Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 508 posts

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

#191

Post by bobthechef »

EricE wrote: post #131
retsibsi wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not outraged - I'm amused. The ultimate admission the only way they can spread their messaging is through force, not honest competition of ideas. How superior. Nothing proves you have a worthy argument better than outright hiding from dissent. Again, they don't care if you stay on the platform. If they did, they wouldn't touch it. The disagreement buttons were added in the first place because they increase and ma…

> The ultimate admission the only way they can spread their messaging is through force, not honest competition of ideas. How superior.

> Nothing proves you have a worthy argument better than outright hiding from dissent.

I don't know the general trends across YouTube or why they would do this. Certainly, they've also been silencing views they and certain influential groups advising them don't like, and I've seen videos put out by connected establishment and moneyed milieu downvoted into oblivion. But value and truth are not determined through popular vote. It might coincide, or it might not.

So the only way I can understand your comment is to suppose that downvoting of "preferred" YouTube content has gotten so severe that the company wishes to prevent the communication of exactly how much disapproval there really is for the "official narrative" (while potentially keeping track of it themselves) because once someone knows he's not alone in his disapproval, he might just have more confidence to resist or leave a comment that spreads a message unfavorable to them. So yes, dislikes might increase engagement, but it might not be the kind of engagement they want to facilitate.

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

#192

Post by fl0wenol »

rosmax_1337 wrote: post #50

This does not seem to me like a move to "improve the user experience", but rather to hide the public opinion about certain topics, such as politics or consumer media. Others name examples here in this thread, such as Ghostbusters (2016) and their trailers and recent Biden administration videos on the White house channel. I am curious __in a genuine way__ if someone who might consider themselves "woke left" (at the la…

Crunchy granola digital soyboy here: I can't think of any reason why this is a good idea since tools already exist to disable voting and comments for PR.

Heat, kitchen, etc.

It's the money; probably Hollywood. Maybe the Whitehouse? If it's perceived as staving off a SV antitrust breakup a little longer but that just doesn't seem "big" enough of a concession. So I'm back to money.

What I'm a little more concerned about is the conspiracy-minded posters on this site coming out of the woodwork on this article who are about 6 parens away from saying what they really mean.

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

#193

Post by creaghpatr »

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.

Where in the comment do they claim “the White House is explicitly pressuring Google to remove this feature”?

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

#194

Post by city41 »

retsibsi wrote: post #115
EricE wrote: 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.

A while back they significantly increased the number of ads and also now show YouTube premium popups constantly. I would imagine it's had very little if any negative impact. Google knows YouTube is the only game in town.

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

#195

Post by hnick »

filoleg wrote: post #179
hnick wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 relat…

For instructional videos I usually click through to skim before fully committing, especially if they waffle at the start. It works easier on desktop than mobile though.

And don't forget the Wadsworth Constant :)

https://www.dictionary.com/e/pop-culture/the-wadsworth-const...

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

#196

Post by frongpik »

argvargc wrote: post #24
nigrioid wrote: post #11

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

There's a site tracking these, some of the stats on older videos with high views are crazy (down the page): https://81m.org

Looks like trolling to me. There's 95% dislike rate even for a mundane "paycheck protection bill".

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

#197

Post by hnick »

Waterluvian wrote: post #167
hnick wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just pick the video with a lot of upvotes that has a good title card and is early on in the search results.

I'm pretty sure this is how you teach YouTube that you like clickbait.

But I guess that happens anyway.

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

#198

Post by prvc »

Hammershaft wrote: post #48
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…

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

Why would the viewcount be relevant to this?

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

#199

Post by dilap »

barbacoa wrote: post #182
dilap wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, slowly but surely YouTube is destroying itself. Which is very sad, because it's been an amazing resource. I'd love to see ByteDance do a YouTube competitor. (Or, dream of all dreams, see something distributed really take off.)

Sadly as long as google dominates search there is little chance that any other video site will get any traction since Google biases towards youtube and away from start up steaming sites.

Probably has to start w/ an app.

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

#200

Post by eindiran »

riffic wrote: post #144
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…

> Content creators of all stripes are absolutely desperate for an alternative platform Peertube exists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube

For certain values of exists. I would love to get off of YouTube completely, but until eg PeerTube actually gets a significant number of content creators to move over or upload in parallel, its going to be impossible to fight YT. It's a very chicken/egg problem.

Thankfully, YT keeps doing user-hostile things, slowly pushing more people into trying out alternatives.

Post reply on HN