Re:I Am Boycotting YouTube's Like Button
by AHappyCamper on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @02:01PM
(#29396006)
I respectfully disagree. The dislike button definitely had value. You cannot read 10,000 comments on a video with 1.5 million views. Like/Dislike ratio was a fast way to ascertain quality. Maybe it was incorrect 20% of the time (and I'm being generous there), but even that means that it was helpful 80% of the time.
And according to your logic, the Like button is also useless and should be deleted as well, since you can equally have a mob of people hitting it without really "liking" the video. The same is true of the comments.
I have long ignored the number of dislikes on a video, because you cannot discern if the dislike was genuine dislike or offense—not a cancel mob, or a troll. Is it possible to look at 2000 dislikes, and then somehow rule out "bad" or "invalid" dislikes? Completely innocent videos get thousands of dislikes, even if it's only a kitten walking across the screen.
So... the dislike button has already meant nothing. The data was skewed to begin with, in my opinion.
If you wish to dissent I suggest you do so in the comments. I read those, and I count the number of "likes" on the comments. That says something far stronger than an arbitrary "10000 / 2000" count.