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But that's the point! Yours and others' belief that down voting is a mean to register dissent. Since dissent is orthogonal to quality down votes no longer indic

But that's the point! Yours and others' belief that down voting is a mean to register dissent. Since dissent is orthogonal to quality down votes no longer indicate lack of quality. Thus the metric becomes meaningless. In fact, if Google and other tech companies were to continue using down votes to measure quality, the end result would be strengthening the majority's echo chamber. Suppose there is a YouTube channel about how a minority in a certain country is discriminated against. Given what we know about discrimination, it is very unlikely for the majority to believe that it is discriminating this minority. Thus you have dissent and the possibility of hordes of angry down voters "brigading" that channel. These brigades may even be organized or supported by country in question because it doesn't like the negative views the channel is conveying.

pessimizer 6y ago
> dissent is orthogonal to quality If you said 2 + 2 = 5, I would disagree. This is a trivial example of dissent completely entangled with quality.
- water8 6y ago
  I agree. How else are we to measure the subjectivity of “quality” if not by approval or disapproval of people?
baryphonic 6y ago
> Suppose there is a YouTube channel about how a minority in a certain country is discriminated against. Given what we know about discrimination, it is very unlikely for the majority to believe that it is discriminating this minority. Thus you have dissent and the possibility of hordes of angry down voters "brigading" that channel. These brigades may even be organized or supported by country in question because it doesn't like the negative views the channel is conveying. This is not how things are in my country (US). People make and post those videos pretty frequently. They get high up-to-down ratios, just like the videos expressing skepticism. Videos that seem to be downvoted the most seem to be ones with extremely "bad takes." For example, when one of the SpaceX Starship test vehicles exploded on landing, some cable news channel described it as some sort of embarrassing failure, when the thing was very clearly an unexpected success. That got a pretty serious number of downvotes. Of the remainder of downvoted videos, the only ones that seem to be consistently brigaded by users are ones where a creator dares to express an unpopular opinion with his audience, or the ones that are just pure corporate shilling and/or propaganda. The former are extremely courageous; the latter deserve to be downvoted to hell. The YouTube algorithm being what it is, YouTube is already showing you videos that it thinks you want to see and will engage with. Brigading is thus pretty rare on the platform.
jim-jim-jim 6y ago
> In fact, if Google and other tech companies were to continue using down votes to measure quality, the end result would be strengthening the majority's echo chamber. "Mainstream" and "majority" are not the same thing. The content and tone of established media is dictated by a very small minority whose basic material interests diverge from those of normal people. I guess the question is what's worse: a mob's echo chamber or a cabal's echo chamber? It's been the latter for most of print/broadcast media's history, and I don't think it's done us much good.

pessimizer 6y ago

> dissent is orthogonal to quality If you said 2 + 2 = 5, I would disagree. This is a trivial example of dissent completely entangled with quality.

water8 6y ago
I agree. How else are we to measure the subjectivity of “quality” if not by approval or disapproval of people?

baryphonic 6y ago

> Suppose there is a YouTube channel about how a minority in a certain country is discriminated against. Given what we know about discrimination, it is very unlikely for the majority to believe that it is discriminating this minority. Thus you have dissent and the possibility of hordes of angry down voters "brigading" that channel. These brigades may even be organized or supported by country in question because it doesn't like the negative views the channel is conveying. This is not how things are in my country (US). People make and post those videos pretty frequently. They get high up-to-down ratios, just like the videos expressing skepticism. Videos that seem to be downvoted the most seem to be ones with extremely "bad takes." For example, when one of the SpaceX Starship test vehicles exploded on landing, some cable news channel described it as some sort of embarrassing failure, when the thing was very clearly an unexpected success. That got a pretty serious number of downvotes. Of the remainder of downvoted videos, the only ones that seem to be consistently brigaded by users are ones where a creator dares to express an unpopular opinion with his audience, or the ones that are just pure corporate shilling and/or propaganda. The former are extremely courageous; the latter deserve to be downvoted to hell. The YouTube algorithm being what it is, YouTube is already showing you videos that it thinks you want to see and will engage with. Brigading is thus pretty rare on the platform.

jim-jim-jim 6y ago

> In fact, if Google and other tech companies were to continue using down votes to measure quality, the end result would be strengthening the majority's echo chamber. "Mainstream" and "majority" are not the same thing. The content and tone of established media is dictated by a very small minority whose basic material interests diverge from those of normal people. I guess the question is what's worse: a mob's echo chamber or a cabal's echo chamber? It's been the latter for most of print/broadcast media's history, and I don't think it's done us much good.