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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

#201
post #154
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvotes increase engagement. Otherwise they wouldn't have been put there in the first place. No, the real issue here is too many of the "right" things are getting downvoted. So when The White House, Disney or the Academy disable downvotes on part or all of their videos but other wide swaths of videos don't need to disable downvotes, the contrast causes them to stick out like a sore thumb. It calls attention (also k…

You are all over this thread claiming that the White House is explicitly pressuring Google to remove this feature of the site. Do you have supporting evidence, or did you just make this up? It seems more like you have a narrative and agenda to push.

I didn't say anyone, let alone the White House is pressuring them to remove anything. Why would the WH have to pressure them? I have zero doubt that Google is pushing this themselves.

What I firmly believe, based on statements by the companies and the employees that work for them as well as their actions (over the past five years in particular) is they have a particular agenda to push and if you aren't on the right side of their messaging they intend to suppress it by any means possible.

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

#203
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not outraged - I'm amused. The ultimate admission the only way they can spread their messaging is through force, not honest competition of ideas. How superior. Nothing proves you have a worthy argument better than outright hiding from dissent. Again, they don't care if you stay on the platform. If they did, they wouldn't touch it. The disagreement buttons were added in the first place because they increase and ma…

> Again, they don't care if you stay on the platform. Why not? Even if you're right that they care more about propaganda than money, what's the point of propagandising to an empty room?

People won't leave that easily. Nobody compares to YouTube. Facebook had no way of voicing disapproval for a long time and membership still increased. They are testing various options which might mean they're weighting the relative benefits and damage. And besides, they may be in a position where they have no choice if propaganda is more important than money.

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

#204
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to compare this to the Trump Whitehouse Archive: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCITMedGC5PA-zMrLTH5-kg Almost the exact inverse like/dislike ratio. Biden received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history, AND they should skew much younger than Trump voters. So why is it that the Biden White House channel struggles so much with likes vs dislikes?

YouTube transferred all the Trump's WH subs to Biden's WH - while Trump's WH had started with zero. Very stupid idea and apparently requested by the Biden admin. Now you have millions of Trump subs just disliking every video.

This actually makes the most sense, although I'm p sure dislikes are not counted if you dont watch the video at least partially. But maybe the dislikers actually watch the Biden videos - who knows.

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

#205
post #116
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smells political alright. The Biden admin disabled comments on all official The White House channel videos pretty quickly into their administration. Most videos have a tremendously high dislike to like ratio, the most recent is 3.4K dislikes to 205 likes. I don't know who they expect to consume their Youtube content but it apparently isn't the establishment's voter base. This is another brick in the wall that is Yout…

To me this sounds like, Right: Cancel culture is bad! Youtube: You're right, so we are removing downvotes! Right: NOOOOO!!! I want to downvote Biden videos and cancel him! It is a little silly. YouTube was removing the downvotes manually as "spam" anyway. Removing the button is just easier for them. The view count is much more telling. It seems like they'd have to pay out more ad money to artificially pump those numb…

The view count is much more telling.

I don't agree. Many quality videos have low-no view counts because they are not promoted in any way or the persons making the video don't know how to do self-promotion. Downvotes are a signal about the percentage of people who watched something and disliked it, albeit an unreliable signal that can be gamed.

If it were just about view counts, th rational thing would be to get rid of upvotes as well and just let people rely on view and subscription #s and/or read the comments. As it is this will just lead to people putting thumb-down emoji in comments or flagging posts on other platforms that contain YouTube links.

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

#206
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think Youtube is removing dislikes because of white house vids that average out less than ~25000 views each?

Not just the white house. There's wholesale rejection that is embarrassing and counter to the messaging being pushed my the media and cultural elites. Disney with the Gina Corano firing has been a huge source of continued embarrassment. Widespread rejection of woke takeovers of popular culture in general are problematic so no, I'm not surprised downvotes are getting remove universally. Much easier to hide reality whe…

The late night talk-show clips which populated the front page (presumably due to artificial promotion) also had embarrassing view and dislike counts displayed to the viewer.

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

#207

well, time for someone to build a third party dislike count and release browser extensions

Or for tiktok to start a competing video streaming site. Sure, if you go against the CCP, your video will be deleted and your account nuked, but you can still post those on YouTube. For everything else, tttube won't care who it offends in the US.

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

#208
post #113
post #61

I have a much sillier reason for disliking this change, which is that there is a charming part of YouTube culture where people attempt to explain a small number of downvotes on an otherwise popular video in a witty way. For example, on a recent piece of Imperial propaganda [1] with 100K upvotes and 935 downvotes, we find the comment: > 930 heretics and counting... This one isn't laugh-out-loud funny, maybe raises a g…

Ah, if we only were allowed to - gasp - have fun on the internet.

You still can have fun, but first drink verification can.

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

#209
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's entirely too much good stuff on YouTube to ignore. I learn so much there, all for free.

But what are the opportunity costs of learning stuff on YouTube, especially if you're watching hours of content? There is good stuff in there - don't get me wrong. It's just that the good stuff you want to find is often quite hidden, and I've on occasion spent more time trying to find some video that actually shows a tricky part of some bit of equipment maintenance than it would take to just do things the slow way (t…

I don't really see YouTube as an alternative to books. Where video shines is in shorter instructional practical stuff. Sure, if I want to understand the underlying mechanism of something then I'll read-up on it but usually I don't need that kind of knowledge. I just want to watch someone do the task I'm about to do.

For anything IT related I usually dislike video guides as they're so slow to get to the point. But that's because I work in IT and don't need to be told that messing around with a disk partition could cause problems with my computer. With non-IT tasks I'm happy to be treated as a moron because I don't have anywhere near as much experience.

When you say "Use an awful lot less data" - is that still an issue most of the time? That's depressing.

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