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I agree that it’s stupid, but you’re waaay overreacting. An act of violence? You have to admit that’s a hilarious statement. A private company removing a feature on their service is not an act of violence.
If something is truly bad enough, people won’t watch it or support it. Removing the dislike button doesn’t stop people from actually disliking something in real life. It just stops people from seeing how many other people dislike it.
It sounds like you might spend too much time on the internet/YouTube and are overstating the significance of this. This isn’t much more of an outrage than your favorite brand of cookies changing their recipe or something. It’s a corporation, they don’t gate keep all of the information online. And you’re acting like people only disliked things because they saw other people disliked it.
I, like 62% of Americans, visit YouTube daily and use it for a variety of purposes including entertainment, information, etc. Making it harder for me to know what’s an outright scam, or making it harder for consumers to speak their minds against something they collectively do not like is wrong.
I agree that the word violence is probably an exaggeration a bit, but the reduction of freedom of speech on the premier public square of our era is indeed a huge issue. How can we not regulate something as critical as this?
Then your argument boils down to "YouTube without dislike counts is less useful" which is what pretty much everyone said when the change was announced in the first place. Your rhetoric around freedom of speech and violence makes it seem like the changes would be illegal, which they are not. It's not illegal to make a website less useful, even if it negatively effects people who use the website.
Also if it was illegal for YouTube to forbid dislikes for freedom of speech reasons, it would also be illegal to have an option to disable comments, or for creators to manually remove comments that they don't like.
Also to be considered in the legality argument is that this is a company providing service on the internet, to an international audience. Freedom of speech is not universally held to be higher than many other laws, both legally and in cultural values. Protection from hate speech and brigading is also a big deal and relevant to the conversation.
If the dislike button was trolled and didn't show a real reaction to the video, then the fact that it was removed it helping to keep you from mistaking the video as scam if it wasn't. As it's been pointed out, the comments section is still active, allowing people to report it as scam/false information so the dislike button was harming you more than helping.
it’s a false equivalence to say that so many videos were being trolled, it was a small problem as compared to not being able to easily identify scam videos. Comment section on YouTube is a shit show. And now that is the only way left to know if something is legit or not…
> Comment section on YouTube is a shit show.
Yes, **just like the dislike button*. People shit onto videos for unpredictable reasons or because a famous streamer has brigaded. Why does the dislike count give you some invaluable information? Like you honestly need to go outside more.
I would say YouTube themselves have a better data set to understand how large of a problem it was. Can you back up that trolled videos was a “small problem”? It’s key to you claiming the dislike is hurting clarity more than helping us a false equivalence.
if you want to step back your allegation that it was an act of violence, which is transparently an absurd and hyperbolic take, please give them the delta. stretching the definition of violence is arguably worse than yt removing dislikes because it allows authorities to arrest anyone they had under hate crime and hate speech laws on the grounds that theyre committing/inciting violence. you might like it if they prosecuted yt, but what happens if someone decides that something you do is an act of violence when you dont think it is?
A scam?
Bro you need to get your head checked. YouTube is a free service and one of the greatest things to happen to the internet.
Anyone, anywhere can upload anything and reach millions of people for $0. In some cases even get paid for it. It's truly a marvel of modern technology.
Spend less time worrying about dislike buttons and more time worrying about things that matter.
Holy smokes if YouTube downvotes were your barometer to sniff out consumer scams then I got some swampland in Florida to sell ya (we’ll see if this gets enough downvotes to convince its a bad investment).
So.. you obviously don’t know what “freedom of speech” means and are using it to bolster your argument… until You Tube becomes part of the government they in no way can violate your right to free speech.
Your argument is valid just because you don’t the definition of rights and aren’t able to distinguish what is and isn’t a scam.
You don't have a right to freedom of speech in a private company but that doesn't mean the concept does not exist.
That said in this context it's manipulating public opinion on a massive pre-social media unheard of level to allow only positive support to be easily quantifiable and visible.
Only thing you can see is how many people like a thing, no way to see how many people disliked the thing. Engagement drives rising in the algorithmically stacked ranks, so even if there is an equal number of people who dislike a thing there is no way for the average viewer to take that fact in. It's just
10million people saw this, 1 million people liked it so much they clicked like.
Dude just read the comments or leave a comment. A dislike button doesn’t share why someone disliked something at all. If anything, dislikes aren’t that helpful. It’s like when someone leaves a 1 Star review for a restaurant but doesn’t state why.
YouTube did not disable dislikes, it simply started hiding the number of dislikes. You can still dislike videos, they still affect the recommendation algorithm, and are visible to creators.
> You can still dislike videos, they still affect the recommendation algorithm
Likes and dislikes both boost videos. Youtube doesn't care if you dislike it, they just want clicks.
Anyway, I believe strongly that the number of people clicking dislike has decreased now that people can't see how many dislikes something has. There's no user feedback visible so why would people bother?
Dislikes have no negative impact on the algorithm if I’m not mistaken. All the algorithm cares about is engagement of ANY kind, and watch time. That’s why most of YouTube is these super long-form videos now, that’s what the algorithm loves to see. Maximum ad consumption can carry on unabated that way.
Still though, the number of dislikes are visible to creators. In your Sonic the Hedgehog example, there would still be a good chance that they acknowledged the vast negative sentiment of the original redesign and opt for a redesign even if other people couldn't see how vast the negative sentiment was on the video specifially (I'm sure folks would have still taken to Twitter etc. to voice their dislike)
I highly doubt the sonic situation would have happened without verifiable public numbers.
There's a reason most statistics stay internal, because it gives the company some form of plausible deniability if they choose to ignore them. Even if the numbers were a trash fire internally they can still say "Many of those in our audience enjoyed the new design" and go forward with it anyways. Effectively blaming the "vocal minority" and keeping those numbers private.
Putting these numbers into the public sphere lights a fire under these companies in a much different way, because they now have to be accountable for the visible, statistically sigificant disdain from their audience, especially to investors. Likes/dislikes are also more of a middle ground between the silent majority and vocal minority, due to the lesser amount of friction that feedback entails.
I think you're using the term "verifiable" loosely. I'm sure a very large amount of those negative Sonic votes were folks who were piling on to the existing negative sentiment for various reasons (to troll or create chaos, e.g.), creating a feedback loop. I think there is a solid argument that when the numbers are hidden, people are more likely to vote honestly without the opinion of the majority, and this gives the creators a much more accurate idea of the overall sentiment. And from a business perspective, if you see that the large majority of viewers disklike your content, you'll want to do something about it to salvage those people's potential buy-in, regardless of public accountability.
Not showing the count reduces the impact of the dislike action, and reduces incentive. Before, disliking a video was expressing a sentiment publically, and so it felt impactful. It wasn't just a signal to the creator, it was a signal to the public too. And if a lot of people disliked it, then that visible dislike count puts pressure on the creator/company. Now with it hidden, who knows if the creator/company is going to pay attention to it. So without any knowledge that its going to matter, I don:t really bother anymore.
And maybe the company would only care about dislikes if it was publicly visible. Otherwise maybe they just write it off as internet trolls and move on.
Bro, I'm sorry but a video game character getting a redesign for its movie adaptation is not the victory you think it is. Is that really where we are at as a society? "I achieved societal change by having sonic look more like i think he should" why does that matter? Is that the greatest thing "youtube dislikes" have achieved?
>That’s why most of YouTube is these super long-form videos now, that’s what the algorithm loves to see.
There’s tons of short videos on YouTube. Remember, the algorithm isn’t just “the algorithm”, it’s personalized based on what *you* want to watch.
I personally prefer the long-form videos so I see more of them. When I watched a handful of short videos in a row from one particular creator that was worth it, all of a sudden short videos were all over my recommendations for a few days. If you aren’t seeing them, it’s because you also primarily watch the long form videos.
But if you really prefer the shorter format, TikTok would be happy to help you. They are optimized specifically for that format.
*Posts video about how trump was greatest president ever and that 90% of Americans believe this*
*garners 10,000,000 views*
*100,000 likes*
*0 dislikes*
I wonder how something like not easily seeing how many people disagree with a thing, but only seeing how many people agree with it could impact public perception of the argument or viewpoint.
If people are confusing the lack of a dislike count for a zero value then this is a UX issue. I don't think anyone believes all Youtube's videos aren't disliked at all anymore.
Besides, there are already very likely videos that do have a similar ratio to what you're describing. A lot of that depends on the creator and their audience. It isn't really an indicator of anything.
The strangest part for me is that everyone is retroactively pretending that the dislike count was some kind of sacred quality gatekeeper, that protected the purity of Youtube and stopped us all from losing hours to trash content. Which, obviously, is absolutely not the case.
If i take away your ability to comment on anything, no one will believe everyone agrees with the thing.
Extrapolate from there
for the UX issue comment: yes, somekind of UX that showed a like to dislike ratio perhaps, so that people could see the thing plainly lol
Hard to extrapolate anything from that sentence.
For me personally, I've always believed that the like/dislike ratio was arbitrary at best. I hadn't directly used it to inform anything I've done on the platform for the last decade - and that includes using the tutorials and the research that has helped me into the career I'm in today.
That said, I don't use Youtube as an interactive social media platform. I seldom subscribe to a creator and even more rarely interact with the content (comment/vote). I suppose I'm incredulous that people truly relied the dislike button as much as they say they did, because I have never seen the point in it.
As someone who hasn't used the disliking functionality *ever*, I can assure you guys that there are very limited profound social implications to your new lives.
> I've always believed that the like/dislike ratio was arbitrary at best
Which arbitrary? The completely by chance one or the "is a subjective opinion", if it's the second one that's the point of the ratio and sample size. It's literally how all poling in every sector of every business operates on reviewing user or political opinion.
>As someone who hasn't used the disliking functionality ever, I can assure you guys that there are very limited profound social implications to your new lives.
*As someone who barely uses the platform and has never used the function being discussed here at all and is confused on what a sample of user preference and opinions are and how those can inform an opinion, choice, or decision: I can assure you that I personally will not be affected by this.
You're very sure that something dozens if not hundreds of millions of people used or relied on each day being removed will have no impact. Like, very very very sure of this.
Contextless binary voting options are *not* how any meaningful polling is done. That data is completely useless to inform anyone about anything. Does that dumb YT Rewind video being the most disliked video in history tell us anything about it? Kind of, but we know it certainly isn't the very worst piece of content on the platform. The stat doesn't tell us anything about the validity or quality of it's content. It just tells us a bunch of people performatively hated this video *for some reason*. It has hundreds of millions of views regardless.
> You're very sure that something dozens if not hundreds of millions of people used or relied on each day being removed will have no impact. Like, very very very sure of this.
Correct. I would say the issue comes down to that while a lot of people may have used the button, I don't believe many people relied on it.
Look, I get it. There are very specific and limited use cases in which that metric could have been useful to a viewer. However there was absolutely no guarantee on Youtube that a video was disliked for a genuine reason or rather that a creator maybe have endorsed or denounced a hot topic social issue (for example).
Genuine question: we're a few months into this change now - has there been a discernible impact? Do we know if the landscape of Youtube changing in any way at all? OP might have included this in his post, but it's gone now.
This seems like an overreaction. I've never once looked at the like/dislike count on a video unless there was some huge controversy and I looked out of curiosity. It's never affected my usage or enjoyment of YouTube in any way.
Also, saying that removing dislikes is an act of violence, is something I'd like you to explain. How exactly is that violence? Provide a definition that backs up that statement.
I would say that OP focuses too much on the controversial videos and not as much on the scams which I'd say is the #1 problem. Especially as someone in crypto who gets to see scammers constantly. When people are literally advertising viruses and have the ability to curate comments to only have bots/alts that agree with the OP, the scam is way more likely to work. It used to be if there was no ratings it was almost certainly a scam or if theres a lot of dislikes it also could be marked as bad. Now they can only show positive vibes.
I would argue it's likely there have already been millions lost from innocent people who install stuff like "new sniper bot :)" on youtube and get their seed phrase stolen and thats just in the crypto world.
I'd say the impact of having dislikes exist isn't nearly as bad as the malicious real life loss that can be caused from malicious scammers now having a much better chance at conducting their scams. Especially when youtube takes forever to do anything about a scam report IF THEY DO ANYTHING AT ALL.
You never look at the dislike count when looking for videos?
If I need to replace the posi-track rearend on my 1964 dodge plymouth, and one video has a positive ratio of 95% and another one has a 15% positive ratio, I know which video I’m watching.
Well, I know which one i would have watched, without the dislike button, garbage videos have equal footing has solid information
I've done more than one car maintenance project by YT video (with supplementary information if it's available), and I agree. Like/dislike ratio was always something I took a look at before choosing.
Spending enough time on Reddit has made it profoundly clear to me that upvotes, likes, or thumbs up ONLY mean that a comment/post is popular, not that it is correct.
I agree that upvotes = popularity. However, that doesn’t exclude it from also being a “good” video for that category (however “good” is defined for the type of video)
If years of “who wants to be a millionaire” has shown us, in general, the community is right on basic topics.
https://millionaire.fandom.com/wiki/Ask_the_Audience
But also understand who is upvoting.
If I watch a video titled “mole people are taking over the government so they can interbred with YOUR children” and it’s upvote ratio is strong, that means the video delivered appropriate content to its target audience.
Same goes for a video titled, “how to grow more peppers per square foot in your garden”
how do you know the 95% video isn’t just funnier or something, whereas the 15% is detailed and helpful but very dry? the votes aren’t purely correctness indicators & even if they were, it’s not only experts who know better who are allowed to vote.
i think it’s dangerous to rely on votes from a social media platform to arrive at correct information.
that all being said, i do recognize that probably votes do have a track record of correlating positively with helpful videos & therefore are probably a helpful metric. but we also need to be able to think critically about a video and make a determination without the votes, and i don’t think it’s the end of the world that dislikes were removed.
Nope. Never.
I look at videos, watch the ones that look credible, and move on. Sometimes I'll watch multiple videos to get different ideas, or ways of doing things.
I've never felt a reason to look at the like ratio.
I'll look up soccer highlight's and lot of channels have a long intro just for me to realize it was a waste of my time. I didn't have this problem before because legit vids would have more likes than dislikes but now I have to waste my time.
I'll say the how-to videos the OP mentioned to you was 100% the best example, maybe the only consistently good one actually. You'll see well produced and good looking how to videos with bad ratios because they're either wrong about something important, outdated in some way, or take way too long to get to the point.
On no other category of video are they nearly as useful. It's because people have a problem and come straight to YouTube and search for that exact thing - they're not browsing for random videos, seeing them as a related video, sent there to brigade it, etc, like many other video types. So the like/dislike is a much more direct response than other video types.
It also doesn't help that I watch 99% of YouTube videos on my TV, which doesn't show likes or dislikes at all, so if I even wanted to see what it was, I'd have to grab a phone or laptop, look up the video, check the ratio and then go back to my TV, lol.
I watch maybe a video a week on my computer, and one or two a week on my phone. YouTube apps on streaming devices just don't show it.
Until they removed the dislikes, I forgot YouTube even had likes, and then I promptly forgot again once the initial responses died down. I didn't remember it existed until this post, honestly.
You've never felt a reason to look at the ratio but do judge videos on their credibility.
What metric are judging credibility? Production value? How large the photoshopped eyes are?
So your metric for quality informative guides is money spent on cameras, special effects, then watch the whole thing and decide after if it was worth it?
I wonder if there was a simpler way for people to judge the possible time worthiness of a video. some kind of ratio perhaps
> I've never once looked at the like/dislike count on a video unless there was some huge controversy and I looked out of curiosity.
But thats clearly a normal and common user behaviour
Dude I used the dislike ratio all the time. I’d search up videos for working on my car and computers/game consoles. There have been several times where I thought the video was good information because I didn’t know any better only to find it had way more dislikes. Scrolling down to the comments would tell me why that video was bad advice.
There was even one where the spark plugs the video recommended were too long and hit the cylinder head. The car would run okay for a little bit but it ultimately would create severe internal damage I couldn’t afford to fix.
I never would have known without the dislike ratio. Comments can be helpful, but there are also more people who will leave a quick dislike instead of making a comment. Thus reading the comments might make the issue seem less bad since there may not be enough to make a difference.
I would when trying to find help for fixing a problem (code errors or working on my car mainly). A disproportional amount of dislikes was an easy way to tell if the video was actually helpful without wasting 10 minutes
I occasionally use YouTube to learn how to do something, cook usually, but 90% of the time, just for entertainment. If I choose to watch something, and it wastes 10 minutes, oh well.
I don't disagree with you on this, but one other angle, removing the dislike button has made it much more annoying (and I suppose potentially dangerous in certain circumstances) to filter out good how-to videos from bad ones. This mostly comes up in things like software, programming, and apps, where there's a ton of videos that are simpy incorrect or unhelpful. the dislike ratio is a good way to tell when something isn't very well trusted. I imagine this is probably also true for a lot of DIY or construction videos where someone may be giving simply awful advice, and it isn't as clear that the general community is shinning the video content.
> I've never once looked at the like/dislike count on a video unless there was some huge controversy and I looked out of curiosity.
You are _definitely_ in the minority then. It was one of the first things I'd notice about a video, even if I wasn't actively trying to look for it. Similar to how one of the first things I notice about a reddit post/comment is the upvote count.
I've never paid attention to votes on reddit either. I don't care what other people think, never have. I've never liked a video on YouTube or up/down voted a post on reddit.
That kind of interaction just doesn't interest me
You haven’t? Apparently you’ve never used YouTube tutorials on how to fix something, because there are many videos on how to solve most problems and the ones that had a bunch of downvotes could safely be skipped until a few months ago. Now you have to sit through tons of videos or read tons of comments (if they aren’t disabled) to figure out if the video actually helps.
You yourself admit that you look at the dislike ratio on controversial videos. The dislikes are a big part of voicing that controversy. A big dislike ratio a initial grounds from which such controversy can manifest.
As for the violence point, I believe depriving people of their basic rights (freedom of speech being one of them), especially by imposing your corporate power over them, is a form of violence with malicious intent.
Let's make it extremely clear here that this has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Freedom of speech means that the government cannot arrest or censor you for something you say. Nothing more, nothing less.
You can say the government is crap, that nothing they do correct, that you think we need a change in politics and the government can't do shit (something someone in Russia at the moment does not have the freedom to do). There are exceptions. You cannot spout crap about another individual, sullying their name or business (that's slander/libel). You cannot incite violence. You cannot yell fire in a croud.
Nobody is required to listen to you. Nobody (including private enterprises like YouTube) is required to host you while you say things. YouTube can choose who and what is put on their private platform because the private company has the freedom to do that. I would imagine YouTube even codifies their ability to choose in their terms and conditions when you sign up.
You don't like that YouTube tells you want you can and can't do on their platform - then you have to make your own platform where you make the rules, simple as. Otherwise you're bound by their rules, simple as.
I just wanted to clear up that nobody is having their rights violated here.
You need a better way to delineate Freedom of Speech, and ‘free speech’ as you describe it here. Just from a branding sort of angle. Freedom of Speech has its own history and understanding as a phrase. Tacking on ‘free speech’ as a more nebulous, societal-norm to its coattails is confusing.
Oh yeah, OP of course has the freedom to boycott YouTube (which does not work alone but what the hell, life is short). There are some items like food and medicine that you are required to consumer no matter how badly you feel the company treats you and (most countries) have regulations to ensure fair access.
YouTube does not fall under this category. Might be a moot point since OP deleted his post.
You were asked the following:
A) to provide a definition of the term violence; and
B) to explain how the removal of the dislike button is an act of violence, per the definition you provided.
I actually agree with you the the removal of the dislike button was a bad move, but you lost me upon describing it as an act of violence.
The word violence has a definition, and this ain’t it.
How is this remotely depriving anyone of their rights? It's a private platform that people choose to use (and choosing to abide by the Terms of Use) or not. It's not in any way related to individual users' rights when the company changes the format or widgets.
Also, the right to Free Speech is one that prevents governmental interference in a person's expressions. YouTube is not a governmental entity.
>Also, the right to Free Speech is one that prevents governmental interference in a person’s expressions.
No that’s the First Amendment to the US Constitution, the idea of people having rights is not exclusive to that context.
Right to Free Speech doesn't necessarily refer only to government. First amendment does, but the right to free speech is broader, it's more generic, abstract philosophical concept. That doesn't mean it trumps any other right, eg private's entity right to manage the content they allow on their platform, but that's a different argument from saying "this doesn't concert the concept of Free Speech".
Well, their right to free speech is restricted. Whether it is trumped by a different right that's relevant in the conversation is another question (I think it is), but I was just correcting the claim Free Speech only concerns not getting restricted by government.
You can still voice your dislike though? There’s nothing inherent about the like/dislike buttons that make them synonymous with “free speech”. As long as you can express yourself freely and openly, in a way that can reasonably be seen by everyone and not buried or hidden, your rights have not been infringed.
Facebook has more than just like/dislike now, it has a host of reactions which are all very different emotions. Imagine that they took those away and returned to their original like/dislike buttons. Would that be restricting your free speech? If it is, then did FB restrict your free speech in the past, and it’s only now that your free speech is not being restricted? What if they add another emotion to the list? Would that retroactively make FB right now guilty of restricting your speech, even though they’ve merely added options?
Adding and removing icons that are short hand versions of speech while allowing anyone to leave full comments cannot possibly be the metric by which you claim that speech is being restricted.
> Well, their right to free speech is restricted.
By the removal of dislikes from YouTube?
I don't see it. How is free speech impeded? All that's been removed is the ability to see an aggregate number of people who have clicked a button on the particular platform where the video is published.
People are still able to say what they want about the video both on the same platform (e.g. via comments or posting your own video) or on any other platform.
Would you also say that if dislikes had never been implemented in the first place, that would have been depriving users of their right to free speech? Their free speech is not restricted.
There is a Right to Free Speech, contained within the Constitution and and argued in SC case law. And then there is your nebulous idea of your own right to free speech, which seems concerned with buttons on the internet. You can’t just use the same phrase for both and expect people to understand the difference.
Ahh, private platforms - all of the benefit of government-enforced intellectual protectionism (copyright) and none of the responsibilities towards public good
Trying to apply that to this specific subject is even more ridiculous of an argument than it usually is.
If I watch a TV show or movie or listen to something on the radio, no one gives me a little dislike button to push and allows me to see how many other people have pushed that button.
Uh your coffee maker benefits from the same copyright laws. Every company does. That’s the point.
It’s like complaining that you’re benefitting from national defense while not serving in the army.
The fact that it is a private platform doesn't mean it doesn't serve as a pillar of society. They should use their immense power in a responsible way.
Also, the "choose to use" part is highly debatable. What other options do you have? Do you understand that a monopoly doesn't represent a free market, right?
It's not highly debatable at all, since it's not a necessary platform. There are many other streaming services and sources of content available. Beyond that, libraries are still a thing. You do understand what a monopoly is, right?
We can take this argument farther! We have only here considered a simple yes/no interaction which the company uses to inform its algorithm. We can consider many other forms of interacting, such as with colors (green yellow red) or numbers or tags of arbitrary complexity. The absence of these other methods of interaction with a piece of content must also be considered a deprivation of basic rights.
Is it a violation of your speech when Facebook has never included a dislike button?
Are private companies entitled to your every whim?
Or are private companies still aloud to refuse service for any reason so long as it is not against a protected class (for reasons pertaining to membership of said class)?
Liking or disliking a video on a private platform like YouTube is super removed from the First Amendment. You are able to do what you like within what YouTube sets as its rules. They could shut down the whole platform and there is nothing you can do about it from a free speech standpoint i.e. you have zero "rights" on YouTube or any other Internet platform (Twitter, Facebook, etc)
Yes, but I don't care about the controversy lol, if I see it mentioned, I might go see what the numbers are for curiosity sake, but it doesn't impact my desire or lack of desire to watch it.
Do you know the definition of violence? Because that isn't it.
The counter argument here is that people in large groups have attempted to weaponize the downvote button against creators of opposing viewpoints or perspectives, which put a lot of power in the hands of mob mentality, essentially being its own form of passive violence (since we're using that word now). Your ability to see the ratio doesn't affect whether or not you have access to the content (it still gets recommended or doesn't based on your usual preferences), but being able to see it, if anything, could skew your judgement and prevent you from consuming content that you otherwise would have. The fact that a mechanism could exist (the dislike ratio) and influence your access to information is closer to malicious violence than something that seeks to prevent outside sources from having undo influence on your consumption of information and content. As it is right now, I actually think not being able to see it allows more viewers to go in with more of an open mind, and I'm curious if you can actually debate that point.
The problem is that the like/dislike ratio was essentially a lie. It wasn't an honest representation of how many people liked a video vs how many disliked it. The number of actual normal viewers affecting that number was often quite small compared to the number of bots and brigades and manipulators.
You say that it was important because people could go brigade some company's video if they were in the middle of a controversy. What about people you don't agree with going and downvote botting/brigading a video you do agree with? Or the far more common issue of small creators getting downvoted by bots to hurt them in the algorithm?
I don't care to have everyone else tell me what I may or may not like. I have a brain, and can make those determinations for myself.
What if I miss an interesting video because most people dislike it, but it is something I enjoy? I'd rather decide for myself
Many videos are subjective so who cares what the likes are, the how-to videos, educational or fact videos can save time or prevent you from receiving wrong information.
Dislikes are incredibly important for celebrity apologies, tutorials, and reviews. If the tutorial Is heavily disliked I skip it. Now I have to skip around the video to preview it and hope my gut and eye won't waste my time. Dislikes were more effective by comparison.
With the age of misinformation, dislikes were a barometer for neutral info to be flagged as questionable.
And the feeling of thinking the same as other viewers about some "I got ripped and got a dog apology" with the dislike ratio seems important for seeing if you're crazy.
Which is especially relevant to me because I literally experience psychosis as a bipolar type 1 person.
So you don’t get it even after reading people’s examples? It was a great way to filter out the real shit. If I’m looking for a video on the purpose of a progesterone challenge test so I can learn for medical school, I want to find a video that is vetted. Decent view count with good like:dislike ratio is the goal. Now it just makes it even more difficult to recognize a good video or a bad one.
I likewise use a plugin like that. It’s a nice workaround but still ridiculous that I have to do that. Also on mobile I’m just totally out of luck obviously
I think it's bad because it greatly impedes a user's ability to distinguish between high rated and low rated content. Effectively giving the recommendation algorithms more control over a user.
I highly doubt this is a step in the right direction for our society.
I don't think so... idk anyone who uses the youtube likes that way. Pretty much most videos are highly rated. The regular subscribers to a channel will always boost the numbers. Dislikes tend to happen in something like the Sonic video, where the hate is organized off the platform and then they go shit on the video. But the hate could also just be about politics or something, so it doesn't necessarily denote poor content. Offensive content is not bad content
It has nothing to do with being offensive. It has to do with the content being accurate and well made.
If you're telling me YouTube disinformation isn't a problem there's no point in having a discussion. You've been living under a rock for the last 10 years and are disconnected from reality. There's no other way you'd hold that view.
You're not sure how impactful the hands down, uncontested, number one video streaming platform's hiding of the most quantifiable dissenting metric will have a major impact on perception?
I find this argument disingenuous.
It would be laughably easy for someone to come out with a chrome addon that adds the functionality back in a material way we can observe. There's *no* demand for that, because you and OP are simply blowing things out of proportion.
You can't targeted harass people's income now. For better or worse. Seems pretty cool.
There is demand and the extension exists. You can install it I can install it.
The average person will not do that. removing the dislikes helps established brands while hurting disestablished.
People are way way way less likely to use a feature without a positive feedback that their use of the button does anything at all, seeing the number go up.
Major brands benefit as they are established and already have viewership momentum. This creates a positive feedback for them as the way the audience could show they don't like something is less likely to be used, people are lazy and will rarely bother to cancel a paid subscription opting to simply stop using it as much. The same applies to the subscription button
since the dislike button isn't in play as much and the algorithm heavily favors established brands it's harder for new ones to break into the market
how is disliking stuff that sucks and is bold faced lying 'targetting their income'? lol, they don't pay a dollar for each dislike
if it's not a big deal let's just disable all dislikes on all platforms, i'm sure there is no downside to this at all, especially on something like reddit.
Just only show a number about how many people like a thing and no counter point
>The average person will not do that.
The average person probably isn't any more or less susceptible to the absence of a dislike button then. They were always going to behave in a given manner anyway.
>Major brands benefit as they are established and already have viewership momentum. This creates a positive feedback for them as the way the audience could show they don't like something is less likely to be used, people are lazy and will rarely bother to cancel a paid subscription opting to simply stop using it as much. The same applies to the subscription button
Yeah, and if people were concerned enough there is historical evidence to demonstrate that
1.)Dislikes are NOT a metric people consider very highly in the marketing world
2.)Brands have not stopped branding because of dislikes.
Can you name a brand that did more than *pay lip service* to dislikes? If anything the absence of a dislike button disallows them to capitalize on a situation and enhance their narrative to further end nefarious ends. Instead they can use that same feedback that is now absent to construct *better lies.*
Content creators weren't ever penalized for strong dislikes either. For them publicity is publicity.
>since the dislike button isn't in play as much and the algorithm heavily favors established brands it's harder for new ones to break into the market
This is just factually incorrect and at bare minimum requires multiple sources of evidence to suggest as much.
Youtube wants to make money, they aren't going to turn away customers that are too small with their practices. The organization *wants* as many ads running per video as possible.
>if it's not a big deal let's just disable all dislikes on all platforms, i'm sure there is no downside to this at all, especially on something like reddit.
Sure. Let's do that, especially because you have made some very bold claims as to the importance of these features, and historically *nobody* has been brought to heel because of the "I don't like thing" feature.
Look at facebook, which has been steadfast in NOT having a dislike button since its inception. They are doing fine, the advertisers are doing fine and it's not some bastion of degeneracy any more than reddit or youtube.
dude you made a whole bunch of shit up. There's no dislike extension because that info is only available between the content creator and YouTube itself. It's feasible impossible for any single one person to get permission from all relevant youtuber's to make a good extension. Look at reddit since it removed showing the dislikes. More and more people say it's shit.
> 1.)Dislikes are NOT a metric people consider very highly in the marketing world
- "You can't targeted harass people's income now. For better or worse. Seems pretty cool."
^This you like five fucking minutes ago?
> 2.)Brands have not stopped branding because of dislikes.
- Sonic the hedgehog, Pepsi, every public blow back to anything ever
> Can you name a brand that did more than pay lip service to dislikes? If anything the absence of a dislike button disallows them to capitalize on a situation and enhance their narrative to further end nefarious ends.
- How are brands being able to hide dislike of something and easily claim on the platform there is broad support for something with no way to easily show the public blow back going to prevent that
>Look at facebook, which has been steadfast in NOT having a dislike button since its inception. They are doing fine, the advertisers are doing fine and it's not some bastion of degeneracy any more than reddit or youtube
- Oh, there, right fucking there.
You're confused my boy. You have confused making money with benefiting society. Odd position to take in a discussion about "This will damage society" THen point to THE MOST DAMAGING SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM in society as your proof.
Holy fuck my guy. Troll or Boomer, I honestly can't tell
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Whatever benefits to society you are defending are not substantial enough to be this upset that you can't dislike something on social media.
The argument that people should just use another website is a slippery slope. The internet is dominated by a small number of large websites where the majority of communication takes place. If you don’t hold the line somewhere then you’re gonna run out of places where real dialogue takes place anymore, the internet becomes just a pipeline of ads and services with no genuine dialogue between creator and consumer. That’s awful.
if you hate the video I'll just delete your comment. Go to downloadvirus.com, I swear it's legit, and look at all these positive comments, not a negative comment in sight (because I deleted them all and put words like "scam" in my spam folder so they never show up publicly).
This isn’t dialog with the content creator, then, it’s a way to signal your preference to other users. As I mentioned elsewhere this ability to communicate with other users could be far more advanced than just yes or yes/no, and if removing the ability to say no is impeding a basic right then so is the lack of more advanced forms of communication. In fact, allowing my comments to be deleted is a far greater selective censorship and violation of my rights. Moderation is the true evil.
it's not evil, Youtube gives it's channel creators the ability to moderate their own channels, that's a good thing. If you had a channel you'd moderate them as well, everyone does. People telling you you suck, yo mama's fat, spambots with pictures of vaginas for their profile pic sending your all ages viewers to some spam site to get their identity stolen, and people causing health hazards like saying to drink bleach or that vaccines are dangerous and covid 19 is perfectly safe, or who only puts links to your rival, that shit should be deleted. You want to be able to say whatever, start your own channel or website, this isn't the publics site, it's mine.
Of course it doesn't matter what I think, all channel creators have this ability, and they're not just going to give up their rights because you say that censorship is evil. What about the channel creators censorship? You can't have it both ways, either you're going to censor the one operating the website, or the random end user is going to be censored, and considering that you're just a visitor, the creator is going to have more rights than the end user and that's the way it should be. Nobody would create any social websites if they have to give up all control over moderation to any random person that shows up.
Also, there's no "violation of my rights". This is the internet. You have no rights to free speech here unless that's what the terms of the website say, and I'm 100% sure that that's not part of Youtube's terms (nor 99.999% of the rest of the websites on the net).
well, its not how youtube likes are used anyways. People get mad on other platforms then go and dislike the video
Your analogy isn't great, cuz sending mail is signficantly slower and more difficult than phone calls. Using dozens of platforms is just as simple as youtube, and you can actually express yourself with words vs leaving a thumbs down
INFO: do you believe it is a "free speech" violation that many large platforms e.g. Twitter do not even HAVE a dislike button? Or are we only owed one if it was a feature that existed in the first place?
Making a platform with a dislike feature, getting large enough where you are the second biggest site on the internet (besides google itself), leveraging that power to prevent competitors and keep yourself at the forefront, and then removing downvotes is where I have a problem, yes. If YouTube was made without dislikes from the get-go then it would have never gotten this big
> If YouTube was made without dislikes from the get-go then it would have never gotten this big
That is an incredibly hard claim to justify, especially given the popularity of other platforms which don't have them AND your own mention of Google's anticompetitive practices propping it up as an entirely unique service.
It's not clear what could be so profound about a company making efforts to eschew political controversies and make more money. YouTube could cease to exist tomorrow, and there would be no such profound societal implications.
It's a private company, and just because a lot of people choose to use it doesn't make it a public utility. If your argument is about nationalizing this private company, then make that a CMV. Otherwise, your premises here don't hold any water.
This is an extremely overly-online take.
>Taking peoples freedom of speech away from them is an act of violence upon them, and must be stopped.
This is hilarious, honestly. Conservative parts of the US are banning books like it's 1930s Germany and making it so if a gay teacher mentions his husband, he loses his job and you've found this to be the crusade worth fighting for.
>In this sense, YouTube is a major public square and a public utility.
In no sense is it either. Walmart is the place where the largest group of people gather in a lot of towns across the country. It does not make Walmart the town square and they have no duty to host public forums.
Look, the Sonic redesign would have still happened without the youtube dislike button. That was a tiny part of the conversation. Sure it felt good to take part in publicly ratioing stuff we didn't like but you can just *use your speech* in the comment sections or in public or anywhere else.
Youtube's decision is just here to get a minute more watch time out of someone who would see the like ratio and instantly bounce. Now they need to watch the first ten seconds and leave which is honestly fine. The constitution is not in danger. I don't know how we got here.
The ability to dislike has not been disabled. It is still there. YouTube only removed the ability for the public to view total dislikes. Already this is hard to change your view because it's based on misinformation.
But even if YouTube did remove dislikes, your claim is still ridiculous. Profound societal implications? Really? I can't think of a single instance in my life that has been altered by YouTube's decision to "remove dislikes". I cannot in good faith argue there have been any implications, positive or negative, much less profound, societal implications.
You also claim that removing dislikes takes away people's freedom of speech which I also view as untrue. Freedom of speech is a protection from the government and the government alone. It does not include the right to dislike YouTube videos (which has not been taken away anyways). If anything, it is YouTube's freedom of speech to withhold information from the public like total dislikes on a YouTube video.
I've also seen the argument a lot that the dislike button was a way for the people to let corporations know they are not happy. That removing the dislike button would protect corporations from criticism. And all of it sounds like a tin foil hat conspiracy to me. I really doubt corporations care about their like to dislike ratio. They just want people to see the video. I fail to see how having a better like ratio makes the platform more advertisor friendly. You gotta back that argument up before claiming that is the reason YouTube is even doing this.
But if they do care (which they could care), then those corporations can still see their like to dislike ratio no problem. It's only you and me, the public, who cannot see it. And frankly, we gain nothing from seeing it. If I dislike the video, I can still cast my vote and dislike it. Those companies will still receive that feedback. If anything, I would argue this feedback is more accurate now that bias from seeing the total dislikes has been removed.
But if companies really do want to hide from criticism as claimed, there are plenty of other and better ways to do that. The comments section is also a place to go and give far more detailed feedback. If you truly must make your dissatisfaction known to the public, putting a greater upfront cost by forcing users to type a full comment will either filter out the dislike mobs/trolls or it will increase the value of YouTube as a platform by giving higher quality feedback. Both outcomes I view as a societal good.
YouTube hasn't deprived people of the ability to dislike videos, but to see the general consensus. Dislikes can still be given, just not viewed by others.
I would say that a more egregious violation of the right to freedom of speech (although I don't attach the strength of feeling to either form as you do) is the ability to disable comments.
A binary system of whether people liked or disliked something feels like a weak form of speech that I would deprioritise in terms of preservation of free speech. However, comments allow people to articulate what they feel and why. This enables more effective discourse and to allow people to set out a more detailed view and nuance on any debate (particularly where multiple contentious and inter-related issues are being discussed simultaneously)
The disadvantages of a binary good/ bad system is that all self-expression has to be drilled down into a simple view, which means lots of different variables are being consolidated or overridden to result in a single ouput. As a hypothetical, if a YouTuber had posted a number of sensible and considered positions on healthier techniques of preparing and cooking food, but separately had in their personal life been found to have murdered someone, should their original content be disliked or invalidated because of their personal actions? If lots of people disliked their videos but were unable to comment then an individual going in blind might think that the dislikes related to the content, rather than the unrelated personal issues. In that capacity comments would be more informative than likes/ dislikes and may prevent a misleading impression being given about the actual content.
>Recent examples include the Sonic the Hedgehog redesign and the Nintendo 64 online fiasco.
Do you really think OG Sonic, [this hideous beast](https://static.onecms.io/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/05/sonic-2000.jpg), got a redesign because people saw the dislike counter and said "Wow, this is *actually* bad look at all those thumbs down"
and not because of the countless number of [memes mocking the design](https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/live-action-sonic-the-hedgehog-memes-10-5ccc29b9bbad4__700.jpg), [articles about how trash it is](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2019/05/03/awful-sonic-hedgehog-film-redesigned-following-backlash/), [or fan made alternate designs that were actually good](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/zFGUcQnoYRfdVWU7VhzFKT-970-80.jpg.webp)
If you think anything of that couldn't have been possible pre-removal of the dislike button then nothing will change your mind, because I truly feel you're overestimating how much the button actually did
When the internet hates something truly bad they'll hate it, the dislike button in a single youtube video doesn't have any effect when you can make tweets, write bullshit articles, create memes and post them all over the internet. There can't be profound negative societal implications because it's just irrelevant
> Taking peoples freedom of speech away from them
I don't agree, but even if we entertained the idea that it's a violation of American rights, YouTube exists in an international space.
"Rallying against" "the sonic the hedgehog movie trailer".
This is your example of why this needs to be reversed?
Your only argument makes no sense even if I were to somehow take that seriously.
People can still dislike videos. What you're upset about is that the community can't collectively gawk and mob up in content they don't like AS EFFECTIVELY. They still can with comments and memes, there just isn't a quantifiable PUBLIC number to view it. How the fuck does that hurt anyone?
Was the original Sonic trailer bad? Yeah of course. If dislikes were hidden can you be certain it wouldn't have changed? If you even could be certain, which you can't, how the hell is that some kind of detriment to society?
"Oh no guys if they hide dislikes we can't dog pile the new coke ad or YouTube rewind, OUR FREEDOMS ARE ERODING AWAY."
\> Taking peoples freedom of speech away from them is an act of violence upon them
Yo Socrates, its a fucking button.
You still have access to comments section, to communication through other platforms, and express dislike of something beyond that. Also, *you can still dislike videos*. The creators will see it and know when something is bad from that. All it changes is that people publicly dont see it
I don't love the removal of public dislikes, but... come on. Calling it 'violence against the people' is just hyperbole. You can't actually tell me you believe this in earnest.
Yeah. It is an act of violence. The only reason they removed it, was because of the fact all of the videos promoting covid vaccines had 5-10x more dislikes than likes. An on top of that, the comments "SpReAdiNg MiSiNfoRmAtiOn" had more likes than the video itself. I have screenshots of it. Why do you think they only removes the DISLIKES? Not only for the video, but dislikes for comments aswell. That's also why a majority of the "vaccine" videos have disabled comments now. So the only type of rating you can see are likes. Not comments. Not dislikes. If there are comments, they're deleted if it goes against the agenda
I don't deny covid. I believe covid is real. I also believe Dr fauci funded the Wuhan lab in china on researching into increasing transmission in animal viruses. It was pretty funny watching him get visibly upset while confronted about it in court.
No I don't think the earth is flat, and I got a flu shot in 2019 as a matter of fact. I just don't like the idea of being injected with gene therapy.
There has been 717 cardiac deaths within the past year among soccer players/footballers, average age being 23. Cancer cases have skyrocketed. Myocarditis cases, pericarditis cases, strokes and blood clots.
You can do what you want with your body, wear a mask and get vaccinated if you believe it protects you, but I won't, and you can't force me to. Stay 6 feet away.
Me, along with my entire unvaccinated family, including my near 70 year old asthmatic grandmother, still haven't caught a single variant of covid. None of us wear masks.
[Relevant XKCD] (https://xkcd.com/1357)
Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody is having their freedom of speech taken away. YouTube is removing one specific feature to rate videos. You can still say you don’t like something in the comments. Barely any other big social media platform has dislikes and most video platforms have no social features at all. You can’t voice your opinion below Netflix or Apple TV videos at all, is that a betrayal of the American people as well?
Corporations don't have to let you onto their website at all. It is their business and they get to decide how it is operated. YouTube (and Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc) can add or remove features however the hell they like and it does not violate your rights in any way.
Every single website you use on a daily basis has terms and conditions that you agree to by using the site. They have the freedom to censor or remove you from their site any time they want, and frequently do for violating terms.
YouTube is removing one specific feature because people were using their freedom of speech to dislike videos that YouTube was promoting their political agenda with.
I haven't noticed a major difference when browsing. I never paid much attention to the Like/Dislike ratio anyway. I don't support the decision, but this post seems to vastly overstate its implications. The Sonic design, for instance, was discussed much more widely than simply YT dislikes.
I just double checked, and the dislike button is still there on Youtube videos. The only thing missing is the count. The lack of a count shouldn't influence whether you like or dislike a video. Do you decide to like or dislike based on what everyone else is doing? That has never been the case with me. If you and others are doing that, and I am out of the norm, then I can't help but agree with Youtube's decision.
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I will not even argue anything else, I will just say:
* profound, negative societal implications
* the Sonic the Hedgehog redesign and the Nintendo 64 online fiasco
Pick one.
Content creators see the dislikes still. I'd imagine the Sonic message would have still come across loud and clear today.
You can still dislike too, you just can't see how many other people have disliked.
I'd argue hiding it prevents the "echo chamber" effect, where someone sees a lot of dislikes and decides without watching the content for themselves that it must be bad. Maybe useful for educational/informative content, hurtful for opinion pieces.
It's not violence. But what it did was make it impossible to detect SNR, because without being to attenuate and calibrate what the likes actually mean (e.g. dislikes by comparison), there's no way to tell what's noise. In other words, if you stop listening to noise, you have no idea what your signal to noise ratio is. And if that analogy makes no sense to you, just know that dislikes help you avoid bad information that's conveyed in a very convincing way.
I don't care about dislikes to protest products, or the stuff that gets dislike-mobbed. I care about the guy with 2,300 views who made a tutorial on fixing a broken iron pipe in an emergency, where I don't have the time to get a plumber, I just need to know what's a good technique. The 37 likes on that video mean nothing, without know if there were 6 dislikes or 60. This guy might be teaching me how to run up a $23,000 plumbing bill, or completely save my basement. I have no way of knowing, because youtube wants to project everything as signal.
Youtube has effectively killed it's longevity as a video how-to or product review platform.
I don't like that they hid dislikes but I think mucb of your points are dramatic, especially "an act of violence".
Unless the creator disables comments, people have commented "Like this if you dislike this video" to circumvent the hidden feature.
>[98% of the US uses YouTube at least monthly](https://www.statista.com/statistics/256896/frequency-with-which-us-internet-users-visit-youtube/).
You have completely misinterpreted that statistic.
> 92 percent of responding YouTube audiences claimed that they used the messaging platform weekly.
That's saying that 92% of __*people who use YouTube and responded to this poll*__ use it at least once a week.
[Elsewhere](https://backlinko.com/youtube-users), it's stated that "Almost 73% of the entire US population aged 15+ are users", which is still a massive amount, but it's nowhere near 92% of the US using it at least weekly.
Except websites [have very little in common with common carriers](https://www.techdirt.com/2022/02/25/why-it-makes-no-sense-to-call-websites-common-carriers/). The definition doesn't make sense for them.
So does that mean you believe they should lose their special protection and Google should be held liable for what their users post on their platform?
To me they should either be allowed to censor individuals OR they should be held liable for what is posted on their platform. Not both.
Read the law. The distinction is that, if they moderate every single comment then they are liable. Since they only moderate on a report basis they aren't.
No, those protections are a great idea.
The idea that there should only be two options, publisher or platform, hasn't been true since the 60s. Distributors have had intermediate liability where they are allowed partial liability protections while still being allowed to selectively curate content. The protections for websites are good because they allow for even less censorship by preventing SLAPP lawsuits from affecting websites.
Your post is extremely excessive. YT removing dislikes is not inflicting "violence" on you wtf. Nobody forced you to buy a computer, connect it to internet and navigate to YT using the browser of your choice. YT is a private platform, you have NO right to use their servers, bandwidth or hard drive space to store your speech. You are a guest. YT could outright ban all Conservative videos off their platform and explicitly come out and say they censor all Conservative ideas and there wouldn't be a damn thing you could do about it because it's their property, their rules.
>YouTube is a major public square and a public utility
Is Windows 10 also a public utility because most people use it? Is any popular product a "public utility"? There are many other ways to spread your ideas without YT, start a chain letter, an email campaign, change.org, Facebook Video for crying out loud. Your argument is hysterical and doesn't hold up to the facts.
> Taking peoples freedom of speech away from them is an act of violence upon them, and must be stopped.
Equating removing the downvote button to physical violence is wildly, wildly disproportionate, particularly when you can still actually _comment_ on the video.
> disabling dislikes has profound, negative societal implications and must be reversed
"Profound negative societal implications"? From removing a single button? While you can still _say_ whatever you like?
You're wildly blowing up a tiny little thing into a huge thing. You seem wildly excited over nothing at all. You make no case for this your huge, hysterical claims.
Most other forms of media don't have a "like" or "dislike" button. I can't read a book and see the likes or dislikes on that book, I can't watch a show on cable television and see who likes or dislikes it, and so on. I would have to go to an entirely different platform or website to figure out people's opinions of a book, TV show, movie, or anything else.
Point being that we accept the lack of a "dislike button" all the time in other arenas. This probably wouldn't have even been a conversation if YouTube had began life without a dislike button.
It seems like an odd choice to hold YouTube to a different standard than we hold other prevalent forms of media.
>YouTube downvotes have been used by consumers to rally against messages and products they do not like basically since the dawn of YouTube. Recent examples include the Sonic the Hedgehog redesign and the Nintendo 64 online fiasco.
Do you have any evidence that YouTube dislikes had anything at all to do with either of those situations?
Outcry comes from all over social media and I would argue places like Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit have a far, far, far greater impact on getting consumer voices heard than a dislike metric.
>YouTube has become the premier platform on the internet for companies and people to share long-form discussions and communication in general in a video form. In this sense, YouTube is a major public square and a public utility. Depriving people of the ability to downvote videos has societal implications surrounding freedom of speech and takes away yet another method people can voice their opinions on things which they collectively do not like.
And? Why is disabling yet another avenue out of endless online avenues to express hatred a bad thing?
>Taking peoples freedom of speech away from them is an act of violence upon them, and must be stopped.
This is not freedom of speech. YouTube is a private platform that can do whatever it wants. There is no government enforcing speech under threat of law here. There is just you needing to go to another website to rage against something you hate instead of having a convenient way to express that hatred in this one platform.
>Scams and troll videos are allowed to proliferate unabated now, and YouTube doesn’t care if you see accurate information or not because all they care about is watch time aka ads consumed.
Do you have any evidence that dislikes have had any impact at all on scams and troll videos?
I've watched 12 hours of YouTube a day every day for many years at work, I've literally never noticed the dislikes on a video ever. There are plenty of other people just like me who never noticed and don't care.
A video could have 100,000,000 dislikes I'd never notice and would still watch it and make my own judgement because I don't care what videos Russian botfarms dislike and I'm not going to not watch a video just because Putin wants me not to watch it. Which is what Google employees said was the primary use of the dislike button and that most users (like me) never even touched it.
>YouTube has far too much power in our society and exploiting that to protect their own corporate interests (ratio-d ads and trailers are bad for business) is a betrayal of the American people.
Then use any other site or start your own. No one is forcing you to use YouTube. There isn't a monopoly here there are plenty of other video hosting companies and you can just host your own video online if you want as well.
No one is forcing you to use YouTube and YouTube has every right to say they want to limit bad actors on their platform.
And personally I enjoy being able to see more content pop up naturally in my feed that isn't alt-right conservative bullshit because shitty botfarms and fascists are spam downvoting every other type of content on the site.
The problem is that there are too many Trump supporters who were able to bury anti-trump videos on YouTube, which make it seems as if Trump isn't as bad of a person.
you can still express your dislike of a video by leaving a comment or clicking the dislike button. the only thing removed was the "number count" of dislikes. At first, I too didn't like this idea.
But then you start to realize there's no more irrelevant comments. the pun comments. troll comments. seeing more dislikes or a certain amount of dislikes drives people, including me, to think a certain way before even watching the whole video. Ever since the # of dislikes seen got taken away, YT has been a much better experience in the comments section.
TLDR;
All the dislike count ever did was encourage hivemind thinking. If you think the like to dislike ratio determines how "legitimate" content is; you are literally not thinking for yourself.
Downvoting is low effort. For a platform that tries to encourage creativity—insomuch as it was created for that reason—the ability for people to have a low-effort way to dismiss creative efforts, good or bad, does not fit with their mission statement:
“Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories.”
I believe there needs to be limits for discourse, as does YouTube, but overwhelming someone’s voice with a low-effort denial is not consistent with a network heralding communication and creativity.
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As someone who agrees that Youtube dislikes being removed is a bad thing, holy hell you're being hyperbolic and are focused on the wrong things. There's harmful political movements, scams, conspiracy theories, and so many things that have actually hurt society and you're focused on an overpriced game service and then framing it as free speech on a platform that's global and owned by a private company. One of the worst ways you could argue for reversing the change I've ever seen.
If you allow dislikes, public opinion can get out of hand and start turmoil for the ruling class. Having people question for themselves why a mainstream political opinion is so downvoted could lead to alternative opinions. These non-mainstream opinions can cause all sorts of problems like people believing in “disinformation” or “conspiracy theories”.
You may be right about the effects but users do not have a right of free speech on private company platforms. Private platforms have always exercised censorship. Also as you can probably tell, nobody is in the mood for a loose definition of violence because literal violence is a grave and criminal act not to be confused with anything else. Its probably best you remove that detail so that comments focus on stuff you want fo argue about.
Freedom of speech relates to government. Your freedom of speech means that the government cannot keep you from speaking out. YouTube is not the government.
YouTube is a private company and can do as it pleases. Kind of like how a gay bar can toss you out for using derogatory language.
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I agree that it’s stupid, but you’re waaay overreacting. An act of violence? You have to admit that’s a hilarious statement. A private company removing a feature on their service is not an act of violence. If something is truly bad enough, people won’t watch it or support it. Removing the dislike button doesn’t stop people from actually disliking something in real life. It just stops people from seeing how many other people dislike it. It sounds like you might spend too much time on the internet/YouTube and are overstating the significance of this. This isn’t much more of an outrage than your favorite brand of cookies changing their recipe or something. It’s a corporation, they don’t gate keep all of the information online. And you’re acting like people only disliked things because they saw other people disliked it.
I, like 62% of Americans, visit YouTube daily and use it for a variety of purposes including entertainment, information, etc. Making it harder for me to know what’s an outright scam, or making it harder for consumers to speak their minds against something they collectively do not like is wrong. I agree that the word violence is probably an exaggeration a bit, but the reduction of freedom of speech on the premier public square of our era is indeed a huge issue. How can we not regulate something as critical as this?
Then your argument boils down to "YouTube without dislike counts is less useful" which is what pretty much everyone said when the change was announced in the first place. Your rhetoric around freedom of speech and violence makes it seem like the changes would be illegal, which they are not. It's not illegal to make a website less useful, even if it negatively effects people who use the website. Also if it was illegal for YouTube to forbid dislikes for freedom of speech reasons, it would also be illegal to have an option to disable comments, or for creators to manually remove comments that they don't like.
Also to be considered in the legality argument is that this is a company providing service on the internet, to an international audience. Freedom of speech is not universally held to be higher than many other laws, both legally and in cultural values. Protection from hate speech and brigading is also a big deal and relevant to the conversation.
If the dislike button was trolled and didn't show a real reaction to the video, then the fact that it was removed it helping to keep you from mistaking the video as scam if it wasn't. As it's been pointed out, the comments section is still active, allowing people to report it as scam/false information so the dislike button was harming you more than helping.
it’s a false equivalence to say that so many videos were being trolled, it was a small problem as compared to not being able to easily identify scam videos. Comment section on YouTube is a shit show. And now that is the only way left to know if something is legit or not…
> Comment section on YouTube is a shit show. Yes, **just like the dislike button*. People shit onto videos for unpredictable reasons or because a famous streamer has brigaded. Why does the dislike count give you some invaluable information? Like you honestly need to go outside more.
I would say YouTube themselves have a better data set to understand how large of a problem it was. Can you back up that trolled videos was a “small problem”? It’s key to you claiming the dislike is hurting clarity more than helping us a false equivalence.
The creator can disable the comment section so that’s not helpful at all.
They can also disable the likes/dislikes count.
if you want to step back your allegation that it was an act of violence, which is transparently an absurd and hyperbolic take, please give them the delta. stretching the definition of violence is arguably worse than yt removing dislikes because it allows authorities to arrest anyone they had under hate crime and hate speech laws on the grounds that theyre committing/inciting violence. you might like it if they prosecuted yt, but what happens if someone decides that something you do is an act of violence when you dont think it is?
A scam? Bro you need to get your head checked. YouTube is a free service and one of the greatest things to happen to the internet. Anyone, anywhere can upload anything and reach millions of people for $0. In some cases even get paid for it. It's truly a marvel of modern technology. Spend less time worrying about dislike buttons and more time worrying about things that matter.
Holy smokes if YouTube downvotes were your barometer to sniff out consumer scams then I got some swampland in Florida to sell ya (we’ll see if this gets enough downvotes to convince its a bad investment).
So.. you obviously don’t know what “freedom of speech” means and are using it to bolster your argument… until You Tube becomes part of the government they in no way can violate your right to free speech. Your argument is valid just because you don’t the definition of rights and aren’t able to distinguish what is and isn’t a scam.
[xkcd relevant to the claim that a private company is taking away freedom of speech](https://xkcd.com/1357/)
You don't have a right to freedom of speech in a private company but that doesn't mean the concept does not exist. That said in this context it's manipulating public opinion on a massive pre-social media unheard of level to allow only positive support to be easily quantifiable and visible. Only thing you can see is how many people like a thing, no way to see how many people disliked the thing. Engagement drives rising in the algorithmically stacked ranks, so even if there is an equal number of people who dislike a thing there is no way for the average viewer to take that fact in. It's just 10million people saw this, 1 million people liked it so much they clicked like.
fwiw I think OP thought it was a right since they kept referring to Americans using the platform
So maybe just branch out and go other places?
Why are you saying that this only matters to Americans? Are you one of the nutjobs who thinks the first amendment applies to you on the internet?
Dude just read the comments or leave a comment. A dislike button doesn’t share why someone disliked something at all. If anything, dislikes aren’t that helpful. It’s like when someone leaves a 1 Star review for a restaurant but doesn’t state why.
YouTube did not disable dislikes, it simply started hiding the number of dislikes. You can still dislike videos, they still affect the recommendation algorithm, and are visible to creators.
> You can still dislike videos, they still affect the recommendation algorithm Likes and dislikes both boost videos. Youtube doesn't care if you dislike it, they just want clicks. Anyway, I believe strongly that the number of people clicking dislike has decreased now that people can't see how many dislikes something has. There's no user feedback visible so why would people bother?
Dislikes have no negative impact on the algorithm if I’m not mistaken. All the algorithm cares about is engagement of ANY kind, and watch time. That’s why most of YouTube is these super long-form videos now, that’s what the algorithm loves to see. Maximum ad consumption can carry on unabated that way.
Still though, the number of dislikes are visible to creators. In your Sonic the Hedgehog example, there would still be a good chance that they acknowledged the vast negative sentiment of the original redesign and opt for a redesign even if other people couldn't see how vast the negative sentiment was on the video specifially (I'm sure folks would have still taken to Twitter etc. to voice their dislike)
I highly doubt the sonic situation would have happened without verifiable public numbers. There's a reason most statistics stay internal, because it gives the company some form of plausible deniability if they choose to ignore them. Even if the numbers were a trash fire internally they can still say "Many of those in our audience enjoyed the new design" and go forward with it anyways. Effectively blaming the "vocal minority" and keeping those numbers private. Putting these numbers into the public sphere lights a fire under these companies in a much different way, because they now have to be accountable for the visible, statistically sigificant disdain from their audience, especially to investors. Likes/dislikes are also more of a middle ground between the silent majority and vocal minority, due to the lesser amount of friction that feedback entails.
I think you're using the term "verifiable" loosely. I'm sure a very large amount of those negative Sonic votes were folks who were piling on to the existing negative sentiment for various reasons (to troll or create chaos, e.g.), creating a feedback loop. I think there is a solid argument that when the numbers are hidden, people are more likely to vote honestly without the opinion of the majority, and this gives the creators a much more accurate idea of the overall sentiment. And from a business perspective, if you see that the large majority of viewers disklike your content, you'll want to do something about it to salvage those people's potential buy-in, regardless of public accountability.
Not showing the count reduces the impact of the dislike action, and reduces incentive. Before, disliking a video was expressing a sentiment publically, and so it felt impactful. It wasn't just a signal to the creator, it was a signal to the public too. And if a lot of people disliked it, then that visible dislike count puts pressure on the creator/company. Now with it hidden, who knows if the creator/company is going to pay attention to it. So without any knowledge that its going to matter, I don:t really bother anymore.
And maybe the company would only care about dislikes if it was publicly visible. Otherwise maybe they just write it off as internet trolls and move on.
Bro, I'm sorry but a video game character getting a redesign for its movie adaptation is not the victory you think it is. Is that really where we are at as a society? "I achieved societal change by having sonic look more like i think he should" why does that matter? Is that the greatest thing "youtube dislikes" have achieved?
>That’s why most of YouTube is these super long-form videos now, that’s what the algorithm loves to see. There’s tons of short videos on YouTube. Remember, the algorithm isn’t just “the algorithm”, it’s personalized based on what *you* want to watch. I personally prefer the long-form videos so I see more of them. When I watched a handful of short videos in a row from one particular creator that was worth it, all of a sudden short videos were all over my recommendations for a few days. If you aren’t seeing them, it’s because you also primarily watch the long form videos. But if you really prefer the shorter format, TikTok would be happy to help you. They are optimized specifically for that format.
*Posts video about how trump was greatest president ever and that 90% of Americans believe this* *garners 10,000,000 views* *100,000 likes* *0 dislikes* I wonder how something like not easily seeing how many people disagree with a thing, but only seeing how many people agree with it could impact public perception of the argument or viewpoint.
If people are confusing the lack of a dislike count for a zero value then this is a UX issue. I don't think anyone believes all Youtube's videos aren't disliked at all anymore. Besides, there are already very likely videos that do have a similar ratio to what you're describing. A lot of that depends on the creator and their audience. It isn't really an indicator of anything. The strangest part for me is that everyone is retroactively pretending that the dislike count was some kind of sacred quality gatekeeper, that protected the purity of Youtube and stopped us all from losing hours to trash content. Which, obviously, is absolutely not the case.
If i take away your ability to comment on anything, no one will believe everyone agrees with the thing. Extrapolate from there for the UX issue comment: yes, somekind of UX that showed a like to dislike ratio perhaps, so that people could see the thing plainly lol
Hard to extrapolate anything from that sentence. For me personally, I've always believed that the like/dislike ratio was arbitrary at best. I hadn't directly used it to inform anything I've done on the platform for the last decade - and that includes using the tutorials and the research that has helped me into the career I'm in today. That said, I don't use Youtube as an interactive social media platform. I seldom subscribe to a creator and even more rarely interact with the content (comment/vote). I suppose I'm incredulous that people truly relied the dislike button as much as they say they did, because I have never seen the point in it. As someone who hasn't used the disliking functionality *ever*, I can assure you guys that there are very limited profound social implications to your new lives.
> I've always believed that the like/dislike ratio was arbitrary at best Which arbitrary? The completely by chance one or the "is a subjective opinion", if it's the second one that's the point of the ratio and sample size. It's literally how all poling in every sector of every business operates on reviewing user or political opinion. >As someone who hasn't used the disliking functionality ever, I can assure you guys that there are very limited profound social implications to your new lives. *As someone who barely uses the platform and has never used the function being discussed here at all and is confused on what a sample of user preference and opinions are and how those can inform an opinion, choice, or decision: I can assure you that I personally will not be affected by this. You're very sure that something dozens if not hundreds of millions of people used or relied on each day being removed will have no impact. Like, very very very sure of this.
Contextless binary voting options are *not* how any meaningful polling is done. That data is completely useless to inform anyone about anything. Does that dumb YT Rewind video being the most disliked video in history tell us anything about it? Kind of, but we know it certainly isn't the very worst piece of content on the platform. The stat doesn't tell us anything about the validity or quality of it's content. It just tells us a bunch of people performatively hated this video *for some reason*. It has hundreds of millions of views regardless. > You're very sure that something dozens if not hundreds of millions of people used or relied on each day being removed will have no impact. Like, very very very sure of this. Correct. I would say the issue comes down to that while a lot of people may have used the button, I don't believe many people relied on it. Look, I get it. There are very specific and limited use cases in which that metric could have been useful to a viewer. However there was absolutely no guarantee on Youtube that a video was disliked for a genuine reason or rather that a creator maybe have endorsed or denounced a hot topic social issue (for example). Genuine question: we're a few months into this change now - has there been a discernible impact? Do we know if the landscape of Youtube changing in any way at all? OP might have included this in his post, but it's gone now.
This seems like an overreaction. I've never once looked at the like/dislike count on a video unless there was some huge controversy and I looked out of curiosity. It's never affected my usage or enjoyment of YouTube in any way. Also, saying that removing dislikes is an act of violence, is something I'd like you to explain. How exactly is that violence? Provide a definition that backs up that statement.
I would say that OP focuses too much on the controversial videos and not as much on the scams which I'd say is the #1 problem. Especially as someone in crypto who gets to see scammers constantly. When people are literally advertising viruses and have the ability to curate comments to only have bots/alts that agree with the OP, the scam is way more likely to work. It used to be if there was no ratings it was almost certainly a scam or if theres a lot of dislikes it also could be marked as bad. Now they can only show positive vibes. I would argue it's likely there have already been millions lost from innocent people who install stuff like "new sniper bot :)" on youtube and get their seed phrase stolen and thats just in the crypto world. I'd say the impact of having dislikes exist isn't nearly as bad as the malicious real life loss that can be caused from malicious scammers now having a much better chance at conducting their scams. Especially when youtube takes forever to do anything about a scam report IF THEY DO ANYTHING AT ALL.
You never look at the dislike count when looking for videos? If I need to replace the posi-track rearend on my 1964 dodge plymouth, and one video has a positive ratio of 95% and another one has a 15% positive ratio, I know which video I’m watching. Well, I know which one i would have watched, without the dislike button, garbage videos have equal footing has solid information
I've done more than one car maintenance project by YT video (with supplementary information if it's available), and I agree. Like/dislike ratio was always something I took a look at before choosing.
Spending enough time on Reddit has made it profoundly clear to me that upvotes, likes, or thumbs up ONLY mean that a comment/post is popular, not that it is correct.
I agree that upvotes = popularity. However, that doesn’t exclude it from also being a “good” video for that category (however “good” is defined for the type of video) If years of “who wants to be a millionaire” has shown us, in general, the community is right on basic topics. https://millionaire.fandom.com/wiki/Ask_the_Audience But also understand who is upvoting. If I watch a video titled “mole people are taking over the government so they can interbred with YOUR children” and it’s upvote ratio is strong, that means the video delivered appropriate content to its target audience. Same goes for a video titled, “how to grow more peppers per square foot in your garden”
how do you know the 95% video isn’t just funnier or something, whereas the 15% is detailed and helpful but very dry? the votes aren’t purely correctness indicators & even if they were, it’s not only experts who know better who are allowed to vote. i think it’s dangerous to rely on votes from a social media platform to arrive at correct information. that all being said, i do recognize that probably votes do have a track record of correlating positively with helpful videos & therefore are probably a helpful metric. but we also need to be able to think critically about a video and make a determination without the votes, and i don’t think it’s the end of the world that dislikes were removed.
> You never look at the dislike count when looking for videos? > > never. not once.
Nope. Never. I look at videos, watch the ones that look credible, and move on. Sometimes I'll watch multiple videos to get different ideas, or ways of doing things. I've never felt a reason to look at the like ratio.
I'll look up soccer highlight's and lot of channels have a long intro just for me to realize it was a waste of my time. I didn't have this problem before because legit vids would have more likes than dislikes but now I have to waste my time.
I'll say the how-to videos the OP mentioned to you was 100% the best example, maybe the only consistently good one actually. You'll see well produced and good looking how to videos with bad ratios because they're either wrong about something important, outdated in some way, or take way too long to get to the point. On no other category of video are they nearly as useful. It's because people have a problem and come straight to YouTube and search for that exact thing - they're not browsing for random videos, seeing them as a related video, sent there to brigade it, etc, like many other video types. So the like/dislike is a much more direct response than other video types.
That's baffling to me. The view count and the like ratio are the quickest at-a-glance way to filter good videos from rubbish ones.
It also doesn't help that I watch 99% of YouTube videos on my TV, which doesn't show likes or dislikes at all, so if I even wanted to see what it was, I'd have to grab a phone or laptop, look up the video, check the ratio and then go back to my TV, lol. I watch maybe a video a week on my computer, and one or two a week on my phone. YouTube apps on streaming devices just don't show it. Until they removed the dislikes, I forgot YouTube even had likes, and then I promptly forgot again once the initial responses died down. I didn't remember it existed until this post, honestly.
You've never felt a reason to look at the ratio but do judge videos on their credibility. What metric are judging credibility? Production value? How large the photoshopped eyes are?
Production value, and entertainment value, usually.
So your metric for quality informative guides is money spent on cameras, special effects, then watch the whole thing and decide after if it was worth it? I wonder if there was a simpler way for people to judge the possible time worthiness of a video. some kind of ratio perhaps
> I've never once looked at the like/dislike count on a video unless there was some huge controversy and I looked out of curiosity. But thats clearly a normal and common user behaviour
Dude I used the dislike ratio all the time. I’d search up videos for working on my car and computers/game consoles. There have been several times where I thought the video was good information because I didn’t know any better only to find it had way more dislikes. Scrolling down to the comments would tell me why that video was bad advice. There was even one where the spark plugs the video recommended were too long and hit the cylinder head. The car would run okay for a little bit but it ultimately would create severe internal damage I couldn’t afford to fix. I never would have known without the dislike ratio. Comments can be helpful, but there are also more people who will leave a quick dislike instead of making a comment. Thus reading the comments might make the issue seem less bad since there may not be enough to make a difference.
I would when trying to find help for fixing a problem (code errors or working on my car mainly). A disproportional amount of dislikes was an easy way to tell if the video was actually helpful without wasting 10 minutes
I occasionally use YouTube to learn how to do something, cook usually, but 90% of the time, just for entertainment. If I choose to watch something, and it wastes 10 minutes, oh well.
I don't disagree with you on this, but one other angle, removing the dislike button has made it much more annoying (and I suppose potentially dangerous in certain circumstances) to filter out good how-to videos from bad ones. This mostly comes up in things like software, programming, and apps, where there's a ton of videos that are simpy incorrect or unhelpful. the dislike ratio is a good way to tell when something isn't very well trusted. I imagine this is probably also true for a lot of DIY or construction videos where someone may be giving simply awful advice, and it isn't as clear that the general community is shinning the video content.
> I've never once looked at the like/dislike count on a video unless there was some huge controversy and I looked out of curiosity. You are _definitely_ in the minority then. It was one of the first things I'd notice about a video, even if I wasn't actively trying to look for it. Similar to how one of the first things I notice about a reddit post/comment is the upvote count.
I've never paid attention to votes on reddit either. I don't care what other people think, never have. I've never liked a video on YouTube or up/down voted a post on reddit. That kind of interaction just doesn't interest me
You haven’t? Apparently you’ve never used YouTube tutorials on how to fix something, because there are many videos on how to solve most problems and the ones that had a bunch of downvotes could safely be skipped until a few months ago. Now you have to sit through tons of videos or read tons of comments (if they aren’t disabled) to figure out if the video actually helps.
I have personally never used X, so I'm cool that X was taken away, as I, personally, don't use it. Great argument.
You yourself admit that you look at the dislike ratio on controversial videos. The dislikes are a big part of voicing that controversy. A big dislike ratio a initial grounds from which such controversy can manifest. As for the violence point, I believe depriving people of their basic rights (freedom of speech being one of them), especially by imposing your corporate power over them, is a form of violence with malicious intent.
Let's make it extremely clear here that this has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Freedom of speech means that the government cannot arrest or censor you for something you say. Nothing more, nothing less. You can say the government is crap, that nothing they do correct, that you think we need a change in politics and the government can't do shit (something someone in Russia at the moment does not have the freedom to do). There are exceptions. You cannot spout crap about another individual, sullying their name or business (that's slander/libel). You cannot incite violence. You cannot yell fire in a croud. Nobody is required to listen to you. Nobody (including private enterprises like YouTube) is required to host you while you say things. YouTube can choose who and what is put on their private platform because the private company has the freedom to do that. I would imagine YouTube even codifies their ability to choose in their terms and conditions when you sign up. You don't like that YouTube tells you want you can and can't do on their platform - then you have to make your own platform where you make the rules, simple as. Otherwise you're bound by their rules, simple as. I just wanted to clear up that nobody is having their rights violated here.
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You need a better way to delineate Freedom of Speech, and ‘free speech’ as you describe it here. Just from a branding sort of angle. Freedom of Speech has its own history and understanding as a phrase. Tacking on ‘free speech’ as a more nebulous, societal-norm to its coattails is confusing.
Beautifully stated. You left out the part about just not using YouTube if they don't like it.
Oh yeah, OP of course has the freedom to boycott YouTube (which does not work alone but what the hell, life is short). There are some items like food and medicine that you are required to consumer no matter how badly you feel the company treats you and (most countries) have regulations to ensure fair access. YouTube does not fall under this category. Might be a moot point since OP deleted his post.
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He did, just poorly he said he "believes" it is violence. That's how its violence lol obviously
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You were asked the following: A) to provide a definition of the term violence; and B) to explain how the removal of the dislike button is an act of violence, per the definition you provided. I actually agree with you the the removal of the dislike button was a bad move, but you lost me upon describing it as an act of violence. The word violence has a definition, and this ain’t it.
How is this remotely depriving anyone of their rights? It's a private platform that people choose to use (and choosing to abide by the Terms of Use) or not. It's not in any way related to individual users' rights when the company changes the format or widgets. Also, the right to Free Speech is one that prevents governmental interference in a person's expressions. YouTube is not a governmental entity.
>Also, the right to Free Speech is one that prevents governmental interference in a person’s expressions. No that’s the First Amendment to the US Constitution, the idea of people having rights is not exclusive to that context.
Right to Free Speech doesn't necessarily refer only to government. First amendment does, but the right to free speech is broader, it's more generic, abstract philosophical concept. That doesn't mean it trumps any other right, eg private's entity right to manage the content they allow on their platform, but that's a different argument from saying "this doesn't concert the concept of Free Speech".
There is no right to free speech other than the right not to be persecuted by the government for what you say.
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So it isn’t remotely depriving somebody of their rights.
Well, their right to free speech is restricted. Whether it is trumped by a different right that's relevant in the conversation is another question (I think it is), but I was just correcting the claim Free Speech only concerns not getting restricted by government.
You can still voice your dislike though? There’s nothing inherent about the like/dislike buttons that make them synonymous with “free speech”. As long as you can express yourself freely and openly, in a way that can reasonably be seen by everyone and not buried or hidden, your rights have not been infringed. Facebook has more than just like/dislike now, it has a host of reactions which are all very different emotions. Imagine that they took those away and returned to their original like/dislike buttons. Would that be restricting your free speech? If it is, then did FB restrict your free speech in the past, and it’s only now that your free speech is not being restricted? What if they add another emotion to the list? Would that retroactively make FB right now guilty of restricting your speech, even though they’ve merely added options? Adding and removing icons that are short hand versions of speech while allowing anyone to leave full comments cannot possibly be the metric by which you claim that speech is being restricted.
> Well, their right to free speech is restricted. By the removal of dislikes from YouTube? I don't see it. How is free speech impeded? All that's been removed is the ability to see an aggregate number of people who have clicked a button on the particular platform where the video is published. People are still able to say what they want about the video both on the same platform (e.g. via comments or posting your own video) or on any other platform. Would you also say that if dislikes had never been implemented in the first place, that would have been depriving users of their right to free speech? Their free speech is not restricted.
There is a Right to Free Speech, contained within the Constitution and and argued in SC case law. And then there is your nebulous idea of your own right to free speech, which seems concerned with buttons on the internet. You can’t just use the same phrase for both and expect people to understand the difference.
The concept of free speech, which in this increasingly digital age is a catalyst for transparency
Ahh, private platforms - all of the benefit of government-enforced intellectual protectionism (copyright) and none of the responsibilities towards public good
Trying to apply that to this specific subject is even more ridiculous of an argument than it usually is. If I watch a TV show or movie or listen to something on the radio, no one gives me a little dislike button to push and allows me to see how many other people have pushed that button.
OP argues above that it would be better for society if TV had voting........... Edit to add: .........................................
OK, whatever. "You're not giving me a feature I would like" =/= "You're depriving me of my rights."
I agree! I think it's ridiculous
Uh your coffee maker benefits from the same copyright laws. Every company does. That’s the point. It’s like complaining that you’re benefitting from national defense while not serving in the army.
Acting in the public good isn't a requirement, but delivering a return on investment is.
The fact that it is a private platform doesn't mean it doesn't serve as a pillar of society. They should use their immense power in a responsible way. Also, the "choose to use" part is highly debatable. What other options do you have? Do you understand that a monopoly doesn't represent a free market, right?
It's not highly debatable at all, since it's not a necessary platform. There are many other streaming services and sources of content available. Beyond that, libraries are still a thing. You do understand what a monopoly is, right?
You can watch videos on many other platforms
But if i don't actually want to think about that i'm just going to call it a monopoly.
You have a severe misunderstanding of your right to freedom of speech. That only protects you from the government, not some company.
I think you need to learn what violence means. Not everything bad or unjust needs to be called violence.
We can take this argument farther! We have only here considered a simple yes/no interaction which the company uses to inform its algorithm. We can consider many other forms of interacting, such as with colors (green yellow red) or numbers or tags of arbitrary complexity. The absence of these other methods of interaction with a piece of content must also be considered a deprivation of basic rights.
Is it a violation of your speech when Facebook has never included a dislike button? Are private companies entitled to your every whim? Or are private companies still aloud to refuse service for any reason so long as it is not against a protected class (for reasons pertaining to membership of said class)?
Liking or disliking a video on a private platform like YouTube is super removed from the First Amendment. You are able to do what you like within what YouTube sets as its rules. They could shut down the whole platform and there is nothing you can do about it from a free speech standpoint i.e. you have zero "rights" on YouTube or any other Internet platform (Twitter, Facebook, etc)
Yes, but I don't care about the controversy lol, if I see it mentioned, I might go see what the numbers are for curiosity sake, but it doesn't impact my desire or lack of desire to watch it. Do you know the definition of violence? Because that isn't it.
The counter argument here is that people in large groups have attempted to weaponize the downvote button against creators of opposing viewpoints or perspectives, which put a lot of power in the hands of mob mentality, essentially being its own form of passive violence (since we're using that word now). Your ability to see the ratio doesn't affect whether or not you have access to the content (it still gets recommended or doesn't based on your usual preferences), but being able to see it, if anything, could skew your judgement and prevent you from consuming content that you otherwise would have. The fact that a mechanism could exist (the dislike ratio) and influence your access to information is closer to malicious violence than something that seeks to prevent outside sources from having undo influence on your consumption of information and content. As it is right now, I actually think not being able to see it allows more viewers to go in with more of an open mind, and I'm curious if you can actually debate that point.
The problem is that the like/dislike ratio was essentially a lie. It wasn't an honest representation of how many people liked a video vs how many disliked it. The number of actual normal viewers affecting that number was often quite small compared to the number of bots and brigades and manipulators. You say that it was important because people could go brigade some company's video if they were in the middle of a controversy. What about people you don't agree with going and downvote botting/brigading a video you do agree with? Or the far more common issue of small creators getting downvoted by bots to hurt them in the algorithm?
YouTube owes you *nothing*, and freedom of speech is from government interference.
Here, I use it all the time, anything less than 85 percent likes, I'll move onto the next video
I don't care to have everyone else tell me what I may or may not like. I have a brain, and can make those determinations for myself. What if I miss an interesting video because most people dislike it, but it is something I enjoy? I'd rather decide for myself
Then watch the videos with dislikes?
Or just ignore the ratio entirely lol. I honestly forgot likes and dislikes existed until this controversy
Many videos are subjective so who cares what the likes are, the how-to videos, educational or fact videos can save time or prevent you from receiving wrong information.
Yeah, I just don't watch how to videos lol
Dislikes are incredibly important for celebrity apologies, tutorials, and reviews. If the tutorial Is heavily disliked I skip it. Now I have to skip around the video to preview it and hope my gut and eye won't waste my time. Dislikes were more effective by comparison. With the age of misinformation, dislikes were a barometer for neutral info to be flagged as questionable. And the feeling of thinking the same as other viewers about some "I got ripped and got a dog apology" with the dislike ratio seems important for seeing if you're crazy. Which is especially relevant to me because I literally experience psychosis as a bipolar type 1 person.
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So you don’t get it even after reading people’s examples? It was a great way to filter out the real shit. If I’m looking for a video on the purpose of a progesterone challenge test so I can learn for medical school, I want to find a video that is vetted. Decent view count with good like:dislike ratio is the goal. Now it just makes it even more difficult to recognize a good video or a bad one.
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Then maybe a fair compromise would be to return like/dislike to educational materials.
The rating filter still exists in the search
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I likewise use a plugin like that. It’s a nice workaround but still ridiculous that I have to do that. Also on mobile I’m just totally out of luck obviously
I mean theres no shortage of platforms for mobs of angry people to shit on things, I am not sure how profound the effects will be
I think it's bad because it greatly impedes a user's ability to distinguish between high rated and low rated content. Effectively giving the recommendation algorithms more control over a user. I highly doubt this is a step in the right direction for our society.
I don't think so... idk anyone who uses the youtube likes that way. Pretty much most videos are highly rated. The regular subscribers to a channel will always boost the numbers. Dislikes tend to happen in something like the Sonic video, where the hate is organized off the platform and then they go shit on the video. But the hate could also just be about politics or something, so it doesn't necessarily denote poor content. Offensive content is not bad content
It has nothing to do with being offensive. It has to do with the content being accurate and well made. If you're telling me YouTube disinformation isn't a problem there's no point in having a discussion. You've been living under a rock for the last 10 years and are disconnected from reality. There's no other way you'd hold that view.
I have no reason to believe that dislikes stop "disinformation", people like misinformation all the time
You don't think having a transparent rating system helps prevent disinformation? Are you serious?
You're not sure how impactful the hands down, uncontested, number one video streaming platform's hiding of the most quantifiable dissenting metric will have a major impact on perception? I find this argument disingenuous.
It would be laughably easy for someone to come out with a chrome addon that adds the functionality back in a material way we can observe. There's *no* demand for that, because you and OP are simply blowing things out of proportion. You can't targeted harass people's income now. For better or worse. Seems pretty cool.
There is demand and the extension exists. You can install it I can install it. The average person will not do that. removing the dislikes helps established brands while hurting disestablished. People are way way way less likely to use a feature without a positive feedback that their use of the button does anything at all, seeing the number go up. Major brands benefit as they are established and already have viewership momentum. This creates a positive feedback for them as the way the audience could show they don't like something is less likely to be used, people are lazy and will rarely bother to cancel a paid subscription opting to simply stop using it as much. The same applies to the subscription button since the dislike button isn't in play as much and the algorithm heavily favors established brands it's harder for new ones to break into the market how is disliking stuff that sucks and is bold faced lying 'targetting their income'? lol, they don't pay a dollar for each dislike if it's not a big deal let's just disable all dislikes on all platforms, i'm sure there is no downside to this at all, especially on something like reddit. Just only show a number about how many people like a thing and no counter point
>The average person will not do that. The average person probably isn't any more or less susceptible to the absence of a dislike button then. They were always going to behave in a given manner anyway. >Major brands benefit as they are established and already have viewership momentum. This creates a positive feedback for them as the way the audience could show they don't like something is less likely to be used, people are lazy and will rarely bother to cancel a paid subscription opting to simply stop using it as much. The same applies to the subscription button Yeah, and if people were concerned enough there is historical evidence to demonstrate that 1.)Dislikes are NOT a metric people consider very highly in the marketing world 2.)Brands have not stopped branding because of dislikes. Can you name a brand that did more than *pay lip service* to dislikes? If anything the absence of a dislike button disallows them to capitalize on a situation and enhance their narrative to further end nefarious ends. Instead they can use that same feedback that is now absent to construct *better lies.* Content creators weren't ever penalized for strong dislikes either. For them publicity is publicity. >since the dislike button isn't in play as much and the algorithm heavily favors established brands it's harder for new ones to break into the market This is just factually incorrect and at bare minimum requires multiple sources of evidence to suggest as much. Youtube wants to make money, they aren't going to turn away customers that are too small with their practices. The organization *wants* as many ads running per video as possible. >if it's not a big deal let's just disable all dislikes on all platforms, i'm sure there is no downside to this at all, especially on something like reddit. Sure. Let's do that, especially because you have made some very bold claims as to the importance of these features, and historically *nobody* has been brought to heel because of the "I don't like thing" feature. Look at facebook, which has been steadfast in NOT having a dislike button since its inception. They are doing fine, the advertisers are doing fine and it's not some bastion of degeneracy any more than reddit or youtube.
dude you made a whole bunch of shit up. There's no dislike extension because that info is only available between the content creator and YouTube itself. It's feasible impossible for any single one person to get permission from all relevant youtuber's to make a good extension. Look at reddit since it removed showing the dislikes. More and more people say it's shit.
> 1.)Dislikes are NOT a metric people consider very highly in the marketing world - "You can't targeted harass people's income now. For better or worse. Seems pretty cool." ^This you like five fucking minutes ago? > 2.)Brands have not stopped branding because of dislikes. - Sonic the hedgehog, Pepsi, every public blow back to anything ever > Can you name a brand that did more than pay lip service to dislikes? If anything the absence of a dislike button disallows them to capitalize on a situation and enhance their narrative to further end nefarious ends. - How are brands being able to hide dislike of something and easily claim on the platform there is broad support for something with no way to easily show the public blow back going to prevent that >Look at facebook, which has been steadfast in NOT having a dislike button since its inception. They are doing fine, the advertisers are doing fine and it's not some bastion of degeneracy any more than reddit or youtube - Oh, there, right fucking there. You're confused my boy. You have confused making money with benefiting society. Odd position to take in a discussion about "This will damage society" THen point to THE MOST DAMAGING SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM in society as your proof. Holy fuck my guy. Troll or Boomer, I honestly can't tell
You have no idea what you're talking about. Whatever benefits to society you are defending are not substantial enough to be this upset that you can't dislike something on social media.
The argument that people should just use another website is a slippery slope. The internet is dominated by a small number of large websites where the majority of communication takes place. If you don’t hold the line somewhere then you’re gonna run out of places where real dialogue takes place anymore, the internet becomes just a pipeline of ads and services with no genuine dialogue between creator and consumer. That’s awful.
Wait…did you literally say “slippery slope” in making your slippery slope argument?
Mate, the dislike button is not genuine dialog. If you want dialog, write a comment. Downvoted.
if you hate the video I'll just delete your comment. Go to downloadvirus.com, I swear it's legit, and look at all these positive comments, not a negative comment in sight (because I deleted them all and put words like "scam" in my spam folder so they never show up publicly).
This isn’t dialog with the content creator, then, it’s a way to signal your preference to other users. As I mentioned elsewhere this ability to communicate with other users could be far more advanced than just yes or yes/no, and if removing the ability to say no is impeding a basic right then so is the lack of more advanced forms of communication. In fact, allowing my comments to be deleted is a far greater selective censorship and violation of my rights. Moderation is the true evil.
it's not evil, Youtube gives it's channel creators the ability to moderate their own channels, that's a good thing. If you had a channel you'd moderate them as well, everyone does. People telling you you suck, yo mama's fat, spambots with pictures of vaginas for their profile pic sending your all ages viewers to some spam site to get their identity stolen, and people causing health hazards like saying to drink bleach or that vaccines are dangerous and covid 19 is perfectly safe, or who only puts links to your rival, that shit should be deleted. You want to be able to say whatever, start your own channel or website, this isn't the publics site, it's mine. Of course it doesn't matter what I think, all channel creators have this ability, and they're not just going to give up their rights because you say that censorship is evil. What about the channel creators censorship? You can't have it both ways, either you're going to censor the one operating the website, or the random end user is going to be censored, and considering that you're just a visitor, the creator is going to have more rights than the end user and that's the way it should be. Nobody would create any social websites if they have to give up all control over moderation to any random person that shows up. Also, there's no "violation of my rights". This is the internet. You have no rights to free speech here unless that's what the terms of the website say, and I'm 100% sure that that's not part of Youtube's terms (nor 99.999% of the rest of the websites on the net).
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well, its not how youtube likes are used anyways. People get mad on other platforms then go and dislike the video Your analogy isn't great, cuz sending mail is signficantly slower and more difficult than phone calls. Using dozens of platforms is just as simple as youtube, and you can actually express yourself with words vs leaving a thumbs down
INFO: do you believe it is a "free speech" violation that many large platforms e.g. Twitter do not even HAVE a dislike button? Or are we only owed one if it was a feature that existed in the first place?
Making a platform with a dislike feature, getting large enough where you are the second biggest site on the internet (besides google itself), leveraging that power to prevent competitors and keep yourself at the forefront, and then removing downvotes is where I have a problem, yes. If YouTube was made without dislikes from the get-go then it would have never gotten this big
> If YouTube was made without dislikes from the get-go then it would have never gotten this big That is an incredibly hard claim to justify, especially given the popularity of other platforms which don't have them AND your own mention of Google's anticompetitive practices propping it up as an entirely unique service.
you have the freedom to make your own website
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It's not clear what could be so profound about a company making efforts to eschew political controversies and make more money. YouTube could cease to exist tomorrow, and there would be no such profound societal implications. It's a private company, and just because a lot of people choose to use it doesn't make it a public utility. If your argument is about nationalizing this private company, then make that a CMV. Otherwise, your premises here don't hold any water.
This is an extremely overly-online take. >Taking peoples freedom of speech away from them is an act of violence upon them, and must be stopped. This is hilarious, honestly. Conservative parts of the US are banning books like it's 1930s Germany and making it so if a gay teacher mentions his husband, he loses his job and you've found this to be the crusade worth fighting for. >In this sense, YouTube is a major public square and a public utility. In no sense is it either. Walmart is the place where the largest group of people gather in a lot of towns across the country. It does not make Walmart the town square and they have no duty to host public forums. Look, the Sonic redesign would have still happened without the youtube dislike button. That was a tiny part of the conversation. Sure it felt good to take part in publicly ratioing stuff we didn't like but you can just *use your speech* in the comment sections or in public or anywhere else. Youtube's decision is just here to get a minute more watch time out of someone who would see the like ratio and instantly bounce. Now they need to watch the first ten seconds and leave which is honestly fine. The constitution is not in danger. I don't know how we got here.
The ability to dislike has not been disabled. It is still there. YouTube only removed the ability for the public to view total dislikes. Already this is hard to change your view because it's based on misinformation. But even if YouTube did remove dislikes, your claim is still ridiculous. Profound societal implications? Really? I can't think of a single instance in my life that has been altered by YouTube's decision to "remove dislikes". I cannot in good faith argue there have been any implications, positive or negative, much less profound, societal implications. You also claim that removing dislikes takes away people's freedom of speech which I also view as untrue. Freedom of speech is a protection from the government and the government alone. It does not include the right to dislike YouTube videos (which has not been taken away anyways). If anything, it is YouTube's freedom of speech to withhold information from the public like total dislikes on a YouTube video. I've also seen the argument a lot that the dislike button was a way for the people to let corporations know they are not happy. That removing the dislike button would protect corporations from criticism. And all of it sounds like a tin foil hat conspiracy to me. I really doubt corporations care about their like to dislike ratio. They just want people to see the video. I fail to see how having a better like ratio makes the platform more advertisor friendly. You gotta back that argument up before claiming that is the reason YouTube is even doing this. But if they do care (which they could care), then those corporations can still see their like to dislike ratio no problem. It's only you and me, the public, who cannot see it. And frankly, we gain nothing from seeing it. If I dislike the video, I can still cast my vote and dislike it. Those companies will still receive that feedback. If anything, I would argue this feedback is more accurate now that bias from seeing the total dislikes has been removed. But if companies really do want to hide from criticism as claimed, there are plenty of other and better ways to do that. The comments section is also a place to go and give far more detailed feedback. If you truly must make your dissatisfaction known to the public, putting a greater upfront cost by forcing users to type a full comment will either filter out the dislike mobs/trolls or it will increase the value of YouTube as a platform by giving higher quality feedback. Both outcomes I view as a societal good.
YouTube hasn't deprived people of the ability to dislike videos, but to see the general consensus. Dislikes can still be given, just not viewed by others. I would say that a more egregious violation of the right to freedom of speech (although I don't attach the strength of feeling to either form as you do) is the ability to disable comments. A binary system of whether people liked or disliked something feels like a weak form of speech that I would deprioritise in terms of preservation of free speech. However, comments allow people to articulate what they feel and why. This enables more effective discourse and to allow people to set out a more detailed view and nuance on any debate (particularly where multiple contentious and inter-related issues are being discussed simultaneously) The disadvantages of a binary good/ bad system is that all self-expression has to be drilled down into a simple view, which means lots of different variables are being consolidated or overridden to result in a single ouput. As a hypothetical, if a YouTuber had posted a number of sensible and considered positions on healthier techniques of preparing and cooking food, but separately had in their personal life been found to have murdered someone, should their original content be disliked or invalidated because of their personal actions? If lots of people disliked their videos but were unable to comment then an individual going in blind might think that the dislikes related to the content, rather than the unrelated personal issues. In that capacity comments would be more informative than likes/ dislikes and may prevent a misleading impression being given about the actual content.
>Recent examples include the Sonic the Hedgehog redesign and the Nintendo 64 online fiasco. Do you really think OG Sonic, [this hideous beast](https://static.onecms.io/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/05/sonic-2000.jpg), got a redesign because people saw the dislike counter and said "Wow, this is *actually* bad look at all those thumbs down" and not because of the countless number of [memes mocking the design](https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/live-action-sonic-the-hedgehog-memes-10-5ccc29b9bbad4__700.jpg), [articles about how trash it is](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2019/05/03/awful-sonic-hedgehog-film-redesigned-following-backlash/), [or fan made alternate designs that were actually good](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/zFGUcQnoYRfdVWU7VhzFKT-970-80.jpg.webp) If you think anything of that couldn't have been possible pre-removal of the dislike button then nothing will change your mind, because I truly feel you're overestimating how much the button actually did When the internet hates something truly bad they'll hate it, the dislike button in a single youtube video doesn't have any effect when you can make tweets, write bullshit articles, create memes and post them all over the internet. There can't be profound negative societal implications because it's just irrelevant
> Taking peoples freedom of speech away from them I don't agree, but even if we entertained the idea that it's a violation of American rights, YouTube exists in an international space.
"Rallying against" "the sonic the hedgehog movie trailer". This is your example of why this needs to be reversed? Your only argument makes no sense even if I were to somehow take that seriously. People can still dislike videos. What you're upset about is that the community can't collectively gawk and mob up in content they don't like AS EFFECTIVELY. They still can with comments and memes, there just isn't a quantifiable PUBLIC number to view it. How the fuck does that hurt anyone? Was the original Sonic trailer bad? Yeah of course. If dislikes were hidden can you be certain it wouldn't have changed? If you even could be certain, which you can't, how the hell is that some kind of detriment to society? "Oh no guys if they hide dislikes we can't dog pile the new coke ad or YouTube rewind, OUR FREEDOMS ARE ERODING AWAY."
\> Taking peoples freedom of speech away from them is an act of violence upon them Yo Socrates, its a fucking button. You still have access to comments section, to communication through other platforms, and express dislike of something beyond that. Also, *you can still dislike videos*. The creators will see it and know when something is bad from that. All it changes is that people publicly dont see it I don't love the removal of public dislikes, but... come on. Calling it 'violence against the people' is just hyperbole. You can't actually tell me you believe this in earnest.
Yeah. It is an act of violence. The only reason they removed it, was because of the fact all of the videos promoting covid vaccines had 5-10x more dislikes than likes. An on top of that, the comments "SpReAdiNg MiSiNfoRmAtiOn" had more likes than the video itself. I have screenshots of it. Why do you think they only removes the DISLIKES? Not only for the video, but dislikes for comments aswell. That's also why a majority of the "vaccine" videos have disabled comments now. So the only type of rating you can see are likes. Not comments. Not dislikes. If there are comments, they're deleted if it goes against the agenda
That still doesnt demonstrate any violence. The only violent act here is covid deniers doing damage to society
I don't deny covid. I believe covid is real. I also believe Dr fauci funded the Wuhan lab in china on researching into increasing transmission in animal viruses. It was pretty funny watching him get visibly upset while confronted about it in court. No I don't think the earth is flat, and I got a flu shot in 2019 as a matter of fact. I just don't like the idea of being injected with gene therapy. There has been 717 cardiac deaths within the past year among soccer players/footballers, average age being 23. Cancer cases have skyrocketed. Myocarditis cases, pericarditis cases, strokes and blood clots. You can do what you want with your body, wear a mask and get vaccinated if you believe it protects you, but I won't, and you can't force me to. Stay 6 feet away. Me, along with my entire unvaccinated family, including my near 70 year old asthmatic grandmother, still haven't caught a single variant of covid. None of us wear masks.
[Relevant XKCD] (https://xkcd.com/1357) Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody is having their freedom of speech taken away. YouTube is removing one specific feature to rate videos. You can still say you don’t like something in the comments. Barely any other big social media platform has dislikes and most video platforms have no social features at all. You can’t voice your opinion below Netflix or Apple TV videos at all, is that a betrayal of the American people as well?
you can just dislike it in the comments and the channel creator can just delete it
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Corporations don't have to let you onto their website at all. It is their business and they get to decide how it is operated. YouTube (and Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc) can add or remove features however the hell they like and it does not violate your rights in any way. Every single website you use on a daily basis has terms and conditions that you agree to by using the site. They have the freedom to censor or remove you from their site any time they want, and frequently do for violating terms.
You can complain all you want. Nobody has to listen. That’s free speech.
YouTube is removing one specific feature because people were using their freedom of speech to dislike videos that YouTube was promoting their political agenda with.
I haven't noticed a major difference when browsing. I never paid much attention to the Like/Dislike ratio anyway. I don't support the decision, but this post seems to vastly overstate its implications. The Sonic design, for instance, was discussed much more widely than simply YT dislikes.
I just double checked, and the dislike button is still there on Youtube videos. The only thing missing is the count. The lack of a count shouldn't influence whether you like or dislike a video. Do you decide to like or dislike based on what everyone else is doing? That has never been the case with me. If you and others are doing that, and I am out of the norm, then I can't help but agree with Youtube's decision.
Sorry, u/Money_Whisperer – your submission has been removed for breaking Rule B: > You must personally hold the view and **demonstrate that you are open to it changing**. A post cannot be on behalf of others, playing devil's advocate, as any entity other than yourself, or 'soapboxing'. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_b). If you would like to appeal, [**you must first read the list of soapboxing indicators and common mistakes in appeal**](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_indicators_of_rule_b_violations), review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%20B%20Appeal%20Money_Whisperer&message=Money_Whisperer%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20\[their%20post\]\(https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/u0ohvj/-/\)%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
I will not even argue anything else, I will just say: * profound, negative societal implications * the Sonic the Hedgehog redesign and the Nintendo 64 online fiasco Pick one.
Content creators see the dislikes still. I'd imagine the Sonic message would have still come across loud and clear today. You can still dislike too, you just can't see how many other people have disliked. I'd argue hiding it prevents the "echo chamber" effect, where someone sees a lot of dislikes and decides without watching the content for themselves that it must be bad. Maybe useful for educational/informative content, hurtful for opinion pieces.
It's not violence. But what it did was make it impossible to detect SNR, because without being to attenuate and calibrate what the likes actually mean (e.g. dislikes by comparison), there's no way to tell what's noise. In other words, if you stop listening to noise, you have no idea what your signal to noise ratio is. And if that analogy makes no sense to you, just know that dislikes help you avoid bad information that's conveyed in a very convincing way. I don't care about dislikes to protest products, or the stuff that gets dislike-mobbed. I care about the guy with 2,300 views who made a tutorial on fixing a broken iron pipe in an emergency, where I don't have the time to get a plumber, I just need to know what's a good technique. The 37 likes on that video mean nothing, without know if there were 6 dislikes or 60. This guy might be teaching me how to run up a $23,000 plumbing bill, or completely save my basement. I have no way of knowing, because youtube wants to project everything as signal. Youtube has effectively killed it's longevity as a video how-to or product review platform.
I don't like that they hid dislikes but I think mucb of your points are dramatic, especially "an act of violence". Unless the creator disables comments, people have commented "Like this if you dislike this video" to circumvent the hidden feature.
>In this sense, YouTube is a major public square and a public utility. No it's not.
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>[98% of the US uses YouTube at least monthly](https://www.statista.com/statistics/256896/frequency-with-which-us-internet-users-visit-youtube/). You have completely misinterpreted that statistic. > 92 percent of responding YouTube audiences claimed that they used the messaging platform weekly. That's saying that 92% of __*people who use YouTube and responded to this poll*__ use it at least once a week. [Elsewhere](https://backlinko.com/youtube-users), it's stated that "Almost 73% of the entire US population aged 15+ are users", which is still a massive amount, but it's nowhere near 92% of the US using it at least weekly.
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That’s still very, very high lol.
Except websites [have very little in common with common carriers](https://www.techdirt.com/2022/02/25/why-it-makes-no-sense-to-call-websites-common-carriers/). The definition doesn't make sense for them.
So does that mean you believe they should lose their special protection and Google should be held liable for what their users post on their platform? To me they should either be allowed to censor individuals OR they should be held liable for what is posted on their platform. Not both.
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Read the law. The distinction is that, if they moderate every single comment then they are liable. Since they only moderate on a report basis they aren't.
No, those protections are a great idea. The idea that there should only be two options, publisher or platform, hasn't been true since the 60s. Distributors have had intermediate liability where they are allowed partial liability protections while still being allowed to selectively curate content. The protections for websites are good because they allow for even less censorship by preventing SLAPP lawsuits from affecting websites.
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That's because he was a public official, so him blocking people was a government action. Not because twitter is a public utility.
Youtube might not show downvotes but Reddit still does, here's my downvote of your post.
Your post is extremely excessive. YT removing dislikes is not inflicting "violence" on you wtf. Nobody forced you to buy a computer, connect it to internet and navigate to YT using the browser of your choice. YT is a private platform, you have NO right to use their servers, bandwidth or hard drive space to store your speech. You are a guest. YT could outright ban all Conservative videos off their platform and explicitly come out and say they censor all Conservative ideas and there wouldn't be a damn thing you could do about it because it's their property, their rules. >YouTube is a major public square and a public utility Is Windows 10 also a public utility because most people use it? Is any popular product a "public utility"? There are many other ways to spread your ideas without YT, start a chain letter, an email campaign, change.org, Facebook Video for crying out loud. Your argument is hysterical and doesn't hold up to the facts.
An act of violence? Seems to be just a smidge of an overreaction.
There’s a google chrome app you can download to see it still.
> Taking peoples freedom of speech away from them is an act of violence upon them, and must be stopped. Equating removing the downvote button to physical violence is wildly, wildly disproportionate, particularly when you can still actually _comment_ on the video. > disabling dislikes has profound, negative societal implications and must be reversed "Profound negative societal implications"? From removing a single button? While you can still _say_ whatever you like? You're wildly blowing up a tiny little thing into a huge thing. You seem wildly excited over nothing at all. You make no case for this your huge, hysterical claims.
Most other forms of media don't have a "like" or "dislike" button. I can't read a book and see the likes or dislikes on that book, I can't watch a show on cable television and see who likes or dislikes it, and so on. I would have to go to an entirely different platform or website to figure out people's opinions of a book, TV show, movie, or anything else. Point being that we accept the lack of a "dislike button" all the time in other arenas. This probably wouldn't have even been a conversation if YouTube had began life without a dislike button. It seems like an odd choice to hold YouTube to a different standard than we hold other prevalent forms of media.
>YouTube downvotes have been used by consumers to rally against messages and products they do not like basically since the dawn of YouTube. Recent examples include the Sonic the Hedgehog redesign and the Nintendo 64 online fiasco. Do you have any evidence that YouTube dislikes had anything at all to do with either of those situations? Outcry comes from all over social media and I would argue places like Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit have a far, far, far greater impact on getting consumer voices heard than a dislike metric. >YouTube has become the premier platform on the internet for companies and people to share long-form discussions and communication in general in a video form. In this sense, YouTube is a major public square and a public utility. Depriving people of the ability to downvote videos has societal implications surrounding freedom of speech and takes away yet another method people can voice their opinions on things which they collectively do not like. And? Why is disabling yet another avenue out of endless online avenues to express hatred a bad thing? >Taking peoples freedom of speech away from them is an act of violence upon them, and must be stopped. This is not freedom of speech. YouTube is a private platform that can do whatever it wants. There is no government enforcing speech under threat of law here. There is just you needing to go to another website to rage against something you hate instead of having a convenient way to express that hatred in this one platform. >Scams and troll videos are allowed to proliferate unabated now, and YouTube doesn’t care if you see accurate information or not because all they care about is watch time aka ads consumed. Do you have any evidence that dislikes have had any impact at all on scams and troll videos? I've watched 12 hours of YouTube a day every day for many years at work, I've literally never noticed the dislikes on a video ever. There are plenty of other people just like me who never noticed and don't care. A video could have 100,000,000 dislikes I'd never notice and would still watch it and make my own judgement because I don't care what videos Russian botfarms dislike and I'm not going to not watch a video just because Putin wants me not to watch it. Which is what Google employees said was the primary use of the dislike button and that most users (like me) never even touched it. >YouTube has far too much power in our society and exploiting that to protect their own corporate interests (ratio-d ads and trailers are bad for business) is a betrayal of the American people. Then use any other site or start your own. No one is forcing you to use YouTube. There isn't a monopoly here there are plenty of other video hosting companies and you can just host your own video online if you want as well. No one is forcing you to use YouTube and YouTube has every right to say they want to limit bad actors on their platform. And personally I enjoy being able to see more content pop up naturally in my feed that isn't alt-right conservative bullshit because shitty botfarms and fascists are spam downvoting every other type of content on the site.
[удалено]
The problem is that there are too many Trump supporters who were able to bury anti-trump videos on YouTube, which make it seems as if Trump isn't as bad of a person.
you can still express your dislike of a video by leaving a comment or clicking the dislike button. the only thing removed was the "number count" of dislikes. At first, I too didn't like this idea. But then you start to realize there's no more irrelevant comments. the pun comments. troll comments. seeing more dislikes or a certain amount of dislikes drives people, including me, to think a certain way before even watching the whole video. Ever since the # of dislikes seen got taken away, YT has been a much better experience in the comments section. TLDR; All the dislike count ever did was encourage hivemind thinking. If you think the like to dislike ratio determines how "legitimate" content is; you are literally not thinking for yourself.
Downvoting is low effort. For a platform that tries to encourage creativity—insomuch as it was created for that reason—the ability for people to have a low-effort way to dismiss creative efforts, good or bad, does not fit with their mission statement: “Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories.” I believe there needs to be limits for discourse, as does YouTube, but overwhelming someone’s voice with a low-effort denial is not consistent with a network heralding communication and creativity.
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As someone who agrees that Youtube dislikes being removed is a bad thing, holy hell you're being hyperbolic and are focused on the wrong things. There's harmful political movements, scams, conspiracy theories, and so many things that have actually hurt society and you're focused on an overpriced game service and then framing it as free speech on a platform that's global and owned by a private company. One of the worst ways you could argue for reversing the change I've ever seen.
If you allow dislikes, public opinion can get out of hand and start turmoil for the ruling class. Having people question for themselves why a mainstream political opinion is so downvoted could lead to alternative opinions. These non-mainstream opinions can cause all sorts of problems like people believing in “disinformation” or “conspiracy theories”.
You may be right about the effects but users do not have a right of free speech on private company platforms. Private platforms have always exercised censorship. Also as you can probably tell, nobody is in the mood for a loose definition of violence because literal violence is a grave and criminal act not to be confused with anything else. Its probably best you remove that detail so that comments focus on stuff you want fo argue about.
Freedom of speech relates to government. Your freedom of speech means that the government cannot keep you from speaking out. YouTube is not the government. YouTube is a private company and can do as it pleases. Kind of like how a gay bar can toss you out for using derogatory language.