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YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

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Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#21

Dislikes still visible on incognito tab. Most fiction/speculative authors assumed tyranny would be from governments, not private companies. How wrong they were.

Dislikes are visible since it's an A/B test where they gradually put more and more people into group B until it's 100%. Only then will they stop sending the dislike count via the API.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#22

Dislikes still visible on incognito tab. Most fiction/speculative authors assumed tyranny would be from governments, not private companies. How wrong they were.

You just equated the removal of a software feature, by a private company, on a free platform, as "tyranny".

You are not a serious person.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#23
Is this youtube staff purposefully deleting critical comments?

Or is it anti-spam algorithms getting triggered by people flooding the comments sections of videos with the same inane comments? And/or getting flagged by creators and other youtube users?

Frankly, I can't see most creators wanting their youtube video comments full of "BRING BACK THE DISLIKE BUTTON", and I could see lots of their fans being annoyed by such comments as well.

My guess is that 95%+ of youtube users are more annoyed by an extremely vocal minority disrupting things than they are the removal of the dislike button.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#24
Just in case someone in a position to do something about it is reading this, there's a graceful way out for Youtube. Leave dislike counts publicly available via the API. That way people who use the ratio to evaluate videos (very useful for reviews) can install a browser extension, but dislike mobbing will be minimized, seeing as most casual users will not bother installing such extensions.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#25

Dislikes still visible on incognito tab. Most fiction/speculative authors assumed tyranny would be from governments, not private companies. How wrong they were.

> Most fiction/speculative authors assumed tyranny would be from governments, not private companies. I was under the impression cyberpunk got that right, generally.

Yep. Weak, incompetent or absent governments, with corporations governing most affairs in practice.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#26
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"tyranny" Okay, I'm definitely not on YouTube/Google's side here, but calling this tyranny is legit hilarious

Looking at this as a single instance of censorship as tyranny might provoke ridicule, but I see where OP is coming from. Taken in aggregate, in a world with multi-trillion dollar corporations censor their users, it's not ridiculous to talk about this as tyranny. There is no one tyrant, but every corporation rules like one and taken as a whole, the "world's government" (in this case the set of the most powerful corpor…

I look forward to your treatise on how Taco Bell's removal of the Grilled Stuff Nacho was tyrannical overreach by an unaccountable food monopolist.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#27
post #12

I find this debate a little strange. My position is that youtube is a private company, they should be allowed to do whatever they want, and people should be able to choose a video service that meets their needs. If you feel that youtube is so dominant that this is cramming a "no dislikes" policy on the whole world, isn't the problem really that you think youtube is a monopoly, not dislikes per se? Edit: I clearly did…

Pretty much, YouTube is for video watching what IE used to be for browsing back in the obscure IE6 times. Unless you live in China where it's blocked.

Some countries (mostly of the EU) already try to enforce some control against this kind of monopolies but they are still too bland.

And competition fails to appear thanks to the WhatsApp effect. If most of the content/friends are on it, its not easy to change to another platform unless something drastic happens (like the Great Firewall).

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#28
post #12

I find this debate a little strange. My position is that youtube is a private company, they should be allowed to do whatever they want, and people should be able to choose a video service that meets their needs. If you feel that youtube is so dominant that this is cramming a "no dislikes" policy on the whole world, isn't the problem really that you think youtube is a monopoly, not dislikes per se? Edit: I clearly did…

The problem is that network effects determine what video service we use, mostly, as internet users. Saying that you could choose an alternative service is like the old argument that you could move to another country if you don't like it here [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergo_decedo

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#29
post #12

I find this debate a little strange. My position is that youtube is a private company, they should be allowed to do whatever they want, and people should be able to choose a video service that meets their needs. If you feel that youtube is so dominant that this is cramming a "no dislikes" policy on the whole world, isn't the problem really that you think youtube is a monopoly, not dislikes per se? Edit: I clearly did…

yes, they are allowed to do it. nobody is demanding the government to intervene and bring the dislikes back. I don't know which debates are you referring to.

that being said, it is also their right to shut down whatever content Russia/China/Iran/etc finds disagreeable, I'm sure you don't mind that either.

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