641–650 of 1001 posts
Since it's about to be hidden and unverifiable: Susan Wojcicki's "Freedom of Expression Award" (sponsored by Youtube) video currently has 227 upvotes, 56000 downvotes, and 185000 views. That's a 99.6% downvote ratio.
So in defense of keeping the dislikes pubic you are pointing to a video in which the dislike count is gamed by an Internet mob?
What game? People almost universally didn't like a CEO giving herself an award.
So basically, "We understand that this feature is useful in helping you determine where to spend your time and attention, but we're going to do it anyway because it benefits us."
> and to help create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves.
"Because we need our creators to get views and keep making content regardless of whether or not our users think it's worth watching."
Why not just hide dislikes from people until they've seen a certain percentage of the video?
"Upvote this comment if you disliked this video:"
I'll just assume every video has as many, if not more, dislikes and will turn to other sources for finding quality content (if at all).
And they might as well get rid of the comments section too cause that's where people will voice their opinions.. but maybe that's part of the plan.
Anyway, I've been a paying premium member since the beginning but the second I stop seeing dislike counts is the second I find other things to do with my time. Sad, because I really enjoy surfing YouTube.
For the viewers (us), this is the opposite of what they should do. For us, they should be showing the up/down count ratio on the video preview link itself so we could easily identify the garbage videos without even having to click on them. Of course this would reduce the amount of ads and pages they would serve to users, so it's in their interest to do everything they can to prevent users from being warned of time-wa…
The corollary is that wasting users time more aggressively is more likely to instill resentment and platform abandonment. Definitely a two edged sword.
I think a lot of the behaviors companies exhibit like this are related to US stock markets and the fixation on quarterly earnings per share. So much executive compensation is stock/options that it's a wiser bet for execs to optimize for the short term. Planning for 5+ years is no longer reasonable from their perspective because even with the best intentions, unplanned events can ruin everything. They might as well do whatever they can to cash in as quickly as possible.
I don't see this changing for any reason. So what will happen is that every 5-10 years some upstart company will gain enough funding to replace the tired old leader, and then within 5-10 years it will become that same tired old leader.