4 ms·

This whole conversation has been baffling to me. I am a huge fan of YouTube, and I consume way too much YouTube. I mean, there's also problems with YT, make n

This whole conversation has been baffling to me. I am a huge fan of YouTube, and I consume way too much YouTube. I mean, there's also problems with YT, make no mistake, but I'm admitting my bias, and also proclaiming my experience level. A year or more ago, someone alleged to me that the like:dislike ratio is informative, and I've been watching it since then on videos that I was watching anyway. I've also been watching it especially closely since they announced this any people said they value the ratio. Nearly every video I see on YT has near the same ratio, about 90:1. 30:1 is extremely rare, 150:1 is even more rare. I don't doubt that there are worse videos out there than 30:1, but YT never shows them to me. When I want to just binge on woodworking crafting videos, they suggest good stuff in my feed. With a 90:1 ratio. When I want to teach myself something, I search for that specific topic and they suggest good stuff. With a 90:1 ratio. And when they do suggest crap, like often my feed will contain some "how to do basic web dev" video that is full of distortions or outright errors (as a moderately senior web dev, this is an area where I am not subject to Gell-Mann error), those videos STILL have the same damn like:dislike ratio, so how could I use that ratio to protect me from errors? How the hell are other people allegedly finding these videos with dislike numbers as high as 10%? (I mean, before this month. Obviously now you cannot do the experiment I've been doing.) As a side note, my Dislike Count only went away a few days ago. I dunno when it went away for other people.

notfed 5y ago
I see videos with more dislikes than likes pretty regularly when searching for tutorials or DIY videos. Avoiding those has surely saved me a lot of time.
docmars 5y ago
Videos from corporate news media are frequently in this position. They've lost their grip on reality, and the majority of viewers understand that and show their distaste towards their non-stop lying and gaslighting, while they brazenly push narratives funded by billionaire philanthropists in spite of their abysmal, spiraling ratings.
kypro 5y ago
You clearly don't watch any political videos if the ratios you're seeing are universally that favourable. Almost all mainstream news content was heavily downvoted. More recently content promoting vaccines, LGBT politics, diversity / BLM related topics, etc have all come under significant fire from viewers and is very often downvoted. I strongly suspect YouTube is having the same problem rotten tomatoes has been having in recent years... In their case we've seen films such as Captain Marvel do very poorly with audiences, while largely receiving praise from critics. What's the problem with that? Well, if you happen to land on a certain side of the culture wars you may start asking if the film's audience review is actually a reflection of the films quality or if it's just a reflection of it being vote bombed by misogynistic trolls. If you think it's the latter then you might feel the need to take action, and in the case of rotten tomatoes you might start altering and deleting audience reviews to ensure the audience score is conforming with what you know to be their true opinion of the film. I'm not saying YouTube did remove the dislike button for political reasons, but their reasoning for doing so certainly doesn't make any sense. If creators are being harassed by the dislike button they can just disable it as many creators had been doing. And if you disable the dislike button you're only encouraging hate in the comments, which is probably worse for a creators mental health, and already enough of a problem on YouTube as it is. The timing of this move is also extremely suspicious. Nowadays my YouTube homepage seems to be full of mainstream news channels which I haven't subbed too often pushing the mainstream narrative in regards to COVID vaccines or some other hot culture war issue. Right now I have 6 mainstream media videos being shown on my homepage none of which I have subbed to, 5 of which are COVID related and the other is about Ghislaine Maxwell. I have absolutely no interest in this content, in fact I actively try to avoid the news but YouTube for whatever reason has been pushing these videos onto my feed recently and therefore if I do end up watching them I'm likely not going to enjoy it much and am probably quite likely to downvote them. I guess I'm not saying big tech have an interest in controlling what information you see and how you perceive it, but it certainly looks a bit suspicious.
- jholman 5y ago
  You're right, I definitely do not watch political content on social media, haha. What a mess that would be.

notfed 5y ago

I see videos with more dislikes than likes pretty regularly when searching for tutorials or DIY videos. Avoiding those has surely saved me a lot of time.

docmars 5y ago

Videos from corporate news media are frequently in this position. They've lost their grip on reality, and the majority of viewers understand that and show their distaste towards their non-stop lying and gaslighting, while they brazenly push narratives funded by billionaire philanthropists in spite of their abysmal, spiraling ratings.

kypro 5y ago

You clearly don't watch any political videos if the ratios you're seeing are universally that favourable. Almost all mainstream news content was heavily downvoted. More recently content promoting vaccines, LGBT politics, diversity / BLM related topics, etc have all come under significant fire from viewers and is very often downvoted. I strongly suspect YouTube is having the same problem rotten tomatoes has been having in recent years... In their case we've seen films such as Captain Marvel do very poorly with audiences, while largely receiving praise from critics. What's the problem with that? Well, if you happen to land on a certain side of the culture wars you may start asking if the film's audience review is actually a reflection of the films quality or if it's just a reflection of it being vote bombed by misogynistic trolls. If you think it's the latter then you might feel the need to take action, and in the case of rotten tomatoes you might start altering and deleting audience reviews to ensure the audience score is conforming with what you know to be their true opinion of the film. I'm not saying YouTube did remove the dislike button for political reasons, but their reasoning for doing so certainly doesn't make any sense. If creators are being harassed by the dislike button they can just disable it as many creators had been doing. And if you disable the dislike button you're only encouraging hate in the comments, which is probably worse for a creators mental health, and already enough of a problem on YouTube as it is. The timing of this move is also extremely suspicious. Nowadays my YouTube homepage seems to be full of mainstream news channels which I haven't subbed too often pushing the mainstream narrative in regards to COVID vaccines or some other hot culture war issue. Right now I have 6 mainstream media videos being shown on my homepage none of which I have subbed to, 5 of which are COVID related and the other is about Ghislaine Maxwell. I have absolutely no interest in this content, in fact I actively try to avoid the news but YouTube for whatever reason has been pushing these videos onto my feed recently and therefore if I do end up watching them I'm likely not going to enjoy it much and am probably quite likely to downvote them. I guess I'm not saying big tech have an interest in controlling what information you see and how you perceive it, but it certainly looks a bit suspicious.

jholman 5y ago
You're right, I definitely do not watch political content on social media, haha. What a mess that would be.