Neither does this help the viewer, nor would this discourage targeted dislike-campaigns. Any layman user knows that the dislikes play a part in YouTube's recommendation algorithm. So, people who want to organize such campaigns are still going to do it because it helps them with their objectives. Only the messaging around the campaign is going to differ.
Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
441–450 of 508 posts
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#442Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#443This 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.
Yeah. The downvote count is extraordinarily important when looking at things like chain sawing how-to videos. So many people uploading unsafe practices. More benign but sharpening videos have the same thing. Some look good but show bad technique.
I've used a fair number of YouTube how-to videos and never thought to check the downvote count. If a video contains bad advice, there will be a well-upvoted comment explaining why it's wrong. That's a lot more informative than an opaque counter
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#444Title is misleading. YouTube is testing removing the ability for viewers to see the dislikes. Video owners can still see the dislikes. I am skeptical about this design change fixing the stated concern, which is creator "well-being". If good faith creators can still see the dislike count, they will still feel miserable. Anyway, if you are putting yourself out there, other people taking a dump on you is part of the dea…
Submitted title was "YouTube to Remove Dislikes". We've replaced it with a substring of the tweet.
Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#445Title is misleading. YouTube is testing removing the ability for viewers to see the dislikes. Video owners can still see the dislikes. I am skeptical about this design change fixing the stated concern, which is creator "well-being". If good faith creators can still see the dislike count, they will still feel miserable. Anyway, if you are putting yourself out there, other people taking a dump on you is part of the dea…
I think the wellbeing play is more about preventing dislike-bombing than about protecting creator egos. Dislike-bombing is coordinated mass action against a video or creator, not by the usual audience of that creator, but by herds of non-watchers seeking to shame the creator publicly via a bad dislike count. That sort of stampede-like behavior doesn't seem like a healthy community dynamic.
It sounds reasonable to imagine that dislike-bomb participants will lose the public shaming motivation if the dislike count is no longer visible; they also will lose the ability to practically organize eg by setting up goals ("10k dislikes and I'll give away xyz").
Creators still retain dislikes as a signal of quality from their audience. Viewers lose dislike count but it's also already taken into account into the recommendation algorithms that drive most consumption on YouTube so maybe not a whole lot is lost; besides in the only place where dislike count is shown, comments are already visible (and those may be negative too).
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#446How 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 ab…
> 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.
"Mainstream" and "majority" are not the same thing. The content and tone of established media is dictated by a very small minority whose basic material interests diverge from those of normal people.
I guess the question is what's worse: a mob's echo chamber or a cabal's echo chamber? It's been the latter for most of print/broadcast media's history, and I don't think it's done us much good.
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let’s cut the BS. It’s about not looking bad. Its that simple
That's absolutely what it's about. There's nothing to debate about that. It's the same reason Trump wanted to be able to block people on Twitter. For the same reason he wasn't allowed to do that, the White House shouldn't be allowed to disable YouTube commenting. But hey, it's not like there's a double standard in favor of the Democrats and Biden.
Different case. From the Twitter ruling: "... utilizing Twitter's 'blocking' function to limit certain users' access to his social media account, which is otherwise open to the public at large, because he disagrees with their speech".
That is completely different from not enabling comments on an announcement video where they're not enabled to anyone, but also not restricting anyone from seeing the content.
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dont think thats true. If people stopped using youtube people would upload to other sites. Google hasnt taught you how to repair anything.
I don't know why you're being downvoted, because you are obviously right — just like the audience will go where the content is, the content creators will go where they can get an audience.
Probably downvoted because of that last sentence.
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#449I actually think it's an interesting change and might make my youtube a bit better for me personally. Let's see how this goes.
Re: Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. The downvote count is extraordinarily important when looking at things like chain sawing how-to videos. So many people uploading unsafe practices. More benign but sharpening videos have the same thing. Some look good but show bad technique.
I've used a fair number of YouTube how-to videos and never thought to check the downvote count. If a video contains bad advice, there will be a well-upvoted comment explaining why it's wrong. That's a lot more informative than an opaque counter
The difference is that the video uploader can delete critical comments