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The majority of YouTube traffic comes from mobile devices (this can be observed in Google Ads for any video campaign), which is losing market share because of T

The majority of YouTube traffic comes from mobile devices (this can be observed in Google Ads for any video campaign), which is losing market share because of Tictoc. Google will do whatever it takes to monetize every inch of their investment. By turning off dislikes, users will be forced to engage with additional content. This is also visible on the other side of the spectrum - Google is pushing heavily integrated campaign products (e.g. Performance Max Campaigns), which include non-performing channels as display and video (in comparison to search), which can't be turned off. At this point they can, as they are a monopoly, but I hope they will get burned, as they are introducing more and more dark patterns, which result in lower than poor user experience. My take on this - AdBlock relentlessly, support creators directly. Switch platforms eventually - there's choice out there.

ddingus 5y ago
"forced" It is still a big Internet out there. All it takes is an up and coming platform to steer people elsewhere. YT is big, and yeah they will carry on via inertia, but for things like news, organizing, commentary? Yeah, people will seek it elsewhere.
- sieabah 5y ago
  You have never dealt with bandwidth costs for video, have you.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Nope, but they are off the charts!! Others will figure this out. The value is high enough for users to fund it. I would for sure. In fact, funding that via small money from people is likely the best model. AD driven stuff has too many conflicts of interest.
    - sieabah 5y ago
      Oh I absolutely agree, I think once R2 becomes GA it will be a game changer for a lot of VOD content or youtube-like platforms. Amazon, Google, and Azure are holding back an entire industry because of the price gouging they have on bandwidth.
dwighttk 5y ago
> By turning off dislikes, users will be forced to engage with additional content. Why?
- ripply 5y ago
  The only other way to engage is to leave a negative comment
  - tehwebguy 5y ago
    Which is not really sufficient because negative comments can be deleted, commenters can be blocked & comments can disabled for a video entirely.
- BbzzbB 5y ago
  Because you can't see a video has a 1:9 like:dislike ratio to tell you it's not worth your time. Granted, you'll (probably) be able to tell from the comments, for now. I'm not convinced how much it'd actually impact watch time, but it seems to be the thesis.
  - drusepth 5y ago
    >Because you can't see a video has a 1:9 like:dislike ratio to tell you it's not worth your time I see this argument every time dislikes are brought up but no one seems to ever mention views as a third data point. I've never really paid attention to dislikes (other than hearing about dislike raids), but you can still see videos' like:view ratio, which IMO has always been more significant than dislikes anyway.
    - rhdunn 5y ago
      I don't always like a video I've watched that I like. Especially when watching via a playlist with the video full screen.
    - throwuxiytayq 5y ago
      No, you can't see it. You need to calculate it. Are you seriously suggesting that people will start doing math?
fnord77 5y ago
prediction: next, youtube will delete/hide negative comments to prevent people from looking at the top comment (as a proxy for up/down votes) and seeing that a particular video is not worth the time.
unclebucknasty 5y ago
OTOH and WRT the comment hiding (i.e. article topic) it's not hard to understand why YouTube doesn't want their comment sections filled with meta. HN "heavily discourages" it as well. On the issue of hiding dislike counts itself, I don't think it's a big deal, as I don't believe it's the quality signal that some suggest: 1) there's the trolling behavior it encourages, which detracts from the meaning of dislikes 2) relative likes are sufficient, harder to game and less troll-inviting 3) the content, being video, speaks for itself more than text, making it easier to determine what's likely to be of interest. 4) what does dislike even mean on YouTube? Disagreement? Something else? I don't trust that there's enough consistency to give it meaning I care about 5) the number of views is also a better indicator of potential quality than dislikes. In fact, on that latter point, the percentile of the percentage of the video watched, relative to other videos, would probably be an even better indicator. That dislike count was essentially noise.
- exodust 5y ago
  > "the number of views is also a better indicator of potential quality" Can't agree. Perhaps you've forgotten about clickbait thumbnails and video titles. "Top 10 Scariest Roller-coasters" with photo-shopped thumbnail of a coaster car mid-air between fake section of track. Literally millions of views from people wanting to see this incredible coaster that jumps the gap. What you find is an ordinary video of copied, grainy clips of ordinary coasters. Previously, such a video had a HUGE number of downvotes. Now those dislikes are hidden, the deception is permitted to flourish.
  - unclebucknasty 5y ago
    I mean, all stats are game-able, so it's really relative. Dislikes seems among the easiest. So, again, I said views are (generally) a better indication than dislikes, not a perfect one. >Literally millions of views from people wanting to see this incredible coaster that jumps the gap. Don't know how much of a vid must be viewed before YouTube counts a view, but that's also where my suggestion to rate by percentage of the video viewed comes in. >Now those dislikes are hidden, the deception is permitted to flourish I think (hope) most people are trained to ignore those fake vids over time, but content that is outright misleading should really be flaggable and removed by moderators anyway vs hit with vague dislikes.
vl 5y ago
Youtube Shorts (TicToc competitor) is pure evil. If I accidentally click on it I can find myself two hours later after watching hundred videos I can't even remember anymore. Sure it's high engagement, but it's truly bad for user satisfaction and long-term user retention. On top of that they blatantly and prominently push their political agenda in "news" section. But I don't think there is deep evil thinking behind dislike change - in large corporations people need promotions, some entrepreneurial PM and couple devs identified the opportunity and went for it. Directors/VPs are too disengaged to truly understand impact of changes.
- gremloni 5y ago
  > blatantly and prominently push their political agenda Only if you consider egalitarianism and diversity as political issues. To most of society they are universal values so it’s not contentious.
  - depressedpanda 5y ago
    Has it ever occurred to you that a person might be for egalitarian values and diversity without approving of the particular flavor of it being pushed by some factions? It's not black and white.
  - ralusek 5y ago
    Well, they are political issues, because they don't exist in a vacuum and nuance exists. For example, what do you mean by egalitarianism? Equality under the law? Well, Republicans/Liberals tend to agree with equality under the law, whereas Leftists and Gender/Racial Identitarians don't. California recently tried to repeal 1960s civil rights legislation preventing discrimination by race, precisely because they'd like to discriminate on the basis of race...because to them, egalitarianism doesn't mean equality under the law, but rather that the law should have weighted parameters necessary to transform societal outcomes into equal measures by arbitrary population, irrespective of those population inputs. Mind you, these are the people claiming to be egalitarian. As Ibram X. Kendi says himself, "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." To many (most?) people, that isn't egalitarianism...so it's political. It's clearly not a universal value when it's actually a bundle of competing values claiming the same word. What about diversity? What, that diversity is just good? Is that the point? Because what exactly do you mean? What if there was a group of liberal people who had democratically made their society in accordance with what they felt aligned with liberalism, and were suddenly being told that a major influx of right wing evangelical Christians were to be allowed to come into their society (and be given exactly the same voting rights as them)? What about a group of frat bros? Is this the kind of diversity you mean? You just accept that diversity is indiscriminately a net positive? What exactly is the mechanisms that makes that be the case? Surely it matters what the cultures are that are being made to coexist, what degree to which they have common ground, what degree to which their respective strengths cover for their respective weaknesses, the rate at which the cultures can tolerate the encroachment of the other while still remaining cooperative rather than hostile, the degree to which each culture has its elements preserved independently of the product of the two cultures interacting, and the degree to which the cultures are encouraged to and are actively assimilating. I mean, this is just scratching the surface. There are many factors that determine whether or not diversity is actually a good thing, and it often comes down to magnitude and rates, which are seemingly unwelcome from that sort of conversation. And then there is the (now tired) distinction between superficial diversity and diversity of thought. There is the (racist) notion that diversity of skin color will result in diversity of thought, proposed by exactly the sort of people who actually detest diversity of thought, and just want to see different colored faces in the crowd. Again, this is just scratching the surface of this conversation. So to say "it's not contentious" is pretty ridiculous, because these are completely loaded terms that mean completely different things to completely different people who ultimately have completely different goals for society. They're not universal values.

ddingus 5y ago

"forced" It is still a big Internet out there. All it takes is an up and coming platform to steer people elsewhere. YT is big, and yeah they will carry on via inertia, but for things like news, organizing, commentary? Yeah, people will seek it elsewhere.

sieabah 5y ago
You have never dealt with bandwidth costs for video, have you.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Nope, but they are off the charts!! Others will figure this out. The value is high enough for users to fund it. I would for sure. In fact, funding that via small money from people is likely the best model. AD driven stuff has too many conflicts of interest.
  - sieabah 5y ago
    Oh I absolutely agree, I think once R2 becomes GA it will be a game changer for a lot of VOD content or youtube-like platforms. Amazon, Google, and Azure are holding back an entire industry because of the price gouging they have on bandwidth.

dwighttk 5y ago

> By turning off dislikes, users will be forced to engage with additional content. Why?

ripply 5y ago
The only other way to engage is to leave a negative comment
- tehwebguy 5y ago
  Which is not really sufficient because negative comments can be deleted, commenters can be blocked & comments can disabled for a video entirely.
BbzzbB 5y ago
Because you can't see a video has a 1:9 like:dislike ratio to tell you it's not worth your time. Granted, you'll (probably) be able to tell from the comments, for now. I'm not convinced how much it'd actually impact watch time, but it seems to be the thesis.
- drusepth 5y ago
  >Because you can't see a video has a 1:9 like:dislike ratio to tell you it's not worth your time I see this argument every time dislikes are brought up but no one seems to ever mention views as a third data point. I've never really paid attention to dislikes (other than hearing about dislike raids), but you can still see videos' like:view ratio, which IMO has always been more significant than dislikes anyway.
  - rhdunn 5y ago
    I don't always like a video I've watched that I like. Especially when watching via a playlist with the video full screen.
  - throwuxiytayq 5y ago
    No, you can't see it. You need to calculate it. Are you seriously suggesting that people will start doing math?

fnord77 5y ago

prediction: next, youtube will delete/hide negative comments to prevent people from looking at the top comment (as a proxy for up/down votes) and seeing that a particular video is not worth the time.

unclebucknasty 5y ago

OTOH and WRT the comment hiding (i.e. article topic) it's not hard to understand why YouTube doesn't want their comment sections filled with meta. HN "heavily discourages" it as well. On the issue of hiding dislike counts itself, I don't think it's a big deal, as I don't believe it's the quality signal that some suggest: 1) there's the trolling behavior it encourages, which detracts from the meaning of dislikes 2) relative likes are sufficient, harder to game and less troll-inviting 3) the content, being video, speaks for itself more than text, making it easier to determine what's likely to be of interest. 4) what does dislike even mean on YouTube? Disagreement? Something else? I don't trust that there's enough consistency to give it meaning I care about 5) the number of views is also a better indicator of potential quality than dislikes. In fact, on that latter point, the percentile of the percentage of the video watched, relative to other videos, would probably be an even better indicator. That dislike count was essentially noise.

exodust 5y ago
> "the number of views is also a better indicator of potential quality" Can't agree. Perhaps you've forgotten about clickbait thumbnails and video titles. "Top 10 Scariest Roller-coasters" with photo-shopped thumbnail of a coaster car mid-air between fake section of track. Literally millions of views from people wanting to see this incredible coaster that jumps the gap. What you find is an ordinary video of copied, grainy clips of ordinary coasters. Previously, such a video had a HUGE number of downvotes. Now those dislikes are hidden, the deception is permitted to flourish.
- unclebucknasty 5y ago
  I mean, all stats are game-able, so it's really relative. Dislikes seems among the easiest. So, again, I said views are (generally) a better indication than dislikes, not a perfect one. >Literally millions of views from people wanting to see this incredible coaster that jumps the gap. Don't know how much of a vid must be viewed before YouTube counts a view, but that's also where my suggestion to rate by percentage of the video viewed comes in. >Now those dislikes are hidden, the deception is permitted to flourish I think (hope) most people are trained to ignore those fake vids over time, but content that is outright misleading should really be flaggable and removed by moderators anyway vs hit with vague dislikes.

vl 5y ago

Youtube Shorts (TicToc competitor) is pure evil. If I accidentally click on it I can find myself two hours later after watching hundred videos I can't even remember anymore. Sure it's high engagement, but it's truly bad for user satisfaction and long-term user retention. On top of that they blatantly and prominently push their political agenda in "news" section. But I don't think there is deep evil thinking behind dislike change - in large corporations people need promotions, some entrepreneurial PM and couple devs identified the opportunity and went for it. Directors/VPs are too disengaged to truly understand impact of changes.

gremloni 5y ago
> blatantly and prominently push their political agenda Only if you consider egalitarianism and diversity as political issues. To most of society they are universal values so it’s not contentious.
- depressedpanda 5y ago
  Has it ever occurred to you that a person might be for egalitarian values and diversity without approving of the particular flavor of it being pushed by some factions? It's not black and white.
- ralusek 5y ago
  Well, they are political issues, because they don't exist in a vacuum and nuance exists. For example, what do you mean by egalitarianism? Equality under the law? Well, Republicans/Liberals tend to agree with equality under the law, whereas Leftists and Gender/Racial Identitarians don't. California recently tried to repeal 1960s civil rights legislation preventing discrimination by race, precisely because they'd like to discriminate on the basis of race...because to them, egalitarianism doesn't mean equality under the law, but rather that the law should have weighted parameters necessary to transform societal outcomes into equal measures by arbitrary population, irrespective of those population inputs. Mind you, these are the people claiming to be egalitarian. As Ibram X. Kendi says himself, "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." To many (most?) people, that isn't egalitarianism...so it's political. It's clearly not a universal value when it's actually a bundle of competing values claiming the same word. What about diversity? What, that diversity is just good? Is that the point? Because what exactly do you mean? What if there was a group of liberal people who had democratically made their society in accordance with what they felt aligned with liberalism, and were suddenly being told that a major influx of right wing evangelical Christians were to be allowed to come into their society (and be given exactly the same voting rights as them)? What about a group of frat bros? Is this the kind of diversity you mean? You just accept that diversity is indiscriminately a net positive? What exactly is the mechanisms that makes that be the case? Surely it matters what the cultures are that are being made to coexist, what degree to which they have common ground, what degree to which their respective strengths cover for their respective weaknesses, the rate at which the cultures can tolerate the encroachment of the other while still remaining cooperative rather than hostile, the degree to which each culture has its elements preserved independently of the product of the two cultures interacting, and the degree to which the cultures are encouraged to and are actively assimilating. I mean, this is just scratching the surface. There are many factors that determine whether or not diversity is actually a good thing, and it often comes down to magnitude and rates, which are seemingly unwelcome from that sort of conversation. And then there is the (now tired) distinction between superficial diversity and diversity of thought. There is the (racist) notion that diversity of skin color will result in diversity of thought, proposed by exactly the sort of people who actually detest diversity of thought, and just want to see different colored faces in the crowd. Again, this is just scratching the surface of this conversation. So to say "it's not contentious" is pretty ridiculous, because these are completely loaded terms that mean completely different things to completely different people who ultimately have completely different goals for society. They're not universal values.