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I didn’t like when they removed the dislike counts, and I still don’t like it. When I look for videos of folks working on Subarus, I don’t want to have to manu

by mikrl 4y ago

I didn’t like when they removed the dislike counts, and I still don’t like it. When I look for videos of folks working on Subarus, I don’t want to have to manually scrub through the video to gauge the quality. Before I’d just look at the ratio and if I was feeling generous I’d preview the frames to see if they had what I wanted. Now it takes me at least 2 mins longer to get to the same judgement which begs the question of why I’m watching a video when I have a book on my lap and a car waiting outside.

mdcds 4y ago
I've been using Return Youtube Dislike addon for Firefox. Idk how accurate it is, but you can gauge the sentiment (mostly positive, mixed, mostly negative)
- donio 4y ago
  I believe that uses a separate database that was seeded from scraped youtube data but now it's only updated by those who use the addon. So it would have a much smaller sample size for recent activity.
  - jobigoud 4y ago
    I'm not sure about this because when going through Youtube shorts I regularly see videos with +100K dislikes, and any "viral" video has dozens of thousands of dislikes. I don't think this many users installed an extension to bring back dislikes and happened to dislike these particular videos.
    - Doxin 4y ago
      The extension estimates the "true" dislike count based on the like/dislikes it has in its database. E.g. if the database contains 100 dislikes and 900 likes, but the video has a million views, it'll estimate 1000 dislikes. I'm sure there's some cleverness in there for videos where it doesn't have a tonne of information yet.
majou 4y ago
(On the topic of Subaru https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAochkcRfK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAochkcRfK4) I agree about the dislikes tho. I used to calculate the ratio of likes:dislikes, and a lot of my hobbies were in the cool 1,000:1 range. Now I do the same with views:likes; 10:1 isn't uncommon for some niches!
- hammock 4y ago
  90/9/1 rule
- the_omegist 4y ago
  I was doing the same things but, depending on the total views and the type of video, it was too inconsistent...
daveoc64 4y ago
The problem with the dislike button seems to be that nobody agrees on what it should be used for. In previous HN discussions, it's become apparent that some people use it to say "I am not interested in this video". That is of zero use to other users. The video isn't necessarily bad, it's just on a topic you don't care about. If you are instead using it to mean "this video is factually wrong" or "this video is obnoxious" that might be useful. If you are using it to say "I don't agree with this political viewpoint" or "I don't like this movie/superhero/game/TV franchise", then that's also probably not that helpful.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  It’s not of zero use, even if it’s imperfect. The perspective shared in the comment you’re replying to is a great example of this, unless you deny the validity of their reasoning or experience.
- cowtools 4y ago
  I think the solution would be to just make the down-vote do nothing but increment the visible counter, and also make it so that users that can't comment if they already voted. This allows people to simply signal their disapproval without fighting repetitive flamewars in the comments or suppressing content they don't like. Or maybe if you're running a forum where you want to promote controversial content and hide boring content, just make the downvote act identical to the upvote, so users are incentivized to downvote and argue if they think it is argue-worthy and just ignore if they think it is too boring to discuss.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  If only we had a way to spend billions of $¥€ on putting the greatest minds in the World into a single company who could solve this at the drop of a hat. It has to be control, right, surely Google are competent to fix this overnight of they wished?
  - taberiand 4y ago
    That implies that the current functionality is broken, for Google's purpose. My guess is, they calculate that they make more money with this configuration than the alternative.
chillfox 4y ago
I agree that removing the dislike count was dumb, but why would it have anything to do with quality? It's "dislike" as in "not like", not "low quality". I hit that button if I don't like the video for any reason, most frequently because it's boring, subject doesn't interest me, I don't like the person or they say something I don't like. I don't hit it if the video is merely low quality.
andrewxdiamond 4y ago
YouTube is famously watch time centric. > Now it takes me at least 2 mins longer to get to the same judgement Sounds like metrics at work.
sircastor 4y ago
I haven’t ever used the dislike button. It never functioned as a “don’t give me more of this”. I did use the “not interested” option to do so, but as others have said “dislike” is ambiguous, not to mention the opportunity for abuse.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  How is this a useful response to the perspective shared in the GP? Even if you don’t use it, it’s still a useful signal. Are you saying this isn’t the case? For example, did you find the dislike ratio to be a misleading signal, when it was around?
  - sircastor 4y ago
    I shared to express that it wasn’t a signal universally understood. I never saw the dislike button as anything other than people hating on a video. There’s no context to it. You don’t know if the dislikes are people who don’t like the content or the author or the subject or the channel. In other words, for me it was never a useful signal. It only reflected how terrible the internet can make people behave. I understand if my perspective is a minority opinion, but I think it’s a valid one.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      I found the like/dislike ratio to be very useful, personally. Since it was removed and I have no signal as to whether or not the video is any good, the number of crap videos I end up playing has increased substantially. It's really annoying. Yes, certain videos would get bombed -- but that, too, tends to be obvious and tells you something useful about the video: namely, that it's controversial in some way.
- iopq 4y ago
  I've used it to mark spam videos that had no real content except for music and copy/pasted text from some other source
nomel 4y ago
> Now it takes me at least 2 mins longer You mean 2 more minutes of engagement! I know, let's try using the provided search filter feature to sort by rating. Surely this will give some useful listing that prioritizes user deemed quality! Testing this with "Subaru repair" (no quotes), the top result has 11 views from 2 years ago.
elondaits 4y ago
The reason dislike count had to be removed is that it enables hate campaigns against things (e.g. the recent controversy around the trailer for the live action The Little Mermaid movie, to name one among many). Organized hate campaigns have a disproportionate representation in review sites, so they break rating systems. Also, the dislike count acts as a positive signal to hate-bombers ("we're winning", "let's make it to 50k dislikes") more than it helps anyone actually engaging with the content in a more healthy way. One could also argue that the like count also creates a pernicious culture around subscriber / watch-count ("help us reach 1M subs!") that negatively affects young content producers and adds nothing of value to the world. But that's a much more complex conversation.
- docmars 4y ago
  Perhaps this is just democracy at play, doing what it's meant to do. I've found that people who interpret a high number of dislikes as "hate campaigns" are usually the ones who agree, if not, applaud the content being disapproved of by a larger group who is frustrated with the subject matter and is using their voices to show their disapproval. This is just as valid the other way around, where you should equally have the opportunity to express your disapproval of a video on the basis of political issues if you so please. Review-bombing certainly exists, but I don't believe it's the norm when there's a high amount of dislikes out-ratioing the likes. And even in the case of review-bombing: to me, it's a clear indicator of societal sentiment around a topic or aspect of whatever it is. I think we should be paying more attention to it, and spend more time publicly discussing these moments, treating high dislike counts as a valid point of view. Unfortunately there is a certain political leaning who has grown quite comfortable with gaslighting those who hold and express majority opinions that aren't popular with late night TV hosts and celebrities, who further encourage hatred, violence, suppression, and ridicule towards this populace as they watch the wealthy and powerful deconstruct every bit of their culture and values, where the only replacement is woke garbage that they've clearly expressed not wanting through their votes, and yes: dislikes. Democracy is eventually unfriendly to those who twist it into a guise for fully endorsed mob rule — and it will bite back.

by mikrl 4y ago

mdcds 4y ago

I've been using Return Youtube Dislike addon for Firefox. Idk how accurate it is, but you can gauge the sentiment (mostly positive, mixed, mostly negative)

donio 4y ago
I believe that uses a separate database that was seeded from scraped youtube data but now it's only updated by those who use the addon. So it would have a much smaller sample size for recent activity.
- jobigoud 4y ago
  I'm not sure about this because when going through Youtube shorts I regularly see videos with +100K dislikes, and any "viral" video has dozens of thousands of dislikes. I don't think this many users installed an extension to bring back dislikes and happened to dislike these particular videos.
  - Doxin 4y ago
    The extension estimates the "true" dislike count based on the like/dislikes it has in its database. E.g. if the database contains 100 dislikes and 900 likes, but the video has a million views, it'll estimate 1000 dislikes. I'm sure there's some cleverness in there for videos where it doesn't have a tonne of information yet.

majou 4y ago

(On the topic of Subaru https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAochkcRfK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAochkcRfK4) I agree about the dislikes tho. I used to calculate the ratio of likes:dislikes, and a lot of my hobbies were in the cool 1,000:1 range. Now I do the same with views:likes; 10:1 isn't uncommon for some niches!

hammock 4y ago
90/9/1 rule
the_omegist 4y ago
I was doing the same things but, depending on the total views and the type of video, it was too inconsistent...

daveoc64 4y ago

The problem with the dislike button seems to be that nobody agrees on what it should be used for. In previous HN discussions, it's become apparent that some people use it to say "I am not interested in this video". That is of zero use to other users. The video isn't necessarily bad, it's just on a topic you don't care about. If you are instead using it to mean "this video is factually wrong" or "this video is obnoxious" that might be useful. If you are using it to say "I don't agree with this political viewpoint" or "I don't like this movie/superhero/game/TV franchise", then that's also probably not that helpful.

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
It’s not of zero use, even if it’s imperfect. The perspective shared in the comment you’re replying to is a great example of this, unless you deny the validity of their reasoning or experience.
cowtools 4y ago
I think the solution would be to just make the down-vote do nothing but increment the visible counter, and also make it so that users that can't comment if they already voted. This allows people to simply signal their disapproval without fighting repetitive flamewars in the comments or suppressing content they don't like. Or maybe if you're running a forum where you want to promote controversial content and hide boring content, just make the downvote act identical to the upvote, so users are incentivized to downvote and argue if they think it is argue-worthy and just ignore if they think it is too boring to discuss.
pbhjpbhj 4y ago
If only we had a way to spend billions of $¥€ on putting the greatest minds in the World into a single company who could solve this at the drop of a hat. It has to be control, right, surely Google are competent to fix this overnight of they wished?
- taberiand 4y ago
  That implies that the current functionality is broken, for Google's purpose. My guess is, they calculate that they make more money with this configuration than the alternative.

chillfox 4y ago

I agree that removing the dislike count was dumb, but why would it have anything to do with quality? It's "dislike" as in "not like", not "low quality". I hit that button if I don't like the video for any reason, most frequently because it's boring, subject doesn't interest me, I don't like the person or they say something I don't like. I don't hit it if the video is merely low quality.

andrewxdiamond 4y ago

YouTube is famously watch time centric. > Now it takes me at least 2 mins longer to get to the same judgement Sounds like metrics at work.

sircastor 4y ago

I haven’t ever used the dislike button. It never functioned as a “don’t give me more of this”. I did use the “not interested” option to do so, but as others have said “dislike” is ambiguous, not to mention the opportunity for abuse.

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
How is this a useful response to the perspective shared in the GP? Even if you don’t use it, it’s still a useful signal. Are you saying this isn’t the case? For example, did you find the dislike ratio to be a misleading signal, when it was around?
- sircastor 4y ago
  I shared to express that it wasn’t a signal universally understood. I never saw the dislike button as anything other than people hating on a video. There’s no context to it. You don’t know if the dislikes are people who don’t like the content or the author or the subject or the channel. In other words, for me it was never a useful signal. It only reflected how terrible the internet can make people behave. I understand if my perspective is a minority opinion, but I think it’s a valid one.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    I found the like/dislike ratio to be very useful, personally. Since it was removed and I have no signal as to whether or not the video is any good, the number of crap videos I end up playing has increased substantially. It's really annoying. Yes, certain videos would get bombed -- but that, too, tends to be obvious and tells you something useful about the video: namely, that it's controversial in some way.
iopq 4y ago
I've used it to mark spam videos that had no real content except for music and copy/pasted text from some other source

nomel 4y ago

> Now it takes me at least 2 mins longer You mean 2 more minutes of engagement! I know, let's try using the provided search filter feature to sort by rating. Surely this will give some useful listing that prioritizes user deemed quality! Testing this with "Subaru repair" (no quotes), the top result has 11 views from 2 years ago.

elondaits 4y ago

The reason dislike count had to be removed is that it enables hate campaigns against things (e.g. the recent controversy around the trailer for the live action The Little Mermaid movie, to name one among many). Organized hate campaigns have a disproportionate representation in review sites, so they break rating systems. Also, the dislike count acts as a positive signal to hate-bombers ("we're winning", "let's make it to 50k dislikes") more than it helps anyone actually engaging with the content in a more healthy way. One could also argue that the like count also creates a pernicious culture around subscriber / watch-count ("help us reach 1M subs!") that negatively affects young content producers and adds nothing of value to the world. But that's a much more complex conversation.

docmars 4y ago
Perhaps this is just democracy at play, doing what it's meant to do. I've found that people who interpret a high number of dislikes as "hate campaigns" are usually the ones who agree, if not, applaud the content being disapproved of by a larger group who is frustrated with the subject matter and is using their voices to show their disapproval. This is just as valid the other way around, where you should equally have the opportunity to express your disapproval of a video on the basis of political issues if you so please. Review-bombing certainly exists, but I don't believe it's the norm when there's a high amount of dislikes out-ratioing the likes. And even in the case of review-bombing: to me, it's a clear indicator of societal sentiment around a topic or aspect of whatever it is. I think we should be paying more attention to it, and spend more time publicly discussing these moments, treating high dislike counts as a valid point of view. Unfortunately there is a certain political leaning who has grown quite comfortable with gaslighting those who hold and express majority opinions that aren't popular with late night TV hosts and celebrities, who further encourage hatred, violence, suppression, and ridicule towards this populace as they watch the wealthy and powerful deconstruct every bit of their culture and values, where the only replacement is woke garbage that they've clearly expressed not wanting through their votes, and yes: dislikes. Democracy is eventually unfriendly to those who twist it into a guise for fully endorsed mob rule — and it will bite back.