3 ms·

> because the count was not visible to them, we found that they were less likely to target a video’s dislike button to drive up the count How is this any diffe

> because the count was not visible to them, we found that they were less likely to target a video’s dislike button to drive up the count How is this any different than users targeting a video with lots of likes to drive up its count, though? If YouTube were hiding both the public like and dislike counts, I wouldn't give this a second thought. But to say "seeing counts influences people" as a reason for hiding dislikes, and not extending that same argument to likes as well just seems a bit shallow. Public counts are useful because they provide a gauge of perceived quality. If I see a video with lots of likes and no dislikes, it's fair to assume I'll like that video. If I see a video with lots of likes and I can't see the dislikes, I have absolutely no idea whether I'll like it or not; maybe it's a really good video and everyone liked it, or maybe the majority of people disliked it but I just can't tell. If you're removing my ability to gauge quality anyway, then why not just remove the like count as well? This change is essentially shifting from "three out of five dentists prefer Trident" to "three dentists prefer Trident". The loss of information is so substantial that the remaining information is essentially useless.

Zak 5y ago
I don't think the ratio of likes to dislikes is a reliable indicator of quality. It probably will be for certain categories of video, but not for anything polarizing like a review of an Apple product or anything even remotely politics-adjacent.
- gameman144 5y ago
  Totally agreed, that's why I wanted to call out that it's a measure of perceived quality. If there's really great documentary about the International Space Station, I'd expect flat-earth believers to think that it's rubbish, that's just part of being human. Conversely, if I saw a documentary about abortion (or some other very polarized topic) which had a 9:1 like-to-dislike ratio, the difference between that ratio and my expected 1:1 ratio would tell me that lots of people thought that the video was high-quality, even those who didn't share the same ideological views.
jayd16 5y ago
>How is this any different than users targeting a video with lots of likes to drive up its count, though? Perhaps, it's hard to fake enough ups to really make a difference to the ranking, but it was easy to bury things?
tshaddox 5y ago
> How is this any different than users targeting a video with lots of likes to drive up its count, though? What do you mean? It's different because it's literally the exact opposite.

Zak 5y ago

I don't think the ratio of likes to dislikes is a reliable indicator of quality. It probably will be for certain categories of video, but not for anything polarizing like a review of an Apple product or anything even remotely politics-adjacent.

gameman144 5y ago
Totally agreed, that's why I wanted to call out that it's a measure of perceived quality. If there's really great documentary about the International Space Station, I'd expect flat-earth believers to think that it's rubbish, that's just part of being human. Conversely, if I saw a documentary about abortion (or some other very polarized topic) which had a 9:1 like-to-dislike ratio, the difference between that ratio and my expected 1:1 ratio would tell me that lots of people thought that the video was high-quality, even those who didn't share the same ideological views.

jayd16 5y ago

>How is this any different than users targeting a video with lots of likes to drive up its count, though? Perhaps, it's hard to fake enough ups to really make a difference to the ranking, but it was easy to bury things?

tshaddox 5y ago

> How is this any different than users targeting a video with lots of likes to drive up its count, though? What do you mean? It's different because it's literally the exact opposite.