Making the dislike count private across YouTube • Hacker News Board

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#271

Post by patycake » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

kypro wrote: post #237

> We want to create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves. It's an interesting position because the assumption YouTube would have to be making here to do this is that their viewers opinion of the content they're watching is either wrong, or irrelevant. Also the only instances of dislike "harassment" and I am aware of has been because…

I’ve never personally seen the kind of “dislike harassment” you are talking about. There was the YouTube rewind video a few years ago but that became more of a joke after a while.

However, I would not be surprised if this feature was accelerated after seeing twitch “hate raids” a few months ago. These definitely are a form of online harassment in my opinion. In YouTube’s competition with twitch they want to show they are a “safer” place for creators (whether someone believes this is up to them)

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#272

Post by gameman144 » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #165

louissan wrote: post #110

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…

From the article.. "What we learned from the experiment: Those in the experiment could still see and use the public dislike button, but because the count was not visible to them, we found that they were less likely to target a video’s dislike button to drive up the count. In short, our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike attacking behavior 1. We’ve also heard directly from smaller creators, and those just g…

> because the count was not visible to them, we found that they were less likely to target a video’s dislike button to drive up the count

How is this any different than users targeting a video with lots of likes to drive up its count, though?

If YouTube were hiding both the public like and dislike counts, I wouldn't give this a second thought. But to say "seeing counts influences people" as a reason for hiding dislikes, and not extending that same argument to likes as well just seems a bit shallow.

Public counts are useful because they provide a gauge of perceived quality. If I see a video with lots of likes and no dislikes, it's fair to assume I'll like that video. If I see a video with lots of likes and I can't see the dislikes, I have absolutely no idea whether I'll like it or not; maybe it's a really good video and everyone liked it, or maybe the majority of people disliked it but I just can't tell. If you're removing my ability to gauge quality anyway, then why not just remove the like count as well?

This change is essentially shifting from "three out of five dentists prefer Trident" to "three dentists prefer Trident". The loss of information is so substantial that the remaining information is essentially useless.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#273

Post by UweSchmidt » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

gitpusher wrote: post #95

RIP to one of my favorite YouTube comment formats: > " of people "

People objecting to the idea that someone might have pressed the dislike button for whatever reason, unable to handle the mild cognitive dissonance of divergent opinions always stood in stark contrast to the old mantra that graced the signatures of slashdot and other forum comments:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#274

Post by albeebe1 » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

summerlight wrote: post #263

As usual, HN users are making lots of interesting assumptions (some comments to a conspiracy level) on the intention here... But in the reality, there are many smaller creators who is frequently being harassed by trolls (have you heard about those young Chinese patriots trolling over Korean and Japanese channels?) and one of their tool is the dislike button. And creators have been complaining about this for many year…

But creators have always been able to hide the like/dislike counts on their videos

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#275

Post by kingcharles » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #67

Bummer. I often use like vs dislike ratios as a gauge on whether a video is worth watching. If I see a 3,000 up / 48 down video on a topic I'm interested in there's a really good chance the video is great. I'm a small time creator (~13.5k subs) and don't care at all about upvotes or downvotes being public. There's only been a handful of videos out of hundreds that received more downvotes than expected because the vid…

That's an interesting point. Why can this feature not be video or channel specific so that a creator who is being targetted could switch off the count if they wanted?

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#276

Post by native_samples » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

subsubzero wrote: post #55

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's all about Wojcicki. The fact she runs YouTube never ceases to amaze me given that she ran Google Video, which failed largely because she was obsessed with 'professional' content and bet against user generated content. That bet was wrong to such a huge extent she was reduced to recommending Google buy her only competitor.

Somehow, despite this failure as an executive - a failure of the kind that got Vic Gundotra fired - she has not only not been fired but ended up running the site that beat her, where she has spent the last half decade trying to turn it back into Google Video.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#277

Post by adolph » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

louissan wrote: post #110

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…

The new ratio will become likes to views. I wonder if likes or views will be next to disappear?

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#278

Post by dontcare007 » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

havetocharge wrote: post #238

louissan wrote: post #110

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…

Hacker News does not have a downvote button for the majority of its users.

which means the ones that do have it wield wield an inordinate inordinate amount of power

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#279

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

louissan wrote: post #110

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…

[deleted]

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#280

Post by adminscoffee » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

was this because all joe biden videos had more downvotes than upvotes? just kidding but all jokes aside i don't think getting rid of the dislikes is a good idea.