Youtube is testing the waters for removing dislikes

Off-Topic Movies, TV and Entertainment
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Admittedly 9 days late, but i’m sure we all know about it. If you somehow miss it like i did, then here it is. :point_down:

I was just going to share it without my input, but ehh. I don’t think this is a great idea as we have seen this with other social media sites and the forums here of what happened when the dislike is nullified or taken away, in the name of “Positivity”. This is even more concerning to think about, considering the platform (YouTube) had it’s history of fraudulent DMCA and/or copyright abuses. How you think that will go moving forward? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Not only this takes away people’s ability to voice their opinions if they dislike it in the name of “positivity” (Having just the like button is controlling your voice and opinions, so not positive in the least…), but this won’t do anything to improve the videos people put out, or degrade in quality possibly, because people won’t see the dislikes on that video and they wouldn’t feel the need to improve. Especially on a website where people can also regularly delete comments and such.

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YouTube is eating itself.

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It’s not controlling your opinion. The dislike button will still be there, and creators can still see their dislike count. The only change per the article is that the dislike count won’t be visible to the public.

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And that’s the thing. We can’t see it, only they will. And what i’m saying here isn’t out of the realm of imagination.

If it’s not controlling our opinions then why they need to hide the dislike tally then? If you say it’s for “Positivity”, then that is controlling. removing dislikes doesn’t promote positivity, if anything, it will lead to situations like this forum where people will use the flag as if it’s a downvote button. And i rather it not be like that considering YouTube moderation is pretty much hands off for the most part. Not to mention, it will just blur the line on what is a waste of time or real, that being clickbait, while the likes/dislikes is usually a good indicator to somebody who clicked on the video to tell them’s the video’s quality. Or content that is objectively bad and harmful to people like scams for instance. (That quote was asked by Jacksepticeye)

Video quality especially, there is tons of channels i’ve watched nearly on the daily and i like them for the most part, but some of them put out either bad points, some bad takes, or just overall made a bad video. Or in other words, i don’t 100% agree or think they are 100% good.

Let’s use Nostalgia Critic’s The Wall for this example here, despite me thinking it’s an okay video on it’s own, the actual review bit was not a great take at all because it doesn’t represent the actual opinions on The Wall until the very end or goes into any sort of analysis and such as a reviewer does with a movie (or even his previous videos) and just focuses on being a parody of sorts. And even by clipless review standards, it’s not that great or improved from the others. Sitting at 21K likes and 79K dislikes right now. So if the Dislikes are gone, the 21K likes are just left there, and to somebody who doesn’t know right away that this is a bad video, this is a good video to them. Whether it be to look at the Review of the The Wall, see a parody of the Wall, or just fans of NC, they will not notice the audience’s negative reactions or opinions on it, just their positives. For the reasons i’ve discussed here, just having the likes will be very misleading to people who are new.

And yes, i’m talking about Nostalgia Critic, but this is an example of the issue that is applied interchangeably at large.

Even if you compare the likes of that video to the likes of other video as a measure of how quality of the video is, that won’t tell you anything. Comments will tell a different story, but that can be deleted by the creators if they want to, and i mean to any of them if they wish.

Lest we forget that people dislike genuinely and people can like dis-ingeniously, this isn’t a “Only dislikes is 100% not genuine, and likes are 100% genuine.”. Audience feedback is very important and it shouldn’t be stifled.

I can understand why they would try to do this, to quell the targeted campaigns and such . I get it. You’re always gonna get that angry crowd who will be angry with you no matter what. But that’s never an excuse to take away less control from people. And likes can be weaponized (and even bought) against people. So some unscrupulous sort will possibly get people liking on their videos based on a lie and try to shame the other video and maybe even buy likes for themselves. Or Buy likes for them and try to claim they are buying likes and cheating the system and all that. I mean removing dislikes doesn’t even begin to address the problem.

Plus they already have a way to hide the dislikes/likes. So not only this hurts more then it helps, but it’s completely redundant.

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I know I’m quoting a specific part, but are you proposing that likes and dislikes, or the ratio of them, should be used to determine the objective worth of a video?

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Quick and summarized objective worth of the video, yes.

I understand that it isn’t good for a full objective worth of the video, but let’s say something like this. I want to get into Building PCs and i need to watch a video on how to put it together. Looking at the Verge’s video, i would right away from the dislikes out weighing the likes, that it’s not a good video or isn’t going to teach me much of worth. Linus Tech Tips does have a video that builds a PC and it’s more positivity received. Based on likes, this would be confusing to me to find out which video should i trust here if i just started building PC and have no idea with these two channels.

Ratings is often reflective of the quality put forth. And dislikes (or negative reviews) play a very important role as much or even more then likes (or positive reviews). And yes, to some extent, i would consider Videos to be products, because it makes the creator money when viewed on.

Yes i know i’m comparing things, but i feel like the job of the dislikes or negative reviews is being massively taken for granted and just seen as purely negative and can never be positive or always weaponized, where the likes are only positive and can never be viewed as a weaponized thing. In a world of without dislikes, without negatives reviews and so on, how can you actually tell from a glance which is a good video?

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Like this website?? That’s where YouTube is headed. Never really seen it until now tbh

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Also worth noting who our president is atm. Are we really shocked they want to remove the dislike button all of a sudden??

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This trend was happening for facebook and such, regardless of which president we had. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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FB had a downvote button?

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I honestly don’t know. I’ve never used facebook, so i assumed it had a dislike button and then it got removed.

I did read up and it seems like Facebook never had one to begin with for… well they think it’s negative and think if people dislike something, they should either express their dislike by typing out the comment or ignore it.

Side tangent; i’ve never liked this whole “if you hate something, it’s your obilgation to either ignore it or comment on it, and if you love something, just hit a button and say nothing further” thing when it should be applied both ways and given both options. Explain your opinion on why you like/dislike something or just hit a button to give your opinions if you don’t want to type it out.

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Hmm guess I joined late.

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I would use amount of views, like Nielsen ratings in TV shows, but I think the bigger difficulty is how one defines good is so subjective to begin with. You link a doom metal music video in a YouTube channel largely devoted to jazz it may get dislikes simply because it doesn’t fit the ‘brand.’ That doesn’t mean the video is bad, it just means the audience that is observing it determines they don’t like it - for whatever reason.

I would hazard to say that it’s not important to know what is good or isn’t good on the basis of others, but that we explore stuff for the sake of exploring and experience. If 90% of the population says X sucks, or dislikes it, does that make it bad for the other 10%?

This is a good discussion, though. Lots of worthwhile stuff here.

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How?

Not to say your wrong, but views is another thing that can be bought or manipulated though. Say for example a channel that has a pretty big name puts out a bad video, but it has lots of views. In contrast, a channel that barely has any recognition puts out a good video but it doesn’t have views. And this opens another set of questions here: Is being small or big means your good? Does having more or less views makes it good? Is it a bad video because it has more views or less views? What does views on it’s own even mean to you and how it’s useful to you?

This is the sort of thing you don’t have to think about with the likes/dislikes here.

Which is where likes/dislikes come in and objectively measures how good or bad a video is given by the audience’s opinion by it.

It’s not just about fitting a brand, i’m talking about videos that are bad that do fit the brand as well. The brand they have decided.

It is important to know what is good or isn’t good video if your doing something like, learning how to build a pc. Or want to go though a tutorial on something, like painting space marines, or repairing a car, or getting medical facts in an easily digestible video, or watching the news.

If were talking about entertainment, then sure, but even that is also important there as well.

It’s important to note that it doesn’t remove their ability to like it if the 90% of the population says it’s bad, and vice versa if they dislike something the population is good. It’s just worth nothing that their opinion is in the minority.

I get what you’re saying, it’s all opinion though. I’m simply saying that when it comes to something that is above just watching it for entertainment or just simply watching it, there has to be an objective value to be measured that reflects off of that. And this again doesn’t apply to just videos, but everything in general.

There is reason why i bought up Linus Tech Tips and The Verge here, somebody not knowledgeable won’t be able to tell quickly which one is the good video to teach them how to build a PC and which one isn’t, and might risk wasting their money or time on something that isn’t valuable.

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Honestly, the more I read what you’re proposing it basic feels like a consumer rights advocacy/consumer reports thing. Where the purpose is the ensure that there is some measure or worth or resource to what you’re watching, when what you’re watching is for a purpose other than entertainment.

Which that does make sense to me.

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I do apologize, i tend to bring whatever topic into a sort of more general sort of thing here, because i do notice a sort of trend sometimes where it starts off small somewhere and will begin from there, even though it’s already happening.

It just concerns me that what we’ve seen on here and other places that removes dislikes, will happen on YouTube, which need i remind, has worse problems for people then WoW’s forums. Fraudulent takedowns by silly people, automated content id (and others), YouTube ad friendly policy double standards (for example, that WAP music video is considered advertiser friendly, but somebody’s video of them saying bad words isn’t…) and also YouTube’s unfair treatment to it’s creators based on… well wealth.

And the sad thing is, based on Youtube’s history of pushing features (Most of the times, YouTube Heroes thankfully didn’t go though) and such that people dislike or not a fan of, this will go though regardless. :confused:

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Unfortunetely, there is no alternative to youtube. Sure there’s vimeo, daily motion, and B*tChute, but they don’t have the significance and cultural impact that youtube has. Youtube is going to continue to butcher itself until it is an empty hollow husk of itself. That wouldn’t bother most people, as long as they can still watch Vevo music videos, nothing will change their preferences.

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Does anybody really look at the number of dislikes to decide whether they watch a video? It’s probably aimed at bots or review bombers who are misusing the feature to express personal opinions not related to the quality of the video and probably didn’t even watch it. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Personally the only videos I’ve ever downvoted were ones that were misleading as to the content and were obviously just cheap gimmicks to get clicks without actually providing the content advertised.

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It gives the person a quick review of the video of what the people think about it. Much like Steam Reviews or any other site that has stars or numbers for reviews to tell at a glance if it’s good or not.

If it just have likes, how can you tell if it’s actually good or not?

Dislikes aren’t the only thing being misused or abused, likes are a good target for that as well to be used against and such.

Exactly, it’s one of the reasons why dislikes are there because you can’t simply tell with just likes or even if a video has more comments then likes. Dislikes aren’t always negative, infact in this instance with misleading videos, their a positive thing as you said.

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It’s not like this kind of move worked here on the forums… oh wait…
:poop: :poop: :poop:

Yeah, maybe please bring back the downvoting here, to stop at least SOME of the flag / report abuse?

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