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The problem is people also use it as a propaganda tool to bury videos they don’t politically agree with. Normies have much lowered like/dislike button engagemen

The problem is people also use it as a propaganda tool to bury videos they don’t politically agree with. Normies have much lowered like/dislike button engagement so it’s a disservice to the vast majority.

propogandist 5y ago
recent political pushes aren't being well received, with sentiment being very negative on WhiteHouse media pushes, mainstream narratives around vaccines and the like (on YT). Normies are swayed easily by dislike bar, so the elites at YT are trying to hide it -- just like reddit hid the downvote count, to enable astrotrufing campaigns and overall shill activity many years ago.
- oscribinn 5y ago
  This site is also pretty retarded and shill-friendly with its "you can downvote if you've accumulated enough good boy points" setup
jjcon 5y ago
But youtube isn't removing the button or the signal from their algorithms - they are just removing the optics of having a disliked video (which a lot of users including myself found useful)
- gremloni 5y ago
  Like I mentioned somewhere else, for recommended videos I see two binary paradigms - videos with >95% like ratios - political videos that have obviously been brigaded Assuming most normies don’t have great engagement rates with the like/dislike button based on view count, this change is doing the vast majority a service.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - hulahoof 5y ago
    If it is easy to believe some videos get a natural >95% rating; isn't it just as likely some content would evoke a <5% rating without 'brigading'? I am not saying that this doesn't sometimes occur, but I also don't believe it's the only case.
    - mikeyjk 5y ago
      Agreed, people made the same argument for removing 5 star ratings from Netflix ('people only ever vote 1 star or 5 stars'). If this were an input for the decision making, these platforms could very easily present that evidence. I do miss the Netflix of years gone past.
- decremental 5y ago
  Because the channels they want to protect are politically aligned with YouTube.
  - gremloni 5y ago
    It’s a business decision. Based on view count vs like/dislike ratio a lot of these videos are obviously brigaded. Most people aren’t engaged enough to represent themselves in the like/dislike ratio. It doesn’t make sense to bury them for the vast majority.
    - Lhiw 5y ago
      What if they are? Why is this a bad thing exactly? Smells a lot like democracy and a platform worth of people telling the creator they aren't welcome. Maybe YouTube doesn't like that but that doesn't make them right. Sometimes the users are right, it's their platform to. Going against them just drives them away further. With the hostile actions of YouTube over the last couple of years YouTube is asking for disruption.
    - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
      >Based on view count vs like/dislike ratio a lot of these videos are obviously brigaded. That's your belief but you have no evidence to prove this. And even if true, why does the entirety of content of YouTube need to be punished for the undesired behavioral patterns that YouTube has cultivated on controversial videos they've pushed on everyone?
      - gremloni 5y ago
        View count vs like/dislike ratio is an incredible accurate metric for my point.
        educaysean 5y ago
        Can you please elaborate? You have a way to compare a raw metric (counts) against a ratio (like vs. dislike) that yields useful insights as to whether the like vs. dislike ratio was the product of brigading?
- loudtieblahblah 5y ago
  This is to kiss the ass of big corporate creators and protect their brand when it becomes unpopular
  - mikeyjk 5y ago
    This, imo. Netflix did the exact same thing.
- rvba 5y ago
  How can you know?
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
What fraction of videos on YouTube are political in nature? Seems like a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in this. Why should videos about replacing the alternator on a 1999 Ford Ranger have the Like/Dislike buttons removed because YouTube wants to protect a very small number of accounts from criticism?
- gremloni 5y ago
  It’s definitely not small. I’m not particularly political and anecdotally my recommendation bubble has atleast 30% of politically “triggering” videos. These videos don’t have to be explicitly political but just involve a person that can be considered a “trigger”. I mostly watch videos on wood and metal working.
  - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
    What YouTube recommends to you is just that, their recommendations. It doesn't reflect the actual amount of content that exists, it reflects what YouTube wants you to watch to drive engagement. It might be 0.001% of content but make up 30% of the recommendations YouTube gives you.
    - naasking 5y ago
      > It doesn't reflect the actual amount of content that exists, it reflects what YouTube wants you to watch to drive engagement. Exactly. And what drives engagement more than enraging political content? Of course they're going to shove politics in your face even if you've never watched a single one before.
  - NavinF 5y ago
    I too mostly watch woodworking/metalworking. If I ignore the “current events” row of videos that I haven’t clicked on in years (because they are incredibly boring and oversimplify complex topics), less than 1% of my recommendations are political. I wonder how YouTube decides which videos to allow in that special row. Most of them don’t have nearly as many views/hour as my usual recommendations.
Manuel_D 5y ago
Sure, but many "Normies" are aware of this dynamic and adjust their expectations accordingly. If some video critical of gamers, anime fans, or WoW players gets piled with downvotes it's no mystery. Same with political content. It's well understood that controversial things get more negative reactions.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  And this makes the system useless. Removing it is the healthy solution to interrupt the game.
  - pc86 5y ago
    How does it make the system useless? It simply means the bar for "should I watch this" re: [dis]like ratio changes at least in part based on video content. If I see a technical video with more than 10-15% dislikes, I probably won't watch it or will be skeptical. But a video about abortion can be 50/50 and still have great content. It seems unlikely that giving someone more information makes something worthless.
    - slightwinder 5y ago
      This system is useless because it does not communicate the reasoning behind a downvote, nor is it objective in the first place. People downvote for many reasons, and quality is the seems usually to be the most likely. You could make the most informative and objective correct video, and toxic communities could downvote it because they feel triggered for some absurd reasons, or because it competes with their favored content-creator, or because of reasons which are independent of the video itself You must be pretty deep inside the bubble of the topic, as also the bubble of the content-creator, to be able to evaluate the value of the rating. And that makes it worthless, because most people can't be that deep and follow everything. And the people who are, are more likely re-enforcing their own ignorance. The Ratio is one of those tools which are making sense when they are fresh, but become corrupted over time, making it useless after a while.
  - chelical 5y ago
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
The alternative is that you're only allowed to like things and increased consumption must be fostered at every turn. Can't have anyone being critical bc the very nature of that is contrary to consumption or promotion
throwawaylinux 5y ago
And Google uses it as a propaganda tool to remove votes on unpopular videos they want to boost, whether there's actual money changing hands its an undeclared in-kind contribution.
Klaster_1 5y ago
There's another side to this too - downvote the authoritarian state propaganda. When I see a 99% disliked video and click a "Dislike", I feel that I am not alone. When all forms of political participation are verboten, you use what you have. Now we have even less.
- gremloni 5y ago
  The problem is only the “disenfranchised” like you use it and more often than not your views are verboten for a good reason.
  - Klaster_1 5y ago
    Not everyone on HN lives in the US or EU. The views that are forbidden here are rule of law, democracy, political representation, freedom of speech, freedom of faith, human rights and so on. People who try to oppose this are regularly imprisoned, tortured, killed, repressed or forced to leave the country.
  - citizenpaul 5y ago
    Whats the difference between the disenfranchised and a oppressed group trying to be heard? If you can answer that honestly you will see your own comment is hate speech.
maest 5y ago
What is a "normie"? Sounds like a vaguely inflammatory/derogatory term, but not 100% clear on what you mean by it.
- djbusby 5y ago
  Persons in the center of the bell curve; not the outliers/zealots
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  It's not necessarily derogatory, it depends on the context. "Normie" just means "ordinary", "average", or "uninitiated". It usually means someone with very conventional political or cultural views but it can also mean "someone who isn't part of a subculture or group" ie developers talking about laptops might say "normies don't usually need more than 8GB of memory but some development tasks require more to be comfortable". Other times it's used in a more derogatory sense to imply that someone is a bit too credulous towards the establishment of the day ie "normies think that corruption and inequality only exist in developing countries".

propogandist 5y ago

recent political pushes aren't being well received, with sentiment being very negative on WhiteHouse media pushes, mainstream narratives around vaccines and the like (on YT). Normies are swayed easily by dislike bar, so the elites at YT are trying to hide it -- just like reddit hid the downvote count, to enable astrotrufing campaigns and overall shill activity many years ago.

oscribinn 5y ago
This site is also pretty retarded and shill-friendly with its "you can downvote if you've accumulated enough good boy points" setup

jjcon 5y ago

But youtube isn't removing the button or the signal from their algorithms - they are just removing the optics of having a disliked video (which a lot of users including myself found useful)

gremloni 5y ago
Like I mentioned somewhere else, for recommended videos I see two binary paradigms - videos with >95% like ratios - political videos that have obviously been brigaded Assuming most normies don’t have great engagement rates with the like/dislike button based on view count, this change is doing the vast majority a service.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hulahoof 5y ago
  If it is easy to believe some videos get a natural >95% rating; isn't it just as likely some content would evoke a <5% rating without 'brigading'? I am not saying that this doesn't sometimes occur, but I also don't believe it's the only case.
  - mikeyjk 5y ago
    Agreed, people made the same argument for removing 5 star ratings from Netflix ('people only ever vote 1 star or 5 stars'). If this were an input for the decision making, these platforms could very easily present that evidence. I do miss the Netflix of years gone past.
decremental 5y ago
Because the channels they want to protect are politically aligned with YouTube.
- gremloni 5y ago
  It’s a business decision. Based on view count vs like/dislike ratio a lot of these videos are obviously brigaded. Most people aren’t engaged enough to represent themselves in the like/dislike ratio. It doesn’t make sense to bury them for the vast majority.
  - Lhiw 5y ago
    What if they are? Why is this a bad thing exactly? Smells a lot like democracy and a platform worth of people telling the creator they aren't welcome. Maybe YouTube doesn't like that but that doesn't make them right. Sometimes the users are right, it's their platform to. Going against them just drives them away further. With the hostile actions of YouTube over the last couple of years YouTube is asking for disruption.
  - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
    >Based on view count vs like/dislike ratio a lot of these videos are obviously brigaded. That's your belief but you have no evidence to prove this. And even if true, why does the entirety of content of YouTube need to be punished for the undesired behavioral patterns that YouTube has cultivated on controversial videos they've pushed on everyone?
    - gremloni 5y ago
      View count vs like/dislike ratio is an incredible accurate metric for my point.
      - educaysean 5y ago
        Can you please elaborate? You have a way to compare a raw metric (counts) against a ratio (like vs. dislike) that yields useful insights as to whether the like vs. dislike ratio was the product of brigading?
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
This is to kiss the ass of big corporate creators and protect their brand when it becomes unpopular
- mikeyjk 5y ago
  This, imo. Netflix did the exact same thing.
rvba 5y ago
How can you know?

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

What fraction of videos on YouTube are political in nature? Seems like a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in this. Why should videos about replacing the alternator on a 1999 Ford Ranger have the Like/Dislike buttons removed because YouTube wants to protect a very small number of accounts from criticism?

gremloni 5y ago
It’s definitely not small. I’m not particularly political and anecdotally my recommendation bubble has atleast 30% of politically “triggering” videos. These videos don’t have to be explicitly political but just involve a person that can be considered a “trigger”. I mostly watch videos on wood and metal working.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  What YouTube recommends to you is just that, their recommendations. It doesn't reflect the actual amount of content that exists, it reflects what YouTube wants you to watch to drive engagement. It might be 0.001% of content but make up 30% of the recommendations YouTube gives you.
  - naasking 5y ago
    > It doesn't reflect the actual amount of content that exists, it reflects what YouTube wants you to watch to drive engagement. Exactly. And what drives engagement more than enraging political content? Of course they're going to shove politics in your face even if you've never watched a single one before.
- NavinF 5y ago
  I too mostly watch woodworking/metalworking. If I ignore the “current events” row of videos that I haven’t clicked on in years (because they are incredibly boring and oversimplify complex topics), less than 1% of my recommendations are political. I wonder how YouTube decides which videos to allow in that special row. Most of them don’t have nearly as many views/hour as my usual recommendations.

Manuel_D 5y ago

Sure, but many "Normies" are aware of this dynamic and adjust their expectations accordingly. If some video critical of gamers, anime fans, or WoW players gets piled with downvotes it's no mystery. Same with political content. It's well understood that controversial things get more negative reactions.

slightwinder 5y ago
And this makes the system useless. Removing it is the healthy solution to interrupt the game.
- pc86 5y ago
  How does it make the system useless? It simply means the bar for "should I watch this" re: [dis]like ratio changes at least in part based on video content. If I see a technical video with more than 10-15% dislikes, I probably won't watch it or will be skeptical. But a video about abortion can be 50/50 and still have great content. It seems unlikely that giving someone more information makes something worthless.
  - slightwinder 5y ago
    This system is useless because it does not communicate the reasoning behind a downvote, nor is it objective in the first place. People downvote for many reasons, and quality is the seems usually to be the most likely. You could make the most informative and objective correct video, and toxic communities could downvote it because they feel triggered for some absurd reasons, or because it competes with their favored content-creator, or because of reasons which are independent of the video itself You must be pretty deep inside the bubble of the topic, as also the bubble of the content-creator, to be able to evaluate the value of the rating. And that makes it worthless, because most people can't be that deep and follow everything. And the people who are, are more likely re-enforcing their own ignorance. The Ratio is one of those tools which are making sense when they are fresh, but become corrupted over time, making it useless after a while.
- chelical 5y ago

loudtieblahblah 5y ago

The alternative is that you're only allowed to like things and increased consumption must be fostered at every turn. Can't have anyone being critical bc the very nature of that is contrary to consumption or promotion

throwawaylinux 5y ago

And Google uses it as a propaganda tool to remove votes on unpopular videos they want to boost, whether there's actual money changing hands its an undeclared in-kind contribution.

Klaster_1 5y ago

There's another side to this too - downvote the authoritarian state propaganda. When I see a 99% disliked video and click a "Dislike", I feel that I am not alone. When all forms of political participation are verboten, you use what you have. Now we have even less.

gremloni 5y ago
The problem is only the “disenfranchised” like you use it and more often than not your views are verboten for a good reason.
- Klaster_1 5y ago
  Not everyone on HN lives in the US or EU. The views that are forbidden here are rule of law, democracy, political representation, freedom of speech, freedom of faith, human rights and so on. People who try to oppose this are regularly imprisoned, tortured, killed, repressed or forced to leave the country.
- citizenpaul 5y ago
  Whats the difference between the disenfranchised and a oppressed group trying to be heard? If you can answer that honestly you will see your own comment is hate speech.

maest 5y ago

What is a "normie"? Sounds like a vaguely inflammatory/derogatory term, but not 100% clear on what you mean by it.

djbusby 5y ago
Persons in the center of the bell curve; not the outliers/zealots
BoxOfRain 5y ago
It's not necessarily derogatory, it depends on the context. "Normie" just means "ordinary", "average", or "uninitiated". It usually means someone with very conventional political or cultural views but it can also mean "someone who isn't part of a subculture or group" ie developers talking about laptops might say "normies don't usually need more than 8GB of memory but some development tasks require more to be comfortable". Other times it's used in a more derogatory sense to imply that someone is a bit too credulous towards the establishment of the day ie "normies think that corruption and inequality only exist in developing countries".