9 ms·
Your first mistake was thinking that you are the user they care about serving :p
by EricE 6y ago
Your first mistake was thinking that you are the user they care about serving :p
- retsibsi 6y agoOh I know, I am pretty cynical and not exactly outraged here. But although they don't care about what's good for us, they do care about what will keep us on the platform. And if it gets harder to find good stuff and filter out the dross, that could conceivably have negative consequences for YouTube in the long run.
- CyberRabbi 6y agoThey hate us. The little guy. No criticism allowed
- EricE 6y agoI'm not outraged - I'm amused. The ultimate admission the only way they can spread their messaging is through force, not honest competition of ideas. How superior. Nothing proves you have a worthy argument better than outright hiding from dissent. Again, they don't care if you stay on the platform. If they did, they wouldn't touch it. The disagreement buttons were added in the first place because they increase and maintain engagement. After a few decades it's now all the sudden a problem? Ha! The real problem is their desired narratives are being soundly rejected and it's embarrassing. So here we are.
- retsibsi 6y ago> Again, they don't care if you stay on the platform. Why not? Even if you're right that they care more about propaganda than money, what's the point of propagandising to an empty room?
- EricE 6y agoIf logic were involved we wouldn't be having a discussion about removing dislikes in the first place, no? :)
- retsibsi 6y agoCome on, I'm trying not to dismiss your perspective just because it sounds a bit conspiratorial, but this is not convincing. Are you saying the YouTube execs (or whoever is leaning on them) are just acting emotionally with no strategy?
- EricE 6y agoThere is absolutely a strategy - there is a particular point of view they favor, and anything counter to it is removed. Dislikes are embarrassing to, for lack of better terminology, their pet causes. Simply disabling them on certain videos or channels calls even more attention to them - so why not just remove them entirely. The only thing surprising to me is that it took them this long.
- jasonfarnon 6y agoIt doesn't need to be that dislikes are embarrassing to their pet causes. There were a few instances where business partners would, e.g., post an ad campaign that got so many dislikes the dislike ratio entered the news cycle. I'm sure google gets pressure from their business/ad partners when that goes down.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoWouldn't business partners be a trivial subset of their pet causes? It's not just a political set.
- markdown 6y agoWhat a silly conspiracy theory. If the wanted to hide embarrassing downvotes on certain videos, they'd just remove those downvotes, not the entire feature.
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoThey do that too
- bobthechef 6y agoPeople won't leave that easily. Nobody compares to YouTube. Facebook had no way of voicing disapproval for a long time and membership still increased. They are testing various options which might mean they're weighting the relative benefits and damage. And besides, they may be in a position where they have no choice if propaganda is more important than money.
- asiachick 6y agofacebook still has no way to voice disapproval. They have like, love, care, haha, wow, sad, angry Angry != disapprove because in the context of the other "emotions" it does not distinguish between disliking the post itself, or what it's referencing. If you post "Candidate X did Y" are you angry because the candidate did Y or because your friend posted something anti candidate X?
- bobthechef 6y ago> The ultimate admission the only way they can spread their messaging is through force, not honest competition of ideas. How superior. > Nothing proves you have a worthy argument better than outright hiding from dissent. I don't know the general trends across YouTube or why they would do this. Certainly, they've also been silencing views they and certain influential groups advising them don't like, and I've seen videos put out by connected establishment and moneyed milieu downvoted into oblivion. But value and truth are not determined through popular vote. It might coincide, or it might not. So the only way I can understand your comment is to suppose that downvoting of "preferred" YouTube content has gotten so severe that the company wishes to prevent the communication of exactly how much disapproval there really is for the "official narrative" (while potentially keeping track of it themselves) because once someone knows he's not alone in his disapproval, he might just have more confidence to resist or leave a comment that spreads a message unfavorable to them. So yes, dislikes might increase engagement, but it might not be the kind of engagement they want to facilitate.
- amznthrwaway 6y agoGet professional help. You are mentally unwell. Fuck you, and fuck your anti-semitism.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago> downvoting of "preferred" YouTube content has gotten so severe that the company wishes to prevent the communication of exactly how much disapproval there really is for the "official narrative" This is exact reason. Go to you tube home page and every day there is bar of "official sources" news on coronavirus (clips from news stations). Here are first four for this day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USE5USAodiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USE5USAodiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4kqSV1p3T8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4kqSV1p3T8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmOL9ek7Tys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmOL9ek7Tys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DpzcMZPTqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DpzcMZPTqA Noticing here, each and every has more dislike than like.
- WillPostForFood 6y ago
- amznthrwaway 6y agoWho is “they”? You appear to have lept to some very extreme conclusions without anything resembling supporting data.
- kbenson 6y agoTo be clear, they aren't removing the button, or a way for users to register their dislike or track that they already disliked a video (I assume), just the count of how many other people disliked it. As a matter of engagement, I'm not sure how much that statistic brings to the table. I agree it might make filtering out crap content somewhat harder, but I'm not sure how good it ever was for that. It might be that the vast majority of the time it indicated anything to the viewer it indicated that some campaign was underway, which generally is counterproductive as a viewer. Personally, I upvote if I liked something, and I don't indicate anything if I didn't find it all that interesting or useful. Rarely if ever have I disliked something that youtube has recommended to me. The few times I have it's probably been because of some outside source noting it because it's objectionable. How useful of a signal is that to youtube or the creator? In that case it indicates what people that don't care about their content and aren't likely to watch any more of it think. That seems a poor source of feedback (and if we're talking about hat being useful to indicate to them that they shouldn't have done whatever they did, that's obviously served already by many other mechanisms, including comments).
- drdeca 6y agoPersonally, I have frequently wished that the downvote button on youtube _comments_ wasn’t fake. (Last I heard, it currently doesn’t even send a packet to any servers when you click it. It used to, until google+ iirc [edit: see correction/update provided by voussoir in the reply. Turns out it does now. Thanks for the update/correction.]) The inability to downvote substantially alters what is said/ranked highly, I think.
- AshWolfy 6y agowhat narratives are being rejected?
- city41 6y agoA while back they significantly increased the number of ads and also now show YouTube premium popups constantly. I would imagine it's had very little if any negative impact. Google knows YouTube is the only game in town.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoFor now, but if they keep treating users like shit, it creates a bigger and bigger opportunity for competition to pop in. You might be thinking it's super hard for someone like you or I to create a YouTube competitor. That's probably true, but what about Amazon or Netflix? Can you imagine if Netflix had a YouTube-like platform where, if you're a subscriber, you get no ads?
- city41 6y agoThat's a good point. Who really knows, but possibly Google just doesn't see that coming, or at least not any time soon. A true competitor to YouTube would really do consumers and creators a lot of good though.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoSeems like it should be a market inevitability. There are just so many things wrong with YouTube. The main obstacle is the bandwidth cost, and that's not an issue for any major tech company. I think Facebook could actually properly compete with YouTube if they wanted, it's just that their insistence that you have to be logged in to access content makes it much less appealing as a platform, because you can't just link people to videos easily.
- plerpin 6y ago>The main obstacle is the bandwidth cost ...hence the ads? How would competitors be immune to the need to pay the bills?
- 6y ago
- RandallBrown 6y agoThey probably think that dislikes aren't actually a good signal for whether or not a video is relevant to a uer. Crappy videos could automatically be filtered out of their search and recommendations because people abandon them early. They may have determined that's enough to help user's find what they need. It also helps the issue of dislike brigading since you won't be able to "dislike" a video at all. Not sure if that's the right move or not but I don't think it's necessarily a bad one.
- jacurtis 6y ago> they do care about what will keep us on the platform Yes they do. Watching 2 useless DIY videos and then a 3rd DIY video that finally helped you out, just kept you on the platform 3x longer than if you had filtered out the badly rated one and watched the helpful video first. Checkmate. YouTube/Google/Alphabet Wins! 3x the ads. 3x the money. 3x the evil. Do not pass go, Google collects your $200. Time to hide the dislike counts... case closed.
- mancerayder 6y ago.. combined with the idea that there's much of an alternative. If the content creators I like are there...
- retsibsi 6y agoIn the short run they can get away with ~anything. In the long run though, anything that upsets users makes the rise of a true competitor marginally more likely.
- paulcole 6y agoCan you clarify this for me? I have always assumed that since I’m the one watching the video I’m their customer/user?
- kube-system 6y agoThe vast majority of YouTube users don’t meet the definition of “customer” — that would be their advertisers.
- DrSiemer 6y agoYou are not paying, right? So you are the product. You are targeted with ads tailored to your viewing pattern; your data is what creates value.
- xiphias2 6y agoI am actually paying to get rid of advertisements, not to get rid of useful features. This will just get me to stick with my channel subscriptions, as the recommendations are already often better and better scams.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoCable television subscribers originally payed to get rid of ads. Then the channels realized they could get you to pay and watch ads. You will be monetized in every way possible.
- blihp 6y agoUnfortunately even then Google doesn't view you as the customer in any substantial way. Advertisers have been, and continue to be, who they want to keep happy. The reality is that, in aggregate, most users are willing to take a fair amount of abuse as long as it's free.
- xiphias2 6y agoIt would have been an interesting experiment to show dislikes for premium users and see how many people pay for those feature, but I think that would have been too controversial compared to the ads that are accepted practice already.
- Retric 6y agoPerhaps, but this is the last Google product I still use. If they break YouTube like they did search, chrome, cellphones, and email, I guess I am off to find something else which must hurt their bottom line eventually.
- kaszanka 6y agoThe cold reality is that most users won't care.
- darepublic 6y agosorry, couldn't help myself. courtesy of youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwcJNsoY50E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwcJNsoY50E
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bogomipz 6y ago>"If they break YouTube like they did search ..." I'm curious what you mean by search being broken? Do you mean the quality of search results or something with search functionality. I ask because lately I've found the quality of certain search results to be increasingly disappointing. I'm not sure if that corresponds to some known change they've made recently though.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 8note 6y agoNebula seems like an obvious alternative
- benhurmarcel 6y agoIt's only for a handful of channels though.
- ma2rten 6y agoRight, according to the tweet this is done based on feedback from creators.
- jacurtis 6y agoYeah it's mainly to discourage dislike trains.
- pmiller2 6y agoSomething something pay for it something something you are the product.
- ironmagma 6y agoI guess Tron wasn’t clear enough, it should have been “fight for the end user.”
- 8note 6y agoThat's still the advertiser, isn't it?
- ironmagma 6y agoThe phrase is defined as “a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product.” When YouTube was created, it was intended to show videos to users. There were no ads yet. So the intention is for the viewers to be the users.
- jp555 6y agoAs long as it's still 2006.
- ironmagma 6y agoThe core intention of YouTube is to have a platform to advertise on. Without the viewers, the advertisers would have no interest in the platform. If there were no advertisers, that would not sway the viewers from having interest in the platform. The ads are there as a means to the end, it’s not the end itself.
- jp555 6y agoIf there were no advertisers, they would not be able to pay the expenses required to deliver something that meets user's expectations, and they would lose interest.
- ironmagma 6y agoNot necessarily. There are other models that could work for YouTube, like the subscription model, and they could always go back to YouTube being an unprofitable arm of Alphabet like it was.
- rz2k 6y agoYouTube premium never shows me adds, and downvotes have reliably gotten the AI to stop suggesting a musician or autoplaying a song that I don't like, regardless of their rough membership in a genre I otherwise want to hear. It makes me feel guilty to downvote someone or their work who's probably a good person, but it's the only reliable way to tune the AI. I get a lot of enjoyment out of music on youtube premium, but would stop using the service if they started airing ads on the pay service, or began serving music in such a way that I couldn't tune the suggestions and automatic play queues.