[HN Gopher] YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike
       count
        
       Author : jafitc
       Score  : 294 points
       Date   : 2021-12-03 19:42 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | rob_c wrote:
       | Lol.
       | 
       | Seems great from a board room, YouTube is too big to fail in
       | 2years...
       | 
       | But this is just a signal that the platform is decaying to the
       | latest generation of artists/creators...
       | 
       | Shame that for now they have a stranglehold on money and
       | advertisers.
        
       | godshatter wrote:
       | Likes and dislikes are a horrible way to judge a video, ime. I
       | don't know who liked or disliked a video or for what reasons. A
       | like by someone may be a good reason for me to watch the video
       | where a like by someone else might be an excellent reason not to
       | watch it. Similar for dislikes. Of the two, I guess I prefer
       | likes. People who dislike videos are usually upset about
       | something specific, often things I don't really care much about.
       | People who like something generally actually like it, as far as
       | I've seen.
       | 
       | When I'm considering whether I might like to watch a video, I do
       | the unthinkable and just give it a go for a few minutes if it
       | looks like it might be interesting or entertaining. I don't
       | really need aggregated opinions from random people on the
       | internet to help me make my decision on whether I like it or not.
       | I couldn't, for example, tell you if I'm currently seeing
       | dislikes on videos even though I've watched a fair few of them
       | recently.
        
       | eddof13 wrote:
       | I adblock youtube now and I cancelled premium due to their
       | censorship
        
       | ordiel wrote:
       | I am more than ready to degoogle myself, if only my pinephone
       | were fully functional :/. I need a phone that can support ANY OS
       | of my choosing, not the one the vendor provides/allows, I am a
       | paying google customer, drive and youtube, the former mostly due
       | to the music, I guess its time to go back to the good old days.
       | ARRGH!!! ;)
        
       | isoskeles wrote:
       | Why not make this an opt-in feature? That way, big media
       | companies with a YouTube presence who constantly have often post
       | videos with high dislike ratios can hide the fact (although,
       | we'll know this because of the hidden dislikes).
       | 
       | It's quite annoying when I'm looking at neutral, nonpolitical
       | content, and I can't get a sense of whether or not other viewers
       | hate it. I look at a decent amount of tutorial content for
       | various things, and the like-dislike ratio is fairly indicative
       | of whether or not the content is wrong or if I should even
       | continue watching it.
        
         | notriddle wrote:
         | > although, we'll know this because of the hidden dislikes
         | 
         | That's exactly the problem, though. Nobody hides the like bar
         | unless they expect a bad rating, so a hidden like bar might as
         | well just be all red (people tend to assume the worst).
         | 
         | No matter what your view is on this (harassment or genuine
         | negative sentiment, it doesn't matter) an optional like bar
         | might as well be mandatory for all the good it does.
        
       | SpicyLemonZest wrote:
       | It's stunning how often things like this get wildly upvoted. The
       | video shows nothing at all about "YouTube deleting comments who
       | criticize their hiding of the dislike count"; the guy shows a
       | comment of his that has nothing to do with the dislike count
       | getting deleted, although he asserts without evidence that this
       | is related to a different comment he made (which was _not_
       | deleted) regarding the dislike count. A lot of people are
       | successfully exploiting HN to spread false stories about
       | controversial events.
        
         | Brian_K_White wrote:
         | Watch the first few seconds of the video again, and then it's
         | your own comment which makes no sense.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | This one's funny because the _actual_ behavior is egregious
         | enough without having to be artificially inflated.
        
         | Gigachad wrote:
         | Tech companies get away with randomly and invisibly doing
         | things to people which no one can verify or understand why. Yes
         | of course we can't know why exactly this happened, but it's
         | still youtube's fault for deleting all of these comments
         | without explaining why.
        
           | SpicyLemonZest wrote:
           | The unfortunate reality, as anyone who's had to moderate
           | online spaces can confirm, is that unexplained shadowbans are
           | a necessary tool. Turn on showdead on HN some time, and
           | you'll see some great examples of smart, coherent people who
           | are incredibly dedicated to ruining the quality of discourse
           | and couldn't be stopped by lesser measures. I was a big
           | opponent of shadowbanning too until I spent some time
           | moderating a subreddit.
        
         | jafitc wrote:
         | Of course. You can't be 100% certain.
         | 
         | You know what else you can't be 100% certain of? How many
         | dislikes this video got.
         | 
         | It's one thing how the comment disappears. It's a whole other
         | thing how you are asked to "take a screenshot of the
         | disappeared comment to investigate".
         | 
         | If you feel this singles out Google, think twice. Yes, Google
         | definitely wasn't afraid to meddle with its search results for
         | its own gains before. But there are other companies having
         | practices just as shady.
         | 
         | Like "how the Apple Podcasts app went from a 1.8-star score all
         | the way to 4.6 stars in a month without any actual fixes"
         | 
         | https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/19/22791968/apple-podcasts-...
         | 
         | Hiding dislikes, disappearing comments, tricking users into
         | reviewing unrelated services.
         | 
         | There is a broader issue unfolding recently about platforms and
         | transparency.
        
       | ragnot wrote:
       | To put my tinfoil hat on: I believe that the recent crackdown on
       | the dislike count and the twitter rule change/bot purging has
       | been orchestrated by the Biden administration in an attempt to
       | combat a repeat of foreign interference via social media.
        
         | completelylegit wrote:
         | If foreign governments can have a discernible effect on America
         | because of a dislike button - removing it wouldn't make a
         | difference.
         | 
         | Removing the ability to _comment_ would be something
         | different...
        
           | Focalise wrote:
           | I agree, Biden is regularly downvoted heavily. I would think
           | primarily by Americans.
        
             | KerryJones wrote:
             | I would guess primarily by Right-wing Americans, the very
             | Left-wing americans I know don't love him but wouldn't down
             | vote him regularly.
        
               | Eelongate wrote:
               | The very left-wing Americans I know hated Trump a lot
               | more than they love Biden. They have no particular love
               | for Biden because Biden is not very left-wing at all.
               | Biden comes from the old neoliberal contingent of the
               | DNC, not the new lefty progressive camp. Biden is no
               | Bernie or AOC and only has lukewarm support from very-
               | left people, in my experience.
        
           | ragnot wrote:
           | I think it does make a difference. Its a small one, but one
           | that hits home. After all, when you see those videos online
           | of the Biden admin with 1000s of dislikes...don't you feel
           | that there is a segment of people out there that don't go
           | along with the cultural zeitgeist of the internet? That maybe
           | left-wing opinions (although dominant on the internet) may
           | have some push back in the real world? When you lose that
           | ability to voice opposition you get something not exactly
           | dystopian but something marching closer to it.
        
             | SpicyLemonZest wrote:
             | I don't, and I think the strongest argument against the
             | dislike counter is that it encourages people to. Dislike
             | counts aren't an accurate metric of what people "out there"
             | think because they're heavily dependent on who ends up
             | seeing the video - it's easy for a video to have lots of
             | dislikes even though it expresses popular views, or few
             | dislikes even though it expresses unpopular views.
        
               | tombert wrote:
               | I definitely agree with this. If you go to _any_ video
               | right now that even mentions vaccines you can look at the
               | comments of people talking about how evil Pfizer and
               | Moderna are, and it dominates the entire comment section.
               | I 'm reasonably certain that a lot of these people are
               | _looking_ for vaccine videos just to shit on them in the
               | comments and downvote them.
        
               | Brian_K_White wrote:
               | Not to mention, regardless what most people think or ones
               | self thinks, I didn't think, or didn't like, much of the
               | most important information and concepts that have ever
               | been told to me.
               | 
               | It's fine to filter entertainment by taste and
               | preference, but having news of the world treated exactly
               | the same way is a problem. It's not only not a good idea,
               | it's literally not sane.
        
             | buerkle wrote:
             | How do you figure left-wing opinions are dominant on the
             | internet?
        
       | snug wrote:
       | So Youtube let him make a video but not make a comment? Something
       | doesn't add up here...
        
       | wnevets wrote:
       | Do people actually look at the votes before watching a video? I
       | don't think I've ever done that on YouTube. The outrage over this
       | just seems so manufactured to me.
        
         | jasode wrote:
         | _> Do people actually look at the votes before watching a
         | video?_
         | 
         | Yes, lots of people do that to avoid wasting time on bad
         | videos.
         | 
         | Especially for product review videos or tutorials, the first
         | thing I look at is the dislike count compared to the like
         | count. If dislikes are high, it's because the reviewer didn't
         | provide useful information. E.g. a "top 5 dash cams" where the
         | video is simply a slide show of dashcams will have more
         | dislikes than likes.
         | 
         | Dislike counts may be unreliable for politics videos but it was
         | an accurate indicator for other topics like DIY how-tos. With
         | the dislikes gone, I now scroll through comments first before
         | hitting play. (But some channels disable comments so that
         | doesn't always work.) I hope Youtube brings the dislikes
         | counter back as their policy change is very user hostile.
        
         | commandlinefan wrote:
         | I don't really watch YouTube much (I don't get sitting through
         | somebody talking about something rather than just reading it
         | myself) but I've seen a lot of people who _do_ use YouTube to
         | find educational videos using the like /dislike ratio as an
         | indicator of the quality of a video. I guess if you're about to
         | invest a half hour in listening to somebody talk about math or
         | computer programming, you want some indication that it's going
         | to be a half hour well spent.
         | 
         | I guess I do the same when I'm thinking about buying a book
         | about a technical topic, after all - I read the amazon reviews
         | to see if it's going to be a waste of my time.
        
           | Drew_ wrote:
           | You can get better feedback on whether a video is bad by
           | skimming comments. You should also acknowledge that you may
           | like content that is unpopular (highly disliked videos are
           | never universally disliked).
        
             | jasode wrote:
             | _> You can get better feedback on whether a video is bad by
             | skimming comments. _
             | 
             | But many videos _disabled comments_ while the dislikes
             | count was still visible to help decide.
             | 
             |  _> You should also acknowledge that you may like content
             | that is unpopular (highly disliked videos _
             | 
             | For non-politics or non-music videos such as how-to
             | tutorials or product reviews, I've never experienced this.
             | The crowdsourced dislikes was a very accurate indicator of
             | a bad video and I've never disagreed with it.
        
               | Drew_ wrote:
               | Disabled comments is a very strong signal in its own
               | right. Ratings can also be disabled and usually are as
               | well. Either way, it is still very easy to discern
               | whether the video you are about to watch is
               | controversial.
        
               | jasode wrote:
               | _> Disabled comments is a very strong signal in its own
               | right._
               | 
               | It might be but often it's not. A common reason comments
               | are disabled is that a female is in it which invites rude
               | sexist remarks. For example, there was some advanced math
               | university lectures taught by female professors and every
               | one of them was spammed with _" men of culture, we meet
               | here again"_. Understandably, the channel later disabled
               | the comments out of respect for those women _but at least
               | the dislike numbers were still visible_.
               | 
               |  _> , it is still very easy to discern whether the video
               | you are about to watch is controversial._
               | 
               | No, it's actually cumbersome and wastes extra time to
               | determine if many how-to videos are bad quality without a
               | dislike count. That's why so many are irritated that
               | Youtube removed it.
        
         | passivate wrote:
         | The argument for "Nobody looks at it" logically leads to
         | removing most features/buttons except play, but UI isn't
         | designed that way for a single workflow/use case. I sometimes
         | look to see if people overwhelmingly disliked the video.
        
         | stjohnswarts wrote:
         | Yeah it's definitely a vocal minority. I bet there is next to
         | no drop in traffic on youtube or in ad revenue. For youtube
         | it's probably a public opinion win.
        
         | rbinv wrote:
         | Yes, first thing. Anything with >=10% dislikes is usually not
         | worth the watch imo.
        
         | jcun4128 wrote:
         | It's helpful to spot fake stuff like fake trailers or some kind
         | of scam.
        
           | rvnx wrote:
           | From the perspective of YouTube, the goal is to increase
           | engagement, so you end up watching more video content = you
           | win. Though it's a pretty sad tactic and deceptive in the
           | long-term.
        
             | jcun4128 wrote:
             | Yeah it's already employed where you can't tell how good a
             | search result video is since the ratings aren't displayed
             | there.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | Agreed. Following the drama has been so stupid. I challenge
         | everybody who has a problem with this to boycott YouTube.
        
         | Kaze404 wrote:
         | Watching any type of Minecraft tutorial on YouTube is
         | impossible without dislikes. There's an insane amount of
         | clickbait, including for contraptions that literally do not
         | exist. It's crazy.
        
         | pier25 wrote:
         | Some times I do look at the votes while already watching the
         | video, but that's it. Same with with the number of views.
         | 
         | I have a feeling Youtubers are probably the segment most
         | annoyed by the change, which happen to be the ones with the
         | megaphone.
        
         | dilap wrote:
         | Honestly, I was surprised to find that I miss the downvotes. I
         | did quickly use it as a sort of gauge of "is this chopped or
         | not".
        
           | stjohnswarts wrote:
           | what does "is this chopped" mean? Is this a new Gen Z term
           | that I've yet to hear?
        
         | fletchowns wrote:
         | It can be helpful on the DIY help videos (home improvement
         | stuff, etc) where the author of the video may have something
         | wrong or dangerous in the instructions. It's not the only
         | indicator since we have comments as well, but it's certainly a
         | useful indicator.
        
         | Toutouxc wrote:
         | Yes, I used to do that every single time, and I would Cmd+W out
         | of it immediately if the like/dislike ratio looked suspicious.
         | Plenty of other videos in the sea.
        
       | TT-392 wrote:
       | The youtube automatically deleting comments thing is strange, it
       | happens to me quite often for no clear reason. I once left a
       | commend on a veritasium vid where I got something wrong. Replies
       | kept coming about what I got wrong. But anytime I edited the
       | comment, or leaving a reply myself. The exact thing happened to
       | my edits or replies as happened in the video.
       | 
       | It is not like I can't leave comments anywhere like the guy in
       | the vid, it just, sometimes happens with specific things, with no
       | clear indication as to why it happens.
        
         | rvnx wrote:
         | It's likely that the reason the comments are deleted are due to
         | the spam filter. I don't see the connection with a critic of
         | the disappearance of dislikes.
        
         | Aunche wrote:
         | Youtube comments are incredibly plagued with spam. Every time I
         | comment on video, I get a reply from a crypto scammer.
        
         | ollien wrote:
         | Google does this as a whole, IME. A body shop did a really
         | shoddy repair and when I went to check my review later, it was
         | gone. I don't understand why; it shows when I'm logged into the
         | original Google account, but not otherwise.
        
       | LinuxBender wrote:
       | I can see why people would be annoyed at being shadow banned.
       | Alternatively get your circle of friends to upload videos to your
       | own site and manage the comments/spam as you see fit. I am not
       | convinced by the arguments that Youtube is needed to handle
       | bandwidth unless you are popular in which case you can probably
       | afford throwing a few small CDN's at the problem. The harder part
       | would be finding advertising partners and embedding code for
       | sponsors but apparently some youtubers are finding ways to do it.
        
         | spiderice wrote:
         | > Alternatively get your circle of friends to upload videos to
         | your own site and manage the comments/spam as you see fit
         | 
         | I'm confused by your suggestion. I have no interest in watching
         | videos that my friends are uploading (because my friends aren't
         | uploading). How would having a site where my friends post
         | videos help this situation?
        
         | EarlKing wrote:
         | You really don't need Youtube for that. You need infrastructure
         | and you need monetization. The former you can achieve today
         | using any service provider with autoscaling (i.e. AWS,
         | Rackspace, Linode, and a hundred others too numerous to list
         | here). The latter you can achieve through any number of ad
         | exchanges that handle pre-roll ads and banners. Youtube is
         | handy primarily in being a one stop shop for both of those
         | things and more. It allows the technically illiterate a place
         | to vent their spleen without having to know anything about the
         | internet works... including, I might add, how to actually
         | market their works so they get eyeballs on them. If, however,
         | you have an IQ higher than your shoe size and can manage the
         | above, including figuring out how to circulate your content to
         | places where potential viewers are so you don't need to rely on
         | Youtube's algorithm, then you can make a go of it yourself and
         | win. Youtube is betting, quite correctly, that most of you will
         | never do that.
        
           | LinuxBender wrote:
           | I agree with all of this. That's why a small number of people
           | and their circles won't be a threat to Youtube at all. Even
           | the handful of popular Youtubers moving to self hosting
           | probably won't get their attention for some time. And yeah,
           | most non technical people won't be going down this path any
           | time soon. That said if each small circle of people had a
           | couple geeky friends and pool together some money they can do
           | it. It's happening albeit it very slowly. Too slow for YT to
           | notice or care about the insignificant churn-and-burn. I
           | would not be surprised if there were also a chunk of
           | youtubers that don't even want monetization.
        
       | dynm wrote:
       | I find this debate a little strange. My position is that youtube
       | is a private company, they should be allowed to do whatever they
       | want, and people should be able to choose a video service that
       | meets their needs. If you feel that youtube is so dominant that
       | this is cramming a "no dislikes" policy on the whole world, isn't
       | the problem really that you think youtube is a monopoly, not
       | dislikes per se?
       | 
       | Edit: I clearly didn't word this well, because people are
       | responding to me with things I agree with. Let me try again.
       | Certainly, everyone can and should complain about this if you
       | want to! (You have my thanks in this case, I don't like it
       | either.) I'm just saying that in a "normal" situation you'd be
       | able to respond to this change by switching to a competitor. I
       | don't think the complaints are strange but rather the _lack_ of
       | complaints about the fact that there are (sorta /kinda) no
       | alternatives.
        
         | bobthechef wrote:
         | So being a private company means no one can criticize you and
         | the detrimental effect you're having on public life? Besides,
         | that YouTube is a monopoly isn't the main problem. Few people
         | complain about utilities that work well. It is rather that YT
         | has done harmful things as a monopoly.
         | 
         | The public/private distinction is important to respect, but
         | according to reason. They don't live in hermetically sealed off
         | universes as some libertarians would have you believe. Just as
         | government can overstep, so can private business.
        
         | BitwiseFool wrote:
         | >"youtube is a private company, they should be allowed to do
         | whatever they want"
         | 
         | Yes? But this isn't the source of why people are upset. As far
         | as I can tell, no one is protesting YouTube's _ability_ to do
         | what they did. No one is demanding the government force YouTube
         | to reverse this decision.
         | 
         | I also feel like reflexive arguments like "So-and-so is a
         | private company and can do whatever they want" is unhelpful and
         | irrelevant to the discussion. Do I really need to be reminded
         | that some giant corporation has control over their own
         | platform? Was I ever under the illusion otherwise? Why is
         | corporate criticism met with a reminder that they had the right
         | to make the decision?
         | 
         | Additionally, the entwined mindset of 'you can just go
         | somewhere else if you don't like it' is also unhelpful. Very
         | few decisions like these are bona-fide deal-breakers.
        
         | oh_sigh wrote:
         | No one has argued Youtube isn't allowed to do it. It is just
         | customers complaining about the move. If McDonalds got rid of
         | their Big Macs, people might complain about it, but that
         | doesn't mean that McDonalds has a hamburger monopoly or that
         | the complainers think McDonalds did something illegal or
         | something they weren't allowed to do. It is just customers
         | complaining about a feature they liked being removed.
        
           | klyrs wrote:
           | If you go to the store, demand a Big Mac, and complain to all
           | present that the Big Mac got cancelled, then they'd ask you
           | to leave. And, sure, folks would be upset about being asked
           | to leave.
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | Everything stems from YT being a monopoly, but since YT is so
         | ubiquitous it can feel good to vent/rant with everyone else
         | about something we all agree on, and here it's that the dislike
         | counter was removed for an arguably bad reason.
        
         | crisdux wrote:
         | I don't see how that is relevant to this debate. Of course they
         | are free to make product changes. As a user I am free to
         | dislike it and complain about it in an effort to get it to
         | change. What do you suggest we do? Should we all just shut up?
         | I've been a paid youtube premium member since the beginning. As
         | well as a youtube tv subscriber. They should take user feedback
         | seriously. But they aren't.
         | 
         | I use youtube for entertainment and learning. This change has
         | seriously made youtube less useful to me on the learning side
         | because the dislike count was a good signal to the quality of
         | the information in the video.
        
           | dynm wrote:
           | I see what you're saying. Certainly, I didn't mean to imply
           | that anyone isn't entitled to complain about it! I should
           | have worded what I was saying differently: There are
           | tradeoffs in having dislike counts visible. Having it will be
           | better for some people, not having it will be better for
           | others. So if we only have one only service that provides
           | video to everyone, then we're stuck in a situation where one
           | of these groups has to get a worse experience.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | Lammy wrote:
         | These "private companies" are effectively governments of their
         | own. Capital is global and claims no single nationality.
         | 
         | "'cause you are the government. You are jurisprudence. You are
         | the volition. You are jurisdiction. And I make a difference
         | too."
        
         | passivate wrote:
         | Public debates around policy changes are just another feedback
         | mechanism to let companies know when they effed up. Its up to
         | YouTube to consider how much they value it.
        
         | xboxnolifes wrote:
         | Nobody is asking the government to step in to stop Youtube from
         | making the change. People are just complaining about the
         | change, like they would for any other change a company may
         | make.
        
         | ambrozk wrote:
         | They're a private company who is free to do what they want, and
         | the people complaining are private individuals who are free to
         | do what they want. There's no assault on anyone's liberty in
         | either direction. Companies can freely modify their products,
         | and customers are free to be pissed off when they do. In this
         | case, people feel that YT is removing dislikes to prevent PR
         | damage to brands and individuals who post unpopular videos on
         | their website. They think Google is prioritizing its profits at
         | the expense of their product. Let them complain.
        
         | akomtu wrote:
         | YT is a private company on paper. In reality it's a fiefdom
         | that has complex relationships with the emperor of the White
         | House. The YT fief has a good deal of influence on the empire's
         | subjects, the fief decides what they get to see, the emperor
         | himself uses YT to speak to the public, and thus the fief has
         | soft power over the emperor. It so hapoens that the emperor is
         | wildly unpopular, his edicts on YT get wooed by peons, but the
         | emperor also has power, and can force his will onto the fief in
         | many ways. YT had to yield in this case, perhaps in exchange
         | for a small favor from the emperor.
        
         | kunagi7 wrote:
         | Pretty much, YouTube is for video watching what IE used to be
         | for browsing back in the obscure IE6 times. Unless you live in
         | China where it's blocked.
         | 
         | Some countries (mostly of the EU) already try to enforce some
         | control against this kind of monopolies but they are still too
         | bland.
         | 
         | And competition fails to appear thanks to the WhatsApp effect.
         | If most of the content/friends are on it, its not easy to
         | change to another platform unless something drastic happens
         | (like the Great Firewall).
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | The problem is that network effects determine what video
         | service we use, mostly, as internet users. Saying that you
         | could choose an alternative service is like the old argument
         | that you could move to another country if you don't like it
         | here [1].
         | 
         | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergo_decedo
        
           | SQueeeeeL wrote:
           | Is this an argument for a centralized govt provided video
           | platform?
        
             | josefx wrote:
             | The average government would invest billions, privatize it
             | immediately for millions and socialize the difference.
        
           | wbsss4412 wrote:
           | The thing is, it's not just about some general "video
           | service", people want exactly what YouTube provides just
           | without the specific things that they don't like. Finding a
           | specific service that does that is nigh impossible.
           | 
           | It is however totally possible to find or create and
           | alternative video platform (this is something that plenty of
           | YouTube creators already do). People just don't want to make
           | the trade offs that solution requires.
        
         | 6f4f06c00484d34 wrote:
         | yes, they are allowed to do it. nobody is demanding the
         | government to intervene and bring the dislikes back. I don't
         | know which debates are you referring to.
         | 
         | that being said, it is also their right to shut down whatever
         | content Russia/China/Iran/etc finds disagreeable, I'm sure you
         | don't mind that either.
        
         | rightbyte wrote:
         | Isn't that a strawman? You can call out companies for doing
         | crappy things with their products without advocating government
         | intervention.
         | 
         | Is this a new thing? I see this argument all the time.
         | 
         | When Coca Cola made their impopular recipe change were people
         | defending it with "oh it is a private company, haters gonna
         | hate".
        
           | md2020 wrote:
           | Seconded. This "private companies can do what they want"
           | isn't the "gotcha" many people think it is. Societal values
           | exist independent of the specific implementations of laws
           | meant to protect them, and in places where the law doesn't
           | reach--like the USA's 1st Amendment not applying to private
           | businesses--I think it's still worth talking over "Hey, the
           | law doesn't really enforce this value here, but maybe it's a
           | good idea to abide by it anyway". Saying private companies
           | can do whatever they want is just stating the obvious and
           | avoiding the question of what they _should_ do.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | butz wrote:
       | Next update: removed comments.
        
         | stiltzkin wrote:
         | Big companies need comments for astroturfing, Google will keep
         | them.
        
         | notriddle wrote:
         | I support such a move. YouTube comments have always been trash.
        
         | gadrev wrote:
         | Only sponsored comments!
        
       | BitwiseFool wrote:
       | I really hope this backfires spectacularly on YouTube and the
       | zealots who pushed for this change are held professionally
       | accountable. I already click on fewer videos in search results
       | and recommendations because I can no longer gauge how worthwhile
       | they are to try and watch.
       | 
       | The end result? I'm sticking to my current channels. I can't be
       | alone and knowing that YouTube takes recommended content so
       | seriously, I have to imagine this is going to panic plenty of
       | product managers at YouTube.
        
         | Metricon wrote:
         | I've heard of a number of Youtube creators that are also
         | placing their content on Odysee as a potential backup. I first
         | heard of this site from Dave at EEVblog:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/c/EevblogDave/videos
         | 
         | https://odysee.com/@eevblog:7
        
           | jjcon wrote:
           | Interesting - I first heard of odysee this week too from a VR
           | channel I follow - it seems like a decent setup
        
           | aronpye wrote:
           | "Welcome to odyssey: we have dislikes", this made me smile
        
           | officeplant wrote:
           | Doesn't give me a lot of hope with Dave being in the top list
           | on odysee surrounded by alt-right creators who escaped there
           | from other platforms. Plus his recent shilling of the crypto
           | currency connected to odysee on twitter.
           | 
           | I get that creators want to be paid and need a better home
           | than youtube, but none of this bodes well to me yet.
        
         | rpowers wrote:
         | From my experience the ones pushing for these ideas are the
         | fresh grad PMs trying to do something big for "perf". The whole
         | platform feels like Waymo, driverless.
        
         | 1_player wrote:
         | Youtube doesn't f*** care. Where are you going to go watch your
         | favorite content creators? Oh, they only upload on our
         | platform? Thought so.
         | 
         | They can do whatever they want and they won't lose a single
         | user.
         | 
         | In fact, I wanted to cancel my Youtube Premium, but I know it's
         | not gonna affect their decision in the slightest, while I will
         | hurt my favourite content creators as they won't get that
         | thousandth of a cent they get from my Premium view.
        
           | sqrt17 wrote:
           | Some of the more well-known YouTube creators are also on
           | 
           | - Curiosity Stream/Nebula (Adam Neely, Mary Spender, Ali
           | Abdaal, Thomas Frank, Super Bunnyhop)
           | 
           | - LBRY/odysee (DistroTube)
           | 
           | - FloatPlane (Linus Tech Tips)
           | 
           | None of these has a nice recommender like YouTube, so you'll
           | likely either have manual curation (Nebula, Floatplane) or
           | drown in a sea of bad/uninteresting content (LBRY)
        
             | SllX wrote:
             | Your list also doesn't have a single YouTuber I actually
             | watch. Well known or not, viewers have very fractured
             | tastes.
        
           | rfrey wrote:
           | It may stop people exploring as much outside their current
           | favourite creators. The issue is quickly judging the quality
           | of unknown channels.
           | 
           | So no, they probably won't lose "users", but they may lose
           | "engagement," however they're measuring that at the minute.
        
           | Nextgrid wrote:
           | > while I will hurt my favourite content creators as they
           | won't get that thousandth of a cent they get from my Premium
           | view.
           | 
           | Over time this should put pressure on them to be open to a
           | better platform and make the move as soon as such platform
           | exists.
        
             | 1_player wrote:
             | No, I just explained that nobody will move out of the
             | platform because everybody's there. Where are you going to
             | watch your favourite USB gadget reviewer that only uploads
             | on YT?
             | 
             | Over time means nothing until there's actually competition,
             | and there's nothing on the horizon that can compete to the
             | scale of YouTube. Your content creator is not moving
             | anywhere any time soon.
        
               | Nextgrid wrote:
               | Competition can only appear if there's a selling point
               | and demand for it. If creators get paid on YT, they have
               | less incentive to seek out an alternative. If they stop
               | getting paid (because people like you cancel their
               | Premium subscription) they become potential customers for
               | an upcoming alternative that does pay them.
        
           | moritonal wrote:
           | Bit hostile. I pay PS30 a year for RoosterTeeth, who are a
           | company that put their content on YouTube (with ads) and
           | their own site without.
           | 
           | YouTube is becoming the place you find content, not
           | necessarily though where you spend money. They're going to
           | start caring about this.
        
           | Hamcha wrote:
           | Not related to the dislike feature in particular, but Youtube
           | is definitely losing the next generation of creators. Plenty
           | of people are using TikTok as their main platform nowadays,
           | as it has bigger reach for their markets.
        
             | 1_player wrote:
             | TikTok is targeting a different type of content, there is
             | no competition with YouTube as we know it, which is videos
             | longer than 10 minutes.
        
               | aaron695 wrote:
               | > TikTok is targeting a different type of content, there
               | is no competition with YouTube
               | 
               | This is not a logical conclusion.
               | 
               | Twitter is different to blogging (also shorter) it has
               | killed a lot of the blogging market.
               | 
               | In fact, a lot of Youtube is too long, as the content
               | producers chase the ad revenue.
               | 
               | Logically things will continue and everything will go to
               | smaller chunks.
        
               | 14 wrote:
               | When the timing is right tic toc could pivot to longer
               | videos.
        
               | terafo wrote:
               | Longer videos aren't suited to the tiktok formula(endless
               | feed of videos and you where you never know what's next).
               | It works for 30 second video, maybe for 3 minute video,
               | not for two hour video and not even for twenty minute
               | video.
        
               | travisd wrote:
               | YouTube now has "shorts" but it's definitely not the same
               | since they aren't able to emulate the TikTok culture.
        
               | Apocryphon wrote:
               | Same thing as Facebook/Instagram Reels, another attempt
               | to blatantly clone a rival platform.
        
               | stjohnswarts wrote:
               | Like TikTok cloning Vine? :)
        
               | Apocryphon wrote:
               | I'd say there is more competition, but on much more
               | specialized platforms with different purposes and smaller
               | user bases- MOOC sites, other types of online learning
               | sites, remote workout class platforms, Patreon, etc.
               | There is a good amount of that video content which
               | _could_ be hosted on YouTube, but would be less easily
               | accessible or monetizeable if it was.
        
               | JonathanMerklin wrote:
               | Which is frankly still a wild concept to me because when
               | I was of prime YouTube-binging age, the maximum length of
               | a video _was_ 10 minutes.
        
             | charcircuit wrote:
             | >as it has bigger reach for their markets.
             | 
             | TikTok has a horrible conversion rate though.
        
             | redwall_hp wrote:
             | Some are already hedging their bets. Linus Tech Tips, which
             | is a pretty big channel to say the least, launched their
             | own Floatplane service which they use to give exclusive
             | access to paying subscribers. Like early viewing, live
             | streaming and videos that don't even end up on YouTube.
             | They offer it to other channels as well. As far as I'm
             | aware, it has no discovery so far (you need to know a
             | channel URL).
             | 
             | I wish Peertube or something would take off. The kind of
             | centralization YouTube has isn't healthy, and it's easier
             | and cheaper to host video now than ever since HTML5 video
             | became a thing. If you're running a business, depending on
             | the goodwill of a third party company's free offering
             | (which costs them a fortune to run) is nonsensical.
        
           | BitwiseFool wrote:
           | >"I will hurt my favourite content creators as they won't get
           | that thousandth of a cent they get from my Premium view."
           | 
           | That's why I choose to reward them through non YouTube
           | platforms like Patreon. I've also noticed a huge trend in
           | content creators making sponsorship deals that they embed in
           | their own videos. I sense that canceling your YouTube premium
           | won't hurt them as much as it used to in the past. Plus, you
           | can give a portion of your subscription to them directly,
           | should you so choose.
        
             | judge2020 wrote:
             | Do you know of any recent reports or tweets of YT Premium
             | CPM vs ad-supported? The only report I have is from 2016
             | when YT Red was even smaller than what Premium is now:
             | https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/totalbiscuit-youtube-
             | red-p...
        
           | NDizzle wrote:
           | Where do I go to watch their videos? Rumble.
        
           | StanislavPetrov wrote:
           | >Where are you going to go watch your favorite content
           | creators?
           | 
           | Rumble and Rokfin, where more and more them are moving.
           | History is littered with bankrupt companies who thought they
           | were untouchable because people had nowhere else to go.
        
           | inChargeOfIT wrote:
           | I cancelled my premium, unsubscribed from all my channels,
           | and have stopped browsing YouTube (which I did daily for
           | years).
           | 
           | Basically, I've stopped using YouTube as a source for finding
           | new content. If I get linked to a video from a trusted source
           | (here, reddit, etc), then I'll watch the video, but they lost
           | me as a member of the community.
        
           | nitrogen wrote:
           | _Where are you going to go watch your favorite content
           | creators?_
           | 
           | A lot of them are cross-posting to Odysee, and some are also
           | on Nebula.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | 2 platforms I have never heard of before this post. It's
             | like saying Mastadon is a replacement for _______. Yeah, no
             | it/they are not replacing. Those sites are like the catch
             | can for those willing to step away from THE place. Until
             | those creators actually leave YT to 100% commit to other
             | places by no longer posting to YT, then the masses are not
             | leaving YT (or FB/Twit/etc).
             | 
             | Edit: Do any of these content creators posting to other
             | non-YT sites mention the availability of these sites in
             | their YT videos? If not, then they are not really convinced
             | of their staying power themselves.
        
               | nitrogen wrote:
               | _Do any of these content creators posting to other non-YT
               | sites mention the availability of these sites in their YT
               | videos?_
               | 
               | Yes. EEVblog mentions Odysee all the time, and many many
               | channels mention Nebula when shilling Curiosity Stream.
               | They tend to tread lightly on YT itself because of the
               | reverse of the prisoner's dilemma.
        
           | webdoodle wrote:
           | I'd like to see torrent hosting become a thing. I don't like
           | to leave my computer\network connected to the internet all
           | the time, but would like to make video/audio I've produced
           | available. A hosting provider that lets me upload my content
           | and host it as a torrent would solve many of the problems we
           | currently face with private gatekeepers deciding what can and
           | can't be hosted, displayed, voted on, commented on etc.
        
             | saurik wrote:
             | The generalization of the premise of Bittorrent to easy
             | file hosting is IPFS, and there in fact are IPFS hosting
             | providers (and decentralized protocols for such, including
             | Filecoin).
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | When the best example of something is a coin, then I'm
               | not really impressed as a file store/share platform.
        
               | remexre wrote:
               | Filecoin is only for paying others to host your content;
               | you can host it yourself (as I do) or on a VPS and ignore
               | Filecoin, and IPFS still works great.
        
             | codezero wrote:
             | Maybe not what you want/need, but I suspect you could
             | accomplish this by just buying a seedbox, then seed your
             | content into it so it's always online, then just make sure
             | you use an open tracker. This isn't an area I've done much
             | in so I may just not be thinking in the right direction :)
        
         | etchalon wrote:
         | The chance this change was pushed without data, and tests,
         | seems antithetical to what we know about the change and how it
         | was rolled out.
         | 
         | They did this with an understanding of its impact on
         | engagement.
        
         | dathinab wrote:
         | I stopped using YT recommendations a while ago, not I only go
         | back to the same channels and if any new channel gets added
         | it's not from a YT source.
         | 
         | Stupid "I don't want to think" content got replaced by twitch,
         | even through many twitch streams contain hardly any interesting
         | "content" they are sadly stile miles better then most/close to
         | all "dump" YT content (because "dump" YT content has gotten
         | pretty bad).
         | 
         | And high quality YT content often gets demonetized and seldomly
         | recommended, because its either not advertisement friendly
         | enough or doesn't cover a wide enough audience spectrum.
        
         | mitchdoogle wrote:
         | I'm really puzzled why anyone cares about this so passionately.
         | I'm not a YouTube diehard but I use it pretty regularly to
         | watch a handful of channels I like, maybe 2-3 hours per week
         | watching videos on the site. Occasionally I'll search for how
         | to video and click on whatever is in the top few results on
         | Google. I've seen several posts now across different sites
         | lamenting this change, but I've yet to see anything remotely
         | persuasive that this is a bad thing. Sometimes I think it's
         | just people being grumpy about any change at all, the way some
         | people will grumble about a logo change despite it having no
         | real consequence of how things work.
         | 
         | In my personal experience, I rarely even noticed the dislike
         | count. Sometimes I'd wonder who the few unfortunate people were
         | who disliked a video with about 1000x as many likes. It
         | reminded me of the 1 star reviews you see on Amazon complaining
         | about the postman for a product that otherwise has a stellar
         | record. I just assume something is wrong with those peoples
         | computers which made their video glitch out or something. I
         | don't really trust negative feedback that much when it is
         | paired with an overwhelming amount of positive feedback for the
         | same thing. And I don't think I ever encountered a video with
         | anywhere near the number of dislikes as likes, let alone more
         | dislikes. I personally have never disliked a video. If I'm
         | watching something new, I'll just watch part of the video
         | myself, and decide if I want to watch the rest or click away to
         | something else.
         | 
         | When I heard the announcement of removing the count as an
         | effort to combat brigading, it made a lot of sense to me. I've
         | seen the growth of negativity across the internet in the last
         | few years. People are actually addicted to outrage these days,
         | so anything that can help eliminate that seems like a good idea
         | to me. The fact they kept the button there and still show the
         | count to the uploader seems like they've at least tried to
         | appease the diehards who appreciate having that dislike button
         | - pretty fair if you ask me.
         | 
         | You may challenge the assumption that only diehards care about
         | this, but I've just looked at a few videos in my feed to see
         | the number of likes and it's abysmal. 40k likes for a video
         | with 4M views. 18k likes for a video with 800k views. They're
         | all like that. The like/dislike metric just doesn't have much
         | engagement. While you predict dire consequences for YouTubes
         | future and panic among their employees, I am thinking that
         | casual users probably have not even noticed at all.
        
         | charcircuit wrote:
         | As a heavy YouTube user the removal of the dislike count didn't
         | effect me at all since the number was always useless to me.
         | 
         | >because I can no longer gauge how worthwhile they are to try
         | and watch.
         | 
         | That is YouTube's job. Their recommendation algorithm will try
         | and suggest videos that are worthwhile for you to watch. The
         | order that videos are recommend is how know which videos are
         | likely more worthwhile for you to watch. After clicking on a
         | video most people judge the video be just watching the first
         | few seconds an opposed to looking at the likes. They will
         | switch to a different video if they didn't find that one
         | interesting. Another common behaviour is just skimming through
         | a video.
        
       | tenpoundhammer wrote:
       | There is a youtube alternative that some creators are using
       | called odysee. https://odysee.com/ . It still has the dislike
       | button.
        
         | Drew_ wrote:
         | This site also has 100% CPU usage on idle for some reason.
        
           | prox wrote:
           | Mining coin?
        
             | stjohnswarts wrote:
             | I don't think so, my cpu is fine, doesn't use any more than
             | youtube uses. I think the poster must have something wrong
             | with their browser. I've seen more than a couple of people
             | who got kicked off youtube move to odysee as they are much
             | less aggressive on removing content. They also have
             | downvoting.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | gotta earn money some how. if you can't make it with ads, put
           | your viewers to work in other ways. just a guess
        
       | jcun4128 wrote:
       | What gets me is the silent deletion. I generally don't post swear
       | words but recently I posted "ass" and I refreshed it was gone.
       | This could be on a personal user setting but still. It's funny
       | though you could comment/not look at something again so does it
       | matter that your comment stayed... idk.
       | 
       | It doesn't tell you "that's not allowed" or something. It updates
       | the UI so you think it went through but it actually didn't.
        
         | foxfluff wrote:
         | That happens even if you don't post anything rude.
        
         | nitrogen wrote:
         | Youtube has an option for channels to hold "potentially
         | offensive" comments for review. If that's what you encountered,
         | the channel can then decide whether to show or delete your
         | comment.
        
       | rhegart wrote:
       | https://returnyoutubedislike.com/
       | 
       | So frustrating not having the dislike button
        
       | hirundo wrote:
       | Hacker News has a similar problem with comments:
       | net_votes = up_votes - down_votes
       | 
       | You need at least two of the above variables to get an idea of
       | both the direction and magnitude of the voting. Hacker News
       | provides only one: net_votes. YouTube used to provide up_votes
       | and down_votes, effectively providing all three. Now YouTube has
       | _reduced_ its information to up_votes, so they 're now down to
       | one variable in the equation, as Hacker News has been all along.
       | 
       | The difference between 102+/100- votes and 2+/0- votes is large,
       | but invisible on this site. I think it would be better for HN to
       | go to where YouTube was, giving us an idea of both the net vote
       | and the level of activity. Like up/down or up/total or net/total.
        
         | jjcon wrote:
         | I think that net votes is still far far better than just up
         | votes. With net votes at least spam or misleading can at times
         | be somewhat detectable.
        
         | kzrdude wrote:
         | Moderation here is quite opionated, isn't it? I would guess
         | that it's a very conscious choice to not show votes or
         | downvotes, since it makes commenter interaction even more
         | contentious. I like it the way it is.
        
           | gthtjtkt wrote:
           | HN is the most heavily moderated, manipulated and astro-
           | turned forum I've even seen, but you don't realize that until
           | the mods start suppressing your posts and comments. Titles
           | are constantly edited for no apparent reason, users who post
           | unpopular facts are permanently penalized, and you can watch
           | as negative stories about large tech companies are quickly
           | flagged off the front page.
           | 
           | There's literally zero transparency here. At least on Reddit
           | you can track the censorship in real time.
        
         | r00fus wrote:
         | It's very interesting to ask what's gained by seeing downvotes
         | in addition to upvotes, and whether that differs based on
         | whether the content is video or commentary.
         | 
         | HN comments can still be downvoted (if you have enough karma)
         | so arguably you can still get signal quality from the sum of
         | votes.
         | 
         | Especially since in most cases, you can simply comment instead
         | of downvote.
        
           | skissane wrote:
           | > HN comments can still be downvoted (if you have enough
           | karma) so arguably you can still get signal quality from the
           | sum of votes.
           | 
           | Downvotes on HN comments aren't a pure quality signal. HN's
           | culture is that downvoting something just because you
           | disagree with it is perfectly cromulent behaviour, as
           | established by PG himself:
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691
           | 
           | Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of that decision, but I didn't
           | start this site.
        
         | polote wrote:
         | Because on HN there are only two possible states for comments.
         | Flagged or visible. The upvotes and downvotes just help compute
         | the order.
         | 
         | This is better for freedom of expression and showing the split
         | would be a bad idea imo. Comments who are more upvoted are also
         | more downvoted because they are more visible (as they rank
         | first)
        
         | emerged wrote:
         | It doesn't provide either except on your own posts, right? Or
         | is that some super karma unlock feature.
        
         | kazinator wrote:
         | Hacker news has a minimum karma requirement for downvoting; you
         | can't just create an account (or a dozen accounts) and start
         | downvoting something you don't like, or to harass someone with
         | serial downvotes. You must first attract a certain number of
         | upvotes for your comments and submissions.
         | 
         | That fixes many of the abuse problems with downvotes.
         | 
         | HN situations are also monitored by the site operators
         | themselves, who intervene. YT is too vastly big for that.
        
       | simonsarris wrote:
       | Looking at a lot of timber framing technique videos this week and
       | realized how badly I miss the dislike as a signal that the video-
       | taker is doing something wrong or dangerous.
        
         | spiderice wrote:
         | Same. The like count is completely useless without the dislike
         | count. They may as well have just gotten rid of both.
        
       | 14 wrote:
       | Has anyone built a browser plug in that we can down vote or up
       | vote videos? Outside of Youtube?
        
       | paulpauper wrote:
       | Dislikes still visible on incognito tab. Most fiction/speculative
       | authors assumed tyranny would be from governments, not private
       | companies. How wrong they were.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | > Most fiction/speculative authors assumed tyranny would be
         | from governments, not private companies.
         | 
         | I was under the impression cyberpunk got that right, generally.
        
           | Eelongate wrote:
           | Yep. Weak, incompetent or absent governments, with
           | corporations governing most affairs in practice.
        
         | SQueeeeeL wrote:
         | "tyranny" Okay, I'm definitely not on YouTube/Google's side
         | here, but calling this tyranny is legit hilarious
        
           | krapp wrote:
           | "first they came for the dislike buttons..."
        
           | gxs wrote:
           | Looking at this as a single instance of censorship as tyranny
           | might provoke ridicule, but I see where OP is coming from.
           | 
           | Taken in aggregate, in a world with multi-trillion dollar
           | corporations censor their users, it's not ridiculous to talk
           | about this as tyranny. There is no one tyrant, but every
           | corporation rules like one and taken as a whole, the "world's
           | government" (in this case the set of the most powerful
           | corporations) is tyranny.
           | 
           | Anyway, I'm neither here nor there on the argument, but I
           | don't see what's so laughable about OPs offhand comment.
        
             | etchalon wrote:
             | I look forward to your treatise on how Taco Bell's removal
             | of the Grilled Stuff Nacho was tyrannical overreach by an
             | unaccountable food monopolist.
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | Dislikes are visible since it's an A/B test where they
         | gradually put more and more people into group B until it's
         | 100%. Only then will they stop sending the dislike count via
         | the API.
        
           | jcun4128 wrote:
           | I did notice this "recently" like there was a recent change
           | before dislikes of making their icons thinner. I would notice
           | it in one account but not another.
        
         | etchalon wrote:
         | You just equated the removal of a software feature, by a
         | private company, on a free platform, as "tyranny".
         | 
         | You are not a serious person.
        
           | 6f4f06c00484d34 wrote:
           | always glad to spot a fellow ancap in the wild. private
           | companies should be able to do whatever the fuck they want.
        
         | throwawayfear wrote:
         | It's governments resorting to tyranny. By expecting a violation
         | of bodily autonomy as a prerequisite for putting bread on the
         | table and participating in society. Germany's government for
         | example is now locking down covid-unvaccinated people and
         | presuming to tell everyone who you can even have in your own
         | home.
         | 
         | "Under rules announced Thursday, gatherings are limited to "one
         | household" plus two other people, if those among them include
         | people who are unvaccinated or who have not recently recovered
         | from covid-19"
         | 
         | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/03/germany-vacc...
         | 
         | And this isn't yet as bad as in Australia, where you have armed
         | and masked police officers arresting and harrassing people just
         | for leaving their home to go outside. It is now a "paper's
         | please" penal colony once again. You can find videos of these
         | types of interactions online.
         | 
         | Australia has been going to shit for over a year now. Here are
         | a few examples of how:
         | 
         | They're going to force people who quarantine at home (rather
         | than a government-mandated quarantine "hotel" with guards) to
         | install and use an app. Facial recognition, GPS tracking in
         | your own home. And it will randomly ping you, and if you don't
         | respond within 15 minutes it'll send the police to your house
         | to conduct an in-person quarantine check. Source:
         | 
         | https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...
         | 
         | They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up
         | to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Sources:
         | 
         | https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53316097
         | 
         | https://fortune.com/2020/11/19/south-australia-adelaide-lock...
         | 
         | And there's more examples if you look online.
         | 
         | So while private companies do have issues at times, they lack
         | the power and reach of governments to enact these types of
         | violations against freedom. This is hiding a dislike counter.
         | It's a stupid product design decision that will cost them money
         | as people seek alternative platforms, but it's not comparable
         | to tyranny. We are seeing actual tyranny unfolding in
         | Australia, Austria, and Germany. These democracies are
         | collapsing because of the bureacrats there. Not the companies.
         | It's time to start recognizing who the real enemies to personal
         | freedom and health are.
        
       | judge2020 wrote:
       | Sounds like his account has been put into some sort of shadowban
       | mode, which is needed for the {human|bot} spammers out there (not
       | that I know why it would be applied to them).
        
         | kristofferR wrote:
         | Shadowbanning is pretty useless for spammers, the pain they
         | receive by getting one of their hundred bot accounts made
         | invisible is nothing compared to the pain the real person gets.
         | 
         | Shaddowbanning should be like the justice system, it is better
         | to let a a hundred guilty go unpunished than to convict one
         | innocent person.
        
         | Nihilartikel wrote:
         | There's a chance that the individual was acting bot like..
         | perhaps they posted the same comment, verbatim, to multiple
         | videos in a short time span.
        
           | rvnx wrote:
           | That's what he says, he goes to some small channels, and keep
           | saying "Great content!" or "Great video!"
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | Then it doesn't really sound like the world is missing much
             | by not having that comment. Make a comment on HN like
             | "Great thread!" and it'll drop like a stone. It's a useless
             | comment. "Great thread/video! I really like ______" would
             | at least tell someone why you think it is great and much
             | more useful.
        
         | im3w1l wrote:
         | Bots and other un-persons.
        
         | dntrkv wrote:
         | As is the case 99% of the time someone makes stupid claims like
         | this. You would think of all people, the users on HN would know
         | this, but apparently not.
        
       | barbazoo wrote:
       | The real travesty here is him using the context menu to refresh
       | the page.
        
       | kazinator wrote:
       | The submission topic is misleading.
       | 
       | The issue is that someone is complaining that Youtube is auto-
       | deleting their comments.
       | 
       | Unless you know someone inside Youtube who has the technical
       | knowledge and access to dig into this there is no way to know
       | exactly what happened to your account: how your account's auto-
       | deletion state got triggered.
       | 
       | It could be due to some completely different reason not related
       | to the content of their posts being remarks against the Youtube
       | change with regard to downvotes.
       | 
       | Maybe the comments were simply too repetitive in their content,
       | and triggered a mechanism against repetitive posts (being
       | predicated on the hypothesis that repetitiveness is an earmark of
       | spam).
       | 
       | Or maybe the comments used offensive language; could be that YT
       | has some mechanism to put serial posters of comments that use
       | certain words on ice for a while.
       | 
       | If you look into the Youtube support forum, a large number of
       | people have or have had this problem.
       | 
       | It may resolve itself if that person just stops commenting for
       | about a week.
        
       | KennyBlanken wrote:
       | Is this youtube staff purposefully deleting critical comments?
       | 
       | Or is it anti-spam algorithms getting triggered by people
       | flooding the comments sections of videos with the same inane
       | comments? And/or getting flagged by creators and other youtube
       | users?
       | 
       | Frankly, I can't see most creators wanting their youtube video
       | comments full of "BRING BACK THE DISLIKE BUTTON", and I could see
       | lots of their fans being annoyed by such comments as well.
       | 
       | My guess is that 95%+ of youtube users are more annoyed by an
       | extremely vocal minority disrupting things than they are the
       | removal of the dislike button.
        
         | jafitc wrote:
         | Oh the dislike button is still there. It just does nothing
         | anymore. Isn't that what we all supposed to be? Dumb and
         | beautiful.
         | 
         | What do you think about our product? interested? very
         | interested? or very interested? which one? which one? which
         | one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZJQDpS7ikc
         | 
         | With the dislike count gone you cannot make a quick judgement
         | about what Youtube recommended to you. Less power to the
         | people, more power to Youtube.
         | 
         | It's a very subtle change. Also a monumental one.
        
         | TT-392 wrote:
         | I think it is automatic, a similar thing happens to me every so
         | often. I am don't think it is related to the content of the
         | comment, I barely even use youtube in the browser anymore and I
         | barely ever leave a comment. I don't think I have left any
         | comments that could be seen as offensive. The only thing that I
         | could think of is that my ip is setting off some kind of spam
         | protection because I watch so much youtube, just through
         | youtube-dl + mpv. Idk what it is exactly, but I can confirm
         | that something like what is shown in the vid happens to people,
         | and that it is really frustrating.
        
       | lkjlwnfas wrote:
       | No one in my family (young and old) uses YouTube or Instagram
       | anymore. It's all about TikTok.
        
       | topynate wrote:
       | Just in case someone in a position to do something about it is
       | reading this, there's a graceful way out for Youtube. Leave
       | dislike counts publicly available via the API. That way people
       | who use the ratio to evaluate videos (very useful for reviews)
       | can install a browser extension, but dislike mobbing will be
       | minimized, seeing as most casual users will not bother installing
       | such extensions.
        
         | AnthonyMouse wrote:
         | They don't need a "way out." Just put it back the way it was.
         | 
         | It's like finding a street full of protesters and trying to
         | figure out the best way to make sure nobody sees them. The
         | problem isn't your method, it's your goal.
        
         | commandlinefan wrote:
         | I mean really, if you want a downvote button, I'm sure there is
         | or will be a browser plugin that you can install that will put
         | the downvotes back in there. Then you know YT isn't messing
         | with the counts as an added bonus (of course, you have to trust
         | that the plugin maintainer isn't...)
        
         | BitwiseFool wrote:
         | Honestly I think the best solution should have been to let
         | creators enable/disable dislike visibility on each of their
         | *own* videos. Removing that for every single video on the
         | platform is a supernova level of overkill.
        
         | wolpoli wrote:
         | The Google Chrome team uses a similar strategy to deal with
         | backlashes: They leave a feature they want to removed behind a
         | feature flag to keep the outspoken users happy. A few releases
         | later, they remove the flag, when the casual users have moved
         | on and there aren't enough outspoken users to cause any kind of
         | mobbing.
        
         | stjohnswarts wrote:
         | This would be useless from facebook's perspective since the
         | brigaders would just make a browser extension to monitor
         | up/down votes anyway.
        
         | jsight wrote:
         | The downside is that you'd end up with facebook memes showing
         | all of the dislikes that "YouTube doesn't want you to see".
        
       | hojjat12000 wrote:
       | The same thing is happening to me right now. Maybe something is
       | wrong in Youtube! My comments are about Youtube and it's under a
       | video that the person is angry that their views are going down
       | (JayzTwoCents). But I can see it being deleted! I have seen
       | multiple content creators also mentioning something like "if you
       | leave a comment and it gets deleted it's not me, youtube is doing
       | it and I don't know why" in the past week.
        
       | AtNightWeCode wrote:
       | This path is kinda the obvious path to go down if you have a
       | large public site 2021. It is what the data says. Even for small
       | sites with 1M users this is obvious. HN would benefit a lot from
       | going down the same path too to avoid premiering all the zealots.
       | 
       | Edit: Landed well as expected. Maybe HN could provide a service
       | where users could battle about facts in different areas. So all
       | the useless fatty Americans could show their true credentials.
        
       | teawrecks wrote:
       | What do people want? On the one hand you have misinformation and
       | psychological harm that social media causes people and all the
       | people complaining about that, and on the other hand you have
       | heavily curated/censored content to try and craft a specific
       | experience on a platform, and all the people complaining about
       | that. So what actually do people want social media companies to
       | do? Hands off or hands on? You can't have both.
        
       | polote wrote:
       | My bet is that people will start posting a comment saying "upvote
       | this comment if you want to downvote", the comment will rank
       | first and it will be as if you have a public dislike count
        
         | cellularmitosis wrote:
         | The tiktok community has adopted a similar strategy for voting
         | on conversations in the comments. Someone will post a spicy
         | comment, which gets a certain number of likes, then someone
         | will reply with the comment "L" (as in "take the L, you lose"),
         | which gets a certain number of likes.
        
       | mikewarot wrote:
       | This is evidence that YouTube breaks the user's trust.
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-03 23:01 UTC)