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Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count

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Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count

#121
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not repair half the things I have learned to repair without Youtube. 100% worth having to look out for manipulative antifeatures, in my book.

I'm happy for the content in any form, but a bunch of things would be easier with a wall of text and a couple pictures I could scroll through. Don't forget to like and subscribe and support me on patreon.

This is certainly true when I want to sit down and repair something. There are other times when I just want to see what's involved and how complicated something will be first, maybe have dinner at the same time. This sort of higher level overview is where I find youtube fits in well, same for programming related videos.

I wish there were more hybrid approaches, video with the accompanying wall of text.

Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count

#122

It's because of what happens when the White House forgets to disable comments and dislikes. https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/359823/former...

This is the correct answer to me. How coincidental, just as White House videos mostly receive dislikes.

Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count

#123
post #22

How else is the mainstream supposed to spin reality? Entertainment giants used to more easily create the illusion of consensus, but web platforms like YouTube completely mess with their power by showing downvotes.

Smells political alright. The Biden admin disabled comments on all official The White House channel videos pretty quickly into their administration. Most videos have a tremendously high dislike to like ratio, the most recent is 3.4K dislikes to 205 likes. I don't know who they expect to consume their Youtube content but it apparently isn't the establishment's voter base. This is another brick in the wall that is Yout…

YouTube was a free speech platform only as long as it took to establish dominance. Now it's just another corporate megaphone with an inconvenient independent creator problem they are slowly solving by making it an intolerable place to have dissenting opinions.

Can't question the election, can't question coronavirus. Big Google decides what is acceptable and keeps the rules and process vague, inscrutable, and opaque so they can selectively enforce them.

Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count

#124
post #9

This seems rather user-hostile. The downvote count is useful for identifying videos that aren't what they claim to be. And how about DIY videos that give terrible advice? A big downvote ratio will get most people's attention in a way that critical comments may not.

Seems like an opportunity to create a browser extension to have crowd sourced upvote/downvotes kind of like Reddit masstagger. Wonder if there is a way to ensure that upvote/downvotes are not tampered with on the server side.

Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count

#125
post #4

It doesn't look like they're removing dislikes at all, but rather hiding the count of dislikes from viewers of the video (in a test).

While technically true, showing the Like/Dislike count provided valuable information for viewers. Determining whether or not a video is worth my time will become a lot more difficult.

Let's not fool ourselves here. The disklike-horde storming critical but good quality videos because they don't like the message was just as normal as overhyped videos with crap quality. Those systems are broken and this doesn't change much. It just hides which horde likes the vid at the moment.

Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count

#127
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think Youtube is removing dislikes because of white house vids that average out less than ~25000 views each?

Why wouldn't you entertain this possibility? Both political parties have been very vocal about regulating or breaking up big tech. I think it's embarrassing to White House. Do you believe that Google would be above doing this for political reasons? Or do you Democrats would be above wanting to suppress this small dissent?

I think, in order to spend engineer time on something this tiny, there would need to be a really strong strategic justification. Big tech generally doesn't want their product teams doing something that only affects a few of their users.

Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count

#128
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first mistake was thinking that you are the user they care about serving :p

Oh I know, I am pretty cynical and not exactly outraged here. But although they don't care about what's good for us, they do care about what will keep us on the platform. And if it gets harder to find good stuff and filter out the dross, that could conceivably have negative consequences for YouTube in the long run.

They hate us. The little guy. No criticism allowed

Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count

#129
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bad tweet is obvious because it's easy to digest. Unfortunately, the 'dislike' signal on a YouTube video doesn't tell me if it's because an expert disagrees with its content, or because the creator is being brigaded, or because the downvoters disagree with their politics (related or unrelated). The comments are a better signal, but looking through them requires reading... YouTube comments.

I'm not sure bad videos are any harder to digest than bad tweets. Maybe a bit more time consuming?

Yes, if I am trying to fix my dishwasher and I see a video with a high dislike ratio I will move on because at best it's probably a time waster and at worst dangerous.

My options now would be to spend a minute or two watching it or reading the comments (engagement!), which may not exist on some niche videos you run across for things like this. This adds up when browsing. Don't forget creators can disable comments too.

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