Live data from Hacker News

Making the dislike count private across YouTube

support.google.com

241–250 of 1001 posts

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#242

why isn't YouTube a public utility yet? or forfeit it for stewardship by archive.org. having the power to monopolistically decide on the design and technical choices for billions of people using proprietary/black box tech is absurd.

If the metric is "anything used by X people should be a public utility", we'll need to have a talk about nationalizing Coca Cola.

yes you're right, who cares about our digital infrastructure, it's not like it is an industry where some of most valuable companies in the world are in, right? /s

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#243
Like/Dislike is a terrible indicator of quality. I'd rather they make public some sort of derivation from the video retention ratio. Wether or not people actually finished the video rather than smashed the like button (which is now an ask every creator has in their intro now) would be a way more useful indicator to me of quality.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#245

This still seems like a huge disconnect to what people use youtube for vs. what google thinks it should be used for. Google wants youtube to be all network and brands making content. ie. a future version of what TV is now. What actual people want is creator made videos(diy/review/podcast videos and everything else that make youtube wonderful). This disconnect has been happening since google bought youtube and this re…

It seems to me like the disconnect is between your baseless imaginary model of how youtube users behave and the objective analysis of the only party holding enough data to make a sound conclusion.

I think there can be a difference between how people behave and what people want. Which means there is a huge difference between what people want to engage with and what they do engage with. For example, TikTok will aggressively optimize your feed based on what you watch. If you get hooked on a video which makes you angry or reactive (like a political take), TikTok will show you more of it. You end up engaging with that content despite not wanting to.

None of social media is optimized around what people like or enjoy watching. It is only optimized on one thing: engagement to drive ad revenue via addictive practices. Engagement != enjoyment. That especially includes YouTube.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#247

I find this pathetic. As if the removal of the "dislike button" helps in any way, shape or form to create a more "inclusive" environment. This reeks of the silencing of what is perceived as dissident voices, is all. I've personally never hit a like or dislike button in my life, never will ... but found it interesting as a viewer to see the ratio. Even knowing this ratio is probably at least partially the outcome of b…

It's the exact same move that reddit made years ago, and it enabled a new era of online brigading and fake credibility/popularity for content shown on pages. If you can't see downvotes on content, there is no way of determining how misleading the content may be. It also disguises cases where a creator may be getting harassed or bullied by others. The beginning of the end of being able to trust YouTube stats (as if th…

I don't believe reddits obfuscation efforts did anything but significantly hamper spammers who relied on accurate counting to be able to determine when their spam accounts were shadowbanned and the reach they had.

Reddit has always had a significant problem with downvote meaning "disagree" or "dislike", which according to redditquette is incorrect usage. In practice, the downvote is about enforcing groupthink on reddit and enforcing subreddit culture, and it is just as powerful today as it has ever been. Sort by "controversial" and you'll see.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#249
post #4

Hmm. For me the dislike button was informative. If feels like they are trying to create a world where everything can only be good, better, even more better, which just doesn't represent reality. Imagine Stack Overflow only having the option to upvote Questions and Answers. The ratio of likes vs dislikes of a TED talk does help me to decide if I should stop watching a video which just isn't getting better.

I mostly agree with you, with the caveat of brigading being a very real thing that lowers the information value. But then why show upvotes either because positive brigading is just as damaging to the information as downvote brigades.

Seems like a middle ground solution might be to restrict the display of downvotes to videos that meet a certain viewership threshold. That way organic voting would make brigading more difficult.
Post reply on HN