11 ms·

YouTube ranks “wholesome and funny” comments higher?

119 points by ipsum2 5y ago

ipsum2 5y ago
URL should point to https://twitter.com/nikhilbd/status/1488027319935537153 https://twitter.com/nikhilbd/status/1488027319935537153, not the archived version.
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  Why? The archive version is much easier to access without an account.
  - pvg 5y ago
    It's in the guidelines - use the original source, workarounds to soft restrictions are typically posted in thread.
- _yoqn 5y ago
  Tweets can be and are deleted. Archives make sense in this case.
  - dang 5y ago
    In deleted cases, yes, but not in advance. We love archives (and archive.org most of all), but archive links shouldn't be used as submission URLs when an original is available. For one thing, it's important for the original domain to be displayed. Of course it's always fine to link to an archived copy from the comments, and we intend eventually to build software support for this.
    - rPlayer6554 5y ago
      To add to this, since it linked to the archived version I thought it was taken down for some reason. Giving the original source makes it clear it's still up.
    - _yoqn 5y ago
      That's totally logical and something I didn't really think about. It's amazing how much information can be implied from context and juxtaposition.
- dang 5y ago
  We changed to the original tweet in the thread. Submitted URL was https://web.archive.org/web/20220131130754/https://twitter.com/nikhilbd/status/1488027319935537153 https://web.archive.org/web/20220131130754/https://twitter.c.... Thanks!
uejfiweun 5y ago
Whatever these folks at YouTube are doing with the comments section, they're doing a great job. I really enjoy YouTube comments - I check them for every video I watch, and I often get more laughs from the comments than I do from the actual video! Would love to know more details about how this is implemented. I assume it's some sort of massively scalable NLP & ML system?
- RankingMember 5y ago
  Wow, I want whatever YouTube's giving you. The comments I see are the same joke over and over again and/or those horrible people that drag politics into every conversation.
  - CactusOnFire 5y ago
    My usual experience is that the top rated post is either insightful or a chuckle, but if you delve into the child comments from that particular post, or any more than a couple down, and it is an outright flame war over something trivial.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tragictrash 5y ago
    Yeah this is my experience. Totally the opposite. Just people disrespecting and arguing in the comments section about nothing.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    Grandparent post is nuts. Youtube comments are mostly full of repetitive jokes in the current meme formats. Sometimes there is a quality contribution, but it probably won't be near the top. This does vary by channel of course, but if you're talking about a popular channel that shows up for non-logged in users like LockPicking Lawyer then the comments will consist of the same tired and lame but highly upvoted jokes in every thread. Maybe if you scroll down far enough you'll get an anecdote about the company that manufactured the lock or something, but never above the "lol, it just falls apart when LPL looks in its direction!" comments.
badRNG 5y ago
There were a number of years where I would have been happy if YouTube just removed the comment section. The "culture" of comments in the early '10s is reminiscent of what you find today on sites like 4chan. Scrolling down to the comments could truthfully be a deeply upsetting experience that can offset the value provided by whatever you were watching. "Don't read the YouTube comments" was a common phrase, and for good reason. Nowadays, I wouldn't say YouTube comments are especially funny or insightful, but they are certainly tolerable. I imagine having a list of epithets, slurs, and phrases (and accounts that use them) to de-rank would have gone far enough to help fix the nightmare that was the comment section.
- tentacleuno 5y ago
  > Nowadays, I wouldn't say YouTube comments are especially funny or insightful I find that a lot of them are something like 'lol', or 'love the way X did Y' / an unfunny meme (with thousands of thumbs ups) / something else along those lines. I find myself scrolling quite a long way to find anything insightful about what I watched, and just for something I can take with me in general.
  - jlack 5y ago
    I think it depends on the niche of the particular video. I've found channels like woodworking/machining have insightful comments from professionals in that field which may have alternate solutions or point out why something is done a certain way.
    - showerst 5y ago
      Seconding this -- the comments on machining and electronics videos tend to be great, comments on gaming videos are usually just jokes. This makes intuitive sense to me; different viewer bases who want to see different things.
  - lovehashbrowns 5y ago
    That has to depend a lot on the content you watch. I did a mini test with three videos I found on my list to test this out: The only video I found that sorta matches this is Chanel 5's ComplexCon video: https://youtu.be/jy9x09iCATA https://youtu.be/jy9x09iCATA which has mostly meme replies. Mentour Pilot made a video about a 747 crash https://youtu.be/Y50saxfTqQA https://youtu.be/Y50saxfTqQA and the top reply is from a pilot with a lot of the other replies being from pilots as well. And the last video I looked at was one titled "All 8 Species of Bear" https://youtu.be/7DERN0R3AbM https://youtu.be/7DERN0R3AbM which I thought would definitely have trash comments because it seemed to be from one of those "Top #" click bait channels. But the top replies are bear stories, species information, and some zoologists. No idea how accurate the info is, however.
tus666 5y ago
Sounds like bread-and-butter kind of machine learning stuff to me.
paulpauper 5y ago
youtube comments are so heavily censored it's crazy. Tons of ghosting going on.
- thirteenfingers 5y ago
  Indeed. Just last week there was a whole thread here on HN about the problems with toxicity detectors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30066720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30066720 I'm not sure if this is the system youtube is using, but it would certainly align with my experience where people have left innocuous comments on my videos that disappear a couple hours later - comments such as "this music is beautiful, damn" where the only thing I can think of, short of that user's entire account getting deactivated, is that the word "damn" tripped some sort of toxicity flag. I hate bullies as much as the next person on HN, but I'm deeply unsettled by youtube's recent efforts in the direction of manufacturing consent.
- bliteben 5y ago
  I don't understand how they don't expect a first amendment case against them, they likely are discriminating against certain ethnicities, races, or localities in using algorithms to block / sort comments. It seems like at some point all automated moderation like this will have to be reviewable. On the other hand it is nice that their comment section isn't as toxic as it once was.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    There is no first amendment right to have your comment visible on Youtube. In fact, Youtube has the first amendment right to show whatever comments they want. They could even have fake accounts that post positive comments and upvotes, and charge users money for artificial engagement. Google executives could decide that they wanted to support literal Nazis, and promote their videos, add fake likes and engagements, and do the opposite to any opposing political views. This would all be perfectly legal. We have restricted the constitutional rights of corporations in other cases e.g. utilities, though. And we can do it again.
  - kube-system 5y ago
elcapitan 5y ago
While I think this may be helpful for the larger part of Youtube that is just entertainment, I find that in many parts where I'm looking for concrete information (like introductory talks on a topic, lectures etc), the "community" part is often not very helpful - if I can't see critical comments early or see the "thumbs up to down" ratio (which has been changed recently apparently to just show "up"), it's harder for me to judge whether I really want to invest 20-60 minutes into watching the video. So I end up just skipping through the video trying to get a first impression of what the quality is.
- simonsarris 5y ago
  Especially things like wood-working and chain-sawing videos. Downvotes and critical comments are key if you want to keep your fingers and your head.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Especially things like wood-working and chain-sawing videos. Downvotes and critical comments are key if you want to keep your fingers and your head. Yeah. In an ideal world "howto videos for dangerous activities" or even just "howto videos in general" would have very special policies applied to them. There's a lot of people who have no idea what they're talking about who like to make howto videos, and it's super important to surface critical information about those. Which is a good demonstration of one of the fundamental problems of trying to make a general content-agnostic distribution platform. A general platform run according to contemporary business practices will tend towards one-size-fits-all policies, but that works about as well as one-size-fits-all pants.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  >So I end up just skipping through the video trying to get a first impression of what the quality is. while this might seem annoying when one is used to the up/down vote mechanism I honestly think incentivizing people to check content for themselves is a significant improvement. I think a lot of websites should remove signals and tone down recommender systems in favor of making people just watch or read. It's one of the things I still like about HN. The greyed out downvoted comments and order aside there's no real visual cues or gamified mechanisms here.
dannyobrien 5y ago
I'd really like to know more about this -- the replies to the original question were divided between people commenting about how much better the comments were, and people talking about better tooling and empowerment being granted to large YT creators. My instinct is that the progress has been primarily because of the better tooling and moderation capabilities, just because the larger companies always promise that ML will take care of their large-scale moderation processes without much concrete evidence. But I also suspect that the answer is somewhere between the two approaches, and it would be great if YT were able to improve the wider ecosystem by sharing some of their strategies.
- gpt5 5y ago
  I’d argue that YouTube simply implemented a Reddit like sorting mechanism.The top comments on a YouTube video are very similar to Reddit. When you optimize for engagement (e.g. Facebook’s sorting), you get toxicity. When you optimize for approval, you get funny and wholesome stuff.
  - TremendousJudge 5y ago
    Reddit top comments are notorious for usually bashing the original post or pointing out how it's wrong. It's a very common trope for there being a super upvoted front page story, and for the first comment to be "actually this is false/incorrect/incomplete/somehow a lie". This basically never happens on Youtube comments.
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      So, basically the same as HN.
      - TremendousJudge 5y ago
        HN is pretty much reddit as it was before subreddits were introduced
        5y ago
coolso 5y ago
Is that why all YouTube comments are exactly the same now? It’s like the top of every major subreddit post’s comment section. It’s almost as if you’re witnessing 14 year olds discover the internet and humor, but over and over again on a daily basis. The homogeneity of the internet is becoming so tiresome.
- Spivak 5y ago
  You could utter this exact statement every day since 1995. You’re also trapped in your own eternal September, doomed to remember your own personal “early” internet as being so much better because it was all new to you despite the fact that it was someone else’s “oh my god it’s all the same now.”
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    This makes a mistake of forgetting the part where none of this was new to us yet this homogenization and sterilization hadn't happened yet.
  - coolso 5y ago
    > You could utter this exact statement every day since 1995. No you couldn't. Because back then, even 10-15 years after 1995, not everyone went to the same 3 websites, and there were more than 3 companies on the web that owned everything. Furthermore, there was no concept of upvotes and downvotes to literally encourage crafting your comments to appeal to the widest audience / lowest common denominator. (This concept is no longer specific to Reddit by the way; nearly every comment section on every website utilizes the same type of deal.) Back then if you wanted to speak your mind or say something, you could just type it out and everyone would see it. Today, if you want to say something, you need to craft your comment in such a way to make it worth it: sure, you could say exactly what you want. But that might only get one upvote. Or, God forbid, it might get downvoted! Then nobody sees it; furthermore, the rating your receive could potentially work against you and make the hivemind turn further against your argument. Because lots of people downvoted it. Or not many people upvoted it. Which means it's bad / not good. It's a perverse incentive. The result is... usually, milquetoast homogeneous repetition.
Leary 5y ago
Maybe they overweighs downvotes, thus pushing only uncontroversial comments up.
- jack_riminton 5y ago
  Occam's razor says it's probably something very simple like that
- RankingMember 5y ago
  I'd be interested to know if that's the case, as it'd present a shift from their long-held strategy of having the comment downvote button do absolutely nothing.
  - phailhaus 5y ago
    > it'd present a shift from their long-held strategy of having the comment downvote button do absolutely nothing. This seems to be a common refrain, despite little evidence to back it up. Just because the dislike button doesn't render a count doesn't mean that it isn't being counted and used to weight comments.
    - RankingMember 5y ago
      Fair point. It'd be helpful if there was some transparency from Youtube.
- drdeca 5y ago
  seeing as the downvotes on comments aren't shown anywhere, that would surprise me a little
RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
There seems to be some perverted notion that "wholesome and funny" is somehow better. Its not. Its manipulative and a case of "I know whats good for you" that can only result when someone thinks they are actually better than you. These aren't people making the things "wholesome and funny". They are criminals in teddy bear outfits controlling what people hear. Modern day clowns.
- Arainach 5y ago
  Have you seen YouTube comments circa 2006-2019 (no idea when this change was implemented, I gave up on reading the comments long ago)? Some of the worst toxicity of the entire Internet. 4chan at least had some funny parts, YT comments were just awful. This isn't censorship, it's trying to build an experience that doesn't actively turn people away from your platform.
  - serf 5y ago
    >This isn't censorship, it's trying to build an experience that doesn't actively turn people away from your platform. i'm here to tell you that the cutesy shit drives certain people away. 'Funny' isn't some objective quality that things can be neatly sorted into with any level of accuracy, except in cases of the worst most generic/juvenile types of humor that are guaranteed to get a chuckle from 'some idiot' out there. The parody show 'Ow! My Balls!' in the movie 'Idiocracy' comes to mind.
  - RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
    > 2006-2019 I believe this was when youtube was growing. > it's trying to build an experience that doesn't actively turn people away I believe youtube was growing at this time. I personally don't remember it being that toxic. But even if it were whose responsibility should it be to deal with the toxicity? The platform's or the content creator's? There's a saying that's oft repeated "dont read the comments section". That's a strategy in line with the approach I'd endorse. We shouldn't be censoring information just because its "toxic", people need to find ways to withstand or ignore or deal with the criticism that exists in the world. People develop weak immune systems if they are protected from everything, it's not just a biological thing. The American mind is as coddled as their biological immune system. We should be teaching people how to deal and withstand criticism whether valid or caustic. Otherwise we get this mad world where no one can offend anyone and you can't even tell clinically obese people their body is not healthy.
sundarurfriend 5y ago
And what can be more wholesome than praising the Supreme Leader! (Or perhaps praising Supreme™!) Sorry about the flippant tone, but I hope we've learned that any system like this operating behind closed doors can be and will be used for manipulation and (much more direct) profit-seeking. And even before that happens, the idea itself is full of cultural bias, and so brings in cultural discrimination and the imposition of one culture's idea of wholesome/funny on the whole world, by its very nature.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Okay, but the previous status quo was abominable. "Don't read the youtube comments" was a well understood internet meme for a reason. This is a massive improvement on what came before. Maybe it could be better yet, but I haven't seen anything better myself for websites in a similar situation.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    Maybe Youtube just shouldn't have comments? Thinking about it, you're not really going to get discussions on a platform like that. Likes and similar, fine. Maybe evolve that. Maybe do the whole Dark Souls thing where you can only leave gestures and stock messages. Sure, you'll still get "try finger, but hole" and "amazing chest ahead", but that's still streets ahead of Youtube's communication.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      I mean the current setup seems fine to me. Yeah it's probably kind of a hugbox-y, and prioritizes simplistic comments like funny one-liners over anything insightful or deep, but that's not the worst thing in the world. I'm not sure they're adding much, but they don't seem to be taking away either.
AniseAbyss 5y ago
impalallama 5y ago
i hate to assume they don't weigh endless replies as much as other social media platforms out there, (100+ comment reply chains is a pretty big sign at something not being wholesome)
- dpark 5y ago
  That’s a good observation. long reply chains do tend to turn to garbage rapidly. Either it’s an “in joke” meme chain (like used to consume nearly all Reddit threads) or it’s an argument. Which kind of makes sense because YouTube comments are a poor venue for valuable back and forth discussions so it’s just going to be garbage driving back and forth.
skilled 5y ago
I’ve always disliked YT comments. It’s either one liners or verified people pretending like they like the video.
- tomcam 5y ago
  How do you know they're pretending?
  - Jowsey 5y ago
    It's a whole thing. People buy verified channels, rebrand into some easy-to-recognise username/avatar, and take advantage of this phenomenon (?) to boost their numbers with so much attention due to posting wholesome comments and always being at the top of the comments list. MrBeast's comments sections are a great example of this. Nothing but verified accounts with short names posting copy/pasted compliments with too many likes.
  - MonaroVXR 5y ago
    On coding videos; "This video is soo good, thank you for the explanation"
bpodgursky 5y ago
I think dumb people are just nicer than smart people.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Counterpoint: Fascists are extremely dumb and not nice.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Fascists are wrong, but I don't think they are particularly dumb on average when compared to other fringe ideologies.
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      Compared to average is what matters, not compared to other "fringe" ideologies. I think to equate "fringe" with dumb in general is foolish.
- etchalon 5y ago
  There are fewer people meaner than a dumb person who thinks they're smart.
- zionic 5y ago
  Might that be evolutionary? If you’re stupid and can’t provide for yourself pissing others off is a quick way to starve.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Maybe. Mostly I think smart people spend a lot of time trying to be dicks in the most clever way possible, especially on social media.
- stnikolauswagne 5y ago
  Idk, being incredibly toxic and/or racist online doesn‘t seem particularly smart to me, in the case of getting doxed or caught on social media at work I would rather defend my questionable taste in music and hobbies to my boss rather than actual vile or racist comments.
oblib 5y ago
I think it depends on what you're watching. Political stuff can tend to have comments that get pretty snarky whereas lighter entertainment oriented content would obviously tend to get more "thumbs up" and humorous comments. From there it's probably fair to say that way more younger people watch lighter stuff than oldsters there, and there are probably a lot more younger folks using YouTube than oldsters.
edpichler 5y ago
Once we learn how the algorithm rules works, the game changes.
andrewclunn 5y ago
Am I the only one who misses ALL CAPS RAGE COMMENTS and horibly mispelled wrod sallad comments? Oh, and remember link comments? And what about those ascii art ones that you had to click on "see more" to get the full effect from? Oh or how about, substantive comments that disagreed with the the content of the video? Yeah, those were great, back before every video was watched mainly by subscribers who would become the echo chamber for content creators, even if they and YouTube mods (see the algorithm) didn't purge you first. Yeah, YouTube comments are great if you never want to be challenged by anything.
- causi 5y ago
  Youtube started being a corporatized content farm the day they removed video replies.
  - TremendousJudge 5y ago
    I only remember video replies as a feature that allowed spammer camgirls to show their face on the related video feed
    - SllX 5y ago
      I remember them as something I ignored after about the first week, and the first week as basically the first inklings of political YouTube. “Neat” when it’s sitting on a whiteboard, but not all that engaging nor interesting in reality.
    - alexb_ 5y ago
      The comment system right now is pretty much the same thing... every single video has a comment section full of scam websites.
  - corobo 5y ago
    video replies were a corporatized content farm themselves tbf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_girl
- 5y ago
osrec 5y ago
That explains why every Indian or Pakistani music video has this sort of comment at the top with a few thousand likes: "I'm Indian/Pakistani, but hats off to Pakistan/India for creating this masterpiece. Music unites us all. Love to my brothers in Pakistan/India". I mean, I appreciate the sentiment, but it feels odd that it's expressed in the comments section of a random YouTube video! Another weird sort of comment is: "May your loved one be blessed and live a hundred years. One like = one blessing." Again, an embarrassingly high number of likes. Do people actually think a YouTube "like" is going to generate a blessing for them?!
- rPlayer6554 5y ago
  > Again, an embarrassingly high number of likes. Do people actually think a YouTube "like" is going to generate a blessing for them?! You never know! Like this comment to get like blessing insurance. Like some of my other posts to get higher coverage. We protect you from bad luck from not liking posts.
  - TehShrike 5y ago
    I upvoted this comment just in case
not2b 5y ago
I like what they've been doing; a couple of years ago the YouTube comment section was toxic, now it's actually pleasant to read. Does this mean that some relevant criticism might get downvoted? Perhaps, but probably not if it is well written and worded politely.
0xedd 5y ago
Use Odysee
tomjonesey 5y ago

119 points by ipsum2 5y ago

URL should point to https://twitter.com/nikhilbd/status/1488027319935537153 https://twitter.com/nikhilbd/status/1488027319935537153, not the archived version.

seattle_spring 5y ago
Why? The archive version is much easier to access without an account.
- pvg 5y ago
  It's in the guidelines - use the original source, workarounds to soft restrictions are typically posted in thread.
_yoqn 5y ago
Tweets can be and are deleted. Archives make sense in this case.
- dang 5y ago
  In deleted cases, yes, but not in advance. We love archives (and archive.org most of all), but archive links shouldn't be used as submission URLs when an original is available. For one thing, it's important for the original domain to be displayed. Of course it's always fine to link to an archived copy from the comments, and we intend eventually to build software support for this.
  - rPlayer6554 5y ago
    To add to this, since it linked to the archived version I thought it was taken down for some reason. Giving the original source makes it clear it's still up.
  - _yoqn 5y ago
    That's totally logical and something I didn't really think about. It's amazing how much information can be implied from context and juxtaposition.
dang 5y ago
We changed to the original tweet in the thread. Submitted URL was https://web.archive.org/web/20220131130754/https://twitter.com/nikhilbd/status/1488027319935537153 https://web.archive.org/web/20220131130754/https://twitter.c.... Thanks!

uejfiweun 5y ago

Whatever these folks at YouTube are doing with the comments section, they're doing a great job. I really enjoy YouTube comments - I check them for every video I watch, and I often get more laughs from the comments than I do from the actual video! Would love to know more details about how this is implemented. I assume it's some sort of massively scalable NLP & ML system?

RankingMember 5y ago
Wow, I want whatever YouTube's giving you. The comments I see are the same joke over and over again and/or those horrible people that drag politics into every conversation.
- CactusOnFire 5y ago
  My usual experience is that the top rated post is either insightful or a chuckle, but if you delve into the child comments from that particular post, or any more than a couple down, and it is an outright flame war over something trivial.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tragictrash 5y ago
  Yeah this is my experience. Totally the opposite. Just people disrespecting and arguing in the comments section about nothing.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Grandparent post is nuts. Youtube comments are mostly full of repetitive jokes in the current meme formats. Sometimes there is a quality contribution, but it probably won't be near the top. This does vary by channel of course, but if you're talking about a popular channel that shows up for non-logged in users like LockPicking Lawyer then the comments will consist of the same tired and lame but highly upvoted jokes in every thread. Maybe if you scroll down far enough you'll get an anecdote about the company that manufactured the lock or something, but never above the "lol, it just falls apart when LPL looks in its direction!" comments.

badRNG 5y ago

There were a number of years where I would have been happy if YouTube just removed the comment section. The "culture" of comments in the early '10s is reminiscent of what you find today on sites like 4chan. Scrolling down to the comments could truthfully be a deeply upsetting experience that can offset the value provided by whatever you were watching. "Don't read the YouTube comments" was a common phrase, and for good reason. Nowadays, I wouldn't say YouTube comments are especially funny or insightful, but they are certainly tolerable. I imagine having a list of epithets, slurs, and phrases (and accounts that use them) to de-rank would have gone far enough to help fix the nightmare that was the comment section.

tentacleuno 5y ago
> Nowadays, I wouldn't say YouTube comments are especially funny or insightful I find that a lot of them are something like 'lol', or 'love the way X did Y' / an unfunny meme (with thousands of thumbs ups) / something else along those lines. I find myself scrolling quite a long way to find anything insightful about what I watched, and just for something I can take with me in general.
- jlack 5y ago
  I think it depends on the niche of the particular video. I've found channels like woodworking/machining have insightful comments from professionals in that field which may have alternate solutions or point out why something is done a certain way.
  - showerst 5y ago
    Seconding this -- the comments on machining and electronics videos tend to be great, comments on gaming videos are usually just jokes. This makes intuitive sense to me; different viewer bases who want to see different things.
- lovehashbrowns 5y ago
  That has to depend a lot on the content you watch. I did a mini test with three videos I found on my list to test this out: The only video I found that sorta matches this is Chanel 5's ComplexCon video: https://youtu.be/jy9x09iCATA https://youtu.be/jy9x09iCATA which has mostly meme replies. Mentour Pilot made a video about a 747 crash https://youtu.be/Y50saxfTqQA https://youtu.be/Y50saxfTqQA and the top reply is from a pilot with a lot of the other replies being from pilots as well. And the last video I looked at was one titled "All 8 Species of Bear" https://youtu.be/7DERN0R3AbM https://youtu.be/7DERN0R3AbM which I thought would definitely have trash comments because it seemed to be from one of those "Top #" click bait channels. But the top replies are bear stories, species information, and some zoologists. No idea how accurate the info is, however.

tus666 5y ago

Sounds like bread-and-butter kind of machine learning stuff to me.

paulpauper 5y ago

youtube comments are so heavily censored it's crazy. Tons of ghosting going on.

thirteenfingers 5y ago
Indeed. Just last week there was a whole thread here on HN about the problems with toxicity detectors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30066720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30066720 I'm not sure if this is the system youtube is using, but it would certainly align with my experience where people have left innocuous comments on my videos that disappear a couple hours later - comments such as "this music is beautiful, damn" where the only thing I can think of, short of that user's entire account getting deactivated, is that the word "damn" tripped some sort of toxicity flag. I hate bullies as much as the next person on HN, but I'm deeply unsettled by youtube's recent efforts in the direction of manufacturing consent.
bliteben 5y ago
I don't understand how they don't expect a first amendment case against them, they likely are discriminating against certain ethnicities, races, or localities in using algorithms to block / sort comments. It seems like at some point all automated moderation like this will have to be reviewable. On the other hand it is nice that their comment section isn't as toxic as it once was.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  There is no first amendment right to have your comment visible on Youtube. In fact, Youtube has the first amendment right to show whatever comments they want. They could even have fake accounts that post positive comments and upvotes, and charge users money for artificial engagement. Google executives could decide that they wanted to support literal Nazis, and promote their videos, add fake likes and engagements, and do the opposite to any opposing political views. This would all be perfectly legal. We have restricted the constitutional rights of corporations in other cases e.g. utilities, though. And we can do it again.
- kube-system 5y ago

elcapitan 5y ago

While I think this may be helpful for the larger part of Youtube that is just entertainment, I find that in many parts where I'm looking for concrete information (like introductory talks on a topic, lectures etc), the "community" part is often not very helpful - if I can't see critical comments early or see the "thumbs up to down" ratio (which has been changed recently apparently to just show "up"), it's harder for me to judge whether I really want to invest 20-60 minutes into watching the video. So I end up just skipping through the video trying to get a first impression of what the quality is.

simonsarris 5y ago
Especially things like wood-working and chain-sawing videos. Downvotes and critical comments are key if you want to keep your fingers and your head.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Especially things like wood-working and chain-sawing videos. Downvotes and critical comments are key if you want to keep your fingers and your head. Yeah. In an ideal world "howto videos for dangerous activities" or even just "howto videos in general" would have very special policies applied to them. There's a lot of people who have no idea what they're talking about who like to make howto videos, and it's super important to surface critical information about those. Which is a good demonstration of one of the fundamental problems of trying to make a general content-agnostic distribution platform. A general platform run according to contemporary business practices will tend towards one-size-fits-all policies, but that works about as well as one-size-fits-all pants.
Barrin92 5y ago
>So I end up just skipping through the video trying to get a first impression of what the quality is. while this might seem annoying when one is used to the up/down vote mechanism I honestly think incentivizing people to check content for themselves is a significant improvement. I think a lot of websites should remove signals and tone down recommender systems in favor of making people just watch or read. It's one of the things I still like about HN. The greyed out downvoted comments and order aside there's no real visual cues or gamified mechanisms here.

dannyobrien 5y ago

I'd really like to know more about this -- the replies to the original question were divided between people commenting about how much better the comments were, and people talking about better tooling and empowerment being granted to large YT creators. My instinct is that the progress has been primarily because of the better tooling and moderation capabilities, just because the larger companies always promise that ML will take care of their large-scale moderation processes without much concrete evidence. But I also suspect that the answer is somewhere between the two approaches, and it would be great if YT were able to improve the wider ecosystem by sharing some of their strategies.

gpt5 5y ago
I’d argue that YouTube simply implemented a Reddit like sorting mechanism.The top comments on a YouTube video are very similar to Reddit. When you optimize for engagement (e.g. Facebook’s sorting), you get toxicity. When you optimize for approval, you get funny and wholesome stuff.
- TremendousJudge 5y ago
  Reddit top comments are notorious for usually bashing the original post or pointing out how it's wrong. It's a very common trope for there being a super upvoted front page story, and for the first comment to be "actually this is false/incorrect/incomplete/somehow a lie". This basically never happens on Youtube comments.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    So, basically the same as HN.
    - TremendousJudge 5y ago
      HN is pretty much reddit as it was before subreddits were introduced
      - 5y ago

coolso 5y ago

Is that why all YouTube comments are exactly the same now? It’s like the top of every major subreddit post’s comment section. It’s almost as if you’re witnessing 14 year olds discover the internet and humor, but over and over again on a daily basis. The homogeneity of the internet is becoming so tiresome.

Spivak 5y ago
You could utter this exact statement every day since 1995. You’re also trapped in your own eternal September, doomed to remember your own personal “early” internet as being so much better because it was all new to you despite the fact that it was someone else’s “oh my god it’s all the same now.”
- guerrilla 5y ago
  This makes a mistake of forgetting the part where none of this was new to us yet this homogenization and sterilization hadn't happened yet.
- coolso 5y ago
  > You could utter this exact statement every day since 1995. No you couldn't. Because back then, even 10-15 years after 1995, not everyone went to the same 3 websites, and there were more than 3 companies on the web that owned everything. Furthermore, there was no concept of upvotes and downvotes to literally encourage crafting your comments to appeal to the widest audience / lowest common denominator. (This concept is no longer specific to Reddit by the way; nearly every comment section on every website utilizes the same type of deal.) Back then if you wanted to speak your mind or say something, you could just type it out and everyone would see it. Today, if you want to say something, you need to craft your comment in such a way to make it worth it: sure, you could say exactly what you want. But that might only get one upvote. Or, God forbid, it might get downvoted! Then nobody sees it; furthermore, the rating your receive could potentially work against you and make the hivemind turn further against your argument. Because lots of people downvoted it. Or not many people upvoted it. Which means it's bad / not good. It's a perverse incentive. The result is... usually, milquetoast homogeneous repetition.

Leary 5y ago

Maybe they overweighs downvotes, thus pushing only uncontroversial comments up.

jack_riminton 5y ago
Occam's razor says it's probably something very simple like that
RankingMember 5y ago
I'd be interested to know if that's the case, as it'd present a shift from their long-held strategy of having the comment downvote button do absolutely nothing.
- phailhaus 5y ago
  > it'd present a shift from their long-held strategy of having the comment downvote button do absolutely nothing. This seems to be a common refrain, despite little evidence to back it up. Just because the dislike button doesn't render a count doesn't mean that it isn't being counted and used to weight comments.
  - RankingMember 5y ago
    Fair point. It'd be helpful if there was some transparency from Youtube.
drdeca 5y ago
seeing as the downvotes on comments aren't shown anywhere, that would surprise me a little

RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago

There seems to be some perverted notion that "wholesome and funny" is somehow better. Its not. Its manipulative and a case of "I know whats good for you" that can only result when someone thinks they are actually better than you. These aren't people making the things "wholesome and funny". They are criminals in teddy bear outfits controlling what people hear. Modern day clowns.

Arainach 5y ago
Have you seen YouTube comments circa 2006-2019 (no idea when this change was implemented, I gave up on reading the comments long ago)? Some of the worst toxicity of the entire Internet. 4chan at least had some funny parts, YT comments were just awful. This isn't censorship, it's trying to build an experience that doesn't actively turn people away from your platform.
- serf 5y ago
  >This isn't censorship, it's trying to build an experience that doesn't actively turn people away from your platform. i'm here to tell you that the cutesy shit drives certain people away. 'Funny' isn't some objective quality that things can be neatly sorted into with any level of accuracy, except in cases of the worst most generic/juvenile types of humor that are guaranteed to get a chuckle from 'some idiot' out there. The parody show 'Ow! My Balls!' in the movie 'Idiocracy' comes to mind.
- RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
  > 2006-2019 I believe this was when youtube was growing. > it's trying to build an experience that doesn't actively turn people away I believe youtube was growing at this time. I personally don't remember it being that toxic. But even if it were whose responsibility should it be to deal with the toxicity? The platform's or the content creator's? There's a saying that's oft repeated "dont read the comments section". That's a strategy in line with the approach I'd endorse. We shouldn't be censoring information just because its "toxic", people need to find ways to withstand or ignore or deal with the criticism that exists in the world. People develop weak immune systems if they are protected from everything, it's not just a biological thing. The American mind is as coddled as their biological immune system. We should be teaching people how to deal and withstand criticism whether valid or caustic. Otherwise we get this mad world where no one can offend anyone and you can't even tell clinically obese people their body is not healthy.

sundarurfriend 5y ago

And what can be more wholesome than praising the Supreme Leader! (Or perhaps praising Supreme™!) Sorry about the flippant tone, but I hope we've learned that any system like this operating behind closed doors can be and will be used for manipulation and (much more direct) profit-seeking. And even before that happens, the idea itself is full of cultural bias, and so brings in cultural discrimination and the imposition of one culture's idea of wholesome/funny on the whole world, by its very nature.

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TulliusCicero 5y ago
Okay, but the previous status quo was abominable. "Don't read the youtube comments" was a well understood internet meme for a reason. This is a massive improvement on what came before. Maybe it could be better yet, but I haven't seen anything better myself for websites in a similar situation.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Maybe Youtube just shouldn't have comments? Thinking about it, you're not really going to get discussions on a platform like that. Likes and similar, fine. Maybe evolve that. Maybe do the whole Dark Souls thing where you can only leave gestures and stock messages. Sure, you'll still get "try finger, but hole" and "amazing chest ahead", but that's still streets ahead of Youtube's communication.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    I mean the current setup seems fine to me. Yeah it's probably kind of a hugbox-y, and prioritizes simplistic comments like funny one-liners over anything insightful or deep, but that's not the worst thing in the world. I'm not sure they're adding much, but they don't seem to be taking away either.

AniseAbyss 5y ago

impalallama 5y ago

i hate to assume they don't weigh endless replies as much as other social media platforms out there, (100+ comment reply chains is a pretty big sign at something not being wholesome)

dpark 5y ago
That’s a good observation. long reply chains do tend to turn to garbage rapidly. Either it’s an “in joke” meme chain (like used to consume nearly all Reddit threads) or it’s an argument. Which kind of makes sense because YouTube comments are a poor venue for valuable back and forth discussions so it’s just going to be garbage driving back and forth.

skilled 5y ago

I’ve always disliked YT comments. It’s either one liners or verified people pretending like they like the video.

tomcam 5y ago
How do you know they're pretending?
- Jowsey 5y ago
  It's a whole thing. People buy verified channels, rebrand into some easy-to-recognise username/avatar, and take advantage of this phenomenon (?) to boost their numbers with so much attention due to posting wholesome comments and always being at the top of the comments list. MrBeast's comments sections are a great example of this. Nothing but verified accounts with short names posting copy/pasted compliments with too many likes.
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  On coding videos; "This video is soo good, thank you for the explanation"

bpodgursky 5y ago

I think dumb people are just nicer than smart people.

guerrilla 5y ago
Counterpoint: Fascists are extremely dumb and not nice.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Fascists are wrong, but I don't think they are particularly dumb on average when compared to other fringe ideologies.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Compared to average is what matters, not compared to other "fringe" ideologies. I think to equate "fringe" with dumb in general is foolish.
etchalon 5y ago
There are fewer people meaner than a dumb person who thinks they're smart.
zionic 5y ago
Might that be evolutionary? If you’re stupid and can’t provide for yourself pissing others off is a quick way to starve.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Maybe. Mostly I think smart people spend a lot of time trying to be dicks in the most clever way possible, especially on social media.
stnikolauswagne 5y ago
Idk, being incredibly toxic and/or racist online doesn‘t seem particularly smart to me, in the case of getting doxed or caught on social media at work I would rather defend my questionable taste in music and hobbies to my boss rather than actual vile or racist comments.

oblib 5y ago

I think it depends on what you're watching. Political stuff can tend to have comments that get pretty snarky whereas lighter entertainment oriented content would obviously tend to get more "thumbs up" and humorous comments. From there it's probably fair to say that way more younger people watch lighter stuff than oldsters there, and there are probably a lot more younger folks using YouTube than oldsters.

edpichler 5y ago

Once we learn how the algorithm rules works, the game changes.

andrewclunn 5y ago

Am I the only one who misses ALL CAPS RAGE COMMENTS and horibly mispelled wrod sallad comments? Oh, and remember link comments? And what about those ascii art ones that you had to click on "see more" to get the full effect from? Oh or how about, substantive comments that disagreed with the the content of the video? Yeah, those were great, back before every video was watched mainly by subscribers who would become the echo chamber for content creators, even if they and YouTube mods (see the algorithm) didn't purge you first. Yeah, YouTube comments are great if you never want to be challenged by anything.

causi 5y ago
Youtube started being a corporatized content farm the day they removed video replies.
- TremendousJudge 5y ago
  I only remember video replies as a feature that allowed spammer camgirls to show their face on the related video feed
  - SllX 5y ago
    I remember them as something I ignored after about the first week, and the first week as basically the first inklings of political YouTube. “Neat” when it’s sitting on a whiteboard, but not all that engaging nor interesting in reality.
  - alexb_ 5y ago
    The comment system right now is pretty much the same thing... every single video has a comment section full of scam websites.
- corobo 5y ago
  video replies were a corporatized content farm themselves tbf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_girl
5y ago

osrec 5y ago

That explains why every Indian or Pakistani music video has this sort of comment at the top with a few thousand likes: "I'm Indian/Pakistani, but hats off to Pakistan/India for creating this masterpiece. Music unites us all. Love to my brothers in Pakistan/India". I mean, I appreciate the sentiment, but it feels odd that it's expressed in the comments section of a random YouTube video! Another weird sort of comment is: "May your loved one be blessed and live a hundred years. One like = one blessing." Again, an embarrassingly high number of likes. Do people actually think a YouTube "like" is going to generate a blessing for them?!

rPlayer6554 5y ago
> Again, an embarrassingly high number of likes. Do people actually think a YouTube "like" is going to generate a blessing for them?! You never know! Like this comment to get like blessing insurance. Like some of my other posts to get higher coverage. We protect you from bad luck from not liking posts.
- TehShrike 5y ago
  I upvoted this comment just in case

not2b 5y ago

I like what they've been doing; a couple of years ago the YouTube comment section was toxic, now it's actually pleasant to read. Does this mean that some relevant criticism might get downvoted? Perhaps, but probably not if it is well written and worded politely.

0xedd 5y ago

Use Odysee

tomjonesey 5y ago