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Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count

• qq4 6y ago
  What's next, getting rid of comments? I use YouTube less and less these days, but I have to say that the dislike button tends to hold more utility than the great swathes of garbage comments. Not that I'm advocating for getting rid of comments, but I see plenty of disliking within them.
• tpmx 6y ago
  Too many embarassing cases of large numbers of downvotes on Youtube-produced videos? (Edit: Boom, apparently this post was just flagged to page 2.)
• lfti 6y ago
  Bad news for the citizens of the Neutral Planet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qump1X6OrEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qump1X6OrEc
• sokoloff 6y ago
  It doesn't look like they're removing dislikes at all, but rather hiding the count of dislikes from viewers of the video (in a test).
  • BitwiseFool 6y ago
    While technically true, showing the Like/Dislike count provided valuable information for viewers. Determining whether or not a video is worth my time will become a lot more difficult.
    • sokoloff 6y ago
      I'd argue that HN got better after they hid the karma (net of 1 + up - down) on a per-comment basis (even though I was initially opposed to the change at the time). They can still use like/dislike metrics to decide which videos to offer you and in what sort order, so there's still some signal available.
      • sillysaurusx 6y ago
        That's the opposite change. HN hid likes, while keeping the dislikes visible.
      • gundmc 6y ago
        HN still fades text if a comment is below a certain threshold.
        • pdq 6y ago
          IMO, HN's fade is worse than just showing the like/dislike ratio. I believe some users see a faded comment and subconsciously get a preference to hit the downvote before even fully reading a comment. Imagine if Youtube automatically showed unpopular videos in a permanently faded mode; this would be even more user-hostile. Just give the users the count or ratio, and let them interpret (or ignore) it.
      • mikeg8 6y ago
        Investing 30 seconds reading a comment vs 12 minutes on a video is not the same thing.
    • Krasnol 6y ago
      Let's not fool ourselves here. The disklike-horde storming critical but good quality videos because they don't like the message was just as normal as overhyped videos with crap quality. Those systems are broken and this doesn't change much. It just hides which horde likes the vid at the moment.
  • ALittleLight 6y ago
    It would be interesting to know if there is an effect where users are more likely to dislike a video with a bad ratio. If the public perception of a like ratio influenced the viewer's opinion.
  • mrzimmerman 6y ago
    It really feels like a lot of people didn't even click through to the _tweet_, which is concise and direct as can be given the nature of Twitter as a platform. I'll grant that the actual count is still helpful data for users but the title is wrong and it's clear a lot of people never bothering clicking through.
  • Valakas 6y ago
    "Hey we're not removing your ability to speak, just your tongue!"
• ravenstine 6y ago
  How else is the mainstream supposed to spin reality? Entertainment giants used to more easily create the illusion of consensus, but web platforms like YouTube completely mess with their power by showing downvotes.
  • Covzire 6y ago
    Smells political alright. The Biden admin disabled comments on all official The White House channel videos pretty quickly into their administration. Most videos have a tremendously high dislike to like ratio, the most recent is 3.4K dislikes to 205 likes. I don't know who they expect to consume their Youtube content but it apparently isn't the establishment's voter base. This is another brick in the wall that is Youtube that just fell out if you ask me. Content creators of all stripes are absolutely desperate for an alternative platform.
    • Hammershaft 6y ago
      You think Youtube is removing dislikes because of white house vids that average out less than ~25000 views each?
      • Covzire 6y ago
        It's one of the few ways that the online public square can still show visible discontent of what their government is doing in a way that is easily visible to all others.
      • EricE 6y ago
        Not just the white house. There's wholesale rejection that is embarrassing and counter to the messaging being pushed my the media and cultural elites. Disney with the Gina Corano firing has been a huge source of continued embarrassment. Widespread rejection of woke takeovers of popular culture in general are problematic so no, I'm not surprised downvotes are getting remove universally. Much easier to hide reality when you pretend it doesn't exist. Social media is a propaganda machine at this point. They don't give a crap about free expression. Too many plebs expressing their displeasure with propaganda can't be tolerated so here we go.
• BitwiseFool 6y ago
  This seems deceptive more than anything else. If a content creator doesn't want their videos to be rated they can disable like/dislike ratings entirely. But to remove public dislikes across the entire site takes away a valuable indicator of video quality. Like/Dislike ratio can also express approval and disapproval for the subject itself, which is also valuable.
  • Syonyk 6y ago
    > But to remove public dislikes across the entire site takes away a valuable indicator of video quality. Indeed. Which means you'd have to watch the ads (oh, right, there's also a video involved) to determine that the content was garbage. If you can tell without watching a video that it's trash, you might not watch it - which is opposed to YouTube's goal of increasing total video hours watched. Or, at least, their short term goal of making sure people watch stuff (I suspect the long term effects of making people watch more low grade nonsense won't show up in this quarter's growth numbers, which means it's Someone Else's Problem - get promoted and go do something else, it's the Google Way). Despite all the claims from Google and YouTube about how they're trying to promote certain content and reduce exposure to others, it's a reasonable bet that their algorithms still don't understand much of anything about a video beyond "Oh, hey, people who watch this video watch more related videos later, so the more people I show it to, the more those people will watch, which increases hours watched!" So, presumably, "dislikes" interfered with people watching more video. Remove the dislikes, problem solved. At least for their definition of "problem" and "solved."
    • EricE 6y ago
      lol - YouTube and most social media is no longer for us plebs. It's all about pushing propaganda, and unfortunately plebs mass rejecting politically motivated BS is too problematic. Instead of trying to engage/change minds it's just easier to pretend "problems" like people having the temerity to call BS don't exist. Double plus good.
      • Syonyk 6y ago
        Even "pushing propaganda" is a bit higher minded than social media seems to be. It's all about the money. ALL about the money. How do social companies make money? They sell ads. How do you make more money selling ads? Either you show more ads (increase ad density, or increase eyeball-time-on-platform), or you make more money per ad (I used to see plenty of scam sites - new Kobota tractor for $1500, free shipping, domain registered last week - and far as I can tell, Facebook only cared that their credit card number was good). More eyeball-time-on-platform requires "engaging" users more - weaponizing psychology, notifications, and A/B testing against them. Facebook's guiding principles are simple: "What's Good For Zuck is Good For Zuck." The rest are no different.
• battles 6y ago
  April Fools?
  • auroranil 6y ago
    That's what I was thinking. It is April 1st in certain parts of the world.
    • amelius 6y ago
      I dislike this joke.
• swiley 6y ago
  It's quickly getting to the point where being exposed to youtube at all just opens you up to a ton of intentional manipulation from an organization who's entire product is manipulating people for pay. It's probably best to completely avoid all of it.
  • cbozeman 6y ago
    There's entirely too much good stuff on YouTube to ignore. I learn so much there, all for free.
    • Syonyk 6y ago
      But what are the opportunity costs of learning stuff on YouTube, especially if you're watching hours of content? There is good stuff in there - don't get me wrong. It's just that the good stuff you want to find is often quite hidden, and I've on occasion spent more time trying to find some video that actually shows a tricky part of some bit of equipment maintenance than it would take to just do things the slow way (think "If you know the exact sequence of steps, you can slip the alternator out this hole between the engine and suspension - or you can just unbolt the exhaust and lower the alternator out that way" sort of tasks - if it takes longer to find a video with the steps clearly displayed than to just drop the exhaust, you've taken longer). I've also found that YouTube leads to a very poor, surface understanding of most issues - and this isn't the fault of YouTube specifically, it's just a limit of video. If I want to learn about a new topic, I'll typically try to find three or so books on it and read those. A single book can have biases and misunderstandings, but by the time you've read a few, it's usually clear enough what the consensus is. Does it take more time than an hour or two video? Certainly. But I also get a far, far better understanding of the material (which, if it's an area I care to learn about, is probably useful) than I would through videos. Plus, I use an awful lot less data in the process. I'm perfectly happy to be called a curmudgeon or such with regards to my preferences for text and images over video, and there may be part of it that's true - but I've weighed video versus the alternatives, and outside entertainment (which there's certainly some value in), I find video coming up wanting. Also, books don't keep (buy this!) interrupting the content (buy that!) to feed me ads for (vote for this person because their opponent eats babies!) whatever happens to (watch this movie!) be paying the best rates (check out this new online bank and stock trading app!) at the moment.
• retsibsi 6y ago
  This seems rather user-hostile. The downvote count is useful for identifying videos that aren't what they claim to be. And how about DIY videos that give terrible advice? A big downvote ratio will get most people's attention in a way that critical comments may not.
  • motbob 6y ago
    I agree that removing public dislikes is a pretty bad idea, but it's not that important of a tool in fighting misleading videos. I mean, there was once a HUGE glut of videos with misleading thumbnails/titles, and what stopped the glut was not dislikes, but rather Youtube's use of watch time as an important metric.
    • retsibsi 6y ago
      Fair point, but I think downvotes have been useful to me relatively recently. Fake videos may not show up in recommendation feeds, but they still appear in search results don't they? (And if you're searching for something relatively obscure, you can realistically hit the bottom of the barrel, rather than only seeing the more highly rated results.)
      • mrkramer 6y ago
        >Fake videos may not show up in recommendation feeds, but they still appear in search results don't they? Use report button
        • retsibsi 6y ago
          I would for anything truly extreme (like some horrible shock footage in the middle of a supposedly innocent video). But I don't know if all of these videos actually violate any rules; often they are of the kind <title: THING YOU'RE LOOKING FOR>, where the content is actually someone talking about the thing I'm looking for. edit: Or another relatively common type, not necessarily fake or even strictly misleading, just cynically low-quality: a video made by pulling some text content from the web, feeding it through a speech synthesiser, and playing that over over the top of some 'relevant' images.
• nigrioid 6y ago
  It's because of what happens when the White House forgets to disable comments and dislikes. https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/359823/former-google-software-engineer-claims-youtube-era.html https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/359823/former...
  • cbozeman 6y ago
    It's because of Ghostbusters (2016). It just took this long for everyone else to catch up and realize that, "it can happen to you". We were all supposed to love that movie because it has four women in it! Turns out a shit movie is a shit movie no matter how many SNL alums you throw at it.
    • happytoexplain 6y ago
      >We were all supposed to love that movie because it has four women in it I see this sarcastic quipping a couple orders of magnitude more often than I see the attitude it is skewering in regards to that movie (not that that attitude didn't exist). I think part of that is the normal overreaction to anything "SJW", but I think the bigger contribution might be because, after the incredible degree of hatred the black actress got, the reasonable backlash to that enhanced the perceived magnitude of the different-but-adjacent attitude you're criticizing.
      • cbozeman 6y ago
        > the incredible degree of hatred the black actress got I really don't recall Leslie Jones receiving as much backlash as certain outlets purported. Part of that is because that, for these outlets (common offenders including Slate and its ilk), any amount of backlash or derision, or frankly, anything less than glowing praise is "racism". And now that the word "racism" is starting to lose power, they've moved on to "white supremacy", but that's another topic... I think you could be on to something, but the bulk of the backlash was because they butchered an absolute classic comedy that millions of people grew up watching (I myself have probably seen it over 50 times, my Mom said I watched it over and over as a kid).
• Schattenbaer 6y ago
  Seems to be a visibility-only change to a small cohort of users. Tangentially, I've often wanted a third button, call it "disinterested". This would just tell YouTube not to recommend more of the same for me, without adjusting the ratio of votes up or down. There are many videos I don't actively dislike (I might not have any strong feelings) I just don't want YouTube to recommend more cats with laugh tracks after I click a some link in our #random Slack channel.
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It's weird, because they actually have a "Not interested" option in the dropdown menu when you're browsing, but there's no way to click it for a video you're actually watching.
  • mcpherrinm 6y ago
    Youtube does have a somewhat-hidden "Not Interested" option - on the homepage, when looking at recommendations, under the three-dots kebab menu. It also has a "Don't recommend channel" option there too, which I aggressively use to remove content I don't want, like the compilation clip content farms.
  • Epskampie 6y ago
    It’s under the three dots icons at your overview page.
• kostarelo 6y ago
  They kinda already did though. You don’t see likes/dislikes when you search for a video so you only use it’s popularity in order to decide to click on it.
• joshuak 6y ago
  It seems to me the platforms that have the most trouble maintaining a grasp on reality are the ones that don’t allow down votes. Down votes are the cognitive immune system at work. Not that down votes are necessarily correct, but rather they provide increased resistance to propagation. Also you can hardly fix a problem by blinding yourself to it.
  • frosted-flakes 6y ago
    They're hiding the down-vote count, not removing them altogether.
• SXX 6y ago
  Okay it's seems like this is the time to create chanel of videos full of bad advice in them. Until Google start to determine whatever advice sounds bad to them so they can ban everyone based off this metric too.
• bitL 6y ago
  Next, IMDB only allows ratings between 8-10.
  • banana_giraffe 6y ago
    I don't think they document it, beyond being a "weighted average", but as I understand things, they already do give one stars a very low weight, in addition to a weight of zero in some cases.
  • sthnblllII 6y ago
    I think this is the appropriate analogy. Is a Hollywood movie studio being "harassed" if people give a movie negative reviews? No. Neither are youtube videos that get downvoted. And yet here we are. You will consume what the people who write the algorithm want you to, you will like it and you if you dont no one will know.
  • 0xy 6y ago
    Rotten Tomatoes is already highly manipulated and editorialized. For example, the interpretation of whether a review was "fresh" or "rotten" is completely subjective and made by editors. You can see the agenda pushing and manipulation on such films as Ghostbusters (2016).
  • frongpik 6y ago
    With 8 not allowed, because it's become the new bad rating.
• haunter 6y ago
  'member when reddit removed the visible downvote count back in 2014, that was really one of the end of something there https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/28hjga/reddit_changes_individual_updown_vote_counts_no/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/28hjga/reddi... Just a random screenshot cause haven't found anything else in Google https://i.imgur.com/3y8W2mk.png https://i.imgur.com/3y8W2mk.png You could see if a comment was highly engaging despite at the bottom, say 200/210 (upvotes/downvotes). Nowdays you only see the + or - number and that's all, only pushing that "meta" narrative that most people want to see.
  • stefan_ 6y ago
    Ironically YouTube feels a lot like Reddit to me - nothing really changed there the past 5 years, no matter what happened on the business side. Some of it is really weird. Like YouTube trying to get into streaming, but never actually implementing anything for it - no clips, no emotes really, but the weird "create a channel from your personal GMail account" thing is still there. It's like the people there were told nothing but a keyword.
    • tester756 6y ago
      but youtube isn't some vc cash cow that has to change every 2 weeks in order to get more moni from vcs i'm very fine with youtube *just working*
• stolenmerch 6y ago
  I'd love if they just remove Likes as well, honestly. I've been using the 'Hide Likes' Chrome Extension for over a year now. I have to say, not seeing Likes or Dislikes on YouTube and other social media is a huge quality of life increase. There is a perceptible difference in reaction when you don't know how popular or unpopular something on the internet is.
  • mikeg8 6y ago
    > huge quality of life increase Ah, the first world, and our struggles...
• davesque 6y ago
  Honestly, it seems like there's no easy win here. I think people for and against this both have good arguments. For example, getting rid of dislikes could mitigate the effects of synthetic brigading campaigns. On the other hand, keeping them could in certain cases give a better view of the organic reaction to a video. I don't spend every day trying to solve these problems so I don't have a strong opinion about what the right answer is.
  • liaukovv 6y ago
    Synthetic brigading is what exactly? Bands of synthetics downvoting videos to bring about downfall of humanity? Or do people's opinions count less if they are organized?
    • davesque 6y ago
      Not sure if that was hyperbole, but since you ask, yeah I think it could actually bring about the downfall of humanity. For example, what if climate science videos were being significantly brigaded by bots controlled by oil companies? Might not be that far-fetched. If we fail to communicate effectively about issues like that, we could very well see the downfall of humanity. Even "organic" brigading by the anti-vaxx crowd on related videos seems like an existential threat.
      • CapricornNoble 6y ago
        >>>For example, what if climate science videos were being significantly brigaded by bots controlled by oil companies? I think we need to separate the bot problem from the organic humans. BOTS should be the issue that is countered, regardless of whether they are upvoting or downvoting content. Humans expressing themselves is just grass-roots organizing.
    • crazygringo 6y ago
      > Or do people's opinions count less if they are organized? Of course not, but the metric ceases to have meaning, so something important is lost. Voting results being meaningful depends on a random sample of people who come across content, so that voters are approximately a random subset of viewers. If voters organize, then they are no longer a random or representative subset, so the metric ceases to be representative of viewers as a whole, and becomes biased.
• rPlayer6554 6y ago
  Wouldn't a more appropriate HN title be "remove public dislike count"?
• mikece 6y ago
  If someone (companies included) is so sensitive to being down-voted perhaps the internet isn't for them. In the case of one campaign of which I'm aware, Lucasfilm and Disney has been hammered by Star Wars fans, down-voting their videos because they have no other way to send a message to Disney that the personnel actions of Kathleen Kennedy have thrown the plans for the Mandalorian -- and it's connected shows -- into delays and uncertainty. I'm pretty sure Disney (and their shareholders) are more upset by the fact that #CancelDisneyPlus is still trending on Twitter, something that actually costs them share value. That YouTube would do this further shows that their platform is for big companies and brand-safe content free from negative perceptions and not "You" like their name implies.
  • mrzimmerman 6y ago
    > they have no other way to send a message to Disney Actually, the best and most effective way is to respond as consumers and vote with their dollars. Disney is a very profit centered and savvy company. If their profits on Star Wars and their streaming service drop off they will change their direction. All signs point to people upset at Kathleen Kennedy as being a vocal minority. Disney is raking cash in on Star Wars and Lucasfilms in general and the population of Star Wars fans is growing. If #CancelDisneyPlus was a big deal then we'd see it in Disney's actual business moves, but it hasn't had an impact and downvoting on YouTube is probably similarly ineffective.
• DavidVoid 6y ago
  I'd be more for adding some kind of requirement for liking/disliking a video. I think that would be a decent way to get rid of shitty mass-dislikes from people who didn't even watch the video.
• rosmax_1337 6y ago
  This does not seem to me like a move to "improve the user experience", but rather to hide the public opinion about certain topics, such as politics or consumer media. Others name examples here in this thread, such as Ghostbusters (2016) and their trailers and recent Biden administration videos on the White house channel. I am curious __in a genuine way__ if someone who might consider themselves "woke left" (at the lack of a better word) here on HN who sees this as a positive development? (I.e., someone who views both aforementioned examples very positively) Or actually, anyone regardless of political leaning for that matter? Because personally I find it hard to construct even a simple argument for the viewpoint that hiding this information in any improves the website and/or society at large, with youtube being an important piece of infrastructure for the entire world right now. This instead would just seem like google continuing down their path of abandoning their "don't be evil" slogan.
  • fl0wenol 6y ago
    Crunchy granola digital soyboy here: I can't think of any reason why this is a good idea since tools already exist to disable voting and comments for PR. Heat, kitchen, etc. It's the money; probably Hollywood. Maybe the Whitehouse? If it's perceived as staving off a SV antitrust breakup a little longer but that just doesn't seem "big" enough of a concession. So I'm back to money. What I'm a little more concerned about is the conspiracy-minded posters on this site coming out of the woodwork on this article who are about 6 parens away from saying what they really mean.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• SuboptimalEng 6y ago
  Seeing 1k likes "hits different" from seeing 1k likes and 2k dislikes.
• goatcode 6y ago
  I wonder how long it will take until the anti-?ism apologetics come out to justify this to headline-readers.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• twic 6y ago
  I have a much sillier reason for disliking this change, which is that there is a charming part of YouTube culture where people attempt to explain a small number of downvotes on an otherwise popular video in a witty way. For example, on a recent piece of Imperial propaganda [1] with 100K upvotes and 935 downvotes, we find the comment: > 930 heretics and counting... This one isn't laugh-out-loud funny, maybe raises a grin. Others are better. But it's a tiny artform which will be lost from the world. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWnQedD4BlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWnQedD4BlI
  • webinvest 6y ago
    I remember a YouTube video of a local news reporter about to interview a teacher for making a eyes-closed backwards basketball shot from half court. The news reporter tries this and with amazing luck, makes the half court blindfolded backwards shot. In the top comment of the video jokingly said, “the 2 dislikes are from the teacher and her husband”.
  • EricE 6y ago
    Ah, if we only were allowed to - gasp - have fun on the internet.
    • avaldeso 6y ago
      You still can have fun, but first drink verification can.
• bioinformatics 6y ago
  I guess Amy Schumer feels vindicated now.
• l0b0 6y ago
  Targeted dislike campaigns are clearly a thing. I'm glad they are doing this.
  • Mountain_Skies 6y ago
    For what percentage of videos? 0.0001%? Seems like they're tossing out the baby with the bathwater, punishing everyone using YouTube in order to protect a very small number from criticism.
    • l0b0 6y ago
      I've seen a bunch of what I would consider likely candidates. Obviously nobody has proof of any of this, but controversial subjects get storms of downvotes all the time.
• CountDrewku 6y ago
  Ayayya. Loooong past time to break Google up. They're a disgusting propaganda machine bent on manipulating everyone into their weird ideologies. Amazon and the rest of these social media platforms that are working in coercion need the same treatment. They might as well all be owned by the same umbrella corporation at this point.
• fasteo 6y ago
  Related - and maybe off-topic. I have never participated in any change.org campaign for a similar reason: You cannot sign to oppose, so you end up with an extremely distorted view of a given matter.
  • frosted-flakes 6y ago
    But that's always how petitions have worked. Whoever created the petition is only interested in collecting signatures of people who agree with their proposal, so that they can bring it to legislators, authorities, etc. and say that 'this many people also want this'. Collecting signatures of people who disagree is counter-productive.
• swagatkonchada 6y ago
  well, time for someone to build a third party dislike count and release browser extensions
  • Mountain_Skies 6y ago
    Or for tiktok to start a competing video streaming site. Sure, if you go against the CCP, your video will be deleted and your account nuked, but you can still post those on YouTube. For everything else, tttube won't care who it offends in the US.
    • slig 6y ago
      > For everything else, tttube won't care who it offends in the US. That has not been the case for a good while.
    • CapricornNoble 6y ago
      I would expect a very different type of video content from a website that is phonetically similar to "Titty Tube"...
• SimeVidas 6y ago
  The title is incorrect. This is not about removing dislikes but about now showing the dislike count.
• tubbyjr 6y ago
  Use better alternative platforms such as Odysee Or if your fave content is only on Youtube, an alternative front-end such as Invidious
• Grimm1 6y ago
  That title doesn't seem to be correct, they're just not showing the exact number to anyone but the creator.
• mrgill 6y ago
  YT should work on preventing targeted dislikes rather than taking away the likes counter - which is so, so useful.
• greatgib 6y ago
  This is the aseptic brand new world that is pushed by too powerful companies No more critic, no more negativity, just kool aid and fake positivity as this is good for business when every one pretend to live in a fairy world...
• jfrunyon 6y ago
  It's supposedly about "creator well-being", which I basically read as creators get downvote brigaded and get upset. Which is simultaneously silly, and also will still happen because they're still going to show the dislike count to the creator. ???
  • JetAlone 6y ago
    I agree, I think the main point is to not show the dislike count to the viewer rather than hiding the information from the viewer and this was a convenient way to frame it... Though, trying to steelman it, this change may push the dislike count one click deeper in the interface. If only the creator knows, they are free from screenshots of the ratio being presented publically. It's still a stifling of the masses' ability to express and view negative review and dissent, definitely not worth it in my view, even if there are benefits to creator mental health.
• deleted 6y ago
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• deleted 6y ago
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• Ekaros 6y ago
  I give 2 years before comments are entirely gone... It seems that all types of user-interaction is getting prohibited...
  • notriddle 6y ago
    They might as well, since they already got rid of comments on “kids videos,” and the distinction between kid and adult videos is more than a little arbitrary.
• tyingq 6y ago
  It is interesting how YouTube seems to maintain the mainstream video moat. The only competitors that make any inroads are in sub-niches, like Twitch.
  • thrower123 6y ago
    YouTube rode to the top by streaming petabytes of copyrighted material that would get anybody who tried to replicate their path destroyed by copyright strikes
    • phendrenad2 6y ago
      This is actually true. I distinctly remember that about 50% of the videos I used to watch on YouTube made me think "better watch this before the copyright holder finds out it's here". Entire British TV shows, Japanese anime movies, stolen corporate training content, audiobooks, etc. Impossible to replicate the growth trajectory in a ContentID world.
• kowlo 6y ago
  Let's hope it's an early April 1st joke...
• SergeAx 6y ago
  Dislike button is a viable instrument of social pressure. About a year ago popular Russian rapper appeared in a government-funded propaganda-like video. After 1MM dislikes he addressed the public, said he was unaware of the real purpose of video and apologized. The video was eventually taken down.
• DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Downvotes have been weirdly wonky and aggressive all over the internet for, say, a year or so. Maybe we could work harder on the root causes and worry less about people "kicking the dog" all over the internet because life simply isn't working across the entire planet for various reasons. /Random thought from a random internet stranger
• gbolcer 6y ago
  This is just a side effect of national politics. Federal courts rules that the public has a right to information. https://knightcolumbia.org/documents/a07ecc2a26 https://knightcolumbia.org/documents/a07ecc2a26 Despite that, Youtube is trying to counter bad engagement. Several of Biden's content team's postings of youtube content have gotten tens of thousand of likes, but millions of dislikes resulting in a content "ratio". Downvoters have not been able to be discredited as bots or automated activity. This isn't a general policy. It's a very specific damage control and political advocacy cloaked in a generic policy.
• jzymbaluk 6y ago
  At least on comments, I'm not sure the dislike button actually did anything previously. The count didn't move when the dislike button was pressed.
• barbacoa 6y ago
  Has anyone else been slowly watching YouTube turn into cable TV? When I search "Hong Kong protests" I just get a bunch of videos from CNN and Fox News, not that long ago a search like that would turn up first hand videos of people who were there. Now they are copying streaming services in making it harder to tell what is garbage and what is worth watching.
  • dilap 6y ago
    Yeah, slowly but surely YouTube is destroying itself. Which is very sad, because it's been an amazing resource. I'd love to see ByteDance do a YouTube competitor. (Or, dream of all dreams, see something distributed really take off.)
    • barbacoa 6y ago
      Sadly as long as google dominates search there is little chance that any other video site will get any traction since Google biases towards youtube and away from start up steaming sites.
      • dilap 6y ago
        Probably has to start w/ an app.
        • hunter-2 6y ago
          On Android...
    • jgoodknight 6y ago
      good luck getting videos of the hong kong protests with a ByteDance YouTube!
  • bogomipz 6y ago
    Yes I agree with your observations. And I've also noticed an aggressive pop up add campaign from Google asking whether I want purchase Youtube Premium.
• pininja 6y ago
  I think the title should be revised to something like “removing public dislike counts”. The tweet shows the dislike feature isn’t removed, dislikes aren’t being deleted, and creators can still see exact dislike counts.
• munk-a 6y ago
  This is slightly off-topic but I wanted to say that the restriction on HN to not be able to downvote direct ancestors (and locking downvoting behind a karma threshold) seems to have served it very well. The restriction of direct ancestor downvotes in particular is a habit I really wish other sites (eyes reddit) would actually implement. It prevents the most common type of downvote the "You have attempted to shame me by trying to disagree with me and thus you must suffer" type.
• mullingitover 6y ago
  This is, of course, a customer-centric move for Youtube (of course keep in mind, you the Youtube viewer are the product, not the customer).
• kashprime 6y ago
  There’s been something wonky about YouTube downvotes for a little while now. If you go any children’s video (I have two toddlers so am accessing them all the time), downvotes often outstrip upvotes. The reasons are unclear, maybe competitive pressure from rival channels astroturfing the votes? Take a look at this[0] video from Sesame Street, 1.3m downvotes for a fairly decent educational video, vs 1.7m upvotes? How is that even justified? I can’t blame YouTube for removing a metric which looks like is being manipulated on a massive level. [0] https://youtu.be/783EsrHchXA https://youtu.be/783EsrHchXA
  • mobjack 6y ago
    I used to wonder about the same thing then I saw my toddler accidentally hit the downvote button.
  • lalaland1125 6y ago
    It's due to accidental clicks from toddlers.
• timnetworks 6y ago
  I think the platform just realized that Harry Mack has been uploading videos there.
• melbourne_mat 6y ago
  I don't get the point of likes and dislikes on YouTube. In more than a decade of use, I have only in the last year or two used the like button and from my TV. Views matter - not likes.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• shmerl 6y ago
  Something HN should totally do as well. There is a report link for inappropriate posts already. Dislike button doesn't serve any good purpose.
• boltzmann_ 6y ago
  I think social media companies underestimate the value of negative feedback. Also ranking-wise is a very strong signal to have
  • slig 6y ago
    They will continue to have this signal. Only it'll be hidden from the users.
• winstonschmidt 6y ago
  What's going on in this comment section? It seems more like of a reddit thread than the usual thoughtful HN comments. Propaganda? Ghostbusters? Whitehouse? "They"? Are troll farms targeting HN now?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• wrongdonf 6y ago
  Silence the dangerous minority. Brilliant.
• frongpik 6y ago
  Youtube is trying to sit on two chairs: it needs dislikes to feed its ML algorithms, but it wants to keep users in the dark. I doubt users will bother to send likes and dislikes into the void, so youtube will have to give at least something back. I bet that the final solution will be to show users convincing fake data, so they would feel the urge to contribute by clicking that like it dislike button.
• blargathon 6y ago
  Let's consider them as market forces. Likes are internet currency. In that context dislikes are a secondary currency that doesn't have a clear value. Dislikes tend to depend on the content and current cultural norms to determine why the dislike was added. Their value is not easily determined. For a controversial creator a dislike may actually be a badge of honor. For a DIY creator it's a major negative. Due to this apparent ambiguity in the value of dislikes and what they mean I don't find them worth while.
  • lainga 6y ago
    A form of social-signal bimetallism. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of likes!
• darepublic 6y ago
  How about someone creates a network of users that are vetted in some way to basically be 'honest' actors and not bots, then they use a browser extension that lets you view and input likes and dislikes for content across the internet independently of what the site provides. Will stop bot-ing/gaming of system if it works. Also if network is small enough even a couple of plus votes could be enough for you to 'trust' that it has a genuine positive review from a reasonable person.
• martinmjc 6y ago
  Like Twitter lists, you can always skip the recommendation algorithm through crafted subscription.
  • cellularmitosis 6y ago
    I really need to make my own youtube client which defaults to the subscriptions page and implements infinite pagination.
• booleandilemma 6y ago
  Users should just comment "dislike" (or some form of it) from here on out. Or maybe people can rate videos on a 3rd party service.
  • rvz 6y ago
    And then they will disable the comments section and that's that.
  • ihumanable 6y ago
    Do people actually venture into the youtube comment section for useful comments? On occasion if the video is small enough of niche enough the comment section will have some useful content, but the vast majority of comments under any video seem to be just weird vitriol that is only ever tangentially related to the video.
  • ByteJockey 6y ago
    So we're back to just commenting sage on things we don't like? The more things change...
• phailhaus 6y ago
  This is always always always a mistake. Social media _needs_ negative signals in order to self moderate, even if it's not much. Look at Facebook and Twitter for what happens when you don't: any kind of interaction is seen as positive, so both platforms amplify the most toxic and attention-seeking behaviors.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ghosty-discord 6y ago
  the like / dislike concept on videos encourage manipulate public opinion I believe, as it creates a false consciousness on whether the video is good or bad based on the number of likes received
• omar_kha 6y ago
  you know this website has no down vote, twitter also has no dislike button
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • frosted-flakes 6y ago
    Hacker News has always had a down-vote button, but there's a minimum karma count to be able to use it.
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  They should go the arrested development route and replace ‘up and down’ with ‘lion and crocodile’
• ExcavateGrandMa 6y ago
  only like? WTH your world lies :Ð
• dirtyid 6y ago
  Between showing: -Likes/Dislikes -Only likes -Only dislikes I'd rather have only dislikes to filter content producer that can work past negativity.
• avindroth 6y ago
  Isn’t the title misleading? They are not removing dislikes; they are testing UI without them. Huge difference.
• mywacaday 6y ago
  It's strange, I upvote pretty much without a thought but I will consider a downvote, it has to be sincerely offensive, wrong or dangerous to get a downvote. To me at least a downvote tells an important story.
  • frosted-flakes 6y ago
    Down-votes aren't being removed though, so that's still possible (the count will only be visible to the video uploader, just like HN).
• ipaddr 6y ago
  The dislike score is a relic of the past. A dislike is a measure of how bad google did at showing you content you expected. Type in show boat videos and they show you a love boat video so you hit dislike. There was never anything wrong with the loveboat video, it was just shown to someone looking for something else.
  • balozi 6y ago
    A dislike is a signaling of my general satisfaction with all aspects of that video. Content is poor? Dislike! AI recommendation was poor? Dislike!! Too much advertising? Dislike!!!
• tialaramex 6y ago
  The only thing I've seen Dislike count used for on videos I watch is to drive a snowclone about what hypothetical type of viewers would dislike this particular video, like say there's a video showing how to correctly position Protoss buildings to prevent a Reaper jumping into your base in the video game Starcraft 2 [an early game harassment which is annoying and could win if you defend it poorly], and the video has 12 dislikes, the snowclone comment might be "12 Reapers saw this video". I have never seen a video which I thought "This is a bad video, nobody should watch this video" and had lots of dislikes. I don't think clicking that would even achieve its goal, clicking the dislike button is engagement and shows you cared about this content enough to do something. So this change seems fine to me. Dislike will still exist, but now it won't cause a snowclone we didn't really need and it doesn't make numbers go up visibly.
  • mikeg8 6y ago
    I watch a lot of videos on home repair or construction topics ie “quick fix for broken PVC pipe” or “how to replace your RV water heater” and the like/dislike ratio is invaluable. The videos with high dislikes are either incomplete, incorrect, or have terrible audio rendering them useless. The videos with a high like ratio usually help me figure out how to do what I needed to do.
• dathinab 6y ago
  While many will complain and there had been some reasonable cases for dislike counts (they only remove the counts not the dislikes!) I think this kinda makes sense. The large majority of "productive"/"fair" video engagement is pretty much independent of the dislike *counts*. It still matters to be able to dislike as a feedback function but they are not removing this (for now at least.).
• Krisjohn 6y ago
  April Fools is starting a little earlier than normal.
• xyst 6y ago
  soon there will be no comments across the entire site, and content creators will have to pay to post videos
• kimchidude 6y ago
  Is this title accurate? Sounds more like their just testing this arrangement out.
• ziml77 6y ago
  I have an extension that shows the likes/dislikes under the video thumbnails. When I look at the news section of the main page, it's been very consistent for months that there's an overwhelming number of dislikes on any video about COVID. Same for things about Biden (but wasn't an issue on positive news about Trump). I wonder if this is why they're removing dislikes. Could be that the media has pressured them to.
• Jommi 6y ago
  Flagged. YouTube "to test out removing" dislikes. I thought HN had a tighter catch on titles like these...
  • Google234 6y ago
    Upvoted because this is important news.
• userbinator 6y ago
  I still remember when you could rate videos on a scale of 1-5 (or was it 0-5?), and it showed the average rating from everyone who did. Then they made it a binary like/dislike, and now the trend continues to making it unary... IMHO the "like/dislike" mentality is partly responsible for the divisive hostility of culture today. You either like something or not, you're with us or against us, there's no middle ground.
• balozi 6y ago
  Maybe a YouTube content creator can chime in. I haven't seen any on this thread. ...
• bobiny 6y ago
  I find dislikes a hostile form of conversation. If you want to discern if a DIY video gives legit advice, look at comment section. A good video will have something like “this totally works, thanks” with many likes. If a video is misleading or fake, I think it should be reported and removed or marked as misleading and fake. I see that my view is not popular, I’m open for debate.
  • argvargc 6y ago
    You're seeing that your view is not popular and being open for debate; because of dislikes.
• trentnix 6y ago
  Sure. It reveals which videos they are pushing on you despite the community of viewers recognizing them as being misleading, deceitful, or distasteful.
• hnnameblah365 6y ago
  As a compromise they could display only the magnitude of likes and dislikes. There's no difference to me if something has 100 or 900 dislikes; 1.2M or 7.9M likes.
• Fern_Blossom 6y ago
  Am I the only one that smells April Fools because the whole VW thing seemed so legit just the other day? No... just me? K...
  • aksss 6y ago
    Removing downvotes seems a lot more legit than Volkwagon dumping decades of brand goodwill on a whim. Partly because a lot of us think of YouTube/Google as censorious/evil to begin with. But maybe they are trolling. 'Tis the season, and pranking people by playing on their pre-existing biases is the correct pattern.
    • Fern_Blossom 6y ago
      Must be their first rodeo for a lot of other folks from what I can tell. Ain't my first. You can't trust shit coming up. The more, "controversial" the more, "it was just a prank bro". Happens every year.
  • DoreenMichele 6y ago
    That hadn't occurred to me and I initially felt foolish upon seeing your comment. But then I thought "What a brilliant way to test public reaction to tentative plans. If they love it, do it. If they hate it, go just kidding."
    • Fern_Blossom 6y ago
      You mean exactly what VW did and everyone has seemingly forgotten already? Yea... I remember when April Fools was actually funny. Like the wifi setup that ran through your toilets. That gave me a giggle back in the day. The PR stunt was to do a funny, absurd joke. Now it's just a marketing testing bed. Damn clouds need to get off my lawn.
• throwitaway1235 6y ago
  How much do you want to bet the Biden admin made this request of Google because many of his speeches had more dislikes than likes? They've deleted a bunch of his dislikes in the past.
• racl101 6y ago
  Well, they might as well remove the like button too cause the rating system will be useless now.
• staff009 6y ago
  Same here - you can' t down vote. IMHO this should be possible.
  • slig 6y ago
    It's possible to downvote here if you have enough karma.
• seandoe 6y ago
  This is just like when they got rid of the star ratings. It annoyed me at the time, but it all makes sense. They want to take away tools that allow you to make your own click choices and doing so gives them more power to control what you ultimately click on.
• shuntress 6y ago
  What is going on in the comments to this article? Why has this relatively minor youtube feature change dredged up such significant vitriol and conspiracy-adjacent rhetoric in the hacker news comments? Skimming all the comments here I'm seeing lots of flaming and hand-wringing. I don't have any actual measures, but to me it feels like significantly more than normal even for an article about a high-profile site/company.
  • YinLuck- 6y ago
    This change was done at the behest of the White House. If you look at the White House official YouTube channel, you will see that every video during the Biden presidency thus far has a 90%+ dislike ratio. It is obvious that a large number of people contest the legitimacy of the current regime and are using the dislike as a form of protest, so the regime is doing what all such illegitimate regimes do and censoring acts of protest.
  • mrzimmerman 6y ago
    What bothers me is that the title is even a little misleading. They're removing the count of dislikes (which obviously has an impact) but the dislike feature itself is still there.
    • shuntress 6y ago
      >What bothers me is that the title is even a little misleading. This is the exact type of comment I'm talking about. This does very little to contribute to discussion while simultaneously implying an undercurrent of conspiracy. Why even bother pointing this out? It's extremely minor at most and the link is to twitter.com. It's not as if it would take long to read the link. Just the second part of you comment: >They're removing the count of dislikes (which obviously has an impact) but the dislike feature itself is still there. would have sufficed.
    • justAnIdea 6y ago
      The like/dislike feature IS NOT for the creator. Whatever Youtube claims now, the ratio always served as an indicator to other users of the platform first, feedback to the creator second. Not to mention that the way you say "i mean, you can still click a button" is incredibly elitist, dismissive and undemocratic. Having a dislike feature without publicly showing the ratio is a political equivalent of saying "Well we can't have these bottom feeders voting on something and seeing the results. We'll let them vote, sure, but then dupm the ballots into a landfill."... Anyways I'm pretty sure all this pleading to democracy and freedom will fall on deaf ears since the powers that control the US government and big tech (and I don't mean the democrats, I mean the progressives) are obsessed with control and limiting speech. I don't doubt some of these people even think dislikes are disinfo campaigns probably done by Trump voters (which is kinda implied in the tweet) and thus need to be erased from the record.
• AzzieElbab 6y ago
  They should make a video about it before removing the dislikes
• Google234 6y ago
  This is terrible and user hostile. How can I avoid bad content now? Why does YT care more about the feelings of a few super star creators than the user base?
  • phendrenad2 6y ago
    I suspect that they're straight-up lying about it being "at the request of creators". I think they're just copying the Twitter model. Twitter became a powerhouse of pro-Trump fake news and single-handedly made qanon a thing. I guess YouTube wants in on that kind of cash flow.
• agumonkey 6y ago
  now innovation in the web is about removing so called innovations, let's iterate quickly and remove the rest..
• npmaile 6y ago
  5 stars to 0 stars first, then it was "like", ignore, or "dislike" and now it's going to be "like" or ignore. 5 options -> 3 options -> 2 options. I'm curious to see what comes in 5 years.
• phendrenad2 6y ago
  And YouTube becomes even more useless to me. The LAST remaining use I have for YouTube (since it ceased to be entertaining by demonetizing all of my favorite creators to the point where they need to shill VPNs and underwear every 2 minutes) is to find tutorials and guides on how to do things I want to learn to do. Too bad I won't know when a guide is giving me bad advice, because there won't be a crowdsourced like/dislike ratio. Guess I'll have to go to Udemy or something.
• krapp 6y ago
  There seem to be an awful lot of accounts here pushing the narrative - which seems to have come out of nowhere - that this is some kind of conspiracy to hide the number of dislikes on the White House's official Youtube channel. I guess someone wants us to believe there's some deep popular dissent and resentment against the Biden administration that they desperately want to have covered up. Sorry gentlemen, it's a reach. Crippling senility didn't stick, pedophilia didn't stick, whatever Hunter Biden's laptop was supposed to be didn't stick, and this... is getting kind of desperate. I know you're gearing up for 2024 but please, find some better memes. Quality over quantity.
• cwhiz 6y ago
  Love it. The dislike, down arrow, and other such options just serve to give the mob an opportunity to bury things they don’t like. I wish HN would get rid of the downvote.
  • cwhiz 6y ago
    Case in point, this dissenting opinion. Proving the point
• iambateman 6y ago
  To put it simply...I use downvotes on YouTube to assess quality constantly. The ratio is meaningful.
• alirsgp 6y ago
  As someone in the ad industry (not part of Google) this makes perfect sense. Youtube likely has video quality scores (like for Grammys, Academy, etc), where they're able to get the best bang for their buck when users watch such videos. Disliking such videos will drive users away from these videos, and hurt their profits. They likely ran a test already and deemed it worthwhile.
• ridaj 6y ago
  Wrong, clickbaity title A correct summary would be: "YouTube experiments with removing public dislike counts"
• jlebar 6y ago
  @dang: Bad headline. Tweet says it will hide the number of dislikes, but you'll still be able to dislike a video.
• yammyhhub 6y ago
  Seems like having the most disliked video in their own website did affect them
• blibble 6y ago
  that's fine, I'll just use the report button instead
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• raynr 6y ago
  Title is misleading. YouTube is testing removing the ability for viewers to see the dislikes. Video owners can still see the dislikes. I am skeptical about this design change fixing the stated concern, which is creator "well-being". If good faith creators can still see the dislike count, they will still feel miserable. Anyway, if you are putting yourself out there, other people taking a dump on you is part of the deal, because other people... you know, exist. If creator well-being is a concern, Google should focus on preventing or minimising actual harassment campaigns instead of these minimal design changes. The design change also assumes that all creators are good faith actors whose well-being ought to be managed, which is impossibly idealistic. If there is a way for bad faith actors to benefit at the cost of good faith actors, they will exploit that, and the good faith actors will lose ground over the long term. It also ignores that dislikes can be given for many reasons, hiding valuable screening information from the viewer. It should not be up to Google to hide this info and finesse their recommendation engine behind the scenes to serve relevant videos. Google would optimize for views, not the content in the video.
  • dang 6y ago
    Submitted title was "YouTube to Remove Dislikes". We've replaced it with a substring of the tweet. Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • ridaj 6y ago
    I think the wellbeing play is more about preventing dislike-bombing than about protecting creator egos. Dislike-bombing is coordinated mass action against a video or creator, not by the usual audience of that creator, but by herds of non-watchers seeking to shame the creator publicly via a bad dislike count. That sort of stampede-like behavior doesn't seem like a healthy community dynamic. It sounds reasonable to imagine that dislike-bomb participants will lose the public shaming motivation if the dislike count is no longer visible; they also will lose the ability to practically organize eg by setting up goals ("10k dislikes and I'll give away xyz"). Creators still retain dislikes as a signal of quality from their audience. Viewers lose dislike count but it's also already taken into account into the recommendation algorithms that drive most consumption on YouTube so maybe not a whole lot is lost; besides in the only place where dislike count is shown, comments are already visible (and those may be negative too).
• gohbgl 6y ago
  New browser extension coming in in 3, 2, 1, ...
• wetpaws 6y ago
  The cinic in me says the only reason for this is the shame from YouTube rewind fiasco.
• azhenley 6y ago
  April Fools?
• foofoo4u 6y ago
  Youtube has been displaying prominent banners on their homepage for the past several months promoting identity-politics centric content by token members. These videos were down voted to oblivion. The community clearly doesn't like their woke agenda (including I). Quickly the videos comments and ratings become disabled. I can't help but think this new feature to disable down votes is somehow a sinister way to take away the power of people to signal their disapproval of driving narratives.
• swilliamsio 6y ago
  I thought this was an April Fools joke at first.
• sigstoat 6y ago
  i won’t mind not seeing all of the “how could six people dislike this video?!?!” comments. doesn’t seem worth it though.
• roody15 6y ago
  This is simply so google can exert more control over its platform and control the narrative. Hate to be so cynical but watching what happened to reddit seeing some similarities here at youtube. It’s almost like Google (and others) want to tell you which videos are good and should be watched and pretend to have user interaction. TV 3.0
• Jyaif 6y ago
  I've actually made the same choice, but in the context of a game and user generated levels: people can like and dislike a level, but only the like count is shown. It's based on the user feedback (they don't want to be demotivated/humiliated by a large dislike count). It's also the solution chosen by Super Mario Maker 2, a big influence on me.
• hunter-2 6y ago
  Neither does this help the viewer, nor would this discourage targeted dislike-campaigns. Any layman user knows that the dislikes play a part in YouTube's recommendation algorithm. So, people who want to organize such campaigns are still going to do it because it helps them with their objectives. Only the messaging around the campaign is going to differ.
• j_san 6y ago
  I actually think it's an interesting change and might make my youtube a bit better for me personally. Let's see how this goes.
• kelnos 6y ago
  One of the things I really like about HN is that you can't see the moderation counts on other people's posts. If YT is going to kill dislike counts, they should also kill like counts. They can still algorithmically bury things that are severely disliked, and promote things that are heavily liked. The video uploader, though, should be able to see the counts in order to get some feedback as to the quality of their videos. Absolute numbers of likes/dislikes turns things into a popularity contest and fuels social media addiction. If you can only see the counts on your own content, you can't compare yourself to someone else and find yourself lacking (or vice versa).
• reportgunner 6y ago
  Time to forget youtube. Most of it is drivel anyway.
• PrimeDirective 6y ago
  That's rich, coming from a company that authored and uploaded the most downvoted video on their own platform
• tsjq 6y ago
  April fools.?
• srg0 6y ago
  I suppose it's April 1 content.
• daveoc64 6y ago
  Reading the comments here makes me realise that how people use the like and dislike buttons differs significantly. It reminds me of the Uber approach to rating drivers - by Uber's metrics anything less than 5 stars indicates there was a problem with the ride. There are riders who don't see it that way though, so for them, 3 stars is an average ride without problems. I rarely look at likes and dislikes. For anything large, it's full of brigading.
• Udik 6y ago
  I was just thinking of the possibile impact had by not allowing/ hiding dislikes in creating the current, extremely tense climate on social networks. I wonder if allowing only positive feedback (which seemed to be meant, at least at the beginning, as a way to boost a mood of positive, pleasant interaction) is instead encouraging the expression of more and more extreme positions, since disagreement is effectively hidden. The popularity of a message doesn't imply that it's not at the same time divisive. You can get millions of hearts and likes, but you'll still be blind to how many people strongly disagree with it.
• yrro 6y ago
  Can't creators already do this? I know I've noticed that the dislike ratio/count/whatever have been hidden on a number of videos I've seen over the years....
• lenkite 6y ago
  Well, youtube is getting severely criticised for removing dislikes from Biden videos. I guess they have decided (correctly) to simply remove the options for dislikes altogether. Frankly, I think this is FAR more honest than removing dislikes.