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Making the dislike count private across YouTube

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Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#71

Post by whoknowswhat11 »

muglug wrote: post #43

The overwhelming sentiment to the decision here is negative, but I don't quite understand that reaction. If YouTube was just looking out for big brands and/or advertisers, they could have restricted the change incredibly simply. By making it a global change they're saying "ok now we understand how our UI actually led to some pretty bad outcomes in ways we failed to anticipate, and we're fixing that".

The dislike count was useful to pick up on

* clickbait headline videos that don't deliver - ie, content in thumbnail never shows

* obviously some political content has been getting dislikes which is embarrassing and risks govt coming after them. Trump threatened this and dems are also now making noise here, so these platforms are vulnerable.

* Dislikes were pretty rare, usually in my case I had to be really annoyed at something to dislike it. I didn't mind scams that were properly described, but some stuff is annoying because it's a bait and switch.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#72

Post by HappyMans »

Does there exist a Chrome (or otherwise) plugin that could keep track of its own like/dislike counts and display them on any given page? You could even have your own separate comment threads. Key everything out on video URL. Wouldn’t work on walled gardens, but would 100% on desktop.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#73

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

jackTheMan wrote: post #54
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #17

No doubt, both Kremlin and White House would be very happy about it.

Dont forget Beijing

AFAIK YouTube is not available in China without VPN, so Beijing is likely not really concerned about it.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#74

Post by deadmutex »

tapoxi wrote: post #50
butler14 wrote: post #9

This isn’t about small content creators. It’s almost certainly about big brands (advertisers) that hate it when their high budget movie/game/trailer/whatever gets publicly downvoted.

Honestly I'm sick of every time someone posts a video suggesting vaccination it's heavily downvoted - for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc79u7ym8SY

Yeah, I fear that some people will see massive dislike ratio on vaccination related videos and think "oh, yeah, vaccination is really unpopular. Maybe I should be listening to what people are saying against it. I don't want to get singled out. No one is getting vaccinated" etc. It seems like it becomes a circle jerk, and a way to "protest", rather than it being an actual signal.

Disclaimer: These views are entirely my own, and not of my employer.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#76

Post by pdq »

LarrySellers wrote: post #69
klipklop wrote: post #16

Odd that a certain political party got a large amount of downvotes on all their videos and YouTube removes the publics ability to see them soon after.

Except they considered the change years before Biden was president: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18207189/youtube-dislike-a... This Trump rally from The Hill, where he tells his followers to get the vaccine that he got, garnered 1.5k likes and 1.3k dislikes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huQdxDnQkac Here Trump hints at a 2024 run on the Today show, but it has more likes than dislikes. https://www.youtube.com/w…

I believe he's referring to the other party, with videos like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcRVR63dnDA

And this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tYl5C9PufY

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#77

Post by nonbirithm »

My take is that YouTube is intending for this to increase engagement, by removing signals that might push away viewers from consuming more content.

If excessive social media use is correlated with damage to mental health, then framing this as beneficial sounds contradictory. Now that social media platforms have reached a critical mass, they should be judged not just for being toxic and user-hostile, but also for being too effective at accepting and retaining people for excessive amounts of time.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#78

Post by godshatter »

I'm usually of the opinion that the more information the better, but I also think that the dislike/downvote button adds a lot to the toxicity levels, mainly for comments. It's much better for a group to get excited about something and over-like it than for a group to get angry about something and over-dislike it.

So I guess I'd rather see the dislike button be removed more than I would like to use that information to inform me about the video in question. I don't tend to even look at how many likes vs. dislikes something has, anyway. My tastes are different enough from the norm that it isn't really that helpful of a statistic for me.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#79

Post by benmw333 »

tapoxi wrote: post #50
butler14 wrote: post #9

This isn’t about small content creators. It’s almost certainly about big brands (advertisers) that hate it when their high budget movie/game/trailer/whatever gets publicly downvoted.

Honestly I'm sick of every time someone posts a video suggesting vaccination it's heavily downvoted - for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc79u7ym8SY

Genuine question - why are you "sick of it" - what does a large amount of downvotes actually "do" and why would that make you "sick"
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