BTW, I should have known that if I questioned the value of public downvotes on a thread of downvoting enthusiasts that I would... get downvoted.
Youtube is borderline stupid right now for most channels that don't have organic growth... what they should do is re-open monetization and live streaming to everyone as its creating its own hell hole if you ask me with the 9 minutes of smash the like button and 1 minute of content we're seeing on every channel that isn't organically growing or making money through other means.
Here is a great example:
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC7qMMY6UJHpNakTDMz6vVXQ
Auto mechanic basically documenting repairs as they come into the shop.
He is doing it for a few reasons:
1. His own protection. Publishing them is smart
2. Share his experiences
3. Promote doing this work in an exemplary way.
Rather than get a simple how to with a lot of the usual fluff, viewers are getting a story, almost like being an intern of sorts.
I look forward to the problem of the day and have already found myself handling some repair and service work I do differently and better.
I did not think this was content I watch on YouTube, but apparently it is.
There are tons of non-controversial topics for which like/dislike is extremely valuable.
Actually, I don't see the like/dislike on my android TV box, and for that reason, I don't even watch new content on it.
Just have a brief preview and if i'm interested, i'll watch it.
Like the new Nintendo Switch Online Expansion pack video.
There's a huge community, that instantly dislikes the video.
Removing it makes paid content so much more attractive for starters...
I am almost laughing as I'm writing this, but reality is moving towards 1984 much quicker that I ever imagined.
The dislike button is like the booo's at a stadium. Removing all negative feedback removes the public ability to respond negatively to a video. Which obviously is the point. Damn Google got really evil real fast.
Or the video just isn't what the clickbait title says.
I get that some things get brigaded sometimes, but in my experience that's few and far between compared to false junk.
This is why I stopped using YouTube a few years ago and heavily prefer text+image tutorials to videos nowadays. YouTube is pushing longer videos, because they show you more ads in the middle of them and creators are also rewarded with more money for longer videos + they can insert their "sponsor messages" a.k.a. even more ads.
Ans quite frankly, things being brigaded probably means it's a political hot take, that's even boring when you agree, and just stupid when you don't. If you remove those from the downvoted video list, you're probably left with only a few actually insightful and useful videos.
Nothing says “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever” like removing the 'dislike' count from YouTube videos.
They neither removed nor disabled the dislike button.
And even then, saying they didn't disable the button is only arguably true. The button no longer performs its primary function.
I'm not the one moving the goalpost—it started as "reality is moving towards 1984", then "they removed the ability to give negative feedback", and now it's "they removed the ability to see the negative feedback that others gave." That's a significant change.
> saying they didn't disable the button is only arguably true. The button no longer performs its primary function
I'm more sympathetic to this argument—that the primary purpose of the "dislike" button isn't to give the creator negative feedback, but as a "rating" system, with the only 2 possible ratings "+1" and "-1". The problem with that is that, "they changed the rating system" doesn't seem to merit all of the comparisons to 1984. And "more like 1984" vs. "less like 1984" seems a silly way to evaluate rating systems.
Edit: actually, the rating system changed from "+1", "-1", "no vote", to "+1", "no vote"—since you can see the # of views, then you can determine roughly how many "no votes" there are.
The basic problem is whether a downvote on a cat juggling video means "this is a bad example of juggling cats" or does it mean "I don't like cat juggling"? On YouTube, it's much more likely to mean the latter, but it's the former that's actually useful.
What are those interests that the vast majority of people here share?
I dislike a fair percentage of the topics posted here regularly, or have no interest in them, and I suspect that's not uncommon. A survey on that subject would be fascinating.
That's the difference I think
What makes you say that? Why is the person that doesn't like cat juggling even clicking on the video?
further, YouTube only said the dislike count is private so the moderation still happens
Further, they're a form of violence against the poster. Not sure what other word to use to be told in a single click "You Suck!". It is or arguably can be a form of bullying.
Care to link to that policy? I was always of the impression that short low-quality comments that don’t further the discussion are prime examples of acceptable downvote targets here. Disagreeing with a constructively expressed idea is best done by expressing your own argument in a reply.
Amen to that. Not how it always works around here though.
[clarification: I suspect you agree and do not mean to imply otherwise, though I do not know]
Your point before that part was something I could engage with, but if you really see any form of disagreement as "violence" or a "form of bullying" then I don't understand how you can even function online.
You suck.
HN and some subreddits avoid becoming tools of disinformation because they are managed by dedicated moderators who remove posts, comments, and participants who are acting in bad faith. (Facebook does not do this.)
Not necessarily. There are other cases where consumers could use dislike as form of brand boycott
For example if you wanted to watch a video on how to setup WSL 2 on Windows 10 and you see one by Microsoft has 100000 dislikes however it's amazing video that doesn't help you.
Strongly agree. For example in HN itself if someone poses a fact-based positive opinion about China, it is down-voted whenever Americans are online and voting (does not happen when Europeans are online).
So dislike/down-vote has 0 value. In fact, majority of the comments in this thread are against Youtube, which tells me that Youtube has made the correct decision.
>There's only been a handful of videos out of hundreds that received more downvotes than expected because the video was posted on a place out of my control and folks didn't like that.
My point exactly. So if I get what you say, most of your videos have a fairly inconsequential amount of downvotes, and those that do are not because they're poor quality but rather because it's been disliked by people who weren't your target audience.
If that's your experience as a content creator how can you, as a viewer, consider the like/dislike ratio a good indication of the quality of the content?