Live data from Hacker News

Making the dislike count private across YouTube

support.google.com

631–640 of 1001 posts

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#631
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…

The problem is people also use it as a propaganda tool to bury videos they don’t politically agree with. Normies have much lowered like/dislike button engagement so it’s a disservice to the vast majority.

Sure, but many "Normies" are aware of this dynamic and adjust their expectations accordingly. If some video critical of gamers, anime fans, or WoW players gets piled with downvotes it's no mystery. Same with political content. It's well understood that controversial things get more negative reactions.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#632
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…

The problem is people also use it as a propaganda tool to bury videos they don’t politically agree with. Normies have much lowered like/dislike button engagement so it’s a disservice to the vast majority.

recent political pushes aren't being well received, with sentiment being very negative on WhiteHouse media pushes, mainstream narratives around vaccines and the like (on YT). Normies are swayed easily by dislike bar, so the elites at YT are trying to hide it -- just like reddit hid the downvote count, to enable astrotrufing campaigns and overall shill activity many years ago.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#634
Can't even remember the last time I looked at likes/dislikes of any video I watched. Play count stopped having meaning (to me) at least a decade ago.

That said, a couple of years ago I somehow ended up on a channel with literally hundreds of videos. I swear, the average view count of this woman's session was way below one. I just wonder how is that even possible. Spent about 10 minutes clicking on random videos and well, it was sad. Real sad. I wonder if she would've kept going if numbers were hidden. I think she would've bailed long time ago.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#635
post #417
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…

> There's only been a handful of videos out of hundreds that received more downvotes than expected because the video was posted on a place out of my control and folks didn't like that. Yes. People downvote based on their expectation. So you can have content that you would probably find bad that has a lot of upvotes because it has a niche that likes it, and my sense is that the excursions in dislike ratio are more oft…

> But if it was true, wouldn't it be a good thing that creators no longer feel as much pressure to conform to fan expectations, eg in pursuit of bigger opportunities/audiences?

I'm not sold on that idea personally. The videos I create are based on what I'm doing in my day to day as a developer or if someone comments with a video suggestion since that's almost always in my wheel house of video topics which I greatly appreciate when this happens. I don't really make videos with intent to optimize for views / upvotes or get upset when a video gets a few downvotes. Lots of them have 100% upvote ratios and almost all have 95%+.

YouTube does let video creators disable voting but whenever I see that on any video I almost always think the channel owner is trying to do something nefarious. Maybe they're trying to avoid transparency by hiding downvotes or they are super self conscious about making videos and my internal bias suggests the video will be worse quality when compared to others. That's not always the case but it's true more often than not, at least for my own subjective take on video preference (mainly tech and hardware, no news).

I always strive for maximum transparency and let the results figure themselves out naturally.

In the end, this is mainly a huge downgrade for consumers of videos. It sounds like the algorithm will still take downvotes into account and video creators can still see the downvotes. It's the viewers who can no longer use this as a metric to quickly gauge a video's quality. In a world with so many amazing videos to watch, losing this quick filter hurts a bit.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#636

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…

I have a small child (14.8 kg) so I know a lot more about children's shows on Youtube than I want to. People use Youtube to publish lots of videos aimed at children. Some of which is inappropriate, BTW; keep an eye on what your kid is seeing. In 2018 some TV executives with Disney ties founded Moonbug Entertainment, which proceeded to swallow up lots of the more popular channels. Sound familiar? Such as Little Baby B…

Did you describe your child using weight instead of age?

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#637

Whether this is good for creators is one thing, but it's definitely bad for viewers. Likes to dislikes is an indicator of the quality of the video, and how well it matches the title/description. This will fundamentally change what I use YouTube for. If I can't determine the quality of a video without having to waste time watching it, I will just look somewhere else.

Maybe they were trying to do a little something for the creators, so they stop complaining about the rampant abuse of Youtube's automated copyright systems. Seeing as YT is completely unwilling to curb copyright strike trolling, or if a queef accidentally sounds like a Danny Elfman score, the good people at YT can stuff that thumb button and call it a day's work. Yay.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#638
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…

And for people who are sensitive to downvotes, there's already the option to make them private. I really don't understand this move... this will seriously limit our ability to filter bad content. I hope that they'll provide an alternative.

> I really don't understand this move... this will seriously limit our ability to filter bad content.

I think that is entirely the point.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#639
post #550

By referring to the act of disliking the video as an "attack", they are framing this change as one which protects users, when in fact, only a small minority post videos, and a smaller portion among them are bothered by dislikes. In fact, the change is user-hostile, removing one channel for users to see whether a video is of low quality (inaccurate description, containing false information, etc.), and improving advert…

That isn't what they said at all. They are talking about actual attacks where a group of people share their objections to a video and encourage everyone to click on dislike. Do you really think that this kind of group objection should be sponsored and enabled?

>They are talking about actual attacks

This is a fallacy known as "begging the question".

Post reply on HN