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

[James Evens]

1 minute ago, pythonmegapixel said:

I suspect that, in an ideal world for Google, no concious user feedback would be required at all.

That's what they do for years: no longer broadcast yourself and more like netflix, classiv TV, etc.

[Bombastinator]

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.

[Kisai]

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.)

 

[thechinchinsong]

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.

[Prodigy_Smit]

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

[jtmoseley]

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

[thechinchinsong]

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.

[jtmoseley]

14 minutes ago, thechinchinsong said:

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.

If only specific people turn off dislikes, it comes across as disingenuous, as untrustworthy. I don't trust a tutorial video with comments and dislikes off.

 

If everyone has it off, it's just the way it is. That's the difference.

[steelo]

So, youtube is becoming more and more unappealing and irrelevant to mainstream users who don't drown themselves in political nonsense.

 

If I have no idea whether a video is well received, I have little motivation to view it. This is especially true with tutorial videos where I need accurate information. Currently, if a video has a disproportionate number of dislikes, I know the video probably provides misinformation. 

 

Something tells me this will increase garbage videos tenfold which will do nothing but harm the youtube platform. It's a shame because youtube started as something that was VERY promising, but it is pretty obvious that in the past few years, it has been taken over and politicized.

 

But, hey...At least Disney is happy about this latest decision!

[Actual_Criminal]

The good thing about dislikes is that for informative type videos, if it has a bunch of dislikes (ratio compared to likes) you know it's either:

 

-Incorrect and wrong
-A scam of some sort
-Troll or just a bad video

 

I personally find this a bad idea. Now people can post mis-information and just disable comments and people will fall victim.

[Kisai]

7 minutes ago, Actual_Criminal said:

The good thing about dislikes is that for informative type videos, if it has a bunch of dislikes (ratio compared to likes) you know it's either:

 

-Incorrect and wrong
-A scam of some sort
-Troll or just a bad video

 

I personally find this a bad idea. Now people can post mis-information and just disable comments and people will fall victim.

Again, dislike brigading is a thing.

 

You can actually use report for scams/violent/misinformation but YouTube has historically allowed algorithms to suspend accounts Willynilly.

Look no further than the gamer gate fiasco to see why dislikes and comments should be moderated by default. Getting brigaded by idiots who don’t even watch the video and react to the title, or thumbnail is bad engagement.

 

YouTube turned comments off on content flagged as “for children” for this reason

[FakeATF]

On 3/30/2021 at 1:57 PM, NumLock21 said:

YouTube don't want to hurt the feelings on youtubers. What's next? Give everyone participation play buttons?!

Woohoo! Where's my PP button!

 

wait

[thechinchinsong]

5 hours ago, jtmoseley said:

If only specific people turn off dislikes, it comes across as disingenuous, as untrustworthy. I don't trust a tutorial video with comments and dislikes off.

 

If everyone has it off, it's just the way it is. That's the difference.

Exactly. It depends on if you prefer the first scenario or second scenario. I imagine there are just as many people who prefer the first scenario (what Youtube is right now), compared to the second scenario (where dislikes/likes are completely removed from public view).

[DeScruff]

I feel like this will be annoying.
Too many times I look up a video on how to *insert obscure thing here*  and the results lead to a lot of videos that just waste your time, are telling you to do it completely incorrectly (The Verge PC build anyone) or might actually cause more harm.
Can't tell you how many times Ive seen videos on electricity, that tell you to do some VERY dangerous things.
Like someone with no hint of sarcasm or humor telling you to do the kinda stuff you would see on ElectroBOOM, that causes the, well... BOOM. Usually you can tell by the Likes vs Dislikes if something falls into those categories.

 

[Kisai]

58 minutes ago, DeScruff said:

I feel like this will be annoying.
Too many times I look up a video on how to *insert obscure thing here*  and the results lead to a lot of videos that just waste your time, are telling you to do it completely incorrectly (The Verge PC build anyone) or might actually cause more harm.
Can't tell you how many times Ive seen videos on electricity, that tell you to do some VERY dangerous things.
Like someone with no hint of sarcasm or humor telling you to do the kinda stuff you would see on ElectroBOOM, that causes the, well... BOOM. Usually you can tell by the Likes vs Dislikes if something falls into those categories.

 

I have never seen a video's likes or dislikes matter. All it does is tell youtube's algorithm which content is more engaging, while simultanously doing nothing about misinformation or clickbait.

[DeScruff]

42 minutes ago, Kisai said:

I have never seen a video's likes or dislikes matter. All it does is tell youtube's algorithm which content is more engaging, while simultanously doing nothing about misinformation or clickbait.

In my experience with looking up obscure things that only results in 3 or 4 videos with maybe a few hundred views, if a video is misinformation/clickbait, you will probably see 3 likes 35 dislikes. - Which yeah as you pointed out, tells Youtube its more engaging so it ends up on the top of the list vs the actual answers which get no likes/dislikes.

Most of the time likes/dislikes don't matter, but as long as such videos keep being the first results its better to at least have some indication that 'na this is bad don't watch' then nothing.

[FakeNSA]

On 3/30/2021 at 1:08 PM, Tieox said:

I can see this move going about as well as taking a dump on your mother in laws brand new designer sofa, slapping her with a wet kipper and asking for a cup of her fancy coffee.

 

 

 

Can I just say, the visceral descriptiveness of this made my day.

[Jet_ski]

This is a crap move by YouTube. As a viewer sometimes we need validation that others disliked a video like we did. We can’t booo on YouTube anymore! What are they thinking.

[Sauron]

They should get rid of the rating system altogether, it's mostly meaningless. With rare exceptions, popular channels will just get a bunch of autolikes from their subscriber base and the occasional dislike bomb.

[tikker]

Hmm bad choice YouTube. Either hide both or show both.

[bcredeur97]

can we just go back to 2006

[Orcblood]

I'll i will say here is Boooooo. bad move.

 

Edit: Also reminder that Odysee.com is awesome and a great alternative. 

[MichelPostma]

This seems like a weird one to me.

Obscuring data for the sake of it not being the most fun to see...

 

Anyway, I have a tendency to always dislike videos that don't display the numbers.

Since in my opinion if you only want to be open to praise and not also be open to public critique then I'll dislike that.

 

So pretty much I'll be disliking a lot more videos now unfortunately.

[Vishera]

10 minutes ago, MichelPostma said:

Since in my opinion if you only want to be open to praise and not also be open to public critique then I'll dislike that.

It's called lack of transparency :D

[MichelPostma]

1 minute ago, Vishera said:

It's called lack of transparency

That's true.

 

Also I fear that this will lead to 2 important things happening which YouTube would not like:

1. Easy Harassment targeting;  This option, when chosen by creators, signals to the world that they are specifically hurt by the dislikes so that they don't want them displayed (but still want the likes). This will make them an easy target for anyone who wants to go out and do some good old cyberbullying as they now have an identifier to go after and a place to attack, as they know that any dislikes, whilst not shown publicly, will still be seen by the creator. 

2. Harder to Identify bad videos; YouTube Rewind, Bad apology videos, Anti-Vax, Scams, Clickbait reaction videos, there are many just plainly bad videos on YouTube which people may click on. Generally a like/dislike ratio helps people to identify whether this video they watch is generally accepted or not. Displaying only likes completely removes this ability.