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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

#171

Post by bjourne »

ravenstine wrote: post #5

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.

But that's the point! Yours and others' belief that down voting is a mean to register dissent. Since dissent is orthogonal to quality down votes no longer indicate lack of quality. Thus the metric becomes meaningless. In fact, if Google and other tech companies were to continue using down votes to measure quality, the end result would be strengthening the majority's echo chamber.

Suppose there is a YouTube channel about how a minority in a certain country is discriminated against. Given what we know about discrimination, it is very unlikely for the majority to believe that it is discriminating this minority. Thus you have dissent and the possibility of hordes of angry down voters "brigading" that channel. These brigades may even be organized or supported by country in question because it doesn't like the negative views the channel is conveying.

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

#172

Post by lightgreen »

causality0 wrote: post #83
retsibsi wrote: 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.

Companies are only interested in user behavior that increases engagement. Everything else is on the chopping block.

In this particular case, the company is interested in more content production. Who are disincentivized by downvotes.

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

#174

Post by munk-a »

gnarbarian wrote: post #123
Covzire wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

If you want a free speech platform you should advocate for a government funded competitor. You might think that the NSA would instantly prune comments but you'd be failing to see the 800 lbs gorilla which is the US GAO and FOIA requests that'd hamstring anything the intelligence branches tried to do (outside of, y'know, legitimate threats).

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

#176

Post by Retric »

EricE wrote: post #92
retsibsi wrote: 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.

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

Perhaps, but this is the last Google product I still use. If they break YouTube like they did search, chrome, cellphones, and email, I guess I am off to find something else which must hurt their bottom line eventually.

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

#177

Post by lightgreen »

aquadrop wrote: post #142
motbob wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that removing public dislikes is a pretty bad idea, but it's not that important of a tool in fighting misleading videos. I mean, there was once a HUGE glut of videos with misleading thumbnails/titles, and what stopped the glut was not dislikes, but rather Youtube's use of watch time as an important metric.

Dislikes are good not just for identifying bad videos, but also good videos. You can see it in the like/dislike ratio. The higher the better, videos with ratio around >98-99% have very high probability of being good etc

Comparison of likes to views works well enough. Actually, they don't even need likes, they can understand good and bad videos just by analysing how long viewers spent viewing the video.

Likes (and dislikes) are needed mostly for viewers who might want to feel helpful.

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

#178

Post by bko »

michaelt wrote: post #153
bko wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

White house video: 3.4K dislikes YouTube Rewind 2018: 19 Million dislikes I don't see any reason you'd attribute removing dislikes to the former rather than the latter.

Because the White House has more power than Will Smith to break up Google.

I'm not attributing to that, but I think the biggest threat Google is being broken up or regulated to death. And considering D control all branches of government, they're the party in power. So I don't think its unfathomable to think that a trillion dollar corporation would want to draw attention away from a small vocal minority of people that isn't happy with the president.

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

#179

Post by filoleg »

hnick wrote: post #129
Waterluvian wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> My options now would be to spend a minute or two watching it or reading the comments

Fully agreed with you on everything you said here, but that specific line I quoted sounds a bit optimistic to me.

You would only waste a minute or two if the video author decided to actually start his video "for real" from the very beginning, instead of spending the first few minutes on his entire life story (that is not even related to the video content) and asking people to like and subscribe. It became so commonplace, these days I instantly start liking videos just for not wasting the first few minutes on things completely irrelevant to the actual content (which would be somewhat fine for entertainment videos, but definitely not for things like DYI tutorials and lessons).

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

#180

Post by jokethrowaway »

jetpks wrote: post #154
EricE wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvotes increase engagement. Otherwise they wouldn't have been put there in the first place. No, the real issue here is too many of the "right" things are getting downvoted. So when The White House, Disney or the Academy disable downvotes on part or all of their videos but other wide swaths of videos don't need to disable downvotes, the contrast causes them to stick out like a sore thumb. It calls attention (also k…

You are all over this thread claiming that the White House is explicitly pressuring Google to remove this feature of the site. Do you have supporting evidence, or did you just make this up? It seems more like you have a narrative and agenda to push.

The White House is just the last one whose videos dislikes are being made fun of and shared in memes

I'm sure YouTube consulted with their biggest customers and partners before removing a functionality that increases engagement

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