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Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
241–250 of 508 posts
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#242Earlier 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.
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.
For now, but if they keep treating users like shit, it creates a bigger and bigger opportunity for competition to pop in. You might be thinking it's super hard for someone like you or I to create a YouTube competitor. That's probably true, but what about Amazon or Netflix? Can you imagine if Netflix had a YouTube-like platform where, if you're a subscriber, you get no ads?
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#243Earlier 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…
To be clear, they aren't removing the button, or a way for users to register their dislike or track that they already disliked a video (I assume), just the count of how many other people disliked it. As a matter of engagement, I'm not sure how much that statistic brings to the table. I agree it might make filtering out crap content somewhat harder, but I'm not sure how good it ever was for that. It might be that the vast majority of the time it indicated anything to the viewer it indicated that some campaign was underway, which generally is counterproductive as a viewer.
Personally, I upvote if I liked something, and I don't indicate anything if I didn't find it all that interesting or useful. Rarely if ever have I disliked something that youtube has recommended to me. The few times I have it's probably been because of some outside source noting it because it's objectionable. How useful of a signal is that to youtube or the creator? In that case it indicates what people that don't care about their content and aren't likely to watch any more of it think. That seems a poor source of feedback (and if we're talking about hat being useful to indicate to them that they shouldn't have done whatever they did, that's obviously served already by many other mechanisms, including comments).
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are people really using votes like that? You putting your trust in deciding quality in a vote count? There's so much wrong with that.
noisy signal is better than no signal, which in turn is better than manipulated signal. at least with this change they won't be deleting[0] dislikes anymore. [0]: https://phzoe.com/2021/01/27/white-house-youtube-dislike-man...
This is a misleading "experiment". Why were only White House channel videos looked at? If you wanted to show that there was targeted dislike manipulation, you would also need to do this analysis on other popular videos, preferably right-leaning political ones. This could simply be an algorithm that detects bot behavior which gets applied broadly, in which case they are not changing any "real" signal.
It's certainly possible that Youtube is acting in a political manner and is preferentially deleting real dislikes, but this post hardly proves that.
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#245This 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.
Totally agree. I notice I find comment sections of sites that allow downvotes (e.g. HN, Reddit) much easier to navigate and filter than sites like Facebook and Twitter that only allow upvotes. Only allowing upvoting gives you similar dynamics to partisan primaries in the US - the most polarizing content filters to the top instead of sinking to the bottom.
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 vide…
> 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"
This is exact reason. Go to you tube home page and every day there is bar of "official sources" news on coronavirus (clips from news stations). Here are first four for this day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USE5USAodiI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4kqSV1p3T8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmOL9ek7Tys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DpzcMZPTqA
Noticing here, each and every has more dislike than like.
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#247the like / dislike concept on videos encourage manipulate public opinion I believe, as it creates a false consciousness on whether the video is good or bad based on the number of likes received
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
noisy signal is better than no signal, which in turn is better than manipulated signal. at least with this change they won't be deleting[0] dislikes anymore. [0]: https://phzoe.com/2021/01/27/white-house-youtube-dislike-man...
I would say votes aren't a signal at all. You can be voted in either direction for anything. You don't know who's voting or why. All that article shows is that the votes are manipulated by users too, there's no signal in down vote brigading like that
How could votes not be a signal? That would only be true if everyone used a stochastic generator to choose up or down.
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#249Honestly, it seems like there's no easy win here. I think people for and against this both have good arguments. For example, getting rid of dislikes could mitigate the effects of synthetic brigading campaigns. On the other hand, keeping them could in certain cases give a better view of the organic reaction to a video. I don't spend every day trying to solve these problems so I don't have a strong opinion about what t…
Synthetic brigading is what exactly? Bands of synthetics downvoting videos to bring about downfall of humanity? Or do people's opinions count less if they are organized?
> Or do people's opinions count less if they are organized?
Of course not, but the metric ceases to have meaning, so something important is lost.
Voting results being meaningful depends on a random sample of people who come across content, so that voters are approximately a random subset of viewers.
If voters organize, then they are no longer a random or representative subset, so the metric ceases to be representative of viewers as a whole, and becomes biased.
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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