Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 498 posts

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#401

Post by cuddlybacon »

Those videos all sound like things that would be _very_ popular and if we could see it have a very good like to dislike ratio. They would likely be over 99% like vs dislike. If dislikes were still visible, you'd merely just see that your tastes doesn't match what the masses want.

This stuff does very well. It gets good clicks, good watch times, good engagement (likes and comments). Hence why everyone does it and it is what's most recommended.

It does do terribly with a lot of the subcultures that hang out on Hacker News, but we are small in the grand scheme of things.

A better explanation is they changed The Algorithm to try and promote more stuff that is new to you. A common complaint about The Algorithm last year on HN was it tended to recommend the same small set of videos over and over again. Mostly stuff you have seen multiple times before. This was leading to people getting bored with YouTube and going to Netflix or whatnot.

So instead of that, it is now trying to recommend you new stuff. And it is not finding stuff you'll like. What you listed all has a theme of general science topics. Its probably now trying to push the most popular stuff in that category to keep your recommendations from getting stale. The usually means will take care of it (disliking the videos, clicking don't recommend video/channel).

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#402

Post by cuteboy19 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #368
cuteboy19 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to be very aggressive against this, dislike and don't recommend every bit of garbage you see otherwise you will be flooded with it

Hum... Maybe you didn't notice all the frenezy, but you can't dislike something anymore. I'm not a very active user, but I think there is no positive "don't show me stuff like this again" action you can do anymore.

The public dislike count was removed. Dislikes are still counted and presumably affect recommendation

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#403

Post by IshKebab »

_v7gu wrote: post #223
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.

I'm pretty sure the White House would just disable ratings?

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#404

Post by ars »

smaryjerry wrote: post #344
ars wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to dislike those videos is to click them. If you click them it means you like that topic. If you actually don't want then then don't click them in the first place and in about a month they will stop showing up.

I think you assume the algorithm is working where I feel the opposite.

My words are not based on theory but actual practice: I had videos I didn't like on my YouTube homepage, and I didn't click them, and after a little while they went away. It's as simple as that. My Google News feed is the same way.

Don't click the dislike button, rather don't watch the video at all. (Dislike means this video is bad not this topic is bad.)

The videos on my homepage exactly match the videos I watch. Exactly. They are often boring since I want something new - but I can't complain that YouTube is messing with me in some way. (Same with Google News - sometimes I want something new, and it's not there - it's always the same type of stuff.)

People who have videos that displease them on the homepage are watching those videos, and then complaining. "Guilty pleasures" basically.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#405

Post by jjoonathan »

padraigf wrote: post #142
ageitgey wrote: post #15

I don't personally think the dislike button is the explanation. But something seems to have changed in the Youtube recommendations algo in the last few weeks. In my experience, the algo has gotten very noticeably worse recently: - Recommending lots of 6 - 12 year old videos on topics I'm interested in (who cares about a 12 year old product review?) - Recommending tons of videos I've already seen or recommending reall…

Yes, the recommendations page is awful. For me, the stupidest thing it does is recommend you the same video again and again, when you never click on it. 'Hey, you've recommended that same video to me 20 times now, and I haven't clicked on it, maybe take a hint!' It's staggering, with all the smart people they hire at Google, that the front page of one of their main products is so dumb.

Did you put that video in your "watch later" list?

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#406

Post by bfgoodrich »

mcslick12 wrote: post #396
bfgoodrich wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dogp…

I tried to downvote your comment for making unsubstantiated claims like "The (vast) majority of people don't engage with these tools". But was unable to because I don't have enough karma. Do with that what you please.

[dead]

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#407

Post by Regic »

bfgoodrich wrote: post #221
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 dogp…

I remember watching some video and looking at dislikes: why is this downvoted this much? Pretty run of the mill video with nothing outrageous or even particularly controversial. Oh it got posted _there_...

Still, I don't think this is the reason. Visible votes simply modify what other people vote on and youtube wanted full control over what users watch instead of the few who actually votes. It is simply not a good metric most likely. Was it improved by removing the dislike bar? I would be surprised if was...

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#408

Post by Regic »

mcslick12 wrote: post #396
bfgoodrich wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dogp…

I tried to downvote your comment for making unsubstantiated claims like "The (vast) majority of people don't engage with these tools". But was unable to because I don't have enough karma. Do with that what you please.

Videos usually had about 10% of the number of votes compared to views, so depending on how you define (vast) majority it is correct.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#410

Post by wildrhythms »

brador wrote: post #281
hbbio wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, the guy is just ripping StackOverflow. His "latest" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtqJq0OF8eA Is a poorly generated copy/paste of: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1644... Probably a tiny Python script. Google is prompt to ban other accounts, hope some Googlers around here can can do something...

If he’s disseminating and distributing solutions I don’t see the problem with it other than jealousy. It’s helpful and helps prevent information rot if a platform goes down.

You can allow yourself to take the stance of "I know it when I see it" when it comes to internet spam and litter for once.
Post reply on HN