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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

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Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#101

Hopefully this brings back the dislike button. Intellectually I know a change of CEO shouldn't/wouldn't impact a feature like this, but I am still annoyed at its absence and find it makes YouTube substantially less useful. Edit: I understand the dislike button is still there, I misspoke. But for my purposes of seeing like/dislike ratio, it might as well not be there.

The stated reason for getting rid of dislike visibility was very suspicious to me. While I don't deny that targeted harassment and bandwagoning with dislikes on certain channels/videos happens, there's no way it was happening frequently enough to warrant removing the feature from all videos. I saw no reason why individual creators couldn't stick with hiding the controls on a per-video or per-channel basis.

Removing the dislike count takes away a valuable indicator of low quality and/or time wasting videos. Yes, it has false positives on charged topics, but I use it to help determine if an intriguing recommendation or search result is actually worthwhile or just clickbait. I suspect YouTube was pleased to remove the like/dislike visibility because it would boost engagement metrics. I assume any concerns about quality or the viewing experience are secondary or considered inconsequential.

Edit: They removed the dislike visibility, not the dislike button.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#102
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://returnyoutubedislike.com/

Do these extensions track the dislikes externally, or do they somehow bring it back on YouTube's side?

they track externally and extrapolate, so it's skewed based on audience (they also made a 'backup' from when yt still showed them)

still, I found it more useful than not

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#103
post #69

I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price doesn't change, I'm a very happy user.

Agreed. I am a massive fan of YouTube Premium and YouTube Music. While I am a bit nervous because major change like this could lead to those products getting worse, I'm also hopeful that it could lead to them getting better! So in general I'm just eager to see what happens next, come what may.

can you sell it to a current spotify user?

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#104

That crazy push for 10min and longer videos was a sole reason why tiktok happened. I still remember that there used to be short and super informative videos before but now everything is so stretched out with low info density

There is quite some value in longer videos.

However there seems to be a thing that you need 10 minutes for monetisation, so people stretch content not needing much time to those 10 minutes ...

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#105
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rewarding to who? And _she_ made it? To me YT continued its successful streak despite of the poor changes with not much to attribute to people actually making the calls.

Exactly, she was only CEO since 2014. Saying she made YT is laughable, if anything most of the annoying things at YT happened under her reign, from bogus DMCAs to dislike button removal to the force fed YT shorts and so on.

Don't forget having to have a fucking Google+ account. I'm proudly one of the few who spent half a decade being unable to comment or send direct messages because I refused to assent to the Google+ account creation pop-up.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#106
post #37

I always saw her as one of the best candidates to become the Twitter CEO. She has the industry credence, and the experience of leading and making both google ads and YouTube successful (the two parts that Twitter needs help with). I wonder if Elon Musk would notice.

I think there's some conflict in their philosophies on free speech.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#107
post #49
post #35

We can all hate Youtube here for sure but when you listen to for example Linus from LTT he is very adamant that while youtube does have it's fair share of problems, when it comes to compensating creators fairly on their platform, they are much better than almost all others. And I personally enjoy Youtube very much. So much great content for free. If I need to learn about something i find myself looking into youtube f…

Agreed. I would not be where I am in life today without the skills and knowledge I learned from YouTube. I am a huge fan of the way they compensate creators and align their incentives with creators' incentives, and generally just very pleased with the product they provide. I pay for Premium and it's the best monthly subscription I have imo — the sheer quantity of expertly-produced content on YT is unparalleled, and I…

I’m not familiar w the compensation mechanism but am part of a YouTube premium family subscription and agree on the overall value.

The content is unparalleled. Home repair is one of my most valued content types on the site.

There are many, many different types of house problems and solutions covered by videos.

Even when you get to something that seemingly has no person describing the problem and fix, you can often get close enough to improvise based on other people’s ideas.

YouTube is a skill building platform. You can save money by becoming more self-reliant.

Despite other comments here, I think the search is quite good. It sometimes ignores keywords but returns the video I _intended_ to seek.

I don’t care for shorts, though and would hide them completely if able.

It would also be good to have relatively anonymous ways to upload video. Sometimes I’ll establish a novel solution and would post the information but wouldn’t want it associated with my identity—or even to monetize it.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#108

Hopefully this brings back the dislike button. Intellectually I know a change of CEO shouldn't/wouldn't impact a feature like this, but I am still annoyed at its absence and find it makes YouTube substantially less useful. Edit: I understand the dislike button is still there, I misspoke. But for my purposes of seeing like/dislike ratio, it might as well not be there.

Completely disagree. Getting rid of that button has significantly cleaned up the associated comments sections. I’ve also noticed a general improvement in my recommendations. Great move imo.

The dislike crowd just came in and demonstrated exactly why dislikes were removed all while trying to defend their position.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#109

I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price doesn't change, I'm a very happy user.

I agree, my wife and I use the YouTube Premium family plan - I don't want them to mess with it. I think it is the best deal of any monthly subscription with the possible exception of Apple+ family plan (I use Fitness+, Arcade, iCloud storage - so it is also a pretty good deal).

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#110
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree. Getting rid of that button has significantly cleaned up the associated comments sections. I’ve also noticed a general improvement in my recommendations. Great move imo.

How can you tell when a video contains something misleading? For example, I struggle to find quality DIY videos without the dislikes warning me away. Dislikes are a great way for the community to clean house.

DIY videos are my primary concern on this as well. It is also why browser extensions don't help me too much because my use case is usually in the garage, half way through a project having issues, on my phone furiously trying to get a solution to the problem I'm having.

I had this exact scenario yesterday trying to remove rounded/stripped lug nuts off my wheels. It would've been very helpful to be able to see if the video I was watching had 1000 likes but 6000 dislikes to know if what I was about to do was advisable or not. Yes, I read the comments and it ended up being a simple fix with the right tools, but the like/dislike ratio is a great way to filter dangerous/dumb/unhelpful videos.

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