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YouTube to try not publicly displaying the number of dislikes on a video

pythonmegapixel

This sounds like something they would AB test before rolling out nationally.  This could just BE an AB test of course.

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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It wouldn't stop dislike brigading, but it does stop people from knowing about they're to run into some disaster fire.

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Great, more censorship from the big tech as usual...

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2 minutes ago, CTR640 said:

Great, more censorship from the big tech as usual...

I was playing polybridge for phone for a while but a lot of the user data was missing for that version so I quit. 

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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you know what, great, alienate your core audience faster so that a better platform can replace youtube in less time

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Surely they could do some analytics and weight your dislikes on your patterns of behaviour.

 

I tend to be very sparing with the dislikes, I save them for useless reviews or clickbait idiots that post videos of some dodgy contraption they 'invented' made almost entirely of hot glue...

 

 

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That seems stupid, can't you already disable dislike/likes if you want to anyway? If 'public dislike counts can impact their wellbeing, and may motivate a targeted campaign of dislikes on a creator’s video.' just disable the damn bar, don't cry about it. Regardless it's a good way to often gauge whether a video is worth watching and whether there's something innately wrong with the video. At that point you might as well remove the bar and the buttons completely since at that point they do not serve (at least to me, a consumer) a meaningful purpose. And to me if anything it would decrease my likelihood of actually trying to watch a video from a new creator that I haven't heard of before making me stick to creators I am familiar with that are far more likely to make content I like compared to a content creator I don't follow.

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1 hour ago, comander said:

There is. I took one. Easy A+. It was basically show up and since I had an intuitive understanding of boolean algebra I skimmed through it. For what it's worth I fiddled with Javascript since I was 12 so the idea of working with 1/0 and AND/OR was instilled. I even discovered certain things on my own (like De Morgan's laws) when I was 13. 

 

https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=logic&page=1

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This is pointless IMO. Sometimes seeing a like:dislike ratio is helpful to understanding if a video is going to be useful or not, especially when it comes to video tutorials of various things. 

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3 minutes ago, Jtalk4456 said:

Sadly this is not a standard class in most places, but glad to know it at least exists!

 

 

It used to be.  Part of Civics.  A lot of stuff has been cut.

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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3 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

This is pointless IMO. Sometimes seeing a like:dislike ratio is helpful to understanding if a video is going to be useful or not, especially when it comes to video tutorials of various things. 

That might be why it is being cut.

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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3 hours ago, Kisai said:

I always turned it off because I don’t care about the numbers. 
 

Again, the numbers can be stressful when you don’t know where the likes/dislikes come from, and can’t readily go, “oh this video was trolling for assclowns, I can ignore the numbers” vs “this legitimately was an attempt to show something informative, but because my competitors don’t like it, they try to discredit me”

 

like look how often the DMCA gets invoked to try and censor people. You don’t need to look very far to see why dislikes are a bad metric.

I haven't really ever seen videos where there were a weird ratio of likes/dislikes. Most of the youtube creators that I watch consistently put out content with similar ratios all the time, so every time there is a weird ratio, it is easily identifiable, although this might not be the case with everyone. I'm mostly concerned with how this will affect people's ability to discern relevant to irrelevant content. I know some people have already mentioned knowing whether a youtube tutorial is actually worth watching through all the way and that's something I'm really keen on being able to do. 

 

It also seems like there is a little contradiction going on here since if you don't care about the numbers, then why is it stressful when the dislikes/likes are anonymous? I'm not saying that's a bad reason for turning it off, but that obviously means you do care about the numbers. I also don't quite understand the comparison between DMCA, dislikes, and censorship.

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34 minutes ago, thechinchinsong said:

I haven't really ever seen videos where there were a weird ratio of likes/dislikes. Most of the youtube creators that I watch consistently put out content with similar ratios all the time, so every time there is a weird ratio, it is easily identifiable, although this might not be the case with everyone. I'm mostly concerned with how this will affect people's ability to discern relevant to irrelevant content. I know some people have already mentioned knowing whether a youtube tutorial is actually worth watching through all the way and that's something I'm really keen on being able to do. 

 

It also seems like there is a little contradiction going on here since if you don't care about the numbers, then why is it stressful when the dislikes/likes are anonymous? I'm not saying that's a bad reason for turning it off, but that obviously means you do care about the numbers. I also don't quite understand the comparison between DMCA, dislikes, and censorship.

There have been popular drives not unlike the GameStop thing where people who wouldn’t normally even see a video are entreated to go to it specifically to like or dislike it.  It’s not terribly common but it does happen.  It can put a video on trending or remove it from trending thus hiding from or putting it in the view of many.  This might be about fixing that problem.  Might be a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.  I don’t know.  Google search has similar problems and Google search and YouTube are I understand owned by the same parent company now so there may be some cross pollination there.

Edited by Bombastinator

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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39 minutes ago, thechinchinsong said:

I haven't really ever seen videos where there were a weird ratio of likes/dislikes. Most of the youtube creators that I watch consistently put out content with similar ratios all the time, so every time there is a weird ratio, it is easily identifiable, although this might not be the case with everyone.

See Youtube Rewind 2018.

See Cuties official trailer

See Sadak 2 official trailer

See "Can this video get 1 million dislikes"

See "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare" trailer

 

Which of these do you think is reflective of the content, and which is a political statement?

 

Quote

I'm mostly concerned with how this will affect people's ability to discern relevant to irrelevant content. I know some people have already mentioned knowing whether a youtube tutorial is actually worth watching through all the way and that's something I'm really keen on being able to do. 

The likes will not help you there.

 

Here's a core way to tell if a video is good:

1. Can it be conveyed or summarized in 150 characters? I'm not gonna watch a 10 minute video that poses a clickbait question that could have been answered in the title. Likes and dislikes tell you nothing about this video.

 

2. Does it exploit a political, religious, or sex topic? The likes to dislikes will never tell you anything about these videos. The only way to tell if it's garbage is to be familiar with the video producer's content. Usually following drama-generating channels is a good way to have your mind poisoned against a topic. Occasionally you can drop in to look, but youtube's algorithms are tuned to assume because you watched X discusses Y, you want more videos from X about Y, or nothing but videos about Y, and that's usually going to offer up the worst content.

 

3. Is the youtuber known for something? Then the likes do not even matter. You're there because of the youtuber/streamer, not because they produce good or bad content.

 

The only time the likes and dislikes have ever mattered are when a dozen different channels are offering opinion pieces on the same subject, and they go off in wildly different directions. (eg "Intel sucks" , "Apple sucks", "Linux sucks", "Android sucks", "AMD sucks", etc) So what the likes tell you in this regard is which channel has the most cowardly opinion. Someone who offers the most offensive, flamebait take will have the most variable amount of likes to dislikes, to which the algorithm will see as high engagement either way. The safe opinion will never generate nearly as much engagement as an egregiously outlandish one swimming against the safe one.

 

 

Quote

 

It also seems like there is a little contradiction going on here since if you don't care about the numbers, then why is it stressful when the dislikes/likes are anonymous? I'm not saying that's a bad reason for turning it off, but that obviously means you do care about the numbers. I also don't quite understand the comparison between DMCA, dislikes, and censorship.

I turn it off because people have used the "number of dislikes" as some meaningful metric that I disagree with. Likes and dislikes are not some currency or popularity contest. They are a way to either kiss the uploader or punch them in the face.

 

People stop producing content when they are given the impression that they are being censored for offering anything but a safe content. This is being driven by "brand-safety", or basically advertisers won't put ads on content that has any dislikes on it, and likely youtube doesn't want the likes/dislikes being weaponized, so the easiest solution to that is get rid of showing the numbers of dislikes, or getting rid of dislikes entirely.

 

eBay (which pretty much is the origin of "positive and negative feedback" scores on the internet) famously got rid of negative feedback for buyers because ebay sellers were weaponizing it, and making the platform too dangerous to use. eBay's official policy is that any buyer or seller with less than 98% feedback is a bad user. 

 

The same is true of youtube, viewers should never have been able to leave anything but positive feedback and positive comments, and if you don't like the content, clicking "dislike" should unsubscribe you from the channel and hide that video from being recommended to you again, and clicking a "dislike" on a channel should hide that channel entirely for the viewer and any embeds. They are functionally need to be two different systems.

 

This is not a "everyone gets a gold star" type of problem. If you don't like content, don't engage with it. Youtube should not be giving viewers the ability to weaponize the engagement process.

 

To reframe this in context:

 

Let's say I upload a video about chocolate chip cookies. Nothing offensive about it.

10 people like the video, and then 1 person dislikes the video. So the thought process goes "ok, why did this person dislike the video."

10 people leave positive comments, and then 1 person leaves a negative comment of "chocolate is gross, ew, delete your channel"

 

Which do you think is more stressful, the 1 dislike that you have no idea why it's there, or the negative comment you can just ignore or delete?

 

Now stretch this out to millions of likes and dislikes vs a few thousand comments.

 

Some people do not want to see the numbers, and some people don't want those numbers being weaponized against them.

 

https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/linustechtips

 

image.thumb.png.8f2f2fb162bd80ab70cee983f10373ba.png

 

image.thumb.png.4af1ed3a24b635a207b00ccb7e7ed196.png

 

 

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That's a manipulation of the like/dislike system and deceiving the viewer into thinking that the reception of the video was positive..

Then if you your video has a bad like/dislike ratio - you can simply remove the dislikes and only show the positive stuff while ignoring the negative.

If that plan will be executed - most channels will disable the dislikes on their videos,because everyone hate it when they get dislikes.

And without dislikes,what's the point of like?,they are two sides of the same coin.

It's a great way of reducing transparency on the platform.

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17 minutes ago, Kisai said:

See Youtube Rewind 2018.

See Cuties official trailer

See Sadak 2 official trailer

See "Can this video get 1 million dislikes"

See "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare" trailer

 

Which of these do you think is reflective of the content, and which is a political statement?

 

The likes will not help you there.

 

Here's a core way to tell if a video is good:

1. Can it be conveyed or summarized in 150 characters? I'm not gonna watch a 10 minute video that poses a clickbait question that could have been answered in the title. Likes and dislikes tell you nothing about this video.

 

2. Does it exploit a political, religious, or sex topic? The likes to dislikes will never tell you anything about these videos. The only way to tell if it's garbage is to be familiar with the video producer's content. Usually following drama-generating channels is a good way to have your mind poisoned against a topic. Occasionally you can drop in to look, but youtube's algorithms are tuned to assume because you watched X discusses Y, you want more videos from X about Y, or nothing but videos about Y, and that's usually going to offer up the worst content.

 

3. Is the youtuber known for something? Then the likes do not even matter. You're there because of the youtuber/streamer, not because they produce good or bad content.

 

The only time the likes and dislikes have ever mattered are when a dozen different channels are offering opinion pieces on the same subject, and they go off in wildly different directions. (eg "Intel sucks" , "Apple sucks", "Linux sucks", "Android sucks", "AMD sucks", etc) So what the likes tell you in this regard is which channel has the most cowardly opinion. Someone who offers the most offensive, flamebait take will have the most variable amount of likes to dislikes, to which the algorithm will see as high engagement either way. The safe opinion will never generate nearly as much engagement as an egregiously outlandish one swimming against the safe one.

 

 

I turn it off because people have used the "number of dislikes" as some meaningful metric that I disagree with. Likes and dislikes are not some currency or popularity contest. They are a way to either kiss the uploader or punch them in the face.

 

People stop producing content when they are given the impression that they are being censored for offering anything but a safe content. This is being driven by "brand-safety", or basically advertisers won't put ads on content that has any dislikes on it, and likely youtube doesn't want the likes/dislikes being weaponized, so the easiest solution to that is get rid of showing the numbers of dislikes, or getting rid of dislikes entirely.

 

eBay (which pretty much is the origin of "positive and negative feedback" scores on the internet) famously got rid of negative feedback for buyers because ebay sellers were weaponizing it, and making the platform too dangerous to use. eBay's official policy is that any buyer or seller with less than 98% feedback is a bad user. 

 

The same is true of youtube, viewers should never have been able to leave anything but positive feedback and positive comments, and if you don't like the content, clicking "dislike" should unsubscribe you from the channel and hide that video from being recommended to you again, and clicking a "dislike" on a channel should hide that channel entirely for the viewer and any embeds. They are functionally need to be two different systems.

 

This is not a "everyone gets a gold star" type of problem. If you don't like content, don't engage with it. Youtube should not be giving viewers the ability to weaponize the engagement process.

 

To reframe this in context:

 

Let's say I upload a video about chocolate chip cookies. Nothing offensive about it.

10 people like the video, and then 1 person dislikes the video. So the thought process goes "ok, why did this person dislike the video."

10 people leave positive comments, and then 1 person leaves a negative comment of "chocolate is gross, ew, delete your channel"

 

Which do you think is more stressful, the 1 dislike that you have no idea why it's there, or the negative comment you can just ignore or delete?

 

Now stretch this out to millions of likes and dislikes vs a few thousand comments.

 

Some people do not want to see the numbers, and some people don't want those numbers being weaponized against them.

 

https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/linustechtips

 

image.thumb.png.8f2f2fb162bd80ab70cee983f10373ba.png

 

image.thumb.png.4af1ed3a24b635a207b00ccb7e7ed196.png

 

 

This post caused me to read the wiki on social blade.  

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Blade

It seems that this change might hinder tracking of the type social blade does. I don’t know to what extent.

 

 

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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Just putting it out there, but CBSViacom is normally the ones that push YT around the most and this sounds like something they might have been "requesting". The two companies have a settlement over Copyright issues that is still unknown the details, but YT goes out of its way to keep CBSViacom happy about things. So this doesn't necessarily have to be caused specifically by them, but it could be something along those lines from a major IP Holder being pissed about a lot of negative feedback.

 

Also, I believe the CoD: Infinite Warfare trailer was the most non-meme disliked video on the platform for a number a years. This is what caused the "boots on the ground" PR for every CoD since. Somehow, Activision seems far more sensible in this context.

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can't wait to see comments under each video be like: "UsE mE aS a DisLiKe BuTtOn"

 

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17 hours ago, Arrogath said:

Honestly, hiding the dislike ratio is kind of like turning off comments because you know that your whole point is bullshit and someone with half a braincell can destroy it with the most basic of points

15 hours ago, thechinchinsong said:

Seeing as this is an option that available to the creators of the video, I guess i'll just stop watching every creator that hides the dislike like ratio. I hate to be the one that says "what do you have to hide", but in this case, I think it actually applies.

As I understand it, this will not be a creator choice; it will be for everyone.

 

Currently, creators can choose, but almost nobody does because the option is buried somewhat.

 

17 hours ago, Kisai said:

Ideally yes.

 

The statistics shown often get conflated with popularity and the like:dislike ratio with how bad the content is. Neither are true since viewbots and dog piling are a thing that happens.

 

Showing the dislikes, or even having it all, is a stressful engagement metric. So it’s better to only show those metrics for the technical requirements to the user rather than as marketing tuning.

I suspect that, in an ideal world for Google, no concious user feedback would be required at all. They could work out what to recommend to people based solely on subtle tracking methods, automatically collected metrics, and parsing the contents of comments, both on and off platform (let's not forget that Google also own, well, Google, and with that comes a huge system dedicated entirely to parsing websites and getting the general meaning out of them)

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1 hour ago, pythonmegapixel said:

  

As I understand it, this will not be a creator choice; it will be for everyone.

 

Currently, creators can choose, but almost nobody does because the option is buried somewhat.

 

I suspect that, in an ideal world for Google, no concious user feedback would be required at all. They could work out what to recommend to people based solely on subtle tracking methods, automatically collected metrics, and parsing the contents of comments, both on and off platform (let's not forget that Google also own, well, Google, and with that comes a huge system dedicated entirely to parsing websites and getting the general meaning out of them)

Sounds like the more correct move would be to unbury it, at least as a next step, or leave it in with the default changed to no rather than yes.  This seems like overreach.

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Sounds like the more correct move would be to unbury it, at least as a next step, or leave it in with the default changed to no rather than yes.  This seems like overreach.

There's extensions on chrome just for hiding likes on youtube.

 

 

https://9to5google.com/2021/03/30/youtube-dislike-count/

 

Quote

This move was made “in response to creator feedback around well-being and targeted dislike campaigns.” Google notes how creators will still “see the exact number of likes and dislikes in YouTube Studio.”

 

Like just getting to the point, people will be garbage on the internet, and when they see something they don't agree with, or aren't winning the argument with, they will then seen out *chan as their personal army to dislike bomb the video, even though 0% of those people have watched it.

 

To being with, in order to like or dislike a video, one should actually watch the entire video, or at least watch past the point an ad plays. If no ad plays, no engagement options should be visible either, because the user is actively damaging the channel anyway by blocking the ads while not paying for the youtube service.

 

The internet would be a better place if engagement algorithms directly followed the actual engagement and interaction time rather than "up/down vote" systems.

 

For youtube (and other video sites), tying the comments directly to the timestamp on the video (eg niconico video) is more engaging than comments that have no context. This is something only available on youtube and twitch streaming playbacks when they're live rather than comments (though you can manually enter the timestamps.)

 

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4 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

  

As I understand it, this will not be a creator choice; it will be for everyone.

 

Currently, creators can choose, but almost nobody does because the option is buried somewhat.

 

I mean, its still an option. If you're a creator that cares about not looking at likes/dislikes, then its up to you to disable that option, I don't see why Youtube has to change this for people who DO think this the like/dislike system is decent. If you don't like the likes/dislikes, disable it. If you're okay with it as is, then leave it as is.

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I am telling you they did this to make it seem that youtube rewind was not too much of a failure.

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22 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Youtube already took away the power of the dislike button on comments years ago. It's literally useless, does nothing, displays nothing either.

I fully expect this to do the same. They only want "positivity" in the cesspool that is the internet. Youtube was pretty much one of the last few places where you could even still dislike something and have it shown. I'm just surprised it took this long for them to take that away from the hands of the viewers. It's all rainbows and sunshine on Youtube, now!

Reddit is now one of the only places where dislike buttons work

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16 hours ago, Kisai said:

See Youtube Rewind 2018.

See Cuties official trailer

See Sadak 2 official trailer

See "Can this video get 1 million dislikes"

See "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare" trailer

 

Which of these do you think is reflective of the content, and which is a political statement?

I'm sure there is a great deal of brigading in Youtube likes/dislikes, but I feel as for a lot of these video's you've listed, the dislikes are actually warranted and reflect the overall opinion of people who've watched the videos. Political statements can be accurate reflections of what people think of the content. If people think that a video has a political or social connotation, it's perfectly acceptable to express their dislike of it.

16 hours ago, Kisai said:

The likes will not help you there.

 

Here's a core way to tell if a video is good:

1. Can it be conveyed or summarized in 150 characters? I'm not gonna watch a 10 minute video that poses a clickbait question that could have been answered in the title. Likes and dislikes tell you nothing about this video.

 

2. Does it exploit a political, religious, or sex topic? The likes to dislikes will never tell you anything about these videos. The only way to tell if it's garbage is to be familiar with the video producer's content. Usually following drama-generating channels is a good way to have your mind poisoned against a topic. Occasionally you can drop in to look, but youtube's algorithms are tuned to assume because you watched X discusses Y, you want more videos from X about Y, or nothing but videos about Y, and that's usually going to offer up the worst content.

 

3. Is the youtuber known for something? Then the likes do not even matter. You're there because of the youtuber/streamer, not because they produce good or bad content.

 

The only time the likes and dislikes have ever mattered are when a dozen different channels are offering opinion pieces on the same subject, and they go off in wildly different directions. (eg "Intel sucks" , "Apple sucks", "Linux sucks", "Android sucks", "AMD sucks", etc) So what the likes tell you in this regard is which channel has the most cowardly opinion. Someone who offers the most offensive, flamebait take will have the most variable amount of likes to dislikes, to which the algorithm will see as high engagement either way. The safe opinion will never generate nearly as much engagement as an egregiously outlandish one swimming against the safe one.

I mean likes help me plenty with tutorial/educational videos with programming, electronics, math, etc. Of course for other less objective topics, they don't make as much sense, but for some tutorial, dyi, and educational videos, it makes sense. In these cases, the youtubers typically aren't that well known, don't exploit political, religious, or sexual topics, and even if they can be answered in 150 characters (certain math and programming tutorials), having them in video format isn't a waste of time, since having a visual learning experience can be better for certain people that just text.

16 hours ago, Kisai said:

I turn it off because people have used the "number of dislikes" as some meaningful metric that I disagree with. Likes and dislikes are not some currency or popularity contest. They are a way to either kiss the uploader or punch them in the face.

 

People stop producing content when they are given the impression that they are being censored for offering anything but a safe content. This is being driven by "brand-safety", or basically advertisers won't put ads on content that has any dislikes on it, and likely youtube doesn't want the likes/dislikes being weaponized, so the easiest solution to that is get rid of showing the numbers of dislikes, or getting rid of dislikes entirely.

 

eBay (which pretty much is the origin of "positive and negative feedback" scores on the internet) famously got rid of negative feedback for buyers because ebay sellers were weaponizing it, and making the platform too dangerous to use. eBay's official policy is that any buyer or seller with less than 98% feedback is a bad user. 

 

The same is true of youtube, viewers should never have been able to leave anything but positive feedback and positive comments, and if you don't like the content, clicking "dislike" should unsubscribe you from the channel and hide that video from being recommended to you again, and clicking a "dislike" on a channel should hide that channel entirely for the viewer and any embeds. They are functionally need to be two different systems.

 

This is not a "everyone gets a gold star" type of problem. If you don't like content, don't engage with it. Youtube should not be giving viewers the ability to weaponize the engagement process.

 

To reframe this in context:

 

Let's say I upload a video about chocolate chip cookies. Nothing offensive about it.

10 people like the video, and then 1 person dislikes the video. So the thought process goes "ok, why did this person dislike the video."

10 people leave positive comments, and then 1 person leaves a negative comment of "chocolate is gross, ew, delete your channel"

 

Which do you think is more stressful, the 1 dislike that you have no idea why it's there, or the negative comment you can just ignore or delete?

 

Now stretch this out to millions of likes and dislikes vs a few thousand comments.

 

Some people do not want to see the numbers, and some people don't want those numbers being weaponized against them.

Okay, that's a fine opinion, but for the people who do not want to see the numbers, they already have the option to turn it off (as you've already done). For those who don't want those numbers being weaponized against them, this change by Youtube doesn't actually help with the underlying algorithm that exploits this. This isn't going to help brigading or mass disliking, since flamers and those organized by some nefarious 4chan thread are still gonna dislike.

 

If we just keep YouTube the way it is, then people like you have the option to turn off the numbers, while others have the option to keep then turned on.

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