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No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#221

Post by bfgoodrich »

jmyeet wrote: post #184

The only explanation for getting rid of dislike count that makes sense to me is to make big brands happy as their videos can't be made to look bad with a high dislike count and they can't be "dislike bombed" for things that may be unrelated to the content (eg the recent Activision-Blizzard scandals). Why? Because in every other way (and every way for the viewer), this makes Youtube worse. So it's a hell of a price to…

Dislikes, as a visible measure, were widely bombed by Internet trolls and ignorant cretins. The (vast) majority of people don't engage with those tools, so a small, coordinated minority can easily have a massively outsized influence. It was grossly misrepresentative to the wider YouTube userbase. The far right, for instance, was hugely overrepresented because everyone else has a life and isn't spending their day dogpiling on White House or other videos to click a down arrow (neither an up arrow -- the rest of us aren't pathologically broken, and we have better things to do with our life and to define our identity with). COVID was actually a great benchmark because factual, scientific COVID videos were downvote bombed with regularity. Conspiracies and nonsense videos were left alone, because the rest of us aren't ignorant nuts.

They were used to bully people and diminish voices. It was a completely toxic element of the system. No, it isn't dumb corporate videos (who were prone to just hiding it at the outset, making the trolls hulk smash and angrily declare that unfair) that they're defending, and that notion is pretty comically dumb.

This whole post and the noise around this issue is so absurd. YouTube isn't worse because a bunch of ignorant assholes can't bully gay and minority people, or ply their misogynistic or backwards ways. There are loads of easy ways to automate videos and basically spam YouTube, and the system hasn't overcome that yet. Visible downvotes would do nothing when these players are uploading literally millions of videos.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#222

Post by jethkl »

yreg wrote: post #63

Finding good YouTube videos is a non-issue. There are more amazing sciency/educational channels than it is possible to watch.[1] Just subscribe to the ones you like and go directly to https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions [1] for example: 3Blue1Brown Beyond The Press CGP Grey Captain Disillusion Cody’s Lab Computerphile EEVblog EVNautilus Electroboom Engineering with Rosie Evan and Katelyn Everyday Astronaut Hal…

That is a great list, though I think content discovery is still a hard issue. Below are a few music-centered channels. To illustrate that discovery is hard, I had a bit of a struggle to find a few of them, even when I knew what I was looking for. Content covers performance, music theory, money, and history. I also verified no overlap with your list.

Adam Neely

NPR Music (Tiny desk)

Paul Davids

Rick Beato

Smalin

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#223

Post by _v7gu »

jmyeet wrote: post #184

The only explanation for getting rid of dislike count that makes sense to me is to make big brands happy as their videos can't be made to look bad with a high dislike count and they can't be "dislike bombed" for things that may be unrelated to the content (eg the recent Activision-Blizzard scandals). Why? Because in every other way (and every way for the viewer), this makes Youtube worse. So it's a hell of a price to…

I think this hits almost bullseye for the reasons of this change, but I'd add the White House along with the brands who'd rather have their dislikes hidden.

However, shadowbanning is for cowards. Would you also ban the people who only cast likes without any dislikes? Both groups have the same signal-to-noise ratio and can be equally harmful.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#224

Post by the_only_law »

alexb_ wrote: post #105

I've recently heard about this YouTube account named Roel Van De Paar. If you've looked up any error message on YouTube recently, you've probably run into him. Because of the "no dislikes" change, he's everywhere now. And by everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE. The account has over 2 million videos. Approximately 0.2% of ALL videos on the ENTIRE platform of YouTube can be attributed to this account, and if you check now th…

Is this guy making income from doing this? I may have to re-evaluate my career if I can pay my rent by mostly just dumping random internet content into a video.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#226

Post by DennisP »

I started quickly clicking away from those sorts of videos, and after a while youtube mostly stopped recommending them to me. If there's no human there talking to me, I'm out. If it's a computer-generated voice, I'm out instantly. Also I subscribe liberally to the good ones.

I haven't noticed any particular change in the last few weeks. Now I'm worried Youtube is gradually rolling out a new algorithm and my useful feed is about to be ruined.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#227

Post by Ensorceled »

thinkindie wrote: post #213
Ensorceled wrote: post #207

I feel like every recommendation engine has tanked in 2022 along with a matching upswing in ads. Audible is aggressively recommending an audiobook I already bought and listened to, it's even in their "your year so far" list because I listened to it in January. Their 2-for-1, annual, special offer emails are coming 2-3 a week now. My Facebook timeline is full of crappy "Suggested for you" entries. I doom scrolled last…

I purchased a hair trimmer on Amazon two weeks ago - Amazon is still sending me emails recommending me to buy a hair trimmer.

It's like shitty feedback ... if I did my research each of those reminds me I made the right choice but if I made a mistake Amazon is rubbing salt in the wound for weeks.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#228

Post by paywallasinbeer »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #159

What is hilarious is for years people asked for a Dislike button on Facebook, and they obliged with their quirky more options to not just like but evoke other emotions, but still no dislike. Instagram, Snapchat, and Tik Tok I believe don't have dislike. How long until reddit joins the bandwagon of we have no negativity. It also feels like the other platforms that never had likes from the get go have good recommendati…

Reddit already fiddles with downvotes. The path to removing them altogether is surely short.

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/28hjga/reddi...

https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_how_is_a_comment.27s_sc...

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#229

Post by _gabe_ »

unglaublich wrote: post #64
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #48

What I noticed is how sterile and sanitised the comments are. You don't see any negative comments anymore. Also if you search you will get random unrelated videos mixed with your results.

Ironically, you see a lot of replies to people that seemingly said something negative, but the original comment is very hard to find. I guess YouTube just hides (or shadow bans) negativity on the platform.

The creators can shadow ban people if they want as well. Most of the time, it's probably creators who are sick of seeing low quality critiques that aren't helpful. Things like "I don't like the way your voice sounds", or "Bruh, do you even know how to code???". I'm all for creators shadow banning these low quality remarks as well because it adds no value to a meaningful conversation, and it's disheartening to see.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#230

Post by BurningPenguin »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #148
philliphaydon wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've probably ruined my recommendations forever now. :( I pretty much only stick to subscriber channels now except for stuff people send me. Since there's no dislikes I just don't browse the stuff available anymore. YouTube is definitely worse off without the dislike counter.

There's a "don't recommend channel" option if you click the 3 dots button on a video. I use this liberally for all sorts of reasons and it makes my recommendations much better.

I've blocked entire accounts, because it kept coming back every time i searched for something specific. It was one of these "10 best " channels. Really annoying.
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