are adding a degree of
| freedom in expressing an intent for the user. It is upto you,
| how you use this information. Most systems fail in this task
| and then they just remove the degree of freedom as their
| solution.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| i don't know. The more i look at hn the more i appreciate the
| thought that went into it. Stories are far more black and
| white- either they violate the guidelines or not. The only
| thing a downvote would do is to make the story float all over
| the front page as there is an inevitable vote war. I would
| even say that most users don't like any given news story,
| which would lead to the situation that everything would get
| downvoted into oblivion. Comments OTOH lend themselves far
| more to moderation by downvotes. Remember we still get the
| "nuclear option" of flagging a submission.
| dang wrote:
| I assume this is sarcastic but flags on stories are a
| significant option.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Yeah, and it seems like you'll still be able to flag videos
| on YouTube too. The change makes YouTube more like HN,
| which I personally feel is a good thing.
| adoxyz wrote:
| 100% agree. If they're going to do away with the dislike
| counter, then do away with the like counter as well.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| My opinion on this, is that they should hide BOTH the counts,
| and only the creator can see it.
|
| Keep the actual buttons, as they signal to YouTube what you
| do and do not want to see in future, but the actual counts
| only have use to the creator... and even then a simple ratio
| or percentage alongside the video in the Creator Studio is
| enough; there's no need for actuall numbers.
|
| What's not been mentioned is that YouTube add a small % of
| fake clicks to the like/dislike buttons, and also hide the
| real counts for a while, if there's a rush on clicks (to
| dissuade click-bandwagoning).
| ohyeshedid wrote:
| Likes and dislikes don't ultimately matter to Google,
| engagement does. Viewing is enough: likes, dislikes, comments;
| those are just multipliers.
|
| Hiding dislikes is something Brands want.
| Igelau wrote:
| > engagement
|
| That's the word. It isn't really "likes" in the sense that we
| normally think of it. It's ticks on the relationship of
| "engagement" to "dollars".
|
| IIRC, Facebook was pretty upfront about this being why they
| didn't implement a "dislike" button; the information wasn't
| valuable to them.
| epolanski wrote:
| Facebook said it lowered engagement iirc, same reason why
| they removed likes count on Instagram, it reduced
| engagement, people posted less if they feared being judged
| by the number of likes.
| ridaj wrote:
| Public dislike counts were opportunities for brands to own up
| to their ambition for authentic engagement. This is maybe the
| main thing lost here - without putting this at stake, and
| with full moderation powers on their video comments, brands
| basically only have a veneer of authenticity at this point.
| There's not as much at stake for them anymore, very limited
| downside / reason to care.
| kobalsky wrote:
| for all practical purposes it was cosmetic.
|
| I constantly got heavily downvoted slideshow + text-to-speech
| autogenerated garbage videos that were ranked above good videos
| on search results
| quotemstr wrote:
| > If feels like they are trying to create a world where
| everything can only be good, better, even more better, which
| just doesn't represent reality.
|
| It's part of a trend towards fake, cloying, passive-aggressive
| forced positivity across the whole industry. It's a California
| thing.
|
| Time was, if you didn't like a bit of code, you could say so.
| Nowadays, you have to wrap criticism in right zillion levels of
| disingenuous praise before you can even start getting to the
| point -- and the you get fake "thank you for the excellent
| feedback!!!!1!!" typed with gritted teeth and fantasies of
| backstabbing later on.
|
| I've always found the in-your-face New York style more genuine,
| more honest, more efficient, and ultimately, kinder and more
| respectful.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| Downvotes on Stack Overflow/Exchange require users to meet a
| reputation threshold (much like HN) and each downvote removes 1
| reputation from the user that gives the downvote.
|
| Dislikes on YouTube and similar platforms don't have any cost
| or barrier to entry.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I wish they'd cost reputation here too. Behavioral experiment
| after experiment has show people will engage in costly
| punishment to maintain norms, so don't need to worry about
| under-downvoting. But enabling downvoting to be costless (and
| anonymous) does have downsides.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| >But enabling downvoting to be costless (and anonymous)
| does have downsides.
|
| What downsides?
|
| Why can't we just say we don't like what we don't like?
| suyash wrote:
| but everyone can still the the count - that is the main point
| here
| peeters wrote:
| That's not actually true. There's a reputation threshold
| (1000) to see how many downvotes the post has:
| https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/established-user.
| Without that privilege one can only see the net votes.
|
| I've argued against it in the past (since it's very
| important context to any reader) but to no avail. An upvote
| and a downvote rarely cancel each other out. They have
| different units and shouldn't be summed together. A score
| of 25 could mean the answer is perfect but has only seen
| moderate traffic, or incredibly dangerous but has seen high
| traffic.
|
| Here's a good list of controversial answers on SO: https://
| data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/466/most-....
| They would mostly look like great answers from the net
| score.
| nyxaiur wrote:
| And the point of the comment above yours is that public
| voting systems are easily manipulated and you should always
| take them with a grain of salt. most people can't or don't
| know how to do that.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| Everyone can see the count on Stack Overflow, but there are
| several mechanisms in place to protect that count from all
| sorts of abuse (bots, tactical voting, second accounts
| etc.).
|
| The same is simply not true of YouTube or any other kind of
| social media upvote/downvote system - anyone can sign up
| for an account, and their votes immediately count and have
| equal weighting.
|
| The same is not true of Stack Exchange or HN, where you
| have to put a lot of effort in with a community to be able
| to downvote something.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| > The same is simply not true of YouTube or any other
| kind of social media upvote/downvote system - anyone can
| sign up for an account, and their votes immediately count
| and have equal weighting.
|
| I don't think this is true for YouTube - you need a
| Google account, and you can't create a Google account
| without verifying your phone number. (Unless you can
| create numerous accounts with one phone number? But that
| seems like an easy loophole to close.)
| mywittyname wrote:
| I have multiple Google accounts on one phone number. I'd
| probably leave google if that limitation were put in
| place.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| A limitation of, say, 10 accounts for one phone number
| doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Google does let you create multiple accounts with a
| single phone number. There's legitimate reasons to have
| multiple email addresses. I have a handful of different
| ones that I use for different identities I have online.
| spurgu wrote:
| Yup. If I'm watching a positive review of a [insert-object] I'm
| planning on buying and it has 10k likes visible while hiding 2k
| dislikes I'm probably going to get horribly misled.
|
| While if it's a video of a political debate I would expect
| there to be a ton of dislikes by default, so I suppose it
| wouldn't matter much in that scenario.
|
| And in howto/explanation-videos, if dislikes aren't shown,
| there's no signal for people telling them whether or not it's a
| good explanation.
|
| I suppose you could devise a dislike count yourself by
| calculating the likes/views ratio. But why... people are
| deliberately putting their content up publicly for display and
| as such are opening themselves up for
| scrutiny/criticism/dislikes. It can't be all praise and hugs
| and kisses. That's how we treat _children_.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| I guess we can make our own standard, someone should comment
| something like "This video is garbage." or simply "Dislike"
| and the amount of thumbs up on that comment can be taken as
| video dislikes.
|
| I sometimes look for obscure how-to's, and I get garbage
| videos not even answering the question. If YouTube can get
| rid of all that garbage, then not having a dislike button is
| fine.
| spurgu wrote:
| > someone should comment something like "This video is
| garbage." or simply "Dislike" and the amount of thumbs up
| on that comment can be taken as video dislikes.
|
| The problem with Youtube as I see it is that these comments
| never rise to the top. It's always compliments and ass-
| kissing and high-fives that make it there.
|
| Twitter tends to gravitate towards the opposite.
|
| It's all fascinating though.
| datenarsch wrote:
| > The problem with Youtube as I see it is that these
| comments never rise to the top. It's always compliments
| and ass-kissing and high-fives that make it there.
|
| That's because they have engineered their comment system
| in a way that comments the AI perceives as negative are
| shadow-banned or buried deep down so people don't get a
| chance to read them.
| NavinF wrote:
| The uploaders of garbage videos will delete all comments
| along those lines. The inability to delete dislikes is what
| made them so useful.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| The alternative would be a 3rd party browser extension,
| that store the dislikes on a 3rd party server...
|
| In the 90's there was an add-on that allowed anyone to
| comment on any webpage:
| http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~orit/utok.html
|
| Although imagine having such a tool nowadays and opening
| cnn.com, it'd be like walking into a MAGA rally.
| president wrote:
| > If feels like they are trying to create a world where
| everything can only be good, better, even more better, which
| just doesn't represent reality.
|
| If they actually believed in the rationale behind this change,
| they would get rid performance reviews for engineers at Youtube
| too.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| I think this shows what standpoint Google has in this: The
| dislike button is not supposed to be used by the user, but
| rather the creator.
|
| You as a user should watch the video no matter what and then
| rate the creator, not skip it if you see a large amount of
| dislikes.
| kingcharles wrote:
| In New World Order everything is doubleplusgood.
| runevault wrote:
| I mostly agree with you, with the caveat of brigading being a
| very real thing that lowers the information value. But then why
| show upvotes either because positive brigading is just as
| damaging to the information as downvote brigades.
| dcow wrote:
| Exactly. Seems like you could just throttle votes or abstract
| the metric to smooth out spikes and account for brigading in
| either direction...
| prions wrote:
| So you'd rather they manipulate the data and potentially
| mislead users? Sounds like a slippery slope to me \s
| lrem wrote:
| Isn't that what Reddit is doing to quite some success?
| fuckcensorship wrote:
| YouTube has been manipulating like/dislike data for the
| White House for months now [1].
|
| [1]: https://81m.org/
|
| Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20211023061808/https
| ://81m.org/
| [deleted]
| mike_d wrote:
| It looks like the creator is counting any decrease in
| dislikes over time as manipulation, without a firm
| understanding of how large scale systems work.
|
| Say for example I used a batch of 100 HN accounts to mass
| downvote your comment. After a while an hourly job runs
| that looks at all those votes in aggregate and determines
| they were coordinated (for simplicity sake they all came
| from the same IP) and removes them. You'd see a large
| shift in the net score of your comment all of the sudden.
| This isn't HN manipulating anything, it is them doing
| their job to prevent abuse on the platform.
| water8 wrote:
| Oh honey, were you born yesterday? Of course they modify
| the numbers especially for political or covid related
| topics
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| What would even be the point of faking the dislike/like
| counts? Does anyone actually look at them compared to
| polls?
| malwarebytess wrote:
| Oh honey.
|
| Or, you know, some of those votes are fraudulent (bots,
| dupe accounts, tactical voting, etc) and they're being
| removed?
| jakear wrote:
| It's interesting data, but the obvious response from
| YouTube would be "we run sophisticated click fraud
| detection algorithms and periodically remove interactions
| determined to be from fraudulent accounts; given the
| current political climate White House videos attract more
| of these types of fraud than other videos on our platform
| and thus the effect is more pronounced on their videos".
| The numbers in question are small enough (~1k missing
| interactions) that it doesn't seem totally unreasonable.
| dcow wrote:
| No I'd rather have a know established system/metric in
| place that amortizes brigading so as to diffuse the
| effects of mob attacks on internet content.
| csee wrote:
| I don't even buy YouTube's claim that "brigading" or
| "dislike attacks" is a real thing or a problem. If they
| have a minimum number of minutes that a video needs to be
| watched before a vote is counted, then that vote is
| legitimate, full stop. YouTube are simply unhappy about
| which videos users dislike, whether it's the White
| House's videos, important brands, or YT's own videos.
| dcow wrote:
| I like that solution even more.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > I don't even buy YouTube's claim that "brigading" or
| "dislike attacks" is a real thing or a problem. If they
| have a minimum number of minutes that a video needs to be
| watched before a vote is counted, then that vote is
| legitimate, full stop.
|
| I've seen dislike attacks happen. And if it takes a non-
| trivial procedure to make them count, people will
| document that procedure. For instance, hypothetically:
|
| "Alright everybody, here's the link. Remember, mute the
| tab right away but don't mute the video itself; wait 2
| minutes (the timer that starts when you click the link
| will go green to let you know), then click the dislike
| button."
|
| I've seen much _more_ complex instructions offered as
| part of gaming a poll, as well as sites built to help
| semi-automate or simplify the process.
|
| The key distinction that would be useful for YouTube to
| measure: did you encounter the video and then dislike it,
| or did you visit a video you were referred to for the
| sole purpose of disliking it? I don't think hiding
| dislike counts serves that purpose, though.
| davorak wrote:
| > If they have a minimum number of minutes that a video
| needs to be watched before a vote is counted
|
| I think that unintentionally removes down votes on
| obviously bad videos that people do not waste much time
| watching.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Agreed. Sometimes you know within a couple of seconds
| that a video isn't what the title and thumbnail claims it
| is, and that's a _great_ reason to hit "dislike".
|
| For instance, an hour-long video claiming to be what
| you're looking for, but actually consisting of a still
| image and a URL to a scam/spam site.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| Spikes don't really mean anything. If a video 'goes viral'
| it will all of a sudden get a lot of responses. And
| sometimes those will all be bad if it's a bad video or
| unpopular opinion. Interpreting that as bot voting or
| manipulation should have nothing to do with spikes.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Seems like a middle ground solution might be to restrict the
| display of downvotes to videos that meet a certain viewership
| threshold. That way organic voting would make brigading more
| difficult.
| a_f wrote:
| Steam has a useful chart which shows the votes/reviews over
| time with the ability to filter by language, purchase type,
| play time etc. Youtube could implement something similar to
| help shine a light on brigading
| bavell wrote:
| The steam review graph is brilliant and an example of
| getting it right. YT seems to have succumbed to it's
| incumbent position in the market and has stopped
| innovating - it now seeks only to maintain the status quo
| and apparently thinks dislikes are a threat to that.
| pugets wrote:
| YT can counter brigades by giving viewers even more
| statistics about a video. Example: what's the like to dislike
| ratio of a video in the past 7, 30, or 90 days, compared to
| all-time?
|
| Steam (a video game store) does this already. They categorize
| reviews as either being recent (made in the last 30 days) or
| all-time. If a game has excellent all-time reviews, but mixed
| recent reviews, then you can suspect something has recently
| upset the playerbase.
| eropple wrote:
| You can't, however, determine if what upset the player base
| is "the game developer is a woman" or "the game developer
| is gay" or "a streamer with a toxic following got mad at
| the game".
|
| It is low signal all the way through, and relegating likes
| and dislikes to a signal for recommendations is wise.
| pugets wrote:
| I don't want video game recommendations from someone that
| wants to sell me a video game, because they have a
| financial incentive to sell me a $60 game that I'll like
| instead of a $10 game that I'll love. No, I would much
| rather trust the opinions of people who have bought and
| played the game. I want to know if 99%, or 90%, or 65% of
| players gave it a good recommendation.
|
| Long-time Netflix subscribers might be having deja vu
| right now. Old Netflix had a ratings system, and users
| could filter content by average rating and see the top-
| rated movies and shows. Netflix later replaced that
| system with a recommendation engine. Not only does the
| recommendation engine not get my taste right, but it sure
| seems to recommend to me a lot of Netflix Originals.
| Jensson wrote:
| You can't vote for a game on steam unless you own it,
| that makes brigading mostly ineffective.
|
| What you are thinking of is metacritic where anyone can
| post, it is very prone to brigading, but steam reviews
| isn't.
| tgittos wrote:
| Except you can buy it, review and then request an almost
| unconditional refund.
| Jensson wrote:
| Which is a huge hurdle compared to just clicking a button
| with zero possible consequences.
| bavell wrote:
| How many times can you get away with this before steam
| wises up? My guess is not many. They also have your CC.
| Makes it a pain for anyone but criminals to successfully
| brigade en-masse.
| bavell wrote:
| Umm... What? I have never seen any of those things you
| mentioned on a steam review, ever, in my ~15yrs on the
| platform.
|
| The steam review graph is a fantastically useful tool for
| users with a huge SNR and I don't understand why you
| think otherwise.
| fishtacos wrote:
| You can probably google more, but here's a prominent
| example of why you're incorrect with your assumptions:
|
| https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-25-total-war-
| rome...
|
| "Total War: Rome 2 has suffered a Steam review bombing
| run over women characters and a recent update - but it
| turns out the game is working as intended.
|
| "Creative Assembly's PC strategy game, which came out in
| 2013, saw hundreds of new negative Steam reviews this
| week over the frequency with which women generals show up
| in the game and related claims about historical
| accuracy."
|
| and another one:
|
| https://www.techspot.com/news/91212-life-strange-true-
| colors...
|
| "The reason behind the Chinese users' anger is the
| inclusion of a symbol banned in their country. On the
| main street of the game's Haven Springs setting is a shop
| called Treasures of Tibet, which displays a Tibetan flag
| prominently outside the store."
|
| Valve has come out on more than one occasion to let
| customers and studios know that they are constantly
| working to mitigate brigading.
|
| EDIT: While not the norm, as you were alluding, gamer
| toxicity and brigading can also be relatively mainstream.
| A popular website among such circles is
|
| https://www.oneangrygamer.net/
|
| Reading the posts and comments can be quite revolting.
| bavell wrote:
| Neither of the articles claim what you're claiming though
| ("game dev is a woman/gay", etc). What assumption have I
| made that you think is incorrect? I just made an
| observation that in my extensive history on the platform
| I've never encountered what you stated.
|
| Really though, my main point I actually care about making
| is that the steam review system is far superior to a
| simple like/dislike system which YT implements.
|
| At the bottom of your first article:
|
| > Meanwhile, Total War: Rome 2 has an "overwhelmingly
| negative" recent reviews rating, with a "mostly positive"
| overall rating.
|
| Ahh, so it seems the steam rating system is working! Even
| though these games got "brigaded", users are still able
| to see the overall and historical ratings to get a better
| picture of what's going on.
|
| This actually lets you see the rating before the brigade
| started. And if the game is actually good, the brigaded
| ratings will amount to a blip amongst the other reviews.
| Case in point, here is the current steam page for R:TW2,
| with "very positive " overall rating: https://store.steam
| powered.com/app/214950/Total_War_ROME_II_...
| fishtacos wrote:
| "Neither of the articles claim what you're claiming
| though ("game dev is a woman/gay", etc). What assumption
| have I made that you think is incorrect? I just made an
| observation that in my extensive history on the platform
| I've never encountered what you stated."
|
| -- Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean that it didn't happen.
| My personal experience of using steam since its inception
| (HL2 launch on Steam, 2004), so roughly 17 years, is that
| I've come across this on a more than a few occasions. I
| tend to collect digital goods in a hoarding method, so
| I'm up to over 3700+ games in my library and I check a
| lot of them out when I can, even if I have no time to
| really play them anymore. The firs thing I read?
|
| REVIEWS!
|
| As mentioned - this is not the norm, and I agree with
| your general premise, but please don't dismiss what
| actually happened and what I witnessed (no, I don't have
| screenshots because I wasn't documenting it happening in
| real time when it occurred). The examples I brought up
| were illustrative of _some_ gamers ' groupthink mentality
| (including oneangrygamer.net, which has in mid-2021
| disabled comments because they were ridiculously toxic -
| misogynistic, sexist, homophobic and racist)
|
| Also - I'm not OP, FYI. I was backing OP's point.
|
| I can't be bothered to respond to the rest of your post,
| unfortunately, because it comes across as vapidly
| dismissive.
|
| Look up GamerGate if you'd like more information on
| brigading and misogynistic groupthink among related sub-
| communities.
| allenu wrote:
| I also found it informative. If I see a clip explaining
| something that has a large number of dislikes, I immediately
| back out and look for another one. Most of the time, those
| dislikes are warranted.
|
| I honestly don't know if it's a generational thing or overall
| cultural shift, but it feels like negativity (at least in the
| workplace is where I've seen this) is either less tolerated or
| less shared. There's a bias towards being positive about
| everything, even for things that aren't... great. It feels like
| self censorship, and this isn't even for things that are
| political, just subjective.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Removing downvotes from SO seems like it would be a net good.
| Instead of downvoting, people could be more encouraged to post
| better and more correct solutions.
|
| A good intermediate solution would be to only record downvotes
| that come with a comment.
| tester756 wrote:
| >Removing downvotes from SO seems like it would be a net
| good. Instead of downvoting, people could be more encouraged
| to post better and more correct solutions.
|
| and way more spam, no thanks.
| politician wrote:
| There's no salvaging what SO has become - the place where
| good complex questions are promptly closed by uninformed
| moderators. The place where questions about new versions of
| software are closed as duplicates of questions about older
| obsolete versions whose answers are no longer relevant. The
| place where popular questions with hundreds of upvotes and
| strong discussions are closed as off-topic.
| manquer wrote:
| If you see SO as community for developers these are all
| problems yes, however if you see it as a high quality wiki
| or KB, most of these issues are not problems for readers[1]
| . All knowledge repositories go through this problem,
| Wikipedia sites are equally notorious for making it very
| hard to contribute. As a KB grows older and larger, it
| becomes hard to balance the need to keep the current KB
| clean and enable creation of new content.
|
| Typically administrators respond by making it harder for
| the contributors rather than taking risk of poorer quality
| for the users, to contribute you have to become effectively
| professional and abide by institutional rules you may not
| agree with. Distributed editing tools only solves part of
| the problem and cannot not solve how to keep generating
| professional quality content without paying.
|
| Strong moderation is what differentiates SO from Quora, I
| rather live with SO style rules as a contributor than
| suffer poor Quora type content quality as a user.
|
| [1] I am cognizant of outdated version problems you raised,
| my anecdotal experience is in general the quality of
| answers that are present for a reader has not dropped
| massively in last 10 years.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| If you see SO as a high quality anything, I'm not sure
| what to say. It's filled with people answering the
| question they _wish_ was asked instead of ignoring the
| question they 're not satisfied with.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The best use of SO for me is: - Write an elaborate
| question about an apparently unsolvable problem - Realise
| the mistake while trying to explain it to the SO crowd -
| Close the website
|
| At some point I wanted to have a high score to see if it
| would affect my daily rate (it didn't) or if I could use
| it somehow (same as having tons of stars on GitHub -
| another useless errand).
|
| I started replying to a bunch of questions and the sheer
| stupidity of most of them made me realise I wasn't ready
| for that. Most of the content on SO is not great. There
| are definitely few gems in there and I certainly enjoyed
| "the <center> cannot hold", but most of the times the
| docs are better.
|
| On a side note. I never understood people that copy code
| from Stack Overflow. I can understand people who are not
| familiar with a programming language - but surely if
| you're a minimum proficient it would be faster to just
| write what you need to do or look for a library to do it?
| manquer wrote:
| I don't know a platform today that has better content
| than SO for technical questions.
|
| My code throughput have reduced a lot in recent years
| with changing roles and I prefer reading the actual
| documentation, I am no longer solving a
| immediate/specific problem. Even then I still click
| search hits on SO few times a week, and most times after
| clicking through a few questions I can find what I need.
|
| Your(others) experience will vary from my mine of course,
| but I don't see anyone attempting a better model or
| better content short of source documentation .
| eitland wrote:
| Like Google their main competitor is their former selves.
|
| As the mix of us who knew early versions of Google and
| Stack overflow gets diluted year by year by new users who
| don't know how well these systems used to work this will
| become less and less of a problem for them so they can
| sleep well at work.
|
| Until someone disrupts them. I'm happy to say it feels we
| are getting close to that moment now ;-)
| manquer wrote:
| It is likely I may know enough to judge a proposed solution
| is wrong or inadequate etc but not enough to write a better
| one. Vast majority of users who can down-vote would come
| under this category.
|
| Encouraging them to write their own solution or even a
| critique/comment is not necessarily better.
|
| You can also down vote questions not only answers, a question
| could be poor but it does not mean I can come up with a
| better one.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| IMO it's perfectly acceptable to not only not downvote but
| to ignore a question or answer if you don't know/don't want
| to put in more effort to figure it out. Maybe someone else
| has faced the problem and understands how the questioner
| came to write the question they did?
| manquer wrote:
| Many times it is not hard to figure out why the question
| was written in a bad way. Spending time in the review
| queue can give a good sense on bad types of content that
| are typical on the site.
|
| Common issues I come across are very vague statements
| without an actual question, very broad advisory
| /opinionated questions, very specific solve this bug in
| my day job/code , no examples/illustrations added, or a
| big log or code dump - i.e. no effort to separate out the
| actual problem statement, do my homework kind of
| questions, typically there will already be comments
| asking for improvements without much impact.
|
| I wouldn't down-vote a question that I don't fully
| understand ( I guess that is true for most users too), at
| the same time I want to make sure bad content is not
| encouraged. It is just internet points for both users,
| nothing to fret about.
| genewitch wrote:
| Kinda of ironic that you can't downvote/dislike on this site
| here without enough upvotes yourself...
| crowbahr wrote:
| That's not the solution proposed by youtube though: They're
| _never_ allowing you to "prove yourself" the way that hacker
| news does.
| LarrySellers wrote:
| There are no dislike/downvote buttons on submissions on HN
| (only comments), no matter how much you "prove yourself"
| WithinReason wrote:
| "flag" is used as dislike
| cute_boi wrote:
| actually this is good because it helps to mitigate bot
| somehow.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| To have full rights in a civilised society, you need to prove
| that you can be a good citizen first. What's wrong with that?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > To have full rights in a civilised society, you need to
| prove that you can be a good citizen first. What's wrong
| with that?
|
| That's literally not the case anywhere though. Maybe
| China's social credit system, maybe, but even then I think
| you start with a presumed "innocence".
|
| I can't think of any system of rights that are afforded
| after evidence merit and not birth. That's not what
| _rights_ are.
|
| Not going to ask you what _full rights_ means, as it
| implies you consider rights a gift from a government and
| not restrictions on a government.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| How about driving licenses?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Privilege, not a right.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| When is a thing merely a privilege, and not a right?
| Particularly when both can be conditional or qualified?
| I'm not sure this isn't playing a game of semantics--just
| because its called a privilege and not a right in the
| American context, does not mean that an argument that
| driving is not a right and merely a privilege.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Rights are restrictions people have placed on the
| government or has imposed on itself, as enumerated in
| say, a charter or constitution. These are not gifts from
| the government as list of things you can do, but a list
| of things they can't do. Bestowed on birth, and infringed
| upon only when necessary as agreed upon by the people for
| reasons.
|
| Privileges are features that may be taken for granted as
| rights but are not enumerated protections. You have no
| right to drive, it's a privilege that we all agree is
| handy.
|
| I don't think you are playing with semantics, but this is
| not a difficult concept.
|
| GP makes a completely baseless claim that you don't have
| "full rights" until someone says you do. They are talking
| about privledges.
| gowld wrote:
| Downvoting is a privilege, not a right. Like driving a
| car on a public road. Don't nitpick words, speak to the
| main point.
| lovethyenemy wrote:
| Guilty until proven innocent is an incompatible maxim for
| civilised society.
| aeternum wrote:
| Parent said full rights. Some rights must be earned or
| granted after some time period. A society that
| immediately gave children the right to drive and carry
| handguns would likely not stay civilized for long.
| [deleted]
| dcow wrote:
| How is that ironic? It's a well established spam prevention
| measure not a complete removal of a useful metric. It exists
| prominently on e.g. stack exchange sites and has been a
| common feature in general on reputation based forum software.
| What's perhaps ironic is that you can't see vote counts on HN
| comments _at all_ unless you're the author. So HN has already
| implemented this feature they just did it sensibly and
| included upvotes (on comments, at least) too. Most
| ironically, the front page shows only up-vote counts,
| something people are citing as a ruined experience in the
| case of YT removing the dislike count yet is par for the
| course for submissions on this very site.
| esnard wrote:
| Yeah, that bugs me a lot, especially since the comments section
| of a video can be heavily censored by the author.
| adminscoffee wrote:
| yeah good is ruining everything they touch
| pjmlp wrote:
| I really don't get this modern culture of positiveness, people
| cannot take a negative remark of any kind, kids should not play
| with anything that can hurt themselves, we are forbidden to say
| anything that can be interpreted in a negative way,...
| userbinator wrote:
| I find it ironic that your comment is downvoted ;-)
|
| I agree, this "toxic positivity" can't be good for society in
| the long term. The continued drive towards stupidity and
| unquestioning, docile populations is going to slowly turn
| into a massive dystopia.
| pjmlp wrote:
| As if I would care, I have seen plenty of stuff in this
| world, and yes we must care for the others and respect
| them.
|
| There is a red line between caring for the others, and what
| is nothing more than plain censorship via "toxic
| positivity".
| t-writescode wrote:
| So now I need to watch complete tutorial videos on obscure issues
| on YouTube to figure out if they're terrible or not?
|
| Tutorial videos, especially, benefited from the like-dislike
| ratio, because if 200 people saw a video on setting up some
| software and 7 people liked it, but 30 people disliked it, it's
| pretty easy to know that that 10 minute tutorial video isn't
| worth watching, as it's pacing is slow, or inaccurate or missing
| major steps or whatever.
|
| Neat.
| sofixa wrote:
| There will still be comments. On tutorial videos they're a
| great source of information.
| buhrmi wrote:
| If that post was a YouTube video it would only have dislikes
| gitgud wrote:
| It's not a huge deal in my opinion, it's the same decision Hacker
| News arrived at right?
| leppr wrote:
| It's not needed on Hacker News since it displays comments in
| order based on score, and greys-out comments with negative
| scores.
| vjancik wrote:
| Workaround: Create a top comment saying:
|
| "Upvote this comment if you disliked this video:"
| notjes wrote:
| I am all for it. But they should also remove like counts and
| comments. The content should speak for itself.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| That's not a feature we need. We need to know like/dislike ratio
| BEFORE clicking on a video so that we can avoid clicking on it. I
| end up clicking on so many spam videos cause Youtube doesn't tell
| you that simple number. For example, looking for sports
| highlights right after a game usually ends up with tens of spammy
| results with fake titles trying to take advantage of trendy
| topics.
|
| I'm sure Youtube tries to down rank such videos but in practice
| it's still a big problem. I understand they are trying to protect
| creators from bad actors but negative feedback is usually more
| important than positive feedback.
| peakaboo wrote:
| Hahaha - I knew it was only a matter of time.
|
| So many videos the last year has been downvoted severely because
| people see through all the bullshit being peddled by the mass
| media.
|
| YouTube has been censoring and removing any content they can that
| is against the narrative being created by the mass media.
|
| Large news stations have disabled comments on their videos to try
| and prevent dissent from being publicly viewable. Some of those
| videos has so many downvotes, it's hilarious to watch how the
| users are no longer sleeping and instead reacting to the
| bullshit.
|
| And now, when censoring and disabling comments still can't hide
| the enormous dissent, they try to remove even the downvote
| button.
|
| That's where we are in 2021. Pathetic.
| livinginfear wrote:
| Would it be a bit conspiratorial to guess that this is related to
| the terrible like/dislike ratio on the Biden administration's
| YouTube presence, as tracked by https://81m.org/
| mvotesbesteever wrote:
| Someone posted the link here a long time ago but some intrepid
| person was scraping youtube likes/dislikes on all the whitehouse
| videos and proved that youtube was actively manipulating vote
| count, sometimes by a very large percentage.
|
| "Most popular president ever".
|
| Total rubbish.
|
| Trump is going to have to win for a third time now.
|
| Let's Go Brandon!!
| crackercrews wrote:
| Any chance we can make a browser extension that registers votes
| of and shows vote counts for installed users?
|
| Google would fight it. But we could always side-load if they do.
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| that could work for any url, by the way. you could
| vote/downvote and discuss
| Zamicol wrote:
| I'd be interested in helping if anyone is working on a project.
|
| I'd also like to see this done web-wide.
| crackercrews wrote:
| It would also be great to have an extension that does a
| twitter search on the current URL. It could run automatically
| every time you load the page or just run when you click it.
|
| And the results could be limited to people you follow/follow
| you or all results. Just a nice way to see what people are
| talking about.
|
| Not sure this belongs in the same extension. But both are
| manual fixes for social media problems.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| I do sort of understand, similar to Reddit posts, if you post
| something factual that the 51% simply don't agree with, you'll
| likely have more dislikes than likes. It doesn't always mean it
| was a bad video, or that you didn't back up what you were saying
| with studies/facts, but just that the 51% personally disagreed.
|
| Now there's obviously a lot of videos that are just bad or full
| of lies that should be negative. But there's also plenty that sit
| negative for reasons entirely made of opinion.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > You can still dislike videos to further personalize and tune
| your recommendations.
|
| If I come across a low-quality rip of Dark Side of the Moon and
| dislike it, will Youtube recommend to me less Pink Floyd or less
| low quality rips? What if I dislike that horrible Barenboim
| performance of Beethoven's Ninth? Will I get less Beethoven or
| less horrible performances? What about reports of Israel killing
| Gazan children, when the video footage clearly shows children
| killed when a Hamas projectile they were "guarding" prematurely
| detonated? Do I get less news or less lies? What about that idiot
| who knows a lot about cars and car history (Donut maybe) but
| screams and acts like he graduated from Animal House? Do I get
| less informative car videos or less puerile screaming and
| sentences composed of 15 cuts, sometimes right in the middle of a
| compound word?
|
| I think that basing recommendations on a single dimension is
| flawed in its own right.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I just went to Youtube's homepage for the first time in ages,
| to see what it would recommend for me. I saw maybe a dozen
| suggested videos just to check it out.
|
| And I would say that all but two had either a misleading title
| or a misleading thumbnail. These are things directly related to
| my interests: self defense, computer security, lockpicking,
| spaceflight, physics, automobiles. But other than the young man
| talking about SpaceX (Marcus House) and the Lock Picking
| Lawyer, every single video had either a title that
| misrepresented or completely lied about the content, or a very
| attractive thumbnail that was barely tangentially associated
| with the content.
| josteink wrote:
| Welcome to monetised platforms with a "infinite" global
| reach.
|
| People _are_ going to game it. They _are_ going to cheat.
|
| Especially when the platform itself allows it. But hey!
| "Small creators!", right?
| cmaggiulli wrote:
| This is another big tech bubble wrap initiative. There is no
| "disapprove" option left. Everyone needs to be positive about
| everything at all times
| 0xFreebie wrote:
| A loose remaining proxy will be the ratio of like count to view
| count. Perhaps one of those will be axed next. I don't understand
| why complaining creators don't just turn off voting.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I don't think you can just turn it off. You can hide both likes
| and dislikes and disable comments e.g.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdvidv6RXJY but the buttons
| still function just without score.
|
| Of course most creator's don't want to do what you say anyways.
| Like's help them, dislikes don't. Dislike counts are (well
| were) for users.
| hammock wrote:
| Or, for those videos with comments enabled, comment count to
| view count (called "getting ratio'd" on Twitter, which also
| doesn't have dislikes)
| scottmcdot wrote:
| Would it be a breach of terms and conditions if a creator live
| streamed their down vote stats?
| TrianguloY wrote:
| In the past, people needed to learn to not take random negative
| opinions on the internet seriously. Now they don't allow them
| directly.
|
| More seriously: I can understand people feeling bad for negative
| opinions on their own content (it's hard and you need to feel it
| directly to be able to understand), however if they do want to
| protect creators which can't protect themselves, make it
| invisible for the creators themselves, like a button to "don't
| see dislikes on my own videos". Those creators will probably be
| unaware of the fact they are being disliked and learn from it,
| but at least viewers won't be disturbed.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Time to code up a quick Likes/Views ratio to inject below videos
| with ViolentMonkey.
| nirui wrote:
| > In short, our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike
| attacking behavior
|
| "attacking behavior"? This tone is giving me some weird feelings.
|
| Here is a constructive opinion: Add it as an optional feature.
| Let the publisher select "Display both like and dislike counts",
| "Display only like counts" and "Don't display both count".
| YouTube has already implemented the "Display both" and "Hide
| both" option in their "Studio"/video manage page, they just need
| to add a new one.
| slightwinder wrote:
| This will not work, because then people will assume that
| everyone who disables dislikes does it for reasons of bad
| content, not because of cybermobbing or similar reasons.
| Disabling it for all is a social solution to protect everyone
| together.
| resonious wrote:
| I had the exact same reaction after reading
|
| > We've also heard directly from smaller creators, and those
| just getting started with their YouTube channel, that they are
| unfairly targeted by dislike attacks.
|
| How do they know that? I hate to be rude but what if people
| genuinely don't like the content? Of course maybe someone said
| upfront "I am dislike bombing this video with my 100 youtube
| accounts" but otherwise it's not clear to me how people are
| differentiating between an attack and a genuine expression of
| opinion (though an admittedly rather coarse one).
| wdb wrote:
| Why not protect the other creators which don't get so many likes
| compared to other creators and hide the like count too?
| schainks wrote:
| Google switched to finance numbers-based management ages ago.
| This decision, while unpopular, is money driven, and they think
| it will make them money.
|
| Edit: I, too, use the ratio of likes/dislikes to make a decision
| about spending time watching something.
| narrator wrote:
| I always said that youtube is too successful and is looking for
| ways to get rid of users. Peak youtube, as far as pure power for
| users, was probably the late 2000s. 2016 was when things started
| to go downhill.
|
| We have a lot of problems where our society has been too
| successful at its technological goal. Inequality, climate change,
| gun control. All areas where capitalist economics has produced
| wild success and enormous effort is diverted from other useful
| goals to control that success.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Surprised it's held on this long.
| [deleted]
| kodah wrote:
| I'm curious how useful voting really is. The usefulness of it
| really depends on if voters are disciplined enough to remove
| their opinion voting and vote based on an established, high-level
| framework. The latter still includes some opinion, but at least
| more rigorous and less opinionated.
|
| I can see a couple outcomes from such a system:
|
| - downvotes are guideline violations
|
| - upvotes indicate relativity, not necessarily agreeableness
|
| - no interaction would be common
|
| All of this is centric to a users thought. I don't think a
| machine could be taught these things.
| throwawaycuriou wrote:
| I'd like to glean valuable context from voting ratios. It used
| to be possible. But my confidence in voting is dashed. There's
| too much money and power involved. Gaming the system is
| something I feel is (rightly or wrongly?) too easy to do.
| Facebook's introduction of a like button was a turning point in
| what the Internet is used for.
| cortexio wrote:
| probably because youtube their own videos are mostly downvoted
| for 90% because everyone recognises they make propaganda videos
| and people dont like it. But, in general this is bad. How is it
| any different than north korea, where you can only show your
| praise to the leader but not the dislike? sigh..
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| People are talking about how this will make it difficult to get
| good information. And that is true. No one will downvote videos
| now, because publicly expressing your disapproval was the only
| reason to do so.
|
| Now, the only people who will downvote are people who are
| technically savvy enough to realize that downvoting will help
| YouTube recommend better videos to them.
|
| It's a shame, YouTube is one of the last platforms where publicly
| expressing your disapproval via a voting system is possible. And
| I think this has an effect on the nature of internet discourse.
| Look at the difference in conversations on Twitter vs Reddit. On
| Twitter, if you see something that you disagree with, you leave
| an (often ad hominem) comment. On Reddit, you just downvote, and
| feel equally satisfied.
| dotancohen wrote:
| From the fine article: > You can still dislike
| videos to further personalize and tune your recommendations.
|
| 2016 Dislike button: Feature to inform other users that a video
| is not worth watching.
|
| 2021 Dislike button: Feature to inform google to show _you_ other
| content.
|
| Google is hijacking user interface concepts to slowly train users
| to train the machine about how to train them.
| notzaler wrote:
| The like to dislike ratio is one of the best indicators of
| whether a video is clickbait or not. We are now at the stage
| where vies for our attention have become a zero-sum game. This
| will ultimately favour bad actors more than it will help out
| small creators.
| [deleted]
| dusted wrote:
| I actually thing this is a fair idea. Preserving the button so I
| can tell the algorithm (and video author) that it's not something
| I want to see is a good thing. Hiding the number of dislikes
| makes me unable to be biased towards what I've seen and forces me
| more directly to form my own opinion.
|
| I think it would be a good idea to do the same with the Likes
| count.
| rickspencer3 wrote:
| I read this as an example of my belief that unfettered engagement
| without a strong Code of Conduct enforced by human moderates
| always leads to a toxic community. Removing degrees of freedom in
| expression is necessary without such efforts to have and enforce
| standards.
|
| For example, if you use Nintendo products, you can see that they
| rarely allow unfettered communication. For example, you can
| choose from a list of things to say, or you can choose an emotion
| to express, but you can't type whatever you want to other players
| on their network (usually).
| post_break wrote:
| So now I can't quickly see if a video how-to is a complete waste
| of my time or not. Great.
| chilling wrote:
| You probably will have to check the comment section
| post_break wrote:
| You can disable or delete comments.
| Drew_ wrote:
| You can also disable ratings. Ratings and comments being
| disabled is a strong signal in its own right as well.
| dylan604 wrote:
| <shudder> reaching into the bowels of YT comments is
| something i regularly try to avoid. "put on a helmet and
| pads, and get in there"
| baud147258 wrote:
| It must depends on the videos, but most comment sections
| where I've gone down weren't bad and a lot were very
| positive.
| epolanski wrote:
| Your waste of time is google's revenue and the reason they are
| doing it.
| bagacrap wrote:
| eh, I would guess it's more like one PM wanted to get a promo
| by making a high profile change, and by claiming they were
| protecting some victim their case became politically
| unassailable
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Alternatively,
|
| "Hey, Reddit did this thing. We're a little like Reddit;
| should we do the thing?"
|
| "I dunno... AB test it."
|
| _AB test shows net effect is fewer dislikes, much like
| Reddit saw_
|
| "Cool; let's roll it out."
| gpt5 wrote:
| The likes to views ratio is still a useful indicator (although
| a less obvious one)
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| I need a FF extension that will display this to me visually.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| They've disabled the visual ratio bar for me. Wish I could
| get it back.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I think it will lead to less liking behaviour. They didn't
| test for this.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| The comment section still works
| tsian2 wrote:
| It might become an outlet for all the people who want to tell
| others whether they think a video is worth watching or not,
| making it harder to find comments with substance.
| pessimizer wrote:
| ...until it's gone, or new youtube blue checks mark
| commenters that automatically get floated to the top.
| emkoemko wrote:
| well this will be good for flat Earthers videos, they always
| end up with lots of dislikes :) now more people can fall for
| the countless bs on youtube based on the like count and no
| counter showing dissent....
| myohmy wrote:
| Oh no its better than that. All the downvotes count as
| engagement, so it will get recommended to other people who
| can only see that it has 100 likes and not 20000 dislikes.
|
| Which means my videos can finally stop being brigaded by
| those damn round earthers! Spread the truth!
| miamiwebdesign wrote:
| Feel like this is a necessary feature. A compromise would be to
| turn it off for ads but leave it on for everything else...I'm
| lost now, gonna be hard to quickly determine garbage from good
| insight.
| [deleted]
| inChargeOfIT wrote:
| This will make the site useless for finding new content and
| content creators. And what's the point of a Like count without a
| Dislike count?
|
| I'll just assume every video has as many, if not more, dislikes
| and will turn to other sources for finding quality content (if at
| all).
|
| And they might as well get rid of the comments section too cause
| that's where people will voice their opinions.. but maybe that's
| part of the plan.
|
| Anyway, I've been a paying premium member since the beginning but
| the second I stop seeing dislike counts is the second I find
| other things to do with my time. Sad, because I really enjoy
| surfing YouTube.
| dntrkv wrote:
| HN doesn't show dislikes and it manages to surface content
| better than the vast majority of aggregators and forums out
| there. Subreddits that remove the dislike function have much
| better content and levels of discourse.
|
| Removing dislikes (hiding them being step one) seems to be one
| of the better ways to improve the quality of content and
| commentary. Just for the fact that it removes the ability of a
| single group to brigade any content/creator they dislike or
| disagree with.
| MMS21 wrote:
| >HN doesn't show dislikes
|
| It sort of does; comments go from black to grey to the point
| where its nearly invisible.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| It shows total score though. Moderators and a community
| culture with quality control matters way more, there is no
| evidence that it increases quality. Just look at 4chan with
| no scores.
| Nesco wrote:
| Except that on 4chan people adapts and mostly reads threads
| that already possess replies. The multiplicative effect it
| creates ensure that only the threads that are the most
| interesting get most of the views. And because it is an
| image board a similar effect happens for posts: the
| presence of an image and the length of a post give a quick
| proxy to evaluate the effort put in it. Yes it will never
| be as effective as a karma / like system but imo it's well
| suited to an anonymous imageboard, particularly for boards
| where threads without replies tends to get replaced
| quickly.
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| It doesn't show votes on comments for me. I can't even
| downvote!
| chairmanwow1 wrote:
| You can after 500 karma
| [deleted]
| ryanisnan wrote:
| Completely - What does 13,478 likes mean if 1,000,000,000
| people have viewed the video, and 20,104,189 people disliked
| it. Batshit stupid.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| This comment is the key isn't it?
|
| If someone tells you there's an election in some province of
| a country that you know nothing about, and they tell you
| there were two candidates A and B, and they tell you that
| candidate A received 17,652 votes, do you not need to know
| the total number of votes cast in order to assess the
| election results? I always thought you did.
| bsder wrote:
| Personally, I'd rather they keep the dislike count and dump the
| comments section.
|
| I can probably count the number of times I've come across a
| comments section on YouTube that hasn't been a dumpster fire of
| idiocy on two hands (and I'm being generous).
| franciscop wrote:
| I've found that the more the niche a video is, or the more
| "cultural" videos (what the masses might call "boring"), the
| better the comments are.
|
| For example "Baumgartner Restoration" are decently popular at
| X00,000 views/video and comments are definitely civil, but it
| definitely doesn't target the typical youtube viewer. Game
| making tutorials in Godot are normally in the X,000-X0,000
| range, which is "niche" for youtube, and they are normally
| not only civil but some times even contain useful tips!
| sojournerc wrote:
| Really depends on the content. I love surfing comments on a
| lot of videos (even dash cam vids, hehe).
|
| I see a lot of positive comments for my favorite creators
| too. Would hate to get rid of the encouragement.
| eftychis wrote:
| This really depends on the content. A lot of areas of content
| have useful comment communities actually.
| SNosTrAnDbLe wrote:
| So true! The comments section feels like the people who shout
| or whistle while watching a movie in a theater. Moreover, I
| find the videos which have commenting turned off much more
| enjoyable.
| OisinMoran wrote:
| Whoa now, steady on! The comments on YouTube are one of my
| favourite parts and I would miss them much more than the
| dislikes (don't really pay much attention to those but do
| seem useful).
|
| I'm guessing you don't listen to much music on YouTube then?
| The great comments honestly at least double the enjoyment.
| E.g https://youtu.be/q4xKvHANqjk
| prawn wrote:
| The comments used to be horrific but on a lot of videos
| now, they're actually quite entertaining. I laugh at the
| top comment on this video every time:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FssULNGSZIA
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| I read some comments for most videos I watch, especially
| Doom, standup comedy, music videos. YouTube seems to surface
| the funny comments and has cut down on the repetitive ones
| about what year it is.
| azth wrote:
| > especially Doom
|
| The game?
| greenimpala wrote:
| No matter whether you agree or disagree with this change (good
| reasons for both sides in the comments), what does it say about
| our society that a minute UI change on a website by a private
| company can potentially cause huge consequence
| adamc wrote:
| Well, it was a good way to get me to cancel youtube premium. It
| seems like a clear indicator that we are the product, and content
| creators the actual customers.
|
| No worries, there are always alternatives.
| louissan wrote:
| Disney's been talking to them ....
| authed wrote:
| might have been Biden... Do a Biden search and look at the
| like/dislike ratios if you don't believe me (I can still see
| the dislikes on Youtube, not sure when it starts)...
| butler14 wrote:
| This isn't about small content creators. It's almost certainly
| about big brands (advertisers) that hate it when their high
| budget movie/game/trailer/whatever gets publicly downvoted.
| gfosco wrote:
| Politics, too. The White House has been on the receiving end of
| quite a showing of popularity lately.
| wubbert wrote:
| Just like when Netflix removed their star ratings with a only a
| thumbs up.
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| And a thumbs down, no?
|
| That being said, there is no globally-visible '%age of
| viewers like this' value on each title. Instead, thumbs
| up/down seems to be used as probably one of many signals in
| the '% match' (how likely are you to enjoy it) metric.
| adamc wrote:
| A small part of why I stopped using Netflix... it became
| harder to assess what I wanted to watch.
| bko wrote:
| Whitehouse youtube also had an embarrassing number of dislikes.
|
| Dislike is incredibly useful to the user. Seeing a high dislike
| count on video (with some exceptions) indicates a video is
| likely not what it purports to be.
| tinalumfoil wrote:
| This could also be a pride thing for Youtube/Alphabet. For the
| past few years the Youtube Rewind video [0] has somewhat
| infamously gotten heavily downvoted, mostly I think as a
| reflection of how frustrated viewers are with Youtube and maybe
| Alphabet as well. I'm sure the executives feel some catharsis
| taking away an avenue for users to express that frustration.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbJOTdZBX1g
| ainar-g wrote:
| Rewind is kind of old news. Now that time YouTube CEO Susan
| Wojcicki received a Free Expression Award from an
| organisation sponsored by YouTube[1] is more recent and
| something else completely, ratio-wise. Currently at 56,502
| dislikes vs 226 likes. Which is a ratio of over 250x.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k
| ernst_10 wrote:
| And now Susan is proving those downvotes were more than
| justified. It's not just that though, also all the left-
| wing stuff being downvoted is hurting feelings over at
| Google HQ. They desperately want to believe the public is
| overwhelmingly on their side.
| deadmutex wrote:
| My take on it is that there is a number of diverse creators
| on the platform, and many YT users see a very different set
| of creators. E.g. You might see creators X, Y, Z and I might
| watch A, B, C for different topics. So, when it comes time to
| rewind, you can't please everyone since you'll have to pick a
| subset of creators. And then those who didn't see their
| favorite creators will be saying things like "Where was
| creator J? I watched so many of their videos, and they have a
| billion views, etc." And they might dislike the video,
| because they feel not represented. So, in my mind, the YT way
| to do rewind would be to do a custom rewind for each person
| (but there's no technology to automatically make a high
| quality video like that today).
|
| Of course, this is just my theory about a segmentation of the
| population. Then there are people with their own agenda, and
| will use the dislike button as a protest for other things.
| Then once it reaches some threshold, some people just like to
| hit the dislike button to see how far they can push it.
|
| Disclaimer: These are my own views, and not of my employer.
| gpt5 wrote:
| Advertisers and creators already had the ability to hide
| likes/dislikes.
| fl0wenol wrote:
| They explained in a related post that people were being
| harassed for hiding it or hiding comments... (Replace people
| with "brands" and we can infer their true motivation)
| tapoxi wrote:
| Honestly I'm sick of every time someone posts a video
| suggesting vaccination it's heavily downvoted - for example
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc79u7ym8SY
| deadmutex wrote:
| Yeah, I fear that some people will see massive dislike ratio
| on vaccination related videos and think "oh, yeah,
| vaccination is really unpopular. Maybe I should be listening
| to what people are saying against it. I don't want to get
| singled out. No one is getting vaccinated" etc. It seems like
| it becomes a circle jerk, and a way to "protest", rather than
| it being an actual signal.
|
| Disclaimer: These views are entirely my own, and not of my
| employer.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Is it a good thing that an average person is getting fewer
| and fewer ways to participate in the exchange of ideas? Has
| this ever worked well in history where less speech was
| enabled was actually progress?
|
| Is the future of humanity only that corporate-approved
| ideas and protests are allowed in the public square? Could
| this ever backfire in the future?
|
| An average person might get their speech silenced when they
| get some fact wrong. Does the mass media suffer that same
| fate when they get something wrong? What are the
| consequences of effectively creating unequal classes of
| people?
|
| Just a few random questions and thoughts that this line of
| thinking leads to, in my opinion.
| deadmutex wrote:
| Discussing ideas based on reality is good. Things like
| hate speech, and deliberate misinformation is not.
|
| Disclaimer: My views are my own, and not of my employer.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| And then we come back to the age old question of who
| decides what is "hate speech", "deliberate
| misinformation", and other doubleplusungood topics?
|
| I think we can do better than letting free human
| discourse be controlled by a handful of megacorps and
| Susan Wojcicki.
|
| Disclaimer: I don't need to repeat an annoying disclaimer
| in every post.
| deadmutex wrote:
| > I think we can do better
|
| I would be open to hearing better ideas, please
| elaborate.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| In this thread, a number of posts seem to be some people
| hyperventilating at the thought of "hate speech" and
| "misinformation" being allowed on the Internet.
|
| Short of building a time machine and going back and
| heeding Senator McCarthy's warning, the solutions are
| very simple in my opinion.
|
| 1) Really teach people that words have no power over you
| unless you let them.
|
| > Sticks and stones may break my bones
|
| > But words shall never hurt me.
|
| Internalize this and voila: any "hate speech" that exists
| is de facto powerless to harm you.
|
| Society has unfortunately taken the opposite approach and
| acts as if the existence of hate is harmful by itself and
| magnifies it to an extreme.
|
| 2) Teach people that everything you read online should be
| considered fake news until you verify it.
|
| Voila. You're immune to fake news, medical
| misinformation, authoritarian government propaganda, and
| anything else that's not real.
|
| Society has unfortunately taken the opposite approach and
| wants to have the political establishment "fact check"
| and decide what's true for you.
| benmw333 wrote:
| I think my above question was just answered here. I think
| YouTube is more aligned with the cultural movement of
| "positive things only" and only with certain ideas, i.e.
| COVID vaccine. I think it is a smart business idea for
| them.
| deadmutex wrote:
| > I think YouTube is more aligned with the cultural
| movement of "positive things only" and only with certain
| ideas, i.e. COVID vaccine.
|
| I don't think you can conclude that from the above. My
| point was that dislike ratios attacks basically abuse the
| feature that previously provided valuable signal to the
| user on whether the video was of good quality. Now, this
| removes the incentive for dislike ratio attacks to abuse
| this feature.
|
| Disclaimer: My views are my own, and not of my employer.
| benmw333 wrote:
| It goes both ways - right? For Likes/Dislikes.
| Regardless, I think this is strictly a big business move
| - in response to perceived cultural movement.
| 0xDEEPFAC wrote:
| Yea, I agree, its dangerous for people to express their
| opinions especially if it changes or influences others.
|
| We should hide the dislike count so the mindless don't
| submit to "bad think"
| deadmutex wrote:
| This post comes off as being sarcastic. Here is a
| question: are you OK with hate speech on social media? If
| yes, then I don't think we can agree on much. If no, then
| please re-read your statement and see how it applies to
| hate speech.
|
| My point: There's always a balance, and health
| misinformation is costing a lot of lives today.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MczumO5PHXg.
|
| Disclaimer: My views are my own, and not of my employer.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"Here is a question: are you OK with hate speech on
| social media? If yes, then I don't think we can agree on
| much."
|
| And now we circle back to the classic question, _who_
| determines what constitutes hate-speech and _who_ is
| responsible for making the judgement? The kinds of people
| who end up as censors tend to be the most sensitive and
| the false-positive rate is very high. There is no
| shortage of partisan activists willing to
| indiscriminately label things as racist or hateful these
| days.
|
| Additionally, what constitutes misinformation that costs
| lives? I remember back when claiming sanitizing surfaces
| did not reduce the spread of COVID was misinformation and
| grounds for a ban on social media platforms. Turns out,
| sanitizing surfaces really doesn't slow Covid at all. So
| much of what we know to be 'true' is actually in-flux and
| subject to change as more time and research goes on.
|
| My point is, wanting to restrict hate-speech and
| misinformation is not a dangerous thing _in and of
| itself_ , but it should be done with great caution and
| hesitancy because you run the risk of censoring true
| information and preventing people from expressing ideas
| that run against the orthodoxy of the censors. I hope
| that people don't view things as black and white as
| 'allow hate-speech, yes or no?'
| deadmutex wrote:
| > wanting to restrict hate-speech and misinformation is
| not a dangerous thing in and of itself, but it should be
| done with great caution and hesitancy
|
| Agree (This is my personal view, and not of my employers)
| 0xDEEPFAC wrote:
| > This post comes off as being sarcastic
|
| Indeed. It is.
|
| > and health misinformation is costing a lot of lives
| today
|
| Thats a pretty cynical view of humanity - should we ban
| motorcycles because they are costing peoples lives? What
| is so bad about letting people make their own choices?
|
| > are you OK with hate speech on social media
|
| I believe in "free speech".
|
| For example, is it even possible for you to tell me an
| objective definition of "hate" speech or
| "misinformation"? I bet you can't since it ends up being
| whatever Alphabet, or Meta's truth and morality
| departments agree on.
|
| Without ways to express yourself the internet will just
| turn into TV - where people who agree with the megacorps
| get to hear their own echos all day.
| tapoxi wrote:
| > Thats a pretty cynical view of humanity - should we ban
| motorcycles because they are costing peoples lives? What
| is so bad about letting people make their own choices?
|
| Ridiculous analogy. We're talking about preventing the
| spread of a lethal contagious disease. If driving a
| motorcycle made everyone around them unsafe then it would
| be a valid comparison.
| 0xDEEPFAC wrote:
| > driving a motorcycle made everyone around them unsafe
|
| Not totally untrue
|
| > We're talking about preventing the spread of a lethal
| contagious disease
|
| Getting vaccinated doesn't stop the spread... if you
| believe everything you hear our government officials say
| then I have a war in Iraq and a truck-load of cloth masks
| to sell you.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Do you want less people to be vaccinated?
|
| Lets bring it back to that specific example someone
| brought up, which is vaccination. Do you think it a good
| thing, personally, for less people to be vaccinated?
| 0xDEEPFAC wrote:
| Do you think censoring people would help encourage
| vaccines?
|
| The key point here is the treatment of those opposing
| certain views as clearly stupid and in need of protecting
| is toxic and non-productive. Is Joe Rogan a mindless
| Trump-voting retard?
|
| You're not going to reach people by silencing creators -
| you're just going to make their viewers feel prosecuted,
| angry, and confused. They'll just move to other platforms
| and probably vote for Trump again...
|
| The way to reach them would be through dialog etc. which
| is getting more impossible by the day.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0PYlLQn_YM
| stale2002 wrote:
| It was a simple question. Do you want less people to be
| vaccinated?
|
| The other person suggested that less people might be
| vaccinated, and your response was to talk about "bad
| think", and "changes or influences others", where the
| specific topic is "changes or influences others" to cause
| less people to be vaccinated.
|
| This implies that you, for some reason want less people
| to be vaccinated, and that it was a good thing to
| "changes or influences others", in such a way as less
| people get vaccinated.
| 0xDEEPFAC wrote:
| > other person suggested that less people might be
| vaccinated
|
| And I am suggesting more people might get vaccinated if
| they are treated as intelligent and allowed to engage in
| dialog instead of being shadow-banned and removed.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > And I am suggesting
|
| You previously suggested that it was be a good thing to
| "change or influences others" to not get vaccinated.
|
| That is the statement that I am taking issue with. When
| you implied that it would be a good thing for less people
| to be vaccinated.
| 0xDEEPFAC wrote:
| I am saying its a good thing that videos are allowed
| which encourage people to not get vaccinated or contain
| information about vaccines not coming from a news
| network, because the alternative (censorship) is barbaric
| and unhelpful.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > which encourage people to not get vaccinated
|
| But that would be bad if that happened right? If people
| got encouraged to not get vaccinated, that would be bad?
|
| > is barbaric and unhelpful.
|
| You think that it is barbaric that a dislike button is
| not available on one single platform? Because that is
| what the other comment was about. It was about the
| dislike button.
|
| It was not about videos being removed en-mass. Instead it
| was about a dislike button, on one platform.
| 0xDEEPFAC wrote:
| > If people got encouraged to not get vaccinated, that
| would be bad?
|
| Yea of course, and thats my point. I think banning these
| videos and the ability to show discontent makes the
| problem worse and further divides us on political lines.
| What exactly is your argument here?
|
| > You that that it is barbaric that a dislike button is
| not available on one platform?
|
| The removal of the dislike button is another step in an
| undeniable trend toward censorship against anything mega
| corps and governments decide is not moral or truthful.
|
| People can tell when they are being herded around and
| silenced, and they dislike it.
| benmw333 wrote:
| Genuine question - why are you "sick of it" - what does a
| large amount of downvotes actually "do" and why would that
| make you "sick"
| [deleted]
| BenoitP wrote:
| Yup. I guess I'll use Youtube less, then. The downvote ratio
| contains so much information as to what video is garbage.
|
| Less than 80% approval -> I don't watch.
|
| I use a Ratings Preview chrome extension to show me the
| downvotes next to the thumbnails, and it will be rendered
| useless. I guess I'll just stop getting into Youtube
| rabbitholes now.
|
| Maybe it is a blessing in disguise.
| deadmutex wrote:
| Note: the downvote ratio is a noisy (and sometimes
| misleading) signal.
|
| From my personal perspective, most vaccine related videos
| have high % of dislikes. And bunch of videos implying
| Ivermectine as a cure videos have a high % of likes. I think
| the dislike ratio is not as valuable to many of these videos.
|
| Disclaimer: My views are my own, and not of my employer.
| jjice wrote:
| The like:dislike ratio is so important when picking a tutorial
| video. If I see a video on replacing my headlights has an awful
| ratio, I'm going to save myself the time and find a different
| video. YouTube has been disappointing me for years now, mostly
| with their hiding of things. Subscriptions don't work the same as
| they used to and recommended videos take precedence over
| everything else.
|
| The issue is that it's so critical to learning these days, and so
| much of the entertainment I consume comes from it. Can't say I'm
| surprised though. Social media has it's positives and enjoyable
| properties, but in the end, they will manipulate the platform in
| the most fiscally advantageous way.
| Ellipse0934 wrote:
| My comment on their post: (Nobody will read it there but you fine
| folk might) > Just letting you know that I have unsubscribed from
| youtube premium and will actively be looking for youtube
| alternatives for content consumption (and creation in the future
| ?). While the dislike button has potential for abuse there is
| also potential for abuse by having no feedback mechanism. There
| are tons of DIY/informative videos on youtube where the
| information is wrong and can hurt viewers, what happens when
| someone unsuspecting installs a virus on their computer or gets
| scammed ? What happens when someone buys a product whose quality
| is extremely poor ? Does youtube take responsibility ? No,
| because you are a platform and had no role. I don't mind if you
| want to monitor the dislikes for abuse but this is taking it too
| far. I also don't mind creators manually switching off the bar
| for their videos.
|
| At the end of the day you are manufacturing consent for your
| users as per the demands of your corporation friends and
| advertisers. You want a happy place where everything is happy and
| joyful with no abuse and attacking but alas that is not the world
| in which we live. Have fun and make profits hacking the brains of
| the viewers you "say" you care about for your advertisers and
| corporate friends.
|
| Peace out!
| alias_neo wrote:
| I'm listening to a "Spaces" chat about this on Twitter right now,
| and I tend to disagree with the consensus, but I don't have a
| voice there.
|
| As a viewer, who uses YouTube for educational/learning reasons,
| dislike ratio is really important for me to know whether I should
| or should not spend the hour or sometimes more to watch it,
| rather than go find something else which may be better.
|
| The pessimist in me sees this as a way for YouTube to take away
| that knowledge you'd have up front, forcing you to watch a video
| (and the adverts it contains) before you can decide whether it
| was worth your time.
|
| The pragmatist in me however believes that if we're going to
| remove dislike counts, we should remove like counts, but again,
| the pessimist sees this as something that wouldn't benefit
| YouTube.
|
| Ultimately, given that people are being abused through the
| counter, I accept the removal of its utility and will probably
| just bounce out of videos that may or may not have been suitable
| much more quickly.
|
| For the record, I believe I may have _clicked_ dislike, no more
| than a handful of times ever for really, truly poor "content".
| shalmanese wrote:
| This feels like one of those changes where they already decided
| to do it and used an experiment to justify their decision. The
| binary choice between showing only raw dislikes or no dislikes as
| well tilts the table towards an extreme change.
|
| There's lots of interesting design choices they could have made
| of not encouraging dislike storms while still giving valuable
| info to viewers like highlighting if any video has an unusually
| high dislike to like ratio or attaching comments to dislikes and
| highlighting highly upvoted reasons why certain people are
| choosing to dislike a video etc.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Almost any video featuring Biden, the "most popular" president in
| history, gets disliked by a huge ratio. So Youtube is making it
| that you can't publicly dislike government propaganda now. Huge
| setback for civil rights and democracy. Government lies, and
| corporate media joining hands together yet again.
| nfRfqX5n wrote:
| purely for engagement
| wffurr wrote:
| What a disaster all the top-level comments are both here and on
| the article.
| dgudkov wrote:
| It solves nothing. They still need something to mark poor quality
| videos so that the viewers don't waste time figuring it out
| themselves. Oh, wait, the mighty algorithm gods of Google will
| again decide for you what you like.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Talk about tinkering around the edges.
|
| How about making an effort to remove polical and health
| misinformation?
| [deleted]
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| You _WILL_ watch the video
|
| You _WILL_ like the video
|
| You _WILL_ have absolutely no say over anything
| Gentil wrote:
| As much as I would love to give the benefit of the doubt, this is
| purely about increasing engagement. Disliking something was a
| very easy way to say I don't like this.
|
| When something controversial happens from now onwards, you will
| have engage in the comment section. Humans cannot just move on
| when they have strong feelings about something like Politics or
| Climate change for example. With the dislike button gone, most
| people will feel the need to say you don't like/agree with a
| video. How do you do that? Comments. The negative engagement
| makes Youtube/Google money. This has been a known fact for a long
| time. This way they can cash on it more with increased
| engagement.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| So, now it is same like Instagram there is only like, how do we
| stop toxic/click-bait videos spreading?
| haunter wrote:
| Nice try but Amy Schumer still sucks
| tetrahedr0n wrote:
| Brilliant.
|
| People will often watch something they dislike with more
| intensity than something they like. The number of dislikes isn't
| the reason they want to watch it, it's the idea the title or
| cover image brings to mind. And those ideas and images are
| curated by Google.
|
| Take the number of dislikes out of visibility and you strip the
| noise away from the signal that makes them money; views.
|
| And who knows, the user might end up watching something that they
| wouldn't normally due to dislikes and, surprise, they like it.
| More exposure, less echo chamber-like. Less potential influence
| over a viewer's opinion of the content.
| sjwalter wrote:
| Not brilliant at all.
|
| This is yet another move to make YouTube friendly to the same
| powers that be everywhere. This is a tool for centralized
| control, not a platform for everyone.
|
| The reason they're doing this is the whitehouse is a joke. It's
| harder to convince the proles they should continue to be as
| easily mollified as they are when the proles aren't aware of
| how angry everyone else is.
|
| It's hard to convince the world that what the TV people are
| paid to say is correct when it's clear that the vast majority
| disagree.
| suyash wrote:
| In other words "High dislike count in our videos hurts our
| ability to make more money so we don't want people to leave when
| they see others disliking the video, better we don't want other
| to dislike, only like and see count of how many likes"
|
| - IMO a fair decision would have been to remove count for both
| dislikes and likes if they really cared about bias but they
| don't.
| devwastaken wrote:
| When people are unable to express their disagreement with
| something in a civil way, they become uncivil. There is plenty of
| bad content on youtube that may not be against the law, but
| youtube allows it. I can quickly know if something is
| controversial by the like and dislikes.
| vincentclee wrote:
| These videos have a lot of dislikes
| https://www.youtube.com/c/WhiteHouse/videos
| throwaway879080 wrote:
| Apparently someone's feelings got hurt by dislikes lol
|
| #LetsGoBrandon
| dmalvarado wrote:
| WHAT.
|
| The like / dislike ratio is EXTREMELY useful. I'm very
| disappointed that they would do this. I expect it will be much
| harder to avoid useless content with this removed.
| [deleted]
| mythrwy wrote:
| Maybe the end goal was always the control of information and
| advertising was just a sideline. Same with Facebook.
| godDLL wrote:
| So likes show you how popular something is.
|
| And dislikes don't show you how controversial it is, or perhaps
| how general Youtube audience reacts to being exposed to
| something.
|
| So that now if you want to make it known you have to leave a
| comment. And then some stats have to be done on the comments to
| understand the sentiment. On Youtube's shitty unforum, you have
| to do stats. Right.
|
| They just sealed it, all of their likes, dislikes, comments etc.;
| all of Youtube's non-streaming aspects are demonstrably useless,
| not just "feel useless", but actually are it.
|
| Time to support things like ogjre.com and reddit etc., for they
| provide what Youtube denies.
|
| Community. Forums. Thought. Orientation and discrimination. What
| is good, and who would think that it is. What is objectionable,
| and for whom.
| conradfr wrote:
| But reddit removed the upvote/downvote counter a long time ago?
|
| I guess the aggregate is better than just the upvotes but it
| still is not ideal as a post at +102/-101 is not the same as
| +2/-1.
| [deleted]
| NazakiAid wrote:
| Was watching YT shorts, and all you see is the likes. Lots of
| likes, and I was thinking who watches this crap. Thankfully the
| comments made me realize I am not alone in this though. Wish I
| could have wasted less time by having the amount of dislikes
| listed.
|
| Now I am going to have to do the same method on YT videos as I do
| shorts, where I go look at the comments first which is
| unfortunate.
|
| Stupid move from YT but was warned it was going to happen.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Those in the experiment could still see and use the public
| dislike button, but because the count was not visible to them, we
| found that they were less likely to target a video's dislike
| button to drive up the count. In short, our experiment data
| showed a reduction in dislike attacking behavior 1._
|
| I know it was for a halfway good cause this time, but does anyone
| else find it creepy with how much nonchalance they are talking
| about behaviour modification and nudging here?
|
| Google would like its users to more frequently show behaviour X,
| so they made some A/B tests, found which UI changes most
| effectively increase the prevalence of X and are now implementing
| the changes.
|
| No need anymore to actually communicate rules with your users if
| you can just manipulate them into showing a particular behaviour.
|
| It's not just Google doing this, however they are in a position
| to do this most effectively right now.
| ospzfmbbzr wrote:
| Yawn... who still uses Youtube? I don't even youtube-dl their
| crap any more. They are a joke. If I wanted to watch TV I would
| not have cancelled my cable in 2001.
| dboshardy wrote:
| I find the negative sentiment for this on a forum that also lacks
| a downvote/dislike option perplexing.
| DevKoala wrote:
| You have to protect the emperor's new clothes.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Just consume the content, slave. Do not question it, do not
| resist it, just consume and move on.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| YouTube used to have 5 star ratings, they got rid of that in 2010
| [1]. If stars and dislikes are so bad, why do they have them in
| the Play Store. I wonder if Trip Advisor and Yelp are next with
| only likes.
|
| [1] - https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/five-stars-dominate-
| rat...
| qu4ku wrote:
| Ministry of Truth found dislike button not helpful.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| I wonder whether the views-to-likes ratio can serve as a proxy
| for dislikes. If you watched it, then didn't like it (i.e. didn't
| click the like button), you [probably?] disliked it.
| randomperson_24 wrote:
| Even HN doesn't show the number of downvotes publicly. So why
| this much hate?
| subsubzero wrote:
| This still seems like a huge disconnect to what people use
| youtube for vs. what google thinks it should be used for.
|
| Google wants youtube to be all network and brands making content.
| ie. a future version of what TV is now. What actual people want
| is creator made videos(diy/review/podcast videos and everything
| else that make youtube wonderful).
|
| This disconnect has been happening since google bought youtube
| and this recent change only reflects google wanting to hide
| backlash/or dislike from who it sees should rightfully be on
| youtube, brands/networks/corporations.
| adminscoffee wrote:
| youtube will join the names of yahoo, myspace and aol. we are
| seeing their decay. the money we see as growth is not going to
| last long.
| newsclues wrote:
| Business vs consumers.
| ahahahahah wrote:
| It sounds like you read the headline and came to post your
| already held views on Google and Youtube hoping that it would
| be relevant.
|
| From the article:
|
| > We've also heard directly from smaller creators, and those
| just getting started with their YouTube channel, that they are
| unfairly targeted by dislike attacks. Our experiment data
| confirmed that this behavior does occur at a higher proportion
| on smaller channels.
| bavila wrote:
| Couldn't smaller channels be getting hit by more dislikes
| because videos produced by smaller channels are actually just
| plain bad?
|
| People who are just getting started on YouTube tend to have
| poor production quality and editing skills compared to
| established channels. That might have been acceptable in
| YouTube's early days when there were no standards, but now
| we're at a point where we've all seen thousands of videos on
| YouTube, and we all collectively expect high quality content.
|
| Seems quite natural that smaller channels that are just
| getting started by people who are still learning will be
| disliked more often than large channels. Hardly a valid
| reason to eliminate the dislike button.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| If that was truly their primary concern, why wouldn't they
| limit the scope of the change to smaller creators? Could it
| be that they were looking for a post-hoc justification for a
| desired policy change?
| jedimastert wrote:
| Would you trust YT to define what a "small creator" is? It
| opens the door to other policies being applied only to
| "small creators" as well, and I don't personally like that
| thought
| ridaj wrote:
| You also cannot have comments on videos that feature or
| target children
| jedimastert wrote:
| That's a response to a legal requirement
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| They already apply different rules to small creators. For
| instance, you must have 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours
| of watch time per a year in order to monetise videos.
| jedimastert wrote:
| That's not even close to what "small creator" would mean
| on YT
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| My point was that your slippery slope argument was a bit
| bonkers because YouTube already has a mechanism to impose
| varying rules on channels based on size.
| weberer wrote:
| They already do that. They don't pay creators at all who
| have less than 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours in
| the past year.
| slingnow wrote:
| It sounds like you're very much predisposed to believing that
| all press releases are 100% truthful -- and you would never
| consider that they might be intentionally misleading.
| pranau wrote:
| Seems like a story they spun with cherry-picked data to
| justify the removal of the dislike count.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It seems to me like the disconnect is between your baseless
| imaginary model of how youtube users behave and the objective
| analysis of the only party holding enough data to make a sound
| conclusion.
| csee wrote:
| > only party holding enough data
|
| Correct.
|
| > objective analysis
|
| Assumption.
|
| For all we know, they could be making up bullshit to cover up
| the real reason; e.g. Disney/Marvel (a source of revenue) or
| the White House (with the threat of potential regulations or
| maybe just the political bias of YT staff) or YouTube
| themselves (YouTube Rewind) are very unhappy that their
| videos are so unpopular.
|
| Since we can't access their data, we will never know one way
| or the other. We either have to trust their corporate PR, as
| you seem to have done, or analyze their possible motives for
| making a decision that is seemingly user-hostile.
| jeffbee wrote:
| "I don't know, so I will invent unfounded theories that
| can't be falsified" is a frankly stupid way to go through
| life.
| Karunamon wrote:
| "Google is a bad faith actor, this is a PR piece, and so
| it is unwise to take them at face value on anything", on
| the other hand, is pretty reasonable.
| csee wrote:
| You've framed a plausible hypothesis - which is the best
| any of us can do given a complete absence of any data -
| as "invent[ing] unfounded theories that can't be
| falsified". That's effective rhetoric, but it isn't
| really an argument.
|
| Instead, "I uncritically accept corporate PR as objective
| analysis" is what I consider to be a stupid way to go
| through life.
|
| Maybe your priors include "corporations always tell the
| truth", but mine don't.
|
| That obviously doesn't mean we should accept some
| alternative conspiracy theory X as the truth, but it does
| mean we should be skeptical and open minded about other
| explanations, especially given the context in this
| particular case of: (i) zero supporting data provided by
| YT, (ii) a very plausible set of alternative explanations
| that would be political suicide for YT to publicly state,
| (iii) the apparent anecdotal user-hostility of this
| decision.
| noahtallen wrote:
| I think there can be a difference between how people behave
| and what people want. Which means there is a huge difference
| between what people want to engage with and what they do
| engage with. For example, TikTok will aggressively optimize
| your feed based on what you watch. If you get hooked on a
| video which makes you angry or reactive (like a political
| take), TikTok will show you more of it. You end up engaging
| with that content despite not wanting to.
|
| None of social media is optimized around what people like or
| enjoy watching. It is only optimized on one thing: engagement
| to drive ad revenue via addictive practices. Engagement !=
| enjoyment. That especially includes YouTube.
| MrMember wrote:
| You could see that with how YouTube Rewind evolved over the
| years. It started out highlighting popular videos from original
| YouTube creators and at some point became Jimmy Kimmel doing
| Fortnite dances.
| native_samples wrote:
| It's all about Wojcicki. The fact she runs YouTube never ceases
| to amaze me given that she ran Google Video, which failed
| largely because she was obsessed with 'professional' content
| and bet _against_ user generated content. That bet was wrong to
| such a huge extent she was reduced to recommending Google buy
| her only competitor.
|
| Somehow, despite this failure as an executive - a failure of
| the kind that got Vic Gundotra fired - she has not only not
| been fired but ended up running the site that beat her, where
| she has spent the last half decade trying to turn it back into
| Google Video.
| subsubzero wrote:
| 100% agree, the only reason Wojcicki is still there is she is
| the sister of founder Sergey Brin's ex-wife and that family
| supplied the "garage" that started google.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| I have a small child (14.8 kg) so I know a lot more about
| children's shows on Youtube than I want to. People use Youtube
| to publish lots of videos aimed at children. Some of which is
| inappropriate, BTW; keep an eye on what your kid is seeing.
|
| In 2018 some TV executives with Disney ties founded Moonbug
| Entertainment, which proceeded to swallow up lots of the more
| popular channels. Sound familiar? Such as Little Baby Bum,
| Cocomelon and Blippi, the last two of which were $120 million.
| All excellent programming. This seems to be the way of the
| World.
|
| My son also loves Vlad and Niki. They make cute, silly videos
| that gross millions of US dollars per month. There is serious
| money involved in this now.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonbug_Entertainment
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_and_Niki
| devortel wrote:
| Did you describe your child using weight instead of age?
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| Yup.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| This is the most weirdest way I have seen someone
| describe a 3 year old..
| aftbit wrote:
| Yeah, they said small not young.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Abandon youtube, use Odysee and support web3 already. It's time
| to go back to a distributed web.
|
| https://odysee.com/
| RNCTX wrote:
| No one is going to use crypto for day to day anything, ever.
| Minor49er wrote:
| Odysee seems okay, but you need LBRY credits in order to do
| pretty much anything
| zoidb wrote:
| I suppose this means the neutral response
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ussCHoQttyQ will no longer be a
| thing :(
| nimonian wrote:
| This is so sad. Sort the comments by newest first - people are
| lamenting the loss of the dislike count.
| [deleted]
| passerby1 wrote:
| How to turn off YT recommendations completely? Any FF/chromium
| extension for that?
| timdaub wrote:
| I can't help but think that this is just corporate bullshit.
|
| Purely rationally speaking, I think whether or not a dislike
| amount is shown or not is not gonna be impactful for the things
| YouTube should optimize to become a better software product and
| company.
|
| In order to battle fake news, misinformation and fostering a
| happy and global community, much more fundamental changes are
| appropriate. But those are inherently incompatible with the
| liquidity model Youtube/Google/Alphabet have chosen: Increasing
| shareholder value & profit.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Sounds like a great use-case for a browser extension. Too bad
| YouTube and the biggest browser are owned by the same company...
| an9n wrote:
| There is a very good case for a superset of tools on top of
| YouTube that they are powerless to control.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Annoying like how they won't show ratings on search results,
| particularly annoying on fake movie trailers or generally
| anything fake like fake spacex live streams with crypto scams on
| top.
| [deleted]
| kf6nux wrote:
| I'm a little surprised no one reached for the obvious humor here:
| Google spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn humans
| will create mobs.
|
| This was such an obvious/good change to make. Viewers will still
| be able to use views:upvotes ratio for determining a video's
| popularity/worth. A mob won't want to attack that ratio because a
| high view count could encourage more views.
|
| Judging by what's bubbling up on HN, I guess I'm in the minority
| on this one.
| rootsudo wrote:
| I really dislike how the world is going to a "forced like" model
| - can't show any dissenting view, argue, debate or have personal
| opinions.
|
| It even goes to some facebook groups, discords and more. Say
| anything that's against the grain and immediate kick and ban.
|
| What a change from the old days, where through debate you found
| great middle ground, or just fun chat/time waste on IRC.
| [deleted]
| lucideer wrote:
| This seems like an odd thing to target. I haven't found dislikes
| to be problematic in the context of YouTube videos: in fact
| they're usually an indicator of something in the content itself
| (I've only ever seen high dislikes either on videos that were
| themselves problematic or harmful, or on unpopular corporate
| announcements).
|
| For "creators" on YouTube the real problems seem to come from the
| contents of comments.
|
| This[0] recent video rant has some interesting insights toward
| the end of the video where other popular YouTubers are
| interviewed on how negative comments impacted them. What I found
| thought provoking was how much of a negative impact some
| particular types of comments that seemed in good intent-e.g.
| commenters stating their preference for a previous video format
| "I preferred when you ___". Feels like Google/social media sites
| could do something around sentiment heuristics; I know Twitter
| has started some stuff like this.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVCpKfedfok
| axiom92 wrote:
| All is not lost, as the dislike count is not independent of the
| number of views and the like count.
|
| Specifically, if a popular video has a small number of likes, one
| can safely assume that it has a large number of dislikes.
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| That is not a safe assumption at all. You're assuming the total
| number of votes is proportional to the view count. But a more
| provocative video will prompt more people to vote
|
| A video that makes people angry might encourage people to vote
| who otherwise wouldn't have voted
| axiom92 wrote:
| I think a popular video will attract votes one way or the
| other.
|
| A video that makes people angry will encourage people to
| dislike the video, and thus eat into the total vote share.
|
| I agree that this likely only covers videos with a large
| number of views (~millions). There's a long tail where the
| view count/vote count is not enough to comment on the number
| of dislikes.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Note the logical fallacy they want to implant here: Dislike
| "attacks" result in high dislike counts, therefore all high
| dislike counts are not genuine.
| kf6nux wrote:
| Why are you making that logical fallacy here? It wasn't present
| in either the video or the article.
| zahrc wrote:
| Great, now I have to trust this wonderful algorithm.
| larinzod wrote:
| I feel they should do the same with the Like button. There is
| cognitive bias towards crowd approval/disapproval. But they
| aren't likely to implement that since it would cut revenue from
| the "we'll I'll watch this suggestion since 100K people liked it"
| group. Where removing the Dislike just works in their favor.
| kypro wrote:
| > We want to create an inclusive and respectful environment where
| creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express
| themselves.
|
| It's an interesting position because the assumption YouTube would
| have to be making here to do this is that their viewers opinion
| of the content they're watching is either wrong, or irrelevant.
|
| Also the only instances of dislike "harassment" and I am aware of
| has been because a content creator has been recently exposed for
| participating in some immoral activity such as a scam or sexual
| abuse.
|
| The only other time I see content heavily downvote is when it's
| disagreeable in some way. For example, a lot of content from
| mainstream media outlets is often downvoted, presumably not
| because people have any particular desire to harass news
| organisations, but because their content is often largely
| disapproved of.
|
| I must admit I've never seen a video get downvoted for no reason
| -- is this something anyone has observed on YouTube? The reason I
| ask is because I worry this move is more likely to be motivated
| by YouTube disagreeing with the viewers about what should and
| shouldn't be downvoted. For example, I very much doubt they care
| some white dude being "harassed" by the dislike button for
| expressing some racist ideas, but if a black women gets downvoted
| for expressing a controversial far-left political position that
| does seem to be viewed as more problematic and represented of
| "harassment" by silicon valley types these days.
| patycake wrote:
| I've never personally seen the kind of "dislike harassment" you
| are talking about. There was the YouTube rewind video a few
| years ago but that became more of a joke after a while.
|
| However, I would not be surprised if this feature was
| accelerated after seeing twitch "hate raids" a few months ago.
| These definitely are a form of online harassment in my opinion.
| In YouTube's competition with twitch they want to show they are
| a "safer" place for creators (whether someone believes this is
| up to them)
| soheil wrote:
| I wonder how long it takes before there is a chrome ext that
| brings back likes/dislikes similar to AdBlock or SponsorBlock.
| It's the ratio that I care about not the absolute numbers.
| frankzander wrote:
| I cant eat as much as I want to vomit! rm -rf /google
| nickstinemates wrote:
| I don't think I've ever looked at likes/dislikes for a youtube
| video. I also don't engage in most up/downvote systems on
| average. I am not sure how much of an outlier I am, but I
| wouldn't notice this being gone at all.
| greatgib wrote:
| <<In short, our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike
| attacking behavior 1.>>
|
| Clearly a flawed conclusion. For the result of their experiment
| they deduced what they wanted it to say. Because we can easily
| say that the effect is not "dislike attacking" but other effects:
|
| - shy people more afraid to give their opinion not knowing that
| others have done the same.
|
| - the feature feeling useless, as even if you dislike, you might
| thing that you click will worth nothing as no one will see it.
|
| Imagine if you were voting for something but no one will give you
| the result of the votation.
|
| Also, strangely they did not do the same experiment with the
| "like" button to see if there was not a "like attack".
|
| So when I see something like that, I'm thinking that they are now
| in the dominant position where they don't have to care about
| their users anymore...
| kf6nux wrote:
| I suspect their dataset was direct link dislikes. I.e. people
| who arrived at YouTube from another site at a specific video
| who dislike the video. That's the characteristic of a
| coordinated dislike campaign.
|
| > the feature feeling useless, as even if you dislike, you
| might thing that you click will worth nothing as no one will
| see it
|
| That was exactly the point. They didn't want the attack mobs
| seeing the fruits of their labor, making it feel useless,
| making fewer people mob.
| xeromal wrote:
| I honestly don't see a problem. If someone truly dislikes a
| video, they put in effort instead of encouraging a mob
| mentality by a high number of dislikes
|
| Maybe Youtube can somehow incorporate the dislikes into
| "Likely to enjoy" score similar to how its set up on Google
| maps. It's pretty accurate from my experience.
| lucideer wrote:
| "dislike attacking" is also a very loaded term. Technically
| it's only referring to the intent of the dislike, but it
| strongly implies that dislike cause harm.
|
| The opening paragraph seems to equate these "dislike attacks"
| with "creator harassment" but I'm not seeing any data on
| dislike constituting a form of harassment.
|
| Don't get me wrong, creators suffer a LOT of online harassment.
| I'm just very unconvinced dislike buttons are a primary tool of
| harassers.
| erhk wrote:
| This is a weak facade to enact a change they want for other
| reasons. The real question is what the underlying reason is. I
| imagine likes will also depart soon as youtube trends toward
| netflix. I wonder what platform will replace it then
| causi wrote:
| Tiktok is already eating youtube's lunch. This is the act of
| a desperate animal trying to find some magic key to win its
| mindshare back. Which is a shame, because I like youtube's
| content a lot more than tiktok's.
| XCSme wrote:
| Yes, the conclusion makes no sense.
|
| "We removed the dislike button. This resulted in a reduction in
| dislikes, people are happier."
| [deleted]
| jnwatson wrote:
| That's not what they did.
| educaysean wrote:
| Completely agreed with this. If you make a feature less useful
| than before of course it will be engaged with less.
|
| A radical approach in the similar vein would be to just turn
| off half your infra and add a ton of latency to YouTube. That
| would similarly solve the "dislike attacking behavior"
| altogether at the cost of having your existing users hate your
| product, with the added bonus of server cost savings.
| SilasX wrote:
| Yes, the bane of my existence.
|
| - Site is usable.
|
| - Site updates to significantly less usable version but keeps
| the old version around.
|
| - They keep breaking things about the old version.
|
| - "Oh no one uses the old version anymore, let's EOL it to
| save resources."
| V-eHGsd_ wrote:
| > Clearly a flawed conclusion. For the result of their
| experiment they deduced what they wanted it to say.
|
| you know how when you navigate google drive on the web you have
| to double-click. like, what, a website, where you double click
| links to navigate? the internal study that justified that was
| 12 people; 6 of whom either immediately tried to double click
| (2 IIRC) or eventually tried to double click (4 IIRC). so, 50%
| didn't shit a brick when they were presented with a broken
| website interaction, so it was greenlit.
|
| source: I was at google when this happened and I argued with
| the pm's when this happened.
| hu3 wrote:
| It seems they want to turn Youtube into a feels-good, positive-
| vibes platform like Instagram aims to be.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Content creators are also their users.
| lifeplusplus wrote:
| Regulatory hijacking but of private entity. Reddit, YouTube, and
| such have already made clear and they no longer pretend to care
| about free speech and instead have an agenda
| ravenstine wrote:
| They wouldn't remove dislike counts across the board (seemingly
| with no opt-out?) if there wasn't a financial advantage to doing
| so. I don't believe this is because they think it's good for the
| community.
|
| Is it any coincidence that, in an era where establishment media
| frequently gets highly ratio'd (look content from the White
| House, MSM, films with political agendas), an organization that
| relies on _advertising_ as well as _government contracts_ makes
| it convenient for said establishment to perpetuate the _illusion_
| that there is no dissent?
|
| Let's put aside the possibility that getting brigaded with
| dislikes can be psychologically harmful to the individual.
|
| How will there ever be actual revolts against the establishment
| if everyone believes there are no other dissenters? That's the
| real trouble behind making it impossible to share any negative
| sentiment on the internet, which is a pattern that mainstream
| platforms like Google/YouTube are continually edging towards, and
| it's a darker pattern than most people understand. The simplest
| way to prevent threats to your regime is to make it difficult, if
| not impossible for people who agree on the _wrong things_ to
| recognize that they are not alone.
|
| _Hold on ravenstine... these are just dislikes on a bunch of
| dumb cat videos. You call that "dissent"?_
|
| When a piece of media with a wide audience is overwhelmingly
| disapproved of by that audience, that tells you something about
| _reality_. Being selectively exposed to only approved opinions is
| a _disconnection_ from reality. If you aren 't connected with
| reality, at best your ability to make predictions is impaired,
| and at worst you can be controlled without even knowing it. If
| you think you're the only one that disagrees with CorpGov
| propaganda, you are much more likely to sit on your ass, never
| getting up to vote, never getting up to protest, never expressing
| your disagreement with the establishment, because _what would be
| the point?_ All you could do is accept that you are the crazy one
| and go with the flow, which happens to be highly convenient for
| the power structure.
|
| Personally, I don't care that much in the case of YouTube because
| I believe it has peaked long ago and is begging for a serious
| replacement. But if all mainstream social media decides to go
| full speed ahead with this sort of reality manipulation YouTube
| is attempting today, then I think we are headed for trouble as a
| global/digital civilization.
| podgaj wrote:
| I am done with the internet. It is nothing but toxic positivity.
| grae_QED wrote:
| I understand the incentives, however, I think the biggest
| consequence of this is that it will give a false sense of support
| on conspiratorial videos and other forms of misinformation.
|
| Some people think that the more likes a video has, the more the
| community agrees with it's message, and therefore the more truth
| the video contains. The classic appeal to the majority fallacy.
|
| This is only going to strengthen those communities and empower
| them further.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| This is insane.
| sellyme wrote:
| I'm getting real sick of websites I use becoming less and less
| functional the bigger they get.
| jackdh wrote:
| I now only have strong feelings about this one way.
| nathias wrote:
| I remember when Blizzard made their announcement of Diablo 4
| youtube was erasing dislikes, but couldn't keep up.
| ordiel wrote:
| Oh! the maximum expression of irony comes by seen how many
| dislikes that shit is getting...
| ArcCompArthur wrote:
| In my opinion this is a bad move. The dislike counter helps me
| optimize my time and help me avoid bad information. For example
| if I see a tutorial or some other video with many dislikes I can
| sometimes predict that the steps in the video aren't
| reproducible. In several cases the creator of a video tutorial
| has linked malicious software in the video as part of the steps
| of the tutorial and I've caught that by first noticing the
| dislike counter.
| adminscoffee wrote:
| was this because all joe biden videos had more downvotes than
| upvotes? just kidding but all jokes aside i don't think getting
| rid of the dislikes is a good idea.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| A lot of comments seem to think that this is a malicious decision
| made by the upper management of google for a variety of sinister
| reasons. I might be naive but i wonder if this isn't just a
| poorly thought out decision by somebody, the only motivation
| being that no dislikes will encourage more creators and thus
| increase advertising revenue. The poorly thought out part of this
| is that they are treating their users like plastic bags, but i
| think users are allowing themselves to be treated like that
| anyway.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| You can't down vote Chinese leaders, and North Korean leaders
| speeches in their countries. Why should you be able to do in the
| West. Thanks Youtube, we can't do it here either now. Youtube,
| making the world a better place, and less embarrassing to our
| great leaders.
| avsteele wrote:
| Why not just make sure the person has watched >X% of the video
| before allowing like/dislike?
|
| Its like they haven't though this through...
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Google learned from Facebook. Next they will remove the dislike
| button and introduce other reactions.
| ghawk1ns wrote:
| Twitter users solved this with the "ratio"
| [deleted]
| pshushereba wrote:
| Rebecca Black from 10 years ago would've liked this.
| voldacar wrote:
| Makes a little more sense when you consider what the #1 disliked
| video is. Clearly google is really in touch with their audience
| and their desires here
| throwaway2077 wrote:
| it is unacceptable that goodthink content that promotes correct
| opinions gets ratioed and ridiculed.
|
| the writing was on the wall for a while. this was probably the
| final nail in the coffin:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k
|
| kudos to our billionaire overlords, celebrities and their first
| world cosmopolitan yuppie congregation for looking out for us
| unwashed, uneducated plebeians. without their guidance, we'd be
| lost.
| bevelwork wrote:
| I have no strong feelings one way or the other.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxK_nA2iVXw
| karaterobot wrote:
| They performed an experiment to see if removing the dislike
| button would mitigate brigade voting, or mob voting, especially
| against small creators. The results of their experiment, they
| say, is that it did address this issue.
|
| That sounds like a great result!
|
| The problem would be if they did not test any other side effect
| of removing the dislike button. For example, if the only thing
| they tested was whether it prevented mob downvoting in a small
| number of cases, and not whether it negatively affected the
| experience for a majority of users, the results of the experiment
| would not mean much. Based on the reaction, I am guessing this
| what they actually did.
|
| (If they published their methodology and results somewhere, I
| apologize: I looked but did not find anything like this).
|
| That's the problem with product research: it's often poorly
| designed, when it's not just designed to confirm a prior decision
| and back it up with some data.
| beezischillin wrote:
| This is part of a wider trend in the corporate internet of
| getting rid of visible user interaction to stop publicising user
| opinion. News publications have slowly gotten rid of comments
| sections, Google itself (an entity quite close to the USG) is
| following suit. Of course I suspect that the idea here is less
| about creator choice, since they can already hide and filter user
| interaction to their hearts content and more about some high
| profile channels of some importance being able to save face since
| manually disabling interactions looks worse for them.
|
| I've seen some interesting projects in the past that were browser
| based and made the entire Internet be equipped with comments
| sections, including YouTube. I wonder if something like that
| would be viable, maybe with the addition of a like dislike bar.
| franciscop wrote:
| Do you mean like Youtube's own Youtube Rewind 2018, which it
| became the most disliked video surpassing even Justin Bieber's
| Baby? To add extra irony, it was subtitled "Youtube Rewind 2018
| - Everyone Controls Rewind". It seems that everyone controlling
| the dislike button was not appreciated, and while I find this
| downvote session brilliant I've been waiting since then for
| Youtube to remove the downvote button.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Isn't that a perfect example of Dislike button being used
| mostly as a meme or to bully / pile-on? Or do you truly
| believe that video was somehow literally the worst video on
| Youtube?
|
| In most other websites and contexts anyway, like/dislike is
| used to share your taste with the algorithm or to the author,
| and neither of those are disrupted here. The only thing that
| is disrupted is the tribal action using the dislike button as
| a way of publicly and anonymously showing hatred towards
| content.
| beezischillin wrote:
| I wouldn't necessarily say that it was the worst video, but
| the response to it was a response to YouTube's general
| direction, in my opinion.
|
| https://www.polygon.com/2019/12/6/20998648/2019-youtube-
| rewi...
| rockstep wrote:
| If I use a dislike button on a platform, it is typically
| because I want to warn other users away from that content,
| because its irrelevant, misleading, uninteresting etc. If
| likes and dislikes are primarily tools for personalising
| the algorithm to your taste then the platform may as well
| hide likes from public view as well.
| qsort wrote:
| It might not be the worst video ever, but it was definitely
| among the most universally disliked. It's like downvotes
| here, you might disagree but it's meaningful signal.
| josefx wrote:
| > Or do you truly believe that video was somehow literally
| the worst video on Youtube?
|
| It was "EA pride and accomplishment" bad. A brainless self
| glorifying marketing piece that didn't spend a second to
| even acknowledge all the issues many channels suffered
| under.
|
| > Or do you truly believe that video was somehow literally
| the worst video on YouTube?
|
| The worst video on YouTube probably doesn't get actively
| promoted by Google or carry the weight of being made by
| Google.
| ehsankia wrote:
| > It was "EA pride and accomplishment" bad
|
| It's funny you refer to Reddit because that's also
| historically well known for pile-on behavior. Why do you
| think features such as "hiding vote count for the first
| few hours" exist? It's been shown that the very first few
| votes you get can result in the same comment either being
| downvoted to hell or upvoted.
|
| So if the EA accident was your reasoning for why having
| dislikes is a good idea, then you really just proved my
| point, as that too was mostly a meme and perfect proof of
| pile-on behavior.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > It was "EA pride and accomplishment" bad. A brainless
| self glorifying marketing piece that didn't spend a
| second to even acknowledge all the issues many channels
| suffered under.
|
| What made the 2018 Rewind any worse than the Rewinds of
| previous years?
| josefx wrote:
| Just re-watched 2017 and 2018
|
| * 2017 music + people doing fun/weird things
|
| * 2018 constant commentary, including mentions on how
| good youtube/they are and how many good things they did
| with some music in between. Lead by non other than the
| man who made it all possible, Mr. Youtube himself: Will
| Smith.
|
| That last part was sarcasm. There are breakdowns by
| people more into youtube culture that can point out in
| detail which inclusions didn't make sense, why music
| videos from 2016 seem misplaced in a 2018 rewind and how
| many high profile content creators youtube passed over in
| order to create the specific public image it wanted to
| present.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Or do you truly believe that video was somehow literally
| the worst video on Youtube?
|
| It has the most downvotes but it definitely doesn't have
| the worst ratio. The many likes and many dislikes don't
| suggest "worst video", and it's not the worst video, so
| all's good there.
| kumarsw wrote:
| I feel that the issue with the dislike button is its
| ambiguity, similar to star ratings. A Uber driver or Ebay
| seller with a many of 4-star ratings is clearly fine, but
| one with a moderate number of 1-star ratings is not,
| despite having the same average ranking. In the case of
| Uber/Ebay, the better question is a simple "Would you do
| business with this individual again?" For YouTube, the
| public dislike would be better replaced with something like
| "report content," followed by a choice of
| "clickbait/inaccurate content/hate speech."
| andromeduck wrote:
| It was pretty cringe, and for how much it was promoted,
| absolutely.
| beezischillin wrote:
| The interesting thing about that video was that the Internet
| took it as a win, YouTube apparently took it as a learning
| opportunity.
| tester756 wrote:
| >News publications have slowly gotten rid of comments sections,
|
| Slowly? I havent seen comment on majority of new sites for
| years.
|
| On the other hand: I'm not shocked, majority of stuff written
| there was basically trash.
| rangoon626 wrote:
| They are only really doing this to hide political dissent
| against the current administration and provide some cover. Both
| the president and vp are polling at historic low approval
| ratings right now.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > They are only really doing this to hide political dissent
| against the current administration and provide some cover.
| Both the president and vp are polling at historic low
| approval ratings right now.
|
| I disagree that this is the only reason; there are other
| reasons that make sense as well - for example, every
| political movement benefits from making their movement appear
| larger and more inclusive than it really is.
|
| It's easier to stifle dissent by saying _" If you don't agree
| with us you're in the minority"_ and then hide the actual
| headcount of your movement.
|
| It's all very _1984-esque_ , TBH. You cannot form an
| opposition if you think you're the only one who opposes.
| rangoon626 wrote:
| Yeah you're right, it's not exclusively just this one
| thing. They're trying to hide push back on a lot of
| cultural hotpoints.
| dannyw wrote:
| Yep, have a look at dislikes of anything on the white house
| channel!
| rangoon626 wrote:
| It's so bad it is truly astonishing.
| alex-ant wrote:
| Exactly
| Thorentis wrote:
| Yes, Gab made their own browser called Dissenter that added a
| comment section to every page of the Internet. Interestingly, I
| can find very little when Googling for it now. I'm sure other
| projects have tried this too.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| HNo wrote:
| It was deemed too dangerous by the powers that be, so it was
| banned from app stores, the extension was banned by Firefox
| and Chrome, etc.
| dang wrote:
| Posting and deleting the same comments dozens of times is
| seriously abusive and I've banned the account. Please stop
| now.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| lbriner wrote:
| My experience is that in many scenarios, comments were an
| attempt to create sticky relationships when the comments
| themselves add very little.
|
| Take a news site, an article about, say, Trump becomming
| President. Comments are likely to range from "I can't satnd the
| guy" though to "I'm so happy he got in". They aren't going to
| add much of any value to the conversation.
|
| I am seeing more attempts now of people attempting to be
| "clever" in their comments and start dropping 'facts' taken
| from various places. Again, interesting at best but at worst it
| doesn't add anything.
|
| Votes are perhaps less contentious but what are they really
| saying? I like the article because it is factually correct or I
| dislike the article because Trump is President?
| nicbou wrote:
| Then again YouTube comments can be pretty funny and
| interesting these days. They're a nice way to interact with
| the content creators, and with other followers.
| Galaxeblaffer wrote:
| Isn't Reddit and hackernews a comment section with upvote and
| downvote for the entire internet ?
| iratewizard wrote:
| Reddit is a comment section filled with insufferable morons
| who allowed their website to become a way of repackaging fun
| parts of the internet with astroturfing.
| [deleted]
| slackfan wrote:
| Hackernews is not different, except most of the posters
| work in a single industry.
| iratewizard wrote:
| Too true.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| And you don't get downvote powers until you've been
| vetted.
| a5aAqU wrote:
| > I've seen some interesting projects in the past that were
| browser based and made the entire Internet be equipped with
| comments sections, including YouTube. I wonder if something
| like that would be viable, maybe with the addition of a like
| dislike bar.
|
| If something like that ever took off, it would devastate
| independent publishers and a huge part of Internet culture by
| draining interactions out of websites. Google tried it before,
| and fortunately it failed. I think it's one of the worst
| possible things that could happen to the Web.
| beezischillin wrote:
| A lot of mainstream media sites have removed comments
| sections from their articles, there's no user interaction
| left on those.
| toxik wrote:
| To be fair, comments _must_ be moderated or they turn into
| a cesspool in short order. A like-dislike count does not
| have that problem, though. And YouTube isn't removing the
| comments (yet).
| a5aAqU wrote:
| That's what blogs are for. Write a blog post about the
| article. If it's good enough, it will get traffic.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| If you believe blog posts are the same thing as comments,
| why did you write a comment to say so?
| a5aAqU wrote:
| Not every site is the same. News sites in the US turn off
| their comments because it's too difficult to moderate in
| the current political environment.
|
| Hacker News isn't a content site, but is mainly created
| for commenting. It is less political than the news sites
| which removed comments. It can also handle the moderation
| more easily than news sites partly because it has a very
| strong ugliness and usability filter.
| feanaro wrote:
| > I've seen some interesting projects in the past that were
| browser based and made the entire Internet be equipped with
| comments sections, including YouTube.
|
| Hypothesis is such a tool: https://web.hypothes.is/
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Yep. Corporations are working hard to turn the internet into
| broadcast TV, back when the broadcaster had all the power and
| you took what they gave you and you liked it because you didn't
| have a choice.
|
| What is the average person going to do now that they have a
| dopamine response addiction to instant feedback and immediate
| knowledge at their fingertips? Read a book? Go for a walk where
| they're not constantly scouting for a situation where they can
| take a picture and receive happy brain chemicals from thousands
| of people?
| SllX wrote:
| https://youtu.be/kxOuG8jMIgI
|
| Direct link to the video if you want to "Dislike" it. Or "Like"
| it too I suppose.
|
| Also I can still see the count: as of this writing it is 2.8K up
| and 1.6K down.
| herewego99 wrote:
| Looks like rick rolls are back on the menu boys.
| herewego99 wrote:
| and scare videos.
| klipklop wrote:
| Odd that a certain political party got a large amount of
| downvotes on all their videos and YouTube removes the publics
| ability to see them soon after.
| [deleted]
| csee wrote:
| It's smart in a gross way. They can materially reduce the risk
| of being regulated by pandering to them.
| jeofken wrote:
| Who whips who? Media or parties?
| native_samples wrote:
| Very unlikely they care about regulation. Wojcicki is a fully
| paid up technocrat globalist - she's ideologically aligned
| with that party.
| LarrySellers wrote:
| Except they considered the change years before Biden was
| president: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18207189/youtube-
| dislike-a...
|
| This Trump rally from The Hill, where he tells his followers to
| get the vaccine that he got, garnered 1.5k likes and 1.3k
| dislikes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huQdxDnQkac
|
| Here Trump hints at a 2024 run on the Today show, but it has
| _more_ likes than dislikes.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU7MWvwTOzw
|
| Here a Fox affiliate covers a recent Trump rally, but it has 10
| times more likes vs dislikes! Didn't anyone tell them about the
| grand Youtube conspiracy?!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi4niom7se8
|
| Does that fit your narrative or no?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I don't think the GP's narrative was that this _exclusively_
| happens to the Democrats. Just that it happens way more on
| the current White House 's videos than it did on the last
| administration's. Plucking examples where Republican videos
| were downvoted intensely does not refute an argument the OP
| wasn't making in the first place.
| LarrySellers wrote:
| Sure, it's easy to find examples of dislike brigades for
| the current White House channel: https://libredd.it/r/Conse
| rvative/comments/l2d9ma/youtube_de...
|
| I was just wondering if there was any evidence that the
| government was involved in UI change. There isn't.
| pdq wrote:
| I believe he's referring to the other party, with videos like
| this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcRVR63dnDA
|
| And this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tYl5C9PufY
| LarrySellers wrote:
| Good point, there's clearly no conspiracy against the
| right.
|
| ...but the recent video of Biden getting sworn in has
| _more_ likes than dislikes!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2305DGsceE
|
| He's been president for nearly a year. Youtube is really
| bad at this conspiracy stuff I guess.
| klipklop wrote:
| I do believe political pressure is what is partially
| guiding this move.
| LarrySellers wrote:
| Do you have any evidence at all?
| [deleted]
| klipklop wrote:
| Can only speculate based on the various complaints the
| party had about all the downvotes the WH channel gets.
|
| Do you think anybody below the VP level of YouTube would
| be told? Guess what, no google employee talked about
| PRISM either.
| LarrySellers wrote:
| Agreed, you have no evidence for your claim, so it can be
| dismissed entirely.
| klipklop wrote:
| Yes we should totally take google at their word when they
| say it's not politically motivated.
|
| They can say whatever reasoning they want, that does not
| necessarily make it true. Google has a well defined
| history of lying publicly or hiding the things they do.
| Dragonfly, PRISM... These things take brave whistle
| blowers that have their lives ruined to reveal.
|
| If I said, "I am going to eat this fried twinkie because
| it is for my health" would you take that as a factual
| statement (that twinkies are healthy) just because some
| PR department repeated it on my behalf? Google saying
| they are not doing this on behalf of the current
| administration means nothing. Nobody reasonable expect
| them to really be honest with the public/users anymore.
| klipklop wrote:
| I am alluding to the current party in the White House that
| gets every video downvoted into oblivion. Some sites accused
| YouTube of deleting the downvotes.
|
| Now they are giving up and just hiding them now.
| rozab wrote:
| All uploaders have the option to hide upvotes and
| downvotes, even retrospectively.
| nova22033 wrote:
| _I am alluding to the current party in the White House that
| gets every video downvoted into oblivion._
|
| Solid analysis backed up by data..
| Spivak wrote:
| Wait, so should platforms do nothing against creators that
| are brigaded and review bombed?
|
| A video being organically downvoted to oblivion is way
| different than a bunch of users organizing on 4chan,
| Reddit, or being directed by their favorite parasocial
| media personality to go bomb a video/product.
|
| If I was YT I wouldn't want to bother policing this crap
| and just take away all the incentive to do it in the first
| place.
| LarrySellers wrote:
| Is there any evidence that the government pressured YouTube
| into making this change? Or this is just blind speculation
| on your part?
|
| Here's evidence that the videos are subject to organized
| brigades: https://libredd.it/r/Conservative/comments/l2d9ma
| /youtube_de...
| gfodor wrote:
| Government already admitted to pointing Facebook to
| accounts to be deplatformed. Government and social media
| collusion is now best assumed to be going on. All that
| matters now is how much the companies are incentivized to
| push back. The answer: not much.
|
| If this change happened or not due to such collusion is
| secondary to the thing worth noting: it would not be
| surprising if it did, it would be consistent with the
| governments positioning if it did, and it would also be
| hard to prove if it did, and if it was proven it would be
| vociferously defended by legions of commentators and the
| media. All that would need to happen was for the
| government to suggest the downvotes on pro-vax vids were
| contributing to deaths and ergo liability, and suggest
| the whole feature serves as a mechanism for
| disinformation they may be liable for in general, perhaps
| criminally so if the feature can be traced back as a
| proximate cause of something like the capital riot. Poof.
| LarrySellers wrote:
| Yep, no evidence.
|
| > so if the feature can be traced back as a proximate
| cause of something like the capital _[sic]_ riot
|
| Then they would have removed OAN's video claiming Trump
| won the presidency, but they didn't.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4c5dYDD9xw
| gfodor wrote:
| My point isn't that is what is happening now, I was
| pointing out a hypothetical that is believable enough to
| think may happen in the future.
| matthewrobertso wrote:
| Are you imagining a parallel reddit thread with 30 votes
| between members of government and YouTube? Why would that
| be public?
| [deleted]
| lovethyenemy wrote:
| It's just blind speculation. There is absolutely no
| historical precedent of Big Tech corporations
| implementing censorship controls at the behest of
| governments. Anyone claiming otherwise is spreading
| misinformation and should be censored.
| [deleted]
| goostavos wrote:
| Absolutely. It's a matter of public health.
| adamiscool8 wrote:
| Direct, of course not. Circumstantial, sure:
|
| >Google representatives attended White House meetings
| more than once a week, on average, from the beginning of
| Obama's presidency through October 2015. Nearly 250
| people have shuttled from government service to Google
| employment or vice versa over the course of his
| administration. [...] The government and Google shared
| engineers, lawyers, scientists, communications
| specialists, executives, and even board members. Google
| has achieved a kind of vertical integration with the
| government: a true public-private partnership. [0]
|
| >MS. PSAKI: Sure. Well, I would say first, it shouldn't
| come as any surprise that [The White House is] in regular
| touch with social media platforms -- just like we're in
| regular touch with all of you and your media outlets --
| about areas where we have concern [1]
|
| >So it is possible YouTube removed dislikes it deemed
| "spam" from videos posted by the White House account,
| including the Jan. 20 press briefing video. But there is
| no evidence YouTube deliberately removed authentic
| dislikes from the video to support the Biden
| administration or silence critics. [2]
|
| [0] https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-
| remarkably-close...
|
| [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-
| briefings/202...
|
| [2] https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/jan/25/did-
| youtube-r...
| LarrySellers wrote:
| That is speculation, not circumstantial evidence. Thank
| you for providing sources that say "there is no evidence
| YouTube deliberately removed authentic dislikes."
| adamiscool8 wrote:
| You have to make reasonable inferences when evaluating
| the potential for collusion between what are arguably the
| two most powerful entities in the world.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| or perhaps its merely co-incidental but because some
| people/activists are always so thirsty about politics _any_
| event can be correlated to their political lens.
| dekerta wrote:
| Most pro-vaccine videos are also massively disliked on YouTube,
| despite the fact that the vast majority of people support
| vaccines.
|
| I'm guessing you're a conservative, and you don't want dislikes
| to go away because you think it's great that pro-democrat
| videos get downvoted, but you can't base real public opinion on
| YouTube dislikes. It's massively astroturfed
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > I'm guessing you're a conservative
|
| Please stop. Most conservatives support vaccines. Your idea
| of conservatives has an insidious skew that's just plain
| wrong.
| dekerta wrote:
| The person I was replying to was talking about dislikes on
| the YouTube of a 'particular political party'. That's what
| I was referring to
| vfclists wrote:
| > Most pro-vaccine videos are also massively disliked on
| YouTube, despite the fact that the vast majority of people
| support vaccines.
|
| You mean the vast majority support vaccines because they will
| lose their jobs if they don't "support" them?
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Well the country clicked over to greater than 50% of people
| with at least one dose on May 25, 2021 so it seems like the
| majority did support vaccination before the mandates.
| dekerta wrote:
| You're living in a bubble if you think that people only
| support vaccines because of Mandates. Even in America,
| which is one of the more vaccine hesitant countries, the
| majority of adults got the vaccine long before any mandates
| were introduced
| [deleted]
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I can't say I've checked but I'd have assumed every partisan
| political video gets a tonne of downvotes. I assume you're
| referring to some sort of recent organised thing though?
| bequanna wrote:
| Not organized at all, completely grassroots.
|
| Check the like/dislike ratio for any mainstream media video
| which features an obvious politically slanted view on some
| topic.
|
| The problem here is that people are using the like/dislike
| ratio to indicate what may be biased content masquerading as
| 'objective news'. It just so happens that this (accurate)
| method is flagging the left leaning propaganda that YT wants
| to propagate.
| gadrev wrote:
| It was useful, but they don't care. The same can be said about
| too many "changes" these days.
|
| Bah.
| cletus wrote:
| I'm sure this is to appease brands and we can say a lot about
| that.
|
| But I want to focus on one big problem with dislikes and down
| votes. It applies to Youtube, Reddit, HN and probably everywhere
| you can dislike something: too often people use it simply because
| they disagree with the opinion expressed or simply dislike to
| creator or author.
|
| This really diminishes the value of downvoting (IMHO) and I'm
| surprised someone hasn't tried to address it by figuring out who
| these opinion downvoters are and just shadow banning them,
| specifically you let them interact with the UI elements but it
| doesn't do anything. My theory is you'd get a much better result.
|
| You also have people who review bomb things and I'm not sure how
| I feel about that. It's a way to express dissatisfaction with,
| say, company actions (eg ridiculous DRM) and that has value.
|
| You also see things like on restaurant reviews "giving one star
| because even though the food was excellent and we had a
| reservation for 4 at 7pm on Friday night, we had to wait 45
| minutes when we turned up at 8pm with a party of 11".
|
| I am inclined to think that downvoting and dislikking actually
| has pretty limited value with the way people use it.
| gorwell wrote:
| This is another example of how the ruling class is trying to
| reassert control over the narrative and flow of information.
|
| Flag dissent as `misinformation`, remove comments, remove
| dislikes. Bit by bit, clamping down on the ability for the public
| to revolt.
| azth wrote:
| Hey man, are you against creating a "safe space"? You must be
| one of those non-inclusive racist people. /s
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I'll say this again, I want Google to go down along with the
| rest of FAANG. It has way too much control over US population
| and the rest of the world. It has started to abuse its
| position.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| What's amazing to me is the intellectual hoops I see otherwise
| smart people go through to ignore this, and often when
| confronted, claim refuge in apathy... I really don't get the
| increase in servitudinal attitudes.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| They've also manipulated search results in the last few years.
| Before ~2018 if you searched for a political debate, the top
| result was likely to be an independent content creator or
| someone who was there, a vlog, or something like that. Now it's
| all.. FOX, NBC, ABC, CNN, etc. I wonder if the legacy media is
| paying Google behind the scenes to promote content.
| schleck8 wrote:
| Definitely true, I also noticed this with the BLM protests.
| There were almost no uncommented videos, all just tv
| recordings from the large channels. And the few uncommented
| videos I found were from news stations as well.
| deadmutex wrote:
| Isn't the bar higher for NBC, ABC, CNN, FOX, etc?
|
| I.e. If they say something false on purpose, they're likely
| to get sued out of existence. Whereas, some random guy can
| just say "oh, I was only joking, or this is just
| entertainment, or it's just freedom of speech man... YOU are
| responsible for checking my dis-info" after spreading lies on
| purpose.
|
| Personally, for these reasons, I trust the mainstream news
| sources MUCH more than the random person on the internet that
| may or may not be trying to sell me some snakeoil on the side
| (e.g. Alex Jones).
|
| Disclaimer: These are my own views, and not of my employer.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| CNN with their 'Ivermectin is horse medicine' didn't seem
| to look like they cared..
| mandmandam wrote:
| > If they say something false on purpose, they're likely to
| get sued out of existence
|
| Only if they piss off the wrong "well-connected"
| billionaire. Otherwise, nah, never ever going to happen.
| gfodor wrote:
| Nothing to be concerned about, citizen. If a video is
| disinformation, no need to look for downvotes, YouTube's
| moderators will take care of removing that dangerous content for
| you. Nothing to see here.
| tootahe45 wrote:
| I think everybody expected this. Big corp/biden news has
| struggled to keep up the facade lately. Look at the dislike
| counts here https://www.youtube.com/c/WhiteHouse/videos
| sequel_database wrote:
| They're still mad about YouTube Rewind
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| No doubt, both Kremlin and White House would be very happy about
| it.
| jackTheMan wrote:
| Dont forget Beijing
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| AFAIK YouTube is not available in China without VPN, so
| Beijing is likely not really concerned about it.
| yellowbanana wrote:
| Maybe now they can consider allowing them. since they can
| disable comments and no dislikes, and get 1 billion likes.
| WC3w6pXxgGd wrote:
| China has official YouTube channels where they pump out
| pro-CCP videos, like these classics about the CCP's Belt &
| Road project:
|
| - https://youtu.be/98RNh7rwyf8 -
| https://youtu.be/M0lJc3PMNIg
| rdiddly wrote:
| Anyone else marveling at the amount of time/effort/thought spent
| on this vs. let's say (cliche incoming) curing cancer, or
| (slightly less cliche but quickly catching up)
| stopping/mitigating climate change?
| rdiddly wrote:
| No, huh? Everybody would rather re-hash all the same boring
| free speech vs. bullying/disinformation arguments again?
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| I bet Google always keeps a few big but not particularly time-
| sensitive announcements like this in their back pocket so they
| can drop them as a distraction when some sizeable negative story
| about them breaks - say, when a $2.8B antritrust ruling goes
| against them (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29175511)
| [deleted]
| dameyawn wrote:
| In response to their reasoning, why not instead hide dislikes
| only for smaller creators then? Once you reach a certain
| threshold of views/subscribers, it becomes visible again.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Very sad to see this move, pathetic.
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| cancelling my premium too. screw this.
| teitoklien wrote:
| I guess now , I'll just consider views to like ratio as a new
| form of hinting at dislike
|
| Overall , this is a pretty bad move, If a creator feels harassed
| by dislikes , they should use it as a way of learning to grow
| thick skin, They need it anyways as public professionals.
|
| Instead what now went away, is information on how others in a
| community reacted to a video or content,
|
| Dislikes have always been a great way to detect misinformation or
| incorrect content or atleast give a hint that a topic needs more
| researching.
|
| Now, someone who's new to all of this, Will see a youtube video
| on cleaning their desktop and wont understand why,
|
| Running "sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /" Is a very bad idea
| ....
|
| (Pls dont run this command on your computer)
| rehhouari wrote:
| so what indicator can we use to check whether a video is
| scam/pointless/have wrong information?
|
| The only one benifiting from this is Youtube itself since we'll
| have to watch entire videos wasting hours on useless content and
| they make more money.
|
| "dislike attacks" what an implausible argument.
| yanis_t wrote:
| So who's the first to implement a Chrome extension that brings
| the dislike button back?
| gitpusher wrote:
| RIP to one of my favorite YouTube comment formats:
|
| > "<dislike number> of people <something funny related to the
| video>"
| mwidell wrote:
| and this beautiful video will lose its point :(
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYS8Av10B00
| glouwbug wrote:
| For me it will be this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussCHoQttyQ
| thamer wrote:
| Unlike with the "k" suffix for thousands that we have today,
| YouTube used to show the unabbreviated number of likes and
| dislikes even for larger numbers of votes.
|
| This video was remarkable for the fact that it maintained
| pretty much a perfectly equal number of likes and dislikes
| for years (rarely off by more than 1). It was a tacit
| agreement among viewers: if you saw a mismatched count, it
| was your duty to vote towards restoring the balance.
|
| The two numbers are probably off by several hundred these
| days.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| Apparently you can hover over the bar under the the like /
| dislike and get the exact counts. Its off by 10 as of this
| post.
|
| Edit: And it was corrected immediately. Refreshed and they
| were back to even.
| prvc wrote:
| >This video was remarkable for the fact that it maintained
| pretty much a perfectly equal number of likes and dislikes
| for years (rarely off by more than 1). It was a tacit
| agreement among viewers: if you saw a mismatched count, it
| was your duty to vote towards restoring the balance.
|
| While this may seem pretty cool and fun to you and me, in
| Youtube's view this is an "attack".
| prvc wrote:
| I don't like this one, as each voter has decisively chosen
| one side. In aggregate, the voters are ambivalent rather than
| neutral. Better had it received no votes at all.
| slingnow wrote:
| Yeah, that was hilarious the first 100 times I saw it. It seems
| now every "funny" comment is a template like the one you
| describe, and everyone is racing to be the first one to plug in
| the right values.
|
| Low quality garbage.
| BoardsOfCanada wrote:
| For me that's the silver lining of this change.
| [deleted]
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| People objecting to the idea that someone might have pressed
| the dislike button for whatever reason, unable to handle the
| mild cognitive dissonance of divergent opinions always stood in
| stark contrast to the old mantra that graced the signatures of
| slashdot and other forum comments:
|
| "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death
| your right to say it."
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think you're misinterpreting as psychological turmoil what
| is actually light anonymous fun being made of people's tastes
| in service of a punchline.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Yes, by all means, let's protect our advertisers from the users
| of the platform. Great thinking!
| yakkityyak wrote:
| Like/Dislike is a terrible indicator of quality. I'd rather they
| make public some sort of derivation from the video retention
| ratio. Wether or not people actually _finished_ the video rather
| than smashed the like button (which is now an ask every creator
| has in their intro now) would be a way more useful indicator to
| me of quality.
| bequanna wrote:
| > We've also heard directly from smaller creators, and those just
| getting started with their YouTube channel, that they are
| unfairly targeted by dislike attacks
|
| Wow. Well, the politically motivated truth behind this change is
| pretty darn obvious, right?
|
| If you're confused what I mean, check any US mainstream media
| video with an obvious political slant but pretending to be
| "objective news" and look at the like/dislike ratio. The system
| is totally working...except it isn't working out well for the
| political party that YT would prefer.
|
| The more striking thing to me is how little effort they put into
| the cover excuse. IMO this just shows they don't really care
| about the optics of censoring speech or letting users flag
| propaganda. Quite brazen.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| The change has been in the works since 2019
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/youtube-doesnt-like-...
|
| Was it "politically motivated" then? Or just when it confirms
| your own biases (now)?
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >Was it "politically motivated" then?
|
| It can be politically motivated now, and reputationally
| motivated then. It can also be both, then and now. We know
| nothing outside of what YouTube's PR department is telling
| us, and all PR is nonsense wrapped around bullshit.
|
| It's pretty obvious why they're rolling it out now. YouTube
| spends a lot of its time suppressing signals it doesn't like.
|
| But, in the end, who cares? Everybody not suffering from
| brain damage knows that YouTube manipulates the hell out of
| all of the public metrics; and everybody who isn't clinically
| dead knows that these things are gamed into uselessness.
| bequanna wrote:
| > Was it "politically motivated" then?
|
| Absolutely. 2019 was only 2 years ago. YT's politics are the
| same now as they were then.
|
| Also, "dislike mobs" are hardly a thing at all. Almost always
| a large number of dislikes on content like "rewind" videos
| expresses widespread genuine disapproval of content. In the
| rewind example, users likely found this content cringy and
| felt pandered to.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| So they knew Biden's YouTube videos would get dislikes
| years ahead of time?
|
| Here's evidence of a dislike mob being organized: https://l
| ibredd.it/r/Conservative/comments/l2d9ma/youtube_de...
|
| Here's more evidence of widespread abuse by the right wing:
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/leaked-the-alt-right-
| playbook-...
|
| You're so out of the loop, I can understand why you are
| confused.
|
| > Almost always a large number of dislikes on content like
| "rewind" videos expresses widespread genuine disapproval of
| content
|
| Go ahead and post your evidence please.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| > Here's evidence of a dislike mob being organized
|
| In other words, democracy doing democracy things?
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| In other words, "dislike mobs" are very real, organized,
| and occur often. This evidence disproves the idea that
| "'dislike mobs' are hardly a thing at all."
| kipchak wrote:
| >Almost always a large number of dislikes on content like
| "rewind" videos expresses widespread genuine disapproval
| of content
|
| Presumably he's referring to this?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbJOTdZBX1g
| will4274 wrote:
| I knew Biden's YouTube videos would get dislikes years
| ahead of time.
|
| It's hardly a shocking conclusion. He's old, boring, out
| of touch, and wildly disliked by both the far left and
| the entire right.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| How did they know he'd win the presidency and be running
| the White House Youtube channel?
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Apparently he seems to be disliked by his kids too.
| Judging by shocking contents is his daughters diary, and
| the contents of his son's laptop. Would not surprise me
| at this point if they were both leaked to spite the "Big
| Guy". How exactly do both of them happen to
| "accidentally" just leave these things behind.
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop posting political battle comments
| to HN? We ban accounts that do that, regardless of their
| politics, because it's destructive of what this site is
| supposed to be for.
|
| We've already had to ask you this before. If you'd please
| review the rules and stick to them, we'd appreciate it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| In my defence, I replied to a political statement about
| Biden's popularity. But now that I reread the comment, I
| can see how it was overtly speculative. Shouldn't have
| made it.
| krzyk wrote:
| > Also, "dislike mobs" are hardly a thing at all.
|
| Have you heard of 4chan? Or any reddit like forum? People
| organize pretty quickly on internet.
| bequanna wrote:
| It looks like ~300,000 videos are uploaded to YT daily.
| What percentage of videos do these "dislike mobs"
| mobilize against?
|
| 0.001%? 0.01%?
|
| As I said, they are hardly a thing at all.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| Dislike mobs are typically targeted to a specific account
| (like the White House) or video, not the 300,000 videos
| uploaded every day. Did you know that?
|
| Luckily they are typically organized so insecurely that
| we have a lot of evidence of them:
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/leaked-the-alt-right-
| playbook-...
| Jensson wrote:
| To someone who doesn't live in USA the policies created by
| tech companies always seemed random and strange. But then I
| started looking at Californian news and suddenly it all made
| sense, it seems most strange policies are made in response to
| local political issues and then the whole world has to live
| with it. I can't say for sure whether that is what happened
| now, but it wouldn't be the first time.
| feoren wrote:
| > an obvious political slant
|
| I think it's worth really pondering this phrase. It's the kind
| of thing people just toss out without really thinking about
| what it means, in the hopes that it will produce automatic
| head-nods from the reader. When you are so deeply, heavily,
| unwaveringly invested in a very specific idea to the extent
| that anything that slightly disagrees with that idea has an
| "obvious political slant", you are literally brainwashed. I
| know that's an overused accusation, but it's hard to define
| "brainwashed" any other way; you've decided that your very
| small bubble of beliefs is the truth, and therefore any video
| that doesn't 100% conform to it is "obviously" politically
| biased and full of lies. And what does "politically" even mean?
| That word has just lost all meaning. Politics is just anything
| that affects people's lives.
|
| The reality is that everything related to COVID or vaccines
| that isn't 100% Q-anon Trumpist cult-thumping is currently
| brigaded with downvotes. Do you not see the irony in rejecting
| everything outside of your bubble as obvious lies, while
| simultaneously calling for less censorship? All you're really
| saying is: we want every idea censored _except for ours_.
|
| You used the word "obvious" twice, and the whole post has a
| "you know what I mean; wink wink, nudge nudge" vibe to it. I
| know I won't change your mind, but I just think it's worth
| pointing out to others to really just notice how _weird_ that
| use of language really is. The Q-anon thought-virus is real and
| it has evolved to be very good at what it does. This kind of
| language is part of its infection mechanism. It 's worth really
| examining.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| I can only imagine how such a speech would look like in the
| form of a YouTube video. Go for it! Tell us the dislike
| ratio.
| bequanna wrote:
| Ha, I love that! My comment seems to suggest that maybe I am
| right-leaning and you sneak in a reference to Q-anon! Genius!
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| It's cute how many commenters are not aware of this.
| https://mobile.twitter.com/FRANK_SINATRA7/status/14584818380...
| tomstockmail wrote:
| This only proves the point to remove the dislikes as clearly
| those are coordinated dislike attacks. The subject matter in
| that video doesn't even have anything worth liking or
| disliking; it was pretty standard stuff. The screenshot you
| show has the person shown disliking it - whomever took the
| screenshot has an agenda. And that Twitter account speaks for
| itself.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Any proof of that? I really can't see how google would be
| vulnerable to bots and brigading. I mean, you can't use
| vpns or tor on google apps without solving annoying
| puzzles.
| Loughla wrote:
| >Wow. Well, the politically motivated truth behind this change
| is pretty darn obvious, right?
|
| I still am very confused by what you mean and what you're
| getting at with this.
| [deleted]
| bequanna wrote:
| Please read the sentence right below the one you copy +
| pasted:
|
| > If you're confused what I mean, check any US mainstream
| media video with an obvious political slant but pretending to
| be "objective news" and look at the like/dislike ratio. The
| system is totally working...except it isn't working out well
| for the political party that YT would prefer.
|
| In other words: People are disliking obvious political
| propaganda that YT would prefer that you like.
| [deleted]
| pcwalton wrote:
| Every video that correctly describes the benefits of the COVID
| vaccine and makes it to the front page is spammed with
| dislikes, and this constitutes a major threat to public health.
| No, this is actually a very important change.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Any good gained with this will be overshadowed by losing
| super important feedback from real users about negativity of
| the content. Kids videos, tutorials, whatever. How will you
| know you are getting the best result for your search instead
| of some search-optimized garbage that already lured tons of
| people before?
| Drew_ wrote:
| I suppose seeing highly disliked videos is a good red flag
| for some, but these videos don't really show up in search
| results or recommendations to begin with. I can't remember
| the last time I've seen a video with any more than 15 or
| 20% dislikes. Either way, you should probably watch the
| video anyway and make up your own mind.
| webinvest wrote:
| The public health of who exactly? The people who have refused
| to or chosen not to get vaccinated?
|
| It's like a seatbelt. You can require that everyone have
| access to one but you can't require that everyone use one.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Except not getting vaccinated harms others. Yes, they're
| mostly harming themselves, but some people aren't able to
| be vaccinated, and a few vaccinated people have still been
| hospitalized from covid complications.
| pcwalton wrote:
| People have literally died from not being able to receive
| treatment from their diseases because hospitals were
| filled with COVID patients who didn't take the vaccine
| when offered.
| webinvest wrote:
| No, it doesn't.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Tell that to the vaccinated people who have still died of
| covid due to spread from the unvaccinated.
| ihumanable wrote:
| What?
|
| Seatbelt laws exist, in many places in the US if a cop sees
| you driving without your seatbelt on you are getting pulled
| over and getting a hefty fine.
| oliv__ wrote:
| Whose public health exactly? The people who have willingly
| chosen not to take the vaccine?
|
| Or are you meaning we must "protect the vaccinated from the
| unvaccinated"?
| pcwalton wrote:
| I'm not interested in debating antivax propaganda.
| bequanna wrote:
| Absolutely. It is so much easier to just silence your
| opposition.
| oliv__ wrote:
| If it's public health you're so interested in, you might
| want to get the "public" on board with your ideas, lest
| you be on the side of propaganda.
| pcwalton wrote:
| The public is broadly on board with vaccines, including
| mandates [1]. The entire problem is that COVID videos are
| spammed by an unrepresentative group of antivaxxers.
|
| [1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/354506/update-american-
| public-o...
| bequanna wrote:
| Ah, right. We must censor speech for the "greater good".
|
| The underclass must not be allowed to organize or disseminate
| "dangerous" ideas.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| you can still leave a shitty comment, its just your
| negative feedback in the binary only goes to the publisher
| to show them that they have missed the mark as opposed to
| signalling behaviour to others (still possible with
| comments).
| oooooooooooow wrote:
| Yesterday I could leave a dissenting comment and publicly
| vote down the content. Today I can leave a dissenting
| comment. Tomorrow... ?
| IshKebab wrote:
| "Comments are disabled for this video"
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| just post it on reddit and shit talk it there? Having a
| conversation on Youtube is a horrible experience anyway.
| supperburg wrote:
| But under your logic a shitty comment is a danger to
| public health just like a dislike.
| bequanna wrote:
| Ah, but then we can use the comment to update their
| social credit score accordingly.
| bequanna wrote:
| Not quite.
|
| The social signal that a large number of people
| disapprove of content is what they are looking to hide.
|
| It isn't just important for us to know if the majority of
| viewers think a fortnite walkthrough is shitty. We also
| need to know when a politician is lying to us.
|
| Do most people think this is bullshit? That is what the
| like/dislike ratio communicates so succinctly.
| pcwalton wrote:
| An enormous number of public opinion polls broadly show
| acceptance of the COVID vaccine, including mandates [1].
| Yet every video demonstrating the efficacy of the vaccine
| that makes it to the front page of YouTube is spammed
| with dislikes (80% or more). It's statistically
| impossible for the polls to be off by so much that
| YouTube dislikes are representative of actual public
| opinion. This is why it is necessary to take antivaxxers'
| toys away.
|
| [1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/354506/update-american-
| public-o...
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| The idea that the dislike ratio indicates any of this is
| kinda silly. At best, a "large number" or "majority of
| viewers" isn't even close to a 10th of those who have
| watched it, the rest either liked the video or didn't
| care enough to leave a like/dislike. And as is pretty
| commonly known, people are much more likely to leave
| feedback if they're unhappy than happy, so clearly the
| numbers are going to be at best unreliable and likely
| very tilted in the dislike direction.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I don't think I've ever used like/dislike as any sort of
| indicator beyond seeing that there's some drama going on.
| Its a very unreliable metric.
|
| If you want discourse about a video and its
| propagandiness then IMHO reddit would be a better place
| to get that because it has conversational features,
| unlike other social media spaces.
| stale2002 wrote:
| You are not being censored because certain videos don't
| have a dislike button on it. You have so many other avenues
| of speech than that.
| nouveaux wrote:
| Sorry I must have missed something. The quote you're addressing
| talks about smaller creators. Wouldn't this apply to smaller
| creators from both parties?
| bequanna wrote:
| The point of my comment is that the stated reason for this
| change is quite obviously bullshit.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nojs wrote:
| It also serves Google's long term interest in being able to
| feed you content according to their own objectives with less
| transparency, similar to the FB newsfeed.
| dools wrote:
| By aligning themselves with a fact free version of reality, the
| conservative/libertarian hybrid movement that has captured the
| right have put themselves politically against anyone who is
| interested in truth or objective reality. This big tech by that
| definition aligns with "the left".
|
| However in reality YouTube has no political bias.
| reubens wrote:
| A lot of comments about the inconvenience to the viewer given
| this was how we decided whether to watch a video.
|
| But I think the dislike ratio will still decide whether a video
| is suggested to you, so will still determine whether you end up
| watching the video?
| savant_penguin wrote:
| CNN must be loving this
|
| (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rYZTN5NkxmQ 11k / 70k)
| drenvuk wrote:
| So now we have to trust their recommendation algos rather than
| other users to avoid trash content. This is stupid.
| dprophecyguy wrote:
| They are removing it before Youtube rewind. Hmmm what could be
| the reason ???
| jonny_eh wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/7/22714550/youtube-rewind-c...
| dprophecyguy wrote:
| my bad.
| garfieldnate wrote:
| I dislike the information asymmetry this creates between the
| poster of a video and its viewers. 100K likes serves implicitly
| as a kind of social proof; no one but the poster gets to know if
| it also has 80K dislikes. So it's quite easy and natural to look
| at a video and think that it has some kind of societal approval.
| It would have been better to hide the number of likes, too.
| aclatuts wrote:
| There should have be an option for the content creator to enable
| or disable this. Just like how comments can be enabled or
| disabled per video or the whole channel. Since this change was
| for creators to reduce harassment on themselves.
| docmars wrote:
| Whitehouse can't handle criticism, bummer.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| At this point, Google can just add YouTube likes as an in-app
| purchase. 1000 likes for $10 or something like that.
| rektide wrote:
| Reducing what the worlds gets to see, what feedback/visibility we
| have, is going to be such a sad sad ongoing theme for this ultra-
| consumerized/consumptive information-technology. There's no
| reason to let us be informed consumers.
| happynacho wrote:
| Protecting the white house legendary ratios.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| a lot of EU propaganda videos like illegal immigrants or climate
| got a lot of dislikes. First they played the Russian Card but as
| that general public did not accept this they now hide the
| dislikes because they want to force people to like climate
| actions and welcome immigrants.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I personally think this should only apply in specific
| circumstances, such as smaller creators or creators likely to be
| targeted by harassment (e.g. women, racial minorities, openly
| LGBT, etc). However, I can also imagine a counterargument that
| hiding dislikes here would be considered some kind of indicator
| that a person is worth harassing for lols. I'm not sure exactly
| how to balance that.
| MatthiasWandel wrote:
| the ability to hide the like/dislike counts has been there all
| along. I don't see why they want to take this choice away from
| creators.
| htoweur234 wrote:
| Snowflakes want to spout lies day in day out, but don't want to
| be accountable for it, or be called out on their lies.
|
| Twitter and now Google. Par for course I guess.
| cute_boi wrote:
| I am very ambivalent about this decision. I have saved multiple
| hours just by watching ratio of like and dislikes. At least show
| us the ratio and better hide the like count too. (but we know
| they wont hide like count because they want to keep user engaged
| to earn more advertising $$$)
|
| Just to appease few creator taking away the functionality just
| seem abysmal to me.
| remram wrote:
| Also you could already disable showing the count of likes and
| dislikes publicly.
| adamc wrote:
| I'm not even ambivalent. It is clearly hostile toward the
| viewers, but helps content creators (or some content creators).
|
| Google is an ad-supported company. They are there to sell you
| soap, and have no more morality than P&G or Walmart. Their
| slogan might as well be "Evil for a buck".
| _trampeltier wrote:
| I think you maybe just should be able to vote, after you watched,
| maybe over 50% or so, if the video.
| roody15 wrote:
| Really quite dystopian. Just another move to blatantly try and
| shape/control the national narrative.
| missinfo wrote:
| Check out the downvotes and top comments on their announcement
| video. Frankly I'm surprised they didn't disable comments yet.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxOuG8jMIgI
|
| "Great to see YouTube finally protecting creators like Pepsi and
| Gillette"
|
| "This is the most offensively dishonest thing you've posted even
| for your standard. Dislike counts were essential to spot scams,
| fake/bad tutorials, clickbaits and were especially important as a
| tool to fight back against horrible megacorporation
| announcements."
|
| "To protect creators that suck, like politicians, big
| corporations that sponsor us, and astroturfed talentless on
| demand era hacks, we're preventing you from seeing how unpopular
| they are."
|
| "We want everyone to have a voice, unless those voices are valid
| criticism or go against our agenda."
|
| "No one wants this other than the corporations who are getting
| shamed for putting out awful content that the public dislike. You
| are removing a key protection people have from scamming,
| dangerous or misleading content and are protecting no one. Stop
| hiding behind 'small creators mental health' like you think
| you're doing anything. We can all still see how many dislikes our
| video got. Our mental health is not protected in any fashion. The
| only thing you change is the public facing, and we know why you
| did this."
|
| "When I was 12, my videos were dislike bombed. Not many liked
| them. Sure, it hurt, but I matured since then. I matured, because
| I was able to respond to the negative feedback my content was
| receiving. If not it, I would be falsely convinced of my
| perceived non-existant greatness. Dislikes are key to personal
| and content growth."
| theHIDninja wrote:
| Okay, so now there is no way for me to tell if a video is a waste
| of my time or not.
|
| Fuck Youtube. they need a competitor.
| WC3w6pXxgGd wrote:
| Odysee is a great alternative.
| latitudan wrote:
| There were videos with a exact issue I am searching for in the
| title. When the ratio to dislike to like is huge I can know that
| they didn't address the issue properly in the video. When they
| take away this functionality, I have to watch and waste my time
| or refer comments(if the creator didn't disable that, which is
| another red flag)
| arwhatever wrote:
| Make the like names invisible across Twitter.
| davewasthere wrote:
| What's stupid, is (as long as comments are enabled) all someone
| needs to say is "I dislike/hate/loathe this video" and everyone
| who would have previously disliked the video, upvotes that
| comment (perhaps as well as...).
|
| Although I guess it all counts as engagement, so win-win as far
| as YT are concerned.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| I bet this is at least partially a result of their "awards show"
| where they awarded themselves all the awards getting a record
| amount of dislikes in record time, publicly embarrassing them.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| https://www.newsweek.com/youtube-ceo-susan-wojcicki-gets-fre...
| m0zg wrote:
| To be re-introduced once a Republican president is elected in
| 2024. /s
| [deleted]
| etchalon wrote:
| I've never found dislike counts to be any more useful than
| letting me know someone said something some partisan group is
| unhappy about.
|
| Like counts / view ratios tell me if a video is worth watching.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Is this the reason?
| https://mobile.twitter.com/FRANK_SINATRA7/status/14584818380...
| [deleted]
| spiznnx wrote:
| This seems like it could have unintended effects of making the
| experience worse for creators. Instead of getting dislikes, maybe
| now they'll get mean comments instead.
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