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Making the dislike count private across YouTube

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Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#821
I have never ever looked at the dislike counts to judge a video. I am baffled by most of the top comments here, that express frustration or outright anger about this. I don't think like counts are relevant to me either. When I consume YouTube (and I have a premium membership which I am happy with) I either know the creator well or I have to trust the search and recommendation algorithms to give me good content for my current interest. I don't find it hard to skim a video and judge for myself if it is worth my time. I'm betting I'm part of the silent majority on this.

You can interpret these like and dislike interactions in two ways: in absolute terms or in personal terms. "Is this video good?" or "Is this video good for me right now?" We can debate what most users are trying to express* or if they are brigading, but it is mostly irrelevant. As soon as the platform stops showing everybody the same videos or at least random videos and it starts recommending specific videos to specific users then like/dislike interactions are a function of how well the algorithm is working, not some absolute measure of sentiment. Dislikes just indicate that the video was recommended to the wrong people. Netflix doesn't show the number of likes and dislikes and I haven't heard of anyone demanding that this change.

* The label "like" certainly suggests a personal judgment. On the other hand, the like/dislike placement and other feedback options suggest an absolute judgement. When I have (very rarely) used the dislike button it was more about a bad recommendation. Often the video wasn't bad in any absolute sense. In my experience I have to go looking for videos I truly dislike in some absolute sense. YouTube does occasionally ask me to rate a recommendation and there is a "Not Interested" option which are alternatives that are even more explicitly about recommendations. Unfortunately these are only offered before you even try to watch a video or if you are very intentional about returning to your recommendations feed and finding "Not Interested" in the three dots menu.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#822
post #762
post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always found this information rather useless myself, so I don't see it as a huge deal. More often that not when I see a video with tons of dislike it's because it's been brigaded by an adversarial community and not really an indicator of the value of the content. In my experience it's more of a "controversial opinion" indicator than a "bad video" indicator. >There's only been a handful of videos out of hundreds tha…

I'm not sure. Reddit, Hacker News, etc. all offer ways for content to be downvoted. This allows for user moderation, which has pros and cons, but seems to work better against disinformation than platforms like Facebook which only allow "likes."

Raw votes are pretty bad at moderation. Voting features are there primarily to help engage visitors so they will return.

HN and some subreddits avoid becoming tools of disinformation because they are managed by dedicated moderators who remove posts, comments, and participants who are acting in bad faith. (Facebook does not do this.)

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#825

Floored and pleased by this. A social media company making a real attempt to curb harassment by re-examining fundamental features. Obviously there's more these companies could do, but this feels significant.

Wow, someone disliking your video is "harassment" now...

Jesus Christ, we're doomed as a species. The meteor can't come soon enough.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#826

Hiding the dislike info on POTUS seems important now. Hiding the dislike info on CNN seems important now. Public trust in government is low. Public trust in corporate media is low. It's been policy to manufacture consent in the US for quite a while now. Hard to say this move isn't more of the same, and it's equally hard to say it helps more than it hurts too.

I guess I've been pretty skeptical of these numbers. Maybe it's wishful thinking on my part but I am unconvinced that the like dislike ratio on a YouTube video is really reflective of public opinion writ large.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#829

Also, coming soon: User comment: DISLIKE Other users click like button on comment a ton of times... Next official move? Making comments visible to subscribers and premium users only... Google is going against basic human nature here and it's Orwellian as fuck. Next unofficial move? Censor comments containing, "DISLIKE" because the ones doing it will stand right out same as they did before and having them not stand ou…

I was trying to put this into words and I like your explanation. People don't seem to realize that yes as long as you can trust the mediating party it may be a net benefit to avoid negative signaling, but the problem is once those precedents are in place it only takes one bad actor to send it all crashing.

Re: Making the dislike count private across YouTube

#830

Hiding the dislike info on POTUS seems important now. Hiding the dislike info on CNN seems important now. Public trust in government is low. Public trust in corporate media is low. It's been policy to manufacture consent in the US for quite a while now. Hard to say this move isn't more of the same, and it's equally hard to say it helps more than it hurts too.

I guess I've been pretty skeptical of these numbers. Maybe it's wishful thinking on my part but I am unconvinced that the like dislike ratio on a YouTube video is really reflective of public opinion writ large.

I see it differently. Where there are very unfavorable ratios, there usually are questions.

On that basis alone, hiding the data hurts more than it helps.

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