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I'm with you. It baffles me how much people claim to care about a metric that seems only to be legitimately useful in the edgiest of edge cases, and has literal

I'm with you. It baffles me how much people claim to care about a metric that seems only to be legitimately useful in the edgiest of edge cases, and has literally never been of any use to me. And, maybe I'm being unfair, but many of these people seem like exactly the sort of people who'd get involved in an ideologically-motivated downvote brigade. Ironically, all the signals I do trust to tell me which videos are worth watching are telling me that this one, even if it contains some grain(s) of truth, is probably heavily biased and not worth my time. The fairest critical take I've seen (not that I totally agree with it, but I respect his experience as a creator) is probably Linus' "rant": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN3ojSzyIG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN3ojSzyIG8

handoflixue 5y ago
> It baffles me how much people claim to care about a metric that seems only to be legitimately useful in the edgiest of edge cases, and has literally never been of any use to me. Different use cases for YouTube, presumably? If you're listening to music or watching well-established content creators, then dislikes are basically irrelevant. But if you're looking for a "how to" tutorial, dislikes and comments are the only way to quickly sort the good from the bad.
- gary_0 5y ago
  I think comments are less useful since the channel owner can arbitrarily delete and filter them (correct me if I'm wrong). So part of the outrage is that dislikes were the last semi-reliable metric left to check for garbage/troll videos.
  - emkoemko 5y ago
    check out flat earth videos... they remove all comments that are critical and now with the dislike counter gone i guess the earth is flat.
- caconym_ 5y ago
  > But if you're looking for a "how to" tutorial, dislikes and comments are the only way to quickly sort the good from the bad. This is the "edge case" (not the best term for it, but whatever) I'm talking about, but I still don't really buy it. There are a lot of signals for how worthwhile a video is going to be, and frankly I'd rank likes/dislikes as the least useful one, mostly because they provide no context and aren't normalized to the video's view count. If we see an epidemic of amateur electricians getting zapped, etcetera, I suppose YouTube will have some egg on its face. But somehow I don't think that's going to happen.
  - emkoemko 5y ago
    so your telling me its fine to leave only likes for a video showing you how to make a DIY air conditioner ? using a bucket full of dry ice and a fan? 100% this will end up killing someone.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      Content likely to end up killing someone should be flagged and removed, not community-downvoted.
      - johnisgood 5y ago
        That particular example may have been exaggerated or extreme, but I think the point still stands. Someone just commented this "check out flat earth videos... they remove all comments that are critical and now with the dislike counter gone i guess the earth is flat.". Indeed. In this case for example it should not be flagged, but down-voted by the community.
        caconym_ 5y ago
        I honestly couldn't tell whether that flat earth comment was being ironic or not, but I think it's an interesting case study either way. Is a visible YouTube downvote count really the only thing standing between a meaningful number of people and belief that the Earth is flat? I don't really buy it.
- zuminator 5y ago
  Perhaps not just different use cases but different user types as well. By that I mean for example, I knew of many people who were outraged and dismayed when RSS feeds started to disappear from websites. They belonged to a class of individual who prefers things to be categorized as granularly as possible. That kind of person is highly upset when their categorizing toolset is downsized. But other people never bother with those tools, don't care if they're eliminated, and frankly find it hard to sympathize with their hypercategorizing comrades.
memorysafety 5y ago
I'll disagree. It seems you and GP have been lucky enough to never stumble on videos with #dislikes > #likes, for whatever (usually well-deserved) reasons. I'd seen some; wishing I could unsee those.

handoflixue 5y ago

> It baffles me how much people claim to care about a metric that seems only to be legitimately useful in the edgiest of edge cases, and has literally never been of any use to me. Different use cases for YouTube, presumably? If you're listening to music or watching well-established content creators, then dislikes are basically irrelevant. But if you're looking for a "how to" tutorial, dislikes and comments are the only way to quickly sort the good from the bad.

gary_0 5y ago
I think comments are less useful since the channel owner can arbitrarily delete and filter them (correct me if I'm wrong). So part of the outrage is that dislikes were the last semi-reliable metric left to check for garbage/troll videos.
- emkoemko 5y ago
  check out flat earth videos... they remove all comments that are critical and now with the dislike counter gone i guess the earth is flat.
caconym_ 5y ago
> But if you're looking for a "how to" tutorial, dislikes and comments are the only way to quickly sort the good from the bad. This is the "edge case" (not the best term for it, but whatever) I'm talking about, but I still don't really buy it. There are a lot of signals for how worthwhile a video is going to be, and frankly I'd rank likes/dislikes as the least useful one, mostly because they provide no context and aren't normalized to the video's view count. If we see an epidemic of amateur electricians getting zapped, etcetera, I suppose YouTube will have some egg on its face. But somehow I don't think that's going to happen.
- emkoemko 5y ago
  so your telling me its fine to leave only likes for a video showing you how to make a DIY air conditioner ? using a bucket full of dry ice and a fan? 100% this will end up killing someone.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Content likely to end up killing someone should be flagged and removed, not community-downvoted.
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      That particular example may have been exaggerated or extreme, but I think the point still stands. Someone just commented this "check out flat earth videos... they remove all comments that are critical and now with the dislike counter gone i guess the earth is flat.". Indeed. In this case for example it should not be flagged, but down-voted by the community.
      - caconym_ 5y ago
        I honestly couldn't tell whether that flat earth comment was being ironic or not, but I think it's an interesting case study either way. Is a visible YouTube downvote count really the only thing standing between a meaningful number of people and belief that the Earth is flat? I don't really buy it.
zuminator 5y ago
Perhaps not just different use cases but different user types as well. By that I mean for example, I knew of many people who were outraged and dismayed when RSS feeds started to disappear from websites. They belonged to a class of individual who prefers things to be categorized as granularly as possible. That kind of person is highly upset when their categorizing toolset is downsized. But other people never bother with those tools, don't care if they're eliminated, and frankly find it hard to sympathize with their hypercategorizing comrades.

memorysafety 5y ago

I'll disagree. It seems you and GP have been lucky enough to never stumble on videos with #dislikes > #likes, for whatever (usually well-deserved) reasons. I'd seen some; wishing I could unsee those.