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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

#501

Post by 81million »

akvadrako wrote: post #496
81million wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is NOT trolling. I made the site. You can easily verify my data. - The hard way: Use YouTube's API to track the stats on one of the videos. Compare to my data, and the two will line up. - The medium-hard way: Over the course of a day or so, simply compare the official likes/dislikes that you see on youtube.com to my stats at 81m.org. You will see that my stats line up with the official numbers. It might be hard to…

I think he meant the dislikes were trolling, not your website. As another commenter mentioned, Biden inherited all of Trump's followers. Enough of them probably just downvote everything Biden posts, which one might call a very mild form of trolling.

I suppose that could be considered a very mild form of trolling.

I guess the theory is that Trump's followers are force-joined into subscribing to the Biden White House's videos. So then they react by downvoting every unsolicited video that pops into their streams. And the response is to delete their downvotes? So I guess the message to them is, "You really must look at what the Biden White House has to say. Oh, but you're not allowed to express your opinion about it."

Actually, you are allowed to click "dislike" and to feel like you expressed your opinion about each video, but later we will delete your opinion when you look away.

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

#502

Post by argvargc »

bobiny wrote: post #319

I find dislikes a hostile form of conversation. If you want to discern if a DIY video gives legit advice, look at comment section. A good video will have something like “this totally works, thanks” with many likes. If a video is misleading or fake, I think it should be reported and removed or marked as misleading and fake. I see that my view is not popular, I’m open for debate.

You're seeing that your view is not popular and being open for debate; because of dislikes.

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

#503

Post by africanboy »

africanboy wrote: post #475
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.

most of the votes (up and down) don't come from real people and do not represent real users' opinions and are casted for the most stupid reasons, like in DIY video example I am friend with the author or am friend of a competitor. there is nothing more hostile to users than the fake information YouTube is providing I would go as far as to remove the votes completely and sort the videos randomly It's the same old story…

as a proof of what I've written on the parent comment, I made the usual mistake yesterday: I commented on a thread about bitcoins writing that no, btc won't save the World and no, very few people got rich, btc are not making the general population rich.

Of course I received a couple downvotes, that rippled over my previous comments on completely unrelated topics, like this one, just because my other comments where more than 24 hours old and they couldn't be downvoted as per HN rules (the parent comment was already 15 hours old when received the only downvote - meaning nobody cared for it - at the same time of the btc thread that was fresh).

> You cannot downvote comments which are direct replies to your own comment, and you cannot downvote 24 hours after the original comment was made.

If downvotes where ided, it would be obvious that the downvotes on the comments on this thread were just retaliation from the frustrated owners of bitcoins whose propaganda was being questioned.

The id doesn't have to be the real useranme, it could be a random id that identifies a user for a brief period of time (48 hours) so that other users could report the issue, knowing that it's not their paranoia, but a real thing.

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

#504

Post by masto »

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.

I'm apparently not most people. I watch far more hours of YouTube every day than I'd like to admit, but I never even notice the like/dislike counts, let alone rely on them to provide any meaningful signal.

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

#505

Post by EricE »

markdown wrote: post #413
EricE wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely a strategy - there is a particular point of view they favor, and anything counter to it is removed. Dislikes are embarrassing to, for lack of better terminology, their pet causes. Simply disabling them on certain videos or channels calls even more attention to them - so why not just remove them entirely. The only thing surprising to me is that it took them this long.

What a silly conspiracy theory. If the wanted to hide embarrassing downvotes on certain videos, they'd just remove those downvotes, not the entire feature.

When it's only the same kinds of content that has to have special treatment, that special treatment still calls unwanted attention.

So hence why the whole feature is pRoBlEmAtIc and must be removed :p

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

#506

Post by Valakas »

nonbirithm wrote: post #157
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.

Beyond the debate on whether or not downvotes are useful as a tool, I think about the higher-level implications of a change like this. One of the most powerful media platforms in the entire world can institute a change like this under everyone's watch, and none of us have any recourse. A couple of programmers in their two-week sprint can fiddle around with some Javascript and push it out to the masses, and suddenly l…

Totally agree with you on this. We're reaching a point where the services some private companies provide are becoming too important to remain private, or at least, being served in a monopolistic fashion where the user has basically no power.
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