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YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

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Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#51
post #39

Do people actually look at the votes before watching a video? I don't think I've ever done that on YouTube. The outrage over this just seems so manufactured to me.

Yes, I used to do that every single time, and I would Cmd+W out of it immediately if the like/dislike ratio looked suspicious. Plenty of other videos in the sea.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#52
post #12

I find this debate a little strange. My position is that youtube is a private company, they should be allowed to do whatever they want, and people should be able to choose a video service that meets their needs. If you feel that youtube is so dominant that this is cramming a "no dislikes" policy on the whole world, isn't the problem really that you think youtube is a monopoly, not dislikes per se? Edit: I clearly did…

Public debates around policy changes are just another feedback mechanism to let companies know when they effed up. Its up to YouTube to consider how much they value it.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#53
post #12

I find this debate a little strange. My position is that youtube is a private company, they should be allowed to do whatever they want, and people should be able to choose a video service that meets their needs. If you feel that youtube is so dominant that this is cramming a "no dislikes" policy on the whole world, isn't the problem really that you think youtube is a monopoly, not dislikes per se? Edit: I clearly did…

Nobody is asking the government to step in to stop Youtube from making the change. People are just complaining about the change, like they would for any other change a company may make.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#54
post #12

I find this debate a little strange. My position is that youtube is a private company, they should be allowed to do whatever they want, and people should be able to choose a video service that meets their needs. If you feel that youtube is so dominant that this is cramming a "no dislikes" policy on the whole world, isn't the problem really that you think youtube is a monopoly, not dislikes per se? Edit: I clearly did…

They're a private company who is free to do what they want, and the people complaining are private individuals who are free to do what they want. There's no assault on anyone's liberty in either direction. Companies can freely modify their products, and customers are free to be pissed off when they do. In this case, people feel that YT is removing dislikes to prevent PR damage to brands and individuals who post unpopular videos on their website. They think Google is prioritizing its profits at the expense of their product. Let them complain.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube doesn't f*** care. Where are you going to go watch your favorite content creators? Oh, they only upload on our platform? Thought so. They can do whatever they want and they won't lose a single user. In fact, I wanted to cancel my Youtube Premium, but I know it's not gonna affect their decision in the slightest, while I will hurt my favourite content creators as they won't get that thousandth of a cent they ge…

> while I will hurt my favourite content creators as they won't get that thousandth of a cent they get from my Premium view. Over time this should put pressure on them to be open to a better platform and make the move as soon as such platform exists.

No, I just explained that nobody will move out of the platform because everybody's there. Where are you going to watch your favourite USB gadget reviewer that only uploads on YT?

Over time means nothing until there's actually competition, and there's nothing on the horizon that can compete to the scale of YouTube. Your content creator is not moving anywhere any time soon.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#56

I can see why people would be annoyed at being shadow banned. Alternatively get your circle of friends to upload videos to your own site and manage the comments/spam as you see fit. I am not convinced by the arguments that Youtube is needed to handle bandwidth unless you are popular in which case you can probably afford throwing a few small CDN's at the problem. The harder part would be finding advertising partners a…

You really don't need Youtube for that. You need infrastructure and you need monetization. The former you can achieve today using any service provider with autoscaling (i.e. AWS, Rackspace, Linode, and a hundred others too numerous to list here). The latter you can achieve through any number of ad exchanges that handle pre-roll ads and banners. Youtube is handy primarily in being a one stop shop for both of those things and more. It allows the technically illiterate a place to vent their spleen without having to know anything about the internet works... including, I might add, how to actually market their works so they get eyeballs on them. If, however, you have an IQ higher than your shoe size and can manage the above, including figuring out how to circulate your content to places where potential viewers are so you don't need to rely on Youtube's algorithm, then you can make a go of it yourself and win. Youtube is betting, quite correctly, that most of you will never do that.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#57

I really hope this backfires spectacularly on YouTube and the zealots who pushed for this change are held professionally accountable. I already click on fewer videos in search results and recommendations because I can no longer gauge how worthwhile they are to try and watch. The end result? I'm sticking to my current channels. I can't be alone and knowing that YouTube takes recommended content so seriously, I have to…

As a heavy YouTube user the removal of the dislike count didn't effect me at all since the number was always useless to me.

>because I can no longer gauge how worthwhile they are to try and watch.

That is YouTube's job. Their recommendation algorithm will try and suggest videos that are worthwhile for you to watch. The order that videos are recommend is how know which videos are likely more worthwhile for you to watch. After clicking on a video most people judge the video be just watching the first few seconds an opposed to looking at the likes. They will switch to a different video if they didn't find that one interesting. Another common behaviour is just skimming through a video.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#59

Just in case someone in a position to do something about it is reading this, there's a graceful way out for Youtube. Leave dislike counts publicly available via the API. That way people who use the ratio to evaluate videos (very useful for reviews) can install a browser extension, but dislike mobbing will be minimized, seeing as most casual users will not bother installing such extensions.

They don't need a "way out." Just put it back the way it was.

It's like finding a street full of protesters and trying to figure out the best way to make sure nobody sees them. The problem isn't your method, it's your goal.

Re: YouTube deleting comments who criticize their hiding of the dislike count

#60
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, Biden is regularly downvoted heavily. I would think primarily by Americans.

I would guess primarily by Right-wing Americans, the very Left-wing americans I know don't love him but wouldn't down vote him regularly.

The very left-wing Americans I know hated Trump a lot more than they love Biden. They have no particular love for Biden because Biden is not very left-wing at all. Biden comes from the old neoliberal contingent of the DNC, not the new lefty progressive camp. Biden is no Bernie or AOC and only has lukewarm support from very-left people, in my experience.
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