4 ms·

What is needed is an extension that provides a separate upvote/downvote system and its own comment system with better forum like tools than YouTube provides. R

What is needed is an extension that provides a separate upvote/downvote system and its own comment system with better forum like tools than YouTube provides. Rather than just begging to see YouTube's historical dislikes use it as a start to completely replace YouTube's manipulated and untrustworthy under video section. You could have it in a window beside the YouTube video or in its own box below and just move on from YouTube comments and dislike control. In the long run it sounds like something better that could pressure YouTube to improve their own meagre and useless comment system.

Minor49er 5y ago
I've seen projects before that take this a step further and let people leave comments on any site on the web for other users of the same project to see. Unfortunately, they don't see a lot of adoption. But there always seems to be a small crowd ready at any time to try out one of these projects.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  This dislike backlash might be a good impetus to get a lot of people into an alternate system
- monetus 5y ago
  Any notable ones you would care to mention? I'm picturing disqus implemented as a browser extension; I'm just curious.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    I imagine a better than Disqus system - something with better forum like tools that make the YouTube comments section look bad in comparison. YouTube videos can get thousands of views and their system or disqus' isn't really built to handle search, discovery, etc etc.
  - Minor49er 5y ago
    None that really come to mind, unfortunately. There was one called Fanbrowser that used to do this briefly a very long time ago, but that project has been torn down and rebuilt from scratch so many times that none of that functionality is left. One iteration of it let you browse through a directory of interests (sourced from the DMOZ). When you found a site, or if you typed in a URL, it would load that page in an iframe. You could bookmark pages and leave comments which other users would be able to see. Unfortunately, it didn't get much further than that, so it never had things like being able to follow other users or anything else. Plus, iframes became increasingly difficult to work with since web browsers started adopting a lot of privacy and security measures like CORS. But for a brief while, it was fun.
fredzel 5y ago
> In the long run it sounds like something better that could pressure YouTube to improve their own meagre and useless comment system. Surely Google is gonna feel pressured because of extension that will have few thousands active users at most.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  I guess if you provide the caveat that it can't be successful sure. But YouTube comments are a garbage system and providing a better comments section than YouTube does with proper forum tools and maybe tagging etc might make for a much more compelling product, especially if you can take advantage of the backlash from this dislike issue
floatingatoll 5y ago
You could launch it today if you felt like it, but only if you charged money for it and paid moderators to enforce an AUP. It's trivial to write such a thing, but someone has to host the content at an https:// https:// endpoint for browsers to access it, and so someone has to pay money for hosting, and someone has to charge users for it, which means enforcing an acceptable use policy, which requires staffing abuse reporting and moderation to keep up with usage, which requires charging users for that, too. Anyone who tries to skip any of those steps ends up going broke and shutting down or losing payment and hosting providers. And you might still find that the target market for this is very small (thousands of users worldwide), or that the target market is largely unwilling to tolerate enforcing a code of conduct. And don't forget the guaranteed lawsuits from companies who think they have a right to disallow you from recording comments about their site! Oh, and spammers and abusers, you'll have to have a plan for dealing with those, except that your target market may be largely unwilling to tolerate identity verification checks (simply charging money isn't enough). None of this is an obstacle to launching a site that charges users from day one to participate, as long as you build it lean, with a cost model that effectively scales as users participate, and with a working anti-spam/abuse model. It's just that most modern startups want to launch with a 'free' tier, and that's simply not compatible with this idea on the modern anonymous internet.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  I feel like a text service as proposed could be paid for by ads rather than membership. Spam/abuse is always an issue but matter less because you're not on someone else's platform who will kick you off at a whim.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    You're on someone's platform. Whether it's the T-1 to your hosting server or the datacenter in which your site resides or the CDN provider, you are always at the mercy of someone else's Acceptable Use Policy. There is no alt-Internet using mesh-networked radio transmitters that's accessible from within a browser today, and so you will, by definition, be subject to being kicked off "at a whim" for violations of AUP or simply "we don't wish to serve you anymore", no matter what decisions you make.

Minor49er 5y ago

I've seen projects before that take this a step further and let people leave comments on any site on the web for other users of the same project to see. Unfortunately, they don't see a lot of adoption. But there always seems to be a small crowd ready at any time to try out one of these projects.

LegitShady 5y ago
This dislike backlash might be a good impetus to get a lot of people into an alternate system
monetus 5y ago
Any notable ones you would care to mention? I'm picturing disqus implemented as a browser extension; I'm just curious.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  I imagine a better than Disqus system - something with better forum like tools that make the YouTube comments section look bad in comparison. YouTube videos can get thousands of views and their system or disqus' isn't really built to handle search, discovery, etc etc.
- Minor49er 5y ago
  None that really come to mind, unfortunately. There was one called Fanbrowser that used to do this briefly a very long time ago, but that project has been torn down and rebuilt from scratch so many times that none of that functionality is left. One iteration of it let you browse through a directory of interests (sourced from the DMOZ). When you found a site, or if you typed in a URL, it would load that page in an iframe. You could bookmark pages and leave comments which other users would be able to see. Unfortunately, it didn't get much further than that, so it never had things like being able to follow other users or anything else. Plus, iframes became increasingly difficult to work with since web browsers started adopting a lot of privacy and security measures like CORS. But for a brief while, it was fun.

fredzel 5y ago

> In the long run it sounds like something better that could pressure YouTube to improve their own meagre and useless comment system. Surely Google is gonna feel pressured because of extension that will have few thousands active users at most.

LegitShady 5y ago
I guess if you provide the caveat that it can't be successful sure. But YouTube comments are a garbage system and providing a better comments section than YouTube does with proper forum tools and maybe tagging etc might make for a much more compelling product, especially if you can take advantage of the backlash from this dislike issue

floatingatoll 5y ago

You could launch it today if you felt like it, but only if you charged money for it and paid moderators to enforce an AUP. It's trivial to write such a thing, but someone has to host the content at an https:// https:// endpoint for browsers to access it, and so someone has to pay money for hosting, and someone has to charge users for it, which means enforcing an acceptable use policy, which requires staffing abuse reporting and moderation to keep up with usage, which requires charging users for that, too. Anyone who tries to skip any of those steps ends up going broke and shutting down or losing payment and hosting providers. And you might still find that the target market for this is very small (thousands of users worldwide), or that the target market is largely unwilling to tolerate enforcing a code of conduct. And don't forget the guaranteed lawsuits from companies who think they have a right to disallow you from recording comments about their site! Oh, and spammers and abusers, you'll have to have a plan for dealing with those, except that your target market may be largely unwilling to tolerate identity verification checks (simply charging money isn't enough). None of this is an obstacle to launching a site that charges users from day one to participate, as long as you build it lean, with a cost model that effectively scales as users participate, and with a working anti-spam/abuse model. It's just that most modern startups want to launch with a 'free' tier, and that's simply not compatible with this idea on the modern anonymous internet.

LegitShady 5y ago
I feel like a text service as proposed could be paid for by ads rather than membership. Spam/abuse is always an issue but matter less because you're not on someone else's platform who will kick you off at a whim.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  You're on someone's platform. Whether it's the T-1 to your hosting server or the datacenter in which your site resides or the CDN provider, you are always at the mercy of someone else's Acceptable Use Policy. There is no alt-Internet using mesh-networked radio transmitters that's accessible from within a browser today, and so you will, by definition, be subject to being kicked off "at a whim" for violations of AUP or simply "we don't wish to serve you anymore", no matter what decisions you make.