[HN Gopher] YouTube removed dislike counts, so this guy made Rot...
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YouTube removed dislike counts, so this guy made Rotten Tomatoes
for YouTube
 
Author : thunderbong
Score  : 289 points
Date   : 2023-05-28 16:42 UTC (6 hours ago)
 
web link (bgr.com)
w3m dump (bgr.com)
 
| Mobes wrote:
| Websites or services that act as personalized recommendation
| middle-men with a less "trashy" presentation for the
| recommendations themselves are a great idea. Essentially, I'd
| like "Rate Your Music" for all sorts of things. There's a reason
| why a handful few are trying to get those "Action Button" Youtube
| videos submitted to Letterboxd.
| 
| I guess I also believe that plenty of platforms with user-
| generated content have boundless stuff to see, and making the
| platforms themselves responsible for recommendations gives them
| almost too much responsibility. I understand it's part of the
| business plan, but recommendations would become less toxic of a
| phenomenon if they weren't forced onto your regular user
| experience as you engaged with the platform.. and better if they
| were more individual and something you'd have to access
| separately. Like movie reviews in the paper!
 
  | Nextgrid wrote:
  | > Websites or services that act as personalized recommendation
  | middle-men
  | 
  | These are impossible without a legal precedent to make
  | adversarial interoperability legal again. While it was never
  | explicitly made illegal, copyright law and the CFAA have
  | successfully been used to curtail it.
  | 
  | Software that wraps common services such as
  | YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/etc and added its own features on top
  | (such as custom recommendations, etc) is routinely attacked and
  | taken down. That's why there are no _mainstream_ alternative
  | clients for any of those services.
 
| hinata08 wrote:
| I don't get why the Reddit crowd cares so much about disliking...
| Mostly without even a comment or something.
| 
| Everytime on groups that share a userbase with Reddit, and on
| YouTube, you get haters. You don't know who, you don't know why,
| they just downvotes and burry your comment and they're not able
| to comment back.
| 
| It kills online discussions, make an echo chamber for the leading
| opinion, and kills any content that's a bit different.
| 
| For exemple, some awesome song about Assassin's creed was
| featured on YouTube, a few years ago, next to related content.
| (Assassin des templiers)
| 
| The quality and the realisation were sublime.
| 
| But it got tons of thumbs down because it was in French, and
| haters only want content in English (filtering your exposition to
| international content was not the point of upvotes and
| downvotes!)
| 
| So downvotes are pointless imo. It's great they get rid of it
| (and HN should do the same for the quality of the discussion)
 
  | newZWhoDis wrote:
  | >Everytime on groups that share a userbase with Reddit, and on
  | YouTube, you get haters. You don't know who, you don't know
  | why, they just downvotes and burry your comment and they're not
  | able to comment back.
  | 
  | I mean, this is exactly how HN works in any controversial
  | thread.
  | 
  | I've almost rage quit the site like 3 times from having written
  | a fully thought out high-quality reply and gotten "you're
  | posting too fast" garbage.
  | 
  | Really dang, you couldn't have said that when I hit 
  | instead of , so I don't waste my time typing a long
  | comment only to have it hit a brick wall?! Ugh
 
  | AlbertCory wrote:
  | Hear, hear.
  | 
  | Another term for downvotes is: _casual meanness_.
  | 
  | If HN isn't willing to get rid of them, then they should at
  | least cost you something: 10 karma points, maybe.
 
    | Fauntleroy wrote:
    | Dislikes were a fantastic way to determine if a video had a
    | misleading thumbnail or title at a glance. Now you have to
    | waste time determining if the contents of the video are
    | factual or not, which can become infuriating, especially for
    | technical work that demands accurate information.
 
    | kortilla wrote:
    | It has nothing to do with meanness. It's community curation.
    | 
    | Upvotes provide you a signal that some people like it.
    | Downvotes provide you a signal that some people dislike it.
    | They are completely different.
    | 
    | Downvotes prevent unpopular things that have a fervent user-
    | base from sitting on top.
 
      | hinata08 wrote:
      | > Downvotes prevent unpopular things that have a fervent
      | user-base from sitting on top
      | 
      | It's the definition of an echo chamber, isn't it ?
 
        | krapp wrote:
        | If it is, an echo chamber isn't always a bad thing.
 
        | kortilla wrote:
        | No, because in the youtube case it doesn't actually
        | suppress it. It was an extra bit of information that you
        | could use to determine if a video was likely misleading.
 
        | pessimizer wrote:
        | YouTube is, at all times, pro-echo chamber. So this is
        | not their motive.
 
      | AlbertCory wrote:
      | Perhaps. And also allow a brigade to suppress opinions they
      | don't like.
 
        | kortilla wrote:
        | Youtube dislikes didn't go into a combined score. So
        | there was no suppression. As a viewer it was an extra
        | signal.
 
        | AlbertCory wrote:
        | sorry, I meant HN here
 
        | pessimizer wrote:
        | On HN you can showdead, so it doesn't matter. You can
        | still read even flagkilled stuff.
        | 
        | It allows us to review the moderation and decide if we
        | approve of it. There's even a _vouching_ mechanism, which
        | is absurdly parliamentary for web 2.0.
        | 
        | edit: there are even mods running around saving stories
        | that they think were unfairly judged.
 
  | Gareth321 wrote:
  | YouTube is plagued by low quality content with clickbait
  | titles, descriptions, and images. Often they outright lie about
  | the content. Any DIY is a crapshoot. Even if it's not a lie,
  | often it doesn't work or it's actually dangerous. Videos with
  | lots of downvotes is a quick and easy indicator not to bother
  | watching the 10 minute video to discover if it's good quality.
  | YouTube's intention here is clear: if one can't determine in
  | advance when a video is poor quality, they'll be forced to
  | watch those poor quality videos until they find a good one.
  | This increases time on the platform and their advertising
  | revenue.
 
    | manicennui wrote:
    | Many great videos have a lot of dislikes. I don't understand
    | this argument. It's a useless metric. I don't care who wins
    | the popularity contest.
 
      | mike741 wrote:
      | Many =/= Most. The dislike ratio was extremely reliable
      | when it came to identifying clickbait. Maybe you don't care
      | about that but many others do.
 
  | wilg wrote:
  | Dislikes have problems, and I'm not too bothered about it on
  | YouTube since I literally never looked at it, but I do think
  | that being able to quickly indicate something is low-quality
  | content is valuable. Think of Twitter, where your only feedback
  | is likes from people who agree with you, so your followers just
  | reinforce your own thing in a positive feedback loop that echo
  | chambers yourself much more than something like Reddit or HN.
 
    | hinata08 wrote:
    | Yeah, but especially on YouTube, you tell YouTube that you
    | didn't like the opinion or the content, so that the AI only
    | serves you the same things on a loop.
    | 
    | And not only to you, but you also to the creator, who might
    | be doing something great, As well as to everyone, as you
    | burry the video if it's too downvoted.
    | 
    | If you don't like something, just move on. Or reply to it.
    | 
    | Because if you just downvote without commenting, the creator
    | of a video doesn't know if it's low quality, or if there are
    | just haters out there.
 
      | mike741 wrote:
      | The value of the dislike button was in warning other
      | viewers about scams and clickbait. If you watch a bad
      | video, realize its clickbait, and then simply move on that
      | would be rewarding the clickbaiter and making the problem
      | worse.
 
  | pessimizer wrote:
  | It's just anti-short-seller bullshit. People running scams hate
  | any way to mark things as scams, and they love praise removed
  | from all context.
 
  | mardifoufs wrote:
  | The YouTube dislike button existed long before modern Reddit
  | culture (lol) did. If anything, the Reddit vote system is quite
  | different since it does not really show the absolute number of
  | up and down votes, and they are even slowly moving towards
  | phasing out the % of up/down votes display counter on posts. It
  | never was available for comments in the first place.
  | 
  | Plus, dislike also boosted engagement and could be good for
  | your video, so again very far from the Reddit karma system.
 
  | zeitgeist123 wrote:
  | [flagged]
 
| poorUs wrote:
| [dead]
 
| SN76477 wrote:
| They made a mistake by removing the star rating system.
 
| dbeley wrote:
| I also started working on a similar website several weeks ago.
| It's called tuberank, feel free to check it out!
| 
| https://tuberank.org/en
 
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Funny idea: What would happen, if a bunch of relatively well
| known Youtubers made it their mission to say at every video
| ending, that one should upvote for disliking a video and that
| they consider upvotes to be dislikes? If it became big enough of
| a movement, would upvoting also be removed?
 
| katamarimambo wrote:
| Didn't click surely LGBT people have less than 10% approval on
| this unless its a pre-misstep Milo Yannopoulos type
 
| activiation wrote:
| Smart idea... Hope it catches up
 
  | andrewclunn wrote:
  | If it does there will then be the "verified YouTube critic
  | score" and the "audience score," where only the critic score is
  | displayed at first glance. You know, because actual popular
  | sentiment is the antithesis of advertising.
 
    | devmunchies wrote:
    | Even Rotten Tomatoes has changed this recently to break the
    | audience score into 2 new categories. "Verified Audience" and
    | "General Audience". Disney was probably putting pressure on
    | RT after years of putting out garbage and getting review
    | bombed.
 
      | watwut wrote:
      | There would be no need for review bomb if they were widely
      | disliked. The issue is that they were not widely disliked
      | and certain groups are angry other people consume this
      | content.
 
        | devmunchies wrote:
        | Disney has been underperforming at the box office for a
        | while now. Review bombs are a symptom of not focusing on
        | the product (entertainment, story).
        | 
        | And to my original point, if review bombs are a symptom,
        | then "verified reviewers" is addressing the symptom, not
        | the problem. Same reason YouTube took down dislikes. It
        | was around the time the Rings of Power was getting
        | wrecked by LoTR fans.
 
        | mike741 wrote:
        | > There would be no need for review bomb if they were
        | widely disliked.
        | 
        | This is circular reasoning. You're calling something a
        | "review bomb" because you're assuming from the outset
        | that its not widely disliked, despite the large amount of
        | negative reviews suggesting it is in fact widely
        | disliked.
 
| dbhalla4 wrote:
| [flagged]
 
| qwertox wrote:
| I think they didn't just remove dislike counts, but are actively
| suppressing negative comments.
| 
| If I watch a speech of someone from the German (right-wing) AfD
| party, which I very rarely do and start reading the comments, I
| feel like I'm visiting an echo chamber. Zero negative comments
| which simply can't be the truth.
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | gavaw wrote:
  | [flagged]
 
  | nativeit wrote:
  | It could be that YouTube secretly supports right-wing German
  | political parties, and is suppressing alternative views in the
  | comments, or it might be that YouTube just thinks the world is
  | too cynical and suppresses any comment with a negative tone
  | irrespective of political bent, OR--and stay with me on this--
  | the channel itself may be moderating its own comment sections
  | out of pure self-interest, and YouTube as an organization isn't
  | particularly interested in the goings on of local German
  | politics. Who can say?
 
  | DaveExeter wrote:
  | There is a lot of shadowbanning on Youtube!
 
  | bspammer wrote:
  | They are, but indirectly via the video recommendation
  | algorithm.
 
  | kmeisthax wrote:
  | I don't think YouTube themselves are doing that. As the
  | uploader, AfD can absolutely just remove all negative comments
  | they don't like. And they've been able to do that since YouTube
  | started.
 
    | whamlastxmas wrote:
    | My understanding is that comments with negative sentiments
    | get held for moderation and bigger channels never go through
    | and approve them so they're effectively shadow banned
    | comments
 
    | mardifoufs wrote:
    | Can they filter out words automatically? Like I know that
    | tons of people seemingly love to be moderators (for free) so
    | maybe some channels just have enough mods to delete stuff
    | very fast, but sometimes the whole comment section is just
    | too clean. Do YouTube channels have more advanced moderator
    | tools now?
    | 
    | The funny thing is that I started to get that impression on
    | videos of Moroccan politics of all things. Not some western
    | culture war topic haha.
 
      | drewtato wrote:
      | There's also the option to manually approve every comment.
 
      | smoldesu wrote:
      | > Can they filter out words automatically?
      | 
      | Yep. See "Blocked Words"
      | https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9483359?hl=en
 
| diimdeep wrote:
| YouTube monopoly is really hurting internet and the world.
| 
| YouTube at this point is globalized TV controlled by one country:
| U.S.
| 
| It got so bad that for countries that do not have their own
| platforms, YouTube become as worse as adversarial subversive NGO
| that dictates one narrative and suppresses other narratives. i
| have seen in recent years countless examples of channels wiped
| from platform for holding opinionated views not aligned with Neo-
| liberal west.
| 
| Removing features so that you watch what they want you to watch.
 
  | w7 wrote:
  | Pretending there isn't a difference between "opinionated views"
  | and collaborating with Russian military while spreading
  | disinformation doesn't help you.
  | 
  | The examples you've provided have done the latter.
  | 
  | Stop using indirect language to hide your beliefs.
 
  | ricardo81 wrote:
  | I don't know about monopolisation (other than Google/YT's
  | massive reach) but their shadow banning of comments is
  | something I find worrying. You can't say something without
  | double checking if it's been binned, and it doesn't have to be
  | that controversial.
  | 
  | I made a comment on some chap making a living from scraping and
  | mentioned mozrepl, tried submitting about 5 variations of it
  | but it never stuck. So all those millions of comments on there,
  | who's to say what the middle ground is (other than the filter).
 
  | bojan wrote:
  | My experience in the Netherlands is completely different than
  | what you are saying.
  | 
  | When not logged in, the front page is full of right to extreme
  | right content, always a click or two away from conspiracy
  | theories and/or Thierry Baudet, the leader of the FvD, which is
  | basically a neo nazi party.
 
    | galoisscobi wrote:
    | Don't be evil, unless I guess it starts hurting the ad money.
 
    | eastbound wrote:
    | So your experience is exactly the same: Online US-controlled
    | media can create uprest, extremism, hate subgroups in foreign
    | countries at will.
 
    | ipaddr wrote:
    | Perhaps people in the Netherlands value right content over
    | left content more than you realize.
 
      | sangnoir wrote:
      | Or perhaps outrage increases engagement, and YouTube
      | optimizes for engagement (i.e. ad revenue)
 
    | [deleted]
 
      | AntiRemote wrote:
      | [dead]
 
    | antman wrote:
    | Those look more like similar than completely different
    | experiences.
 
    | jjeaff wrote:
    | I noticed the same thing in the US. When logged in I get
    | mostly suggestions of stuff I tend to watch, which includes a
    | few left leaning commentators and some more centrist news
    | sources like NPR. If I check logged out, I get tons of right
    | wing, own-the-libs type content with a lot of "men's rights"
    | stuff.
 
      | iinnPP wrote:
      | Why is Men's rights in quotes?
      | 
      | Oddly enough, when I log out and use a new browser I get
      | nothing but CBC, CNN, Fox, and things like Mr. Beast.
      | 
      | None of which I watch.
      | 
      | I would suggest watching some things outside your bubble.
      | Watch it from the mindset of a poor person who isn't sure
      | where their next meal will come from.
      | 
      | As an FYI, some of the contents of men's rights extend to
      | family court and have an obviously devastating impact on
      | children. Some of those children are boys, whom will
      | inevitably become men. There's also a population of men but
      | not cis men.
 
        | doix wrote:
        | You should try to read things more charitably/interpret
        | them in good faith. I'm assuming they are referring to
        | content that claims to be about "men's rights" but is
        | actually redpill-ish and just plain women bashing.
        | 
        | Similarly, there is a lot of content that claims to be
        | "feminist" content but really it's just women saying all
        | men are trash.
        | 
        | Both are extremely harmful for gender equality and both
        | tend to get recommended pretty happily by YouTube.
 
        | iinnPP wrote:
        | I based my assumption on the entirety of the post
        | including what they watch when logged in, what I note
        | while viewing similar shows, and the mention of "own-the-
        | libs."
        | 
        | Admittedly, that isn't quite at the bar I prefer. As
        | such, I removed my pointed criticism at the end, leaving
        | the more important and informative piece intact.
 
      | bmarquez wrote:
      | > more centrist news sources like NPR
      | 
      | NPR is not considered centrist, but left-leaning.
      | 
      | When I check logged out I get CNN and Fox side by side,
      | along with a lot of non-political basketball and Mr. Beast
      | type stuff. Content probably varies on your IP address.
 
        | manicennui wrote:
        | NPR is only left-leaning when you ignore how far right
        | all US politics are.
 
  | s3p wrote:
  | This is quite a narrative. I think the correct perspective is:
  | YouTube caters to local governments, which often want to limit
  | what their population has access to. Many countries regulate
  | their speech much more heavily than the United States.
  | 
  | You watch what your government wants you to watch.
 
  | scrollaway wrote:
  | Why is it always the same types of people peddling the same
  | noise?
  | 
  | You're constantly posting russian propaganda here, with links
  | to russian propagandist telegram channels, foxnews.com, RT,
  | propagandist twitter accounts, propagandist youtube channels...
  | and of course you're singing the wonders of Elon Musk next to
  | this.
  | 
  | "Blah blah the west, liberals, etc" -- please. You'll jump at
  | the opportunity to defend Russia and whine about "The West" the
  | first chance you'll see. Don't pretend you're in favour of
  | anything just in this world.
 
    | glogla wrote:
    | The story goes, the internet propagandists that are paid for
    | the work are paid more if people respond. Best to just
    | downvote, flag, move on.
 
  | crazygringo wrote:
  | OK, I'll ask -- can you give some specific examples of wiped
  | channels? What is an example of an NGO promoting one narrative
  | and what are the other narratives being suppressed? What are
  | countries this is happening in?
  | 
  | I'm genuinely interested in the specifics here. I always want
  | to be knowledgeable about different narratives.
  | 
  | Because my impression was that YouTube will serve you up
  | recommendations on any topic you watch, because its goal is to
  | serve ads, not to further a neoliberal narrative over others.
  | But if YouTube is hiding certain narratives, I definitely want
  | to be aware, to understand what kinds of categories they fall
  | into. Can you share what you've observed?
  | 
  | Edit: best I can tell (looking through comment history) is that
  | the commenter is upset specifically with YouTube banning
  | content and channels that "denies or trivializes" Russia's
  | invasion of Ukraine:
  | 
  | > _YouTube has also been able to operate in Russia despite
  | cracking down on pro-Kremlin content that has broken guidelines
  | including its major violent events policy, which prohibits
  | denying or trivialising the invasion. Since the conflict began
  | in February, YouTube has taken down channels including that of
  | the pro-Kremlin journalist Vladimir Solovyov. Channels
  | associated with Russia's Ministries of Defence and Foreign
  | Affairs have also been temporarily suspended from uploading
  | videos in recent months for describing the war as a "liberation
  | mission". YouTube's chief product officer, Neal Mohan, said:
  | "We have a major violent events policy and that applies to
  | things like denial of major violent events: everything from the
  | Holocaust to Sandy Hook. And of course, what's happening in
  | Ukraine is a major violent event. And so we've used that policy
  | to take unprecedented action."_ [1]
  | 
  | [1]
  | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/22/youtube-u...
 
    | [deleted]
 
    | labrador wrote:
    | My take: YouTube provides the tools, then people use them in
    | a biased way. If liberals in your country are good at
    | technology and conservatives are not, the liberal point of
    | view will look like it's being pushed.
    | 
    | Something happened yesterday to me that really drove it home.
    | An AI scam started showing up for me. Before I realized a
    | scam, I made a comment pointing out that what they were
    | saying was incorrect. They deleted my comment, reported my
    | email address to YouTube as a scammer so shutting me down
    | real quick. It was then I noticed they had 50k subscribers
    | despite only being a couple of days old and they had a
    | product to sell in the description. Clearly, the people
    | behind this account were tech savvy.
    | 
    | tl;dr: The viewpoints of tech savvy groups in your country
    | are going to win out. Info promotion and suppression is not a
    | conspiracy of tech companies.
 
      | kitsunesoba wrote:
      | > If liberals in your country are good at technology and
      | conservatives are not, the liberal point of view will look
      | like it's being pushed.
      | 
      | Awareness of the rules makes a difference too.
      | 
      | If a particular political group is frequently posting
      | videos that flagrantly break the TOS (as might happen with
      | particularly polarized members), they're much more likely
      | to get reported and banned before they make much headway.
      | It's creators that sit firmly within the rules or carefully
      | run right up alongside their boundaries that do well in the
      | long term.
 
        | edmundsauto wrote:
        | > If a particular political group is frequently posting
        | videos that flagrantly break the TOS... they're much more
        | likely to get reported and banned before they make much
        | headway.
        | 
        | They are also able to get feedback and learn how to
        | adapt, in the cat-and-mouse game of spam/SEO/wrongthink.
        | IMO, these groups are the ones that know how to exploit
        | the algorithms best, because they have a ruthless
        | survivalship happening.
 
    | olejorgenb wrote:
    | Also curious about some specific examples.
    | 
    | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34907079 Is one example
    | OP has posted about before, but light on details.
 
    | kitsunesoba wrote:
    | This has also been my experience. Whenever I view the YouTube
    | homepage signed out or in an incognito window, the
    | video/creator selection is almost wholly alien and often very
    | unaligned with my personal views.
 
      | pests wrote:
      | Well, duh.
      | 
      | Its personalized.
      | 
      | If you signed out - how do you expect them to show you
      | personalized results?
      | 
      | Of course the homepage you see is different than the
      | default or what others see.
      | 
      | I'm very happy with the state of my homepage and the
      | recommended videos they push to me. Everything is very on-
      | topic to my interests and what I have curated as my watch
      | history over the years.
      | 
      | I do agree the default experience is pretty bland and
      | lackluster.
 
        | eastbound wrote:
        | Youtube lacks a button "Show me something else".
        | 
        | I'm stuck in a local minimum, but I keep hearing about
        | valleys of people watching entirely different stuff. I
        | tried searching but the search keeps returning "content I
        | might be interested in" (ie absolutely unrelated to the
        | search) and it's impossible to "discover more".
        | 
        | (And in France, the "discover" tab is swamped by rap
        | videos).
 
        | espadrine wrote:
        | A button was actually introduced a couple of years ago
        | for that! It is called the "New to you" button:
        | https://9to5google.com/2021/10/25/youtube-new-to-you/
        | 
        | I use it regularly, but it is well-hidden (usually, the
        | rightmost tag in the ribbon of buttons at the top).
 
        | pests wrote:
        | Interesting! Never noticed that before. I'll check it out
        | thank you.
        | 
        | On my iPhone it is now the third tag in the ribbon right
        | next to All.
 
        | pests wrote:
        | So it is true there can be some local minimum problems.
        | Sometimes I'll get on a random topic binge for a few days
        | and I'll notice my homepage changing (sometimes for the
        | worse.)
        | 
        | In terms of getting out - hard to say. I rarely if ever
        | use search on YouTube or even most of the discovery
        | features unless there is a very specific video I'm
        | looking for. I don't search specific topics or interests
        | to find content. I don't even use the "subscriptions-
        | only" view because I like seeing the algorithm recommend
        | new things to me and I know good content from any of my
        | subscriptions will bubble up if it is good. A few
        | YouTubers I do watch religiously and will personally
        | check their page every so often.
        | 
        | Most of the content I watch and people I subscribe too I
        | found pretty organically. Something will pop up on the
        | homepage that I like. I'll check out more of their
        | videos. Then the next day that person and similar
        | channels will start showing up in the algo. Eventually
        | I'll subscribe if its consistent quality. Rinse and
        | repeat.
        | 
        | My current homepage consists of indie gamers playing new
        | games, some technology channels like LTT or similar, low-
        | level electronics and circuit board design, a few
        | programming channels, documentaries for speedrunning
        | history, some DIY channels for DIY or furniture building,
        | Ancient Egypt and its conspiracies, game devlogs. I have
        | a guilty pleasure for Minecraft but its been a few weeks
        | since I watched anything related so looking now its
        | completely fallen off the algo.
        | 
        | Every so often I'll get a channel rec from reddit or here
        | and I'll check them out.
        | 
        | Oh - don't be afraid to curate your watch history. If I
        | watched something I didn't like I go into my watch
        | history and remove that video so it no longer has
        | influence on the algo. I like my history to be an archive
        | of what I have watched so I can find it again though so
        | this is rare.
 
    | sodapopcan wrote:
    | Ya I regularly wipe my cookies and start over with YouTube
    | and the politically charged fresh slate recommendations are
    | definitely not Neo-liberal.
 
      | jonathankoren wrote:
      | Yeah. "Neo-liberal" is defiantly not how I'd describe
      | YouTube political content. Everything I get is far right
      | bullshit.
 
        | _a9 wrote:
        | I think the youtube algo just serves you what it thinks
        | will get you engaged (hate watching?). In the past I've
        | gotten both right and left extremist content. I
        | eventually set my youtube settings to delete everything
        | that is older than 3 months, my feed has been way more
        | usable since I did that. That plus using revanced to
        | remove all the stupid shorts and news/promo sections from
        | the app.
 
        | jonathankoren wrote:
        | YouTube always gives me the vague "people in your area
        | and time of day" answer, which is totally bullshit. It's
        | content driven. You watch a video about fighter jets, or
        | Ukraine, get Matt Walsh telling you how we have to
        | eliminate trans kids. Watch an Alan Watts or Terrance
        | McKenna video, get an ad about how the ancient Egyptians
        | used magic flutes to generate antigravity fields to build
        | the pyramids.
 
        | Slava_Propanei wrote:
        | [dead]
 
      | kiba wrote:
      | I worked hard to make my youtube feed mostly free of
      | political content.
      | 
      | One time, PragerU stuff starts appearing in my
      | recommendation....I cannot ban it fast enough.
 
        | s3p wrote:
        | I'm not sure why you were downvoted for this. Maybe HN
        | readers are mostly far-right, lol.
 
        | eep_social wrote:
        | I have noticed that there is a contingent that seems to
        | downvote but not respond to new comments with leftward
        | inclination. Usually the comments recover but presumably
        | enough do not that it's worth the effort.
 
        | jonathankoren wrote:
        | It's a very real thing.
 
    | midasuni wrote:
    | YouTube bans basic daytime adverts because of American
    | puritanical beliefs.
 
      | Fauntleroy wrote:
      | Which daytime advertisements are you referring to?
 
| gliixo wrote:
| There is a Firefox extension that brings it back...
 
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Innovative Idea:
| 
| Instead of a single dislike button, force the user to select a
| dislike reason, with choices such as:
| 
| - title doesn't match content
| 
| - content is in unexpected language
| 
| - content is in low visual quality
| 
| etc.
 
| Scokee wrote:
| Wouldn't it make more sense to install an extension that shows
| the dislike count again? https://returnyoutubedislike.com/ I've
| been using it since YouTube removed the dislikes and it's worked
| very well...
 
  | stemlord wrote:
  | Please as least click the link before posting comments
 
  | thunkshift1 wrote:
  | That extension wouldn't probably last 6 months on the google
  | owned chrome extension store
 
    | capableweb wrote:
    | It is there already?
    | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-dislike-
    | bu...
    | 
    | Not sure how long it's been there, but it's been approved by
    | someone, you think they'd remove it after that?
    | 
    | Edit: looking at the reviews of the extension, it has reviews
    | from a year ago (until I stop going backwards) so seems
    | you're wrong
 
  | bertman wrote:
  | This is literally in the second paragraph of the article.
 
  | Waterluvian wrote:
  | I think these are actually two different things.
  | 
  | One shows dislikes. One provides a big picture review page for
  | whole channels.
 
  | NayamAmarshe wrote:
  | Remember that you can't use an extension on all browsers and on
  | all platforms. So, having a common platform makes sense.
 
    | gsich wrote:
    | Those should be called "crippled" platforms or browsers.
 
      | qwytw wrote:
      | Desktop Safari has extensions yet that plugin does not
      | support it. At some point developing for anything but
      | Chromium ceases to make sense since your potential users
      | can just install Chrome, so who cares..
 
        | 2Gkashmiri wrote:
        | And then people say why is market share of Firefox
        | decreasing.
        | 
        | If extension developers spend just a little time porting
        | their extension, then they can point either way.
        | 
        | By forcing your customers to only support chrome, you are
        | helping chrome build a monopoly overtye browser based
        | internet where all extensions and work and play happens
        | only on chrome.
        | 
        | Please do better.
        | 
        | And yes. I have an extension that is built for Firefox
        | and chrome so I have some skin in the game
 
        | rollcat wrote:
        | > Desktop Safari has extensions
        | 
        | As a desktop Safari user: Safari _theoretically_ has
        | extensions. Apple made it painful and expensive for
        | developers to publish, and so the ecosystem is in an
        | abysmal state, with ultimately the users losing.
        | 
        | I'm torn between paying for extensions (that are free for
        | other browsers) as a way to say "sincerely thank you" to
        | those developers who bother, and absolutely not paying -
        | to send a message, that this system sucks.
 
        | moffkalast wrote:
        | > Apple made it painful and expensive for developers
        | 
        | The most Apple thing to ever have Appled.
 
    | alvarezbjm-hn wrote:
    | https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com/install
    | 
    | Works for firefox, chrome, opera, brave, edge, tapermonkey
    | userscript.
    | 
    | Firefox android not supported natively, You have to use
    | newpipe fork. I havent tried tampermonkey in ff android, be
    | right back.
 
    | nntwozz wrote:
    | Return YouTube dislike is available as a toggle in setting
    | with Yattee on iOS/macOS. The app is available on tvOS as
    | well, it runs Piped or Invidious as the backend and filters
    | out all the ads too. Very nice on the Apple TV.
    | 
    | https://github.com/yattee/yattee
 
  | ttctciyf wrote:
  | It's just guessing, and rather inaccurate, isn't it?[1] I don't
  | see the point.
  | 
  | 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R43m7I9GOpM
 
    | doodlesdev wrote:
    | It's not _guessing_ per se. The dataset includes dislikes
    | from before YouTube removed it from the API, from then
    | onwards any dislikes in the interface while using the
    | extension get sent to their backend and get registered. The
    | numbers are _extrapolated_ (but not guessed) of course since
    | not every YouTube will be using the extension. Take a look at
    | the FAQ [0] where this is better explained.
    | 
    | [0]: https://returnyoutubedislike.com/faq
 
      | katbyte wrote:
      | It's a guess. Maybe an educated guess, but it's still a
      | guess.
 
        | colejohnson66 wrote:
        | Strictly speaking, sure. But calling every data-
        | extrapolated result a "guess" wrongly, IMO, lumps it in
        | with guesses based on no evidence.
 
        | horsawlarway wrote:
        | I'm sorry, but the extension has a grand total of 14k
        | users.
        | 
        | There are some 368 million _DAILY_ active users on
        | youtube.
        | 
        | It is making claims based on a dataset of roughly 0.0003%
        | of the population of users.
        | 
        | It's a GUESS. A bad one at that, since the people who
        | install that extension are absolutely not representative
        | of the general youtube user.
        | 
        | If we expand it out to the 2.28 BILLION monthly active
        | userbase... the data from the 14k users is basically
        | meaningless.
        | 
        | ---
        | 
        | Think of it this way - if you were seconds in the day,
        | those extension users are 25 seconds. if I were to try to
        | measure any sort of meaningful data in a day by using 25
        | seconds of data, I would likely be horribly, horribly
        | wrong.
        | 
        | Ex: My water company billed me and it's bullshit, I've
        | been carefully tracking usage data for 30 seconds after I
        | wake up every day, and I never measure any usage! Why are
        | they billing me?
        | 
        | Holy cow, I measured our water usage today and we used a
        | whole gallon over the 25 seconds I measured!!! We're
        | blowing through nearly 3000 gallons a day!
        | 
        | ---
        | 
        | Both are horribly, horribly wrong estimates. A sample
        | size that small is not very valuable.
 
        | _a9 wrote:
        | Where do you get 14k from? The chrome store says 4
        | million users and firefox says 400k. And an unknown
        | amount of users using the many modded mobile youtube
        | clients that have it builtin.
 
        | scraptor wrote:
        | It doesn't matter how representative the data is of the
        | wider userbase as long as as it accurately represents the
        | opinions of the people who use the extension, since those
        | are the only people who see the result. The sample size
        | is only an issue insofar as most videos won't get any
        | votes.
 
        | mike741 wrote:
        | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/return-youtube-
        | dis...
        | 
        | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/return-
        | youtub...
        | 
        | 4,000,000+ users on chrome with 14k reviews. Maybe you
        | are mistaking the review count for the user count?
        | 
        | Even if it were just 0.0003% that's still the same
        | sampling rate as the average Gallup poll using 1000
        | people to represent the USA's 300,000,000+ population.
 
        | [deleted]
 
        | idonotknowwhy wrote:
        | It seems pretty accurate to me. Maybe the other users are
        | similar to me.
 
        | s3p wrote:
        | It's more valuable than having an invisible dislike
        | count. If i found out one person with the extension (that
        | I also use) disliked the video, that is infinitely more
        | helpful than just having a blank dislike button with no
        | statistics.
 
        | noirscape wrote:
        | Keep in mind that the type of people who are going to use
        | this extension will also likely only view a specific
        | domain of video content. While yes, it'll be a very small
        | sample size on the whole, those users will still be
        | representative of the broad strokes for that kind of
        | content.
        | 
        | Like, let's say that the audience is specifically going
        | to be interested in tech content (not too big of a
        | stretch). With tech content, there's a couple of standout
        | creators that are... at least somewhat universally
        | interesting/viewed (ie. Tom Scott). As a result, you can
        | fairly reliably conclude that any dislike count on those
        | creators will be at least percentage-wise accurate
        | enough. OTOH, let's say that this audience is not
        | interested _at all_ in  "prank videos". (This is a
        | personal bias - this is something I cannot stand myself.)
        | As a result, those videos will have less registered data
        | on the backend, and as a result the dislike counter for
        | those extensions will be less accurate as a result, but
        | for the audience that has this extension installed it
        | won't matter.
        | 
        | Others have already pointed out that the extension has
        | about half a million users already, but even if it was as
        | low as you are suggesting, it can still be very useful in
        | that specific criteria.
        | 
        | I don't think anyone is doing serious usage analysis on
        | dislike/like counts with the data from this extension,
        | people just like having a general idea on what the ratio
        | is.
 
        | Nuzzerino wrote:
        | > Think of it this way - if you were seconds in the day,
        | those extension users are 25 seconds. if I were to try to
        | measure any sort of meaningful data in a day by using 25
        | seconds of data, I would likely be horribly, horribly
        | wrong.
        | 
        | How many seconds (or fractions of) did you spend looking
        | at the page? How could you have missed the actual
        | download count if not for likely closing the tab as soon
        | as you saw the review count, which was just to the left
        | of it?
 
        | mach1ne wrote:
        | Rather biased, too. Though in this case towards the
        | preferences of the user.
 
        | spurgu wrote:
        | The guess is accurate enough to be _way_ better than
        | nothing.
 
    | asutekku wrote:
    | The video you linked showed it being relatively accurate
    | though.
 
      | ttctciyf wrote:
      | It did not. In one case it had the number of dislikes
      | correct, but the other cases showed it out by up to 50% -
      | and these were videos that had dislikes registered _before_
      | youtube disappeared them.
 
        | pessimizer wrote:
        | Being off by up to 50% is plenty of signal.
 
        | Fogest wrote:
        | The video linked is also a small YouTuber with not many
        | views on their videos. Looking at the comparisons it
        | actually gave a pretty close count. Sure it's not exact,
        | but considering it's a small niche YouTuber it seems to
        | be giving a fairly decent approximation. On even larger
        | YouTube channels it's likely going to give you an even
        | better sample of whether people like or dislike the
        | video.
 
    | lelandfe wrote:
    | https://automaton-media.com/en/column/20230125-17606/
    | 
    | > _the actual number doesn't even reach 10% of what RYD
    | displays. This isn't just a slight miscalculation; it
    | potentially changes the impression of the video itself_
    | 
    | > _there are also cases where the actual number of dislikes
    | for a video on the channel are 5 times higher than what RYD
    | estimates. Sometimes it's too high and sometimes it's too
    | low_
 
  | Gigablah wrote:
  | Well, if you're comfortable with sending your youtube view
  | history to another website.
  | 
  | https://github.com/Anarios/return-youtube-dislike/blob/5c738...
 
    | Dig1t wrote:
    | ha wow, thanks for pointing that out. I just uninstalled.
 
      | sebzim4500 wrote:
      | How did you think it was working exactly?
 
        | hxugufjfjf wrote:
        | People often use technology without thinking about or
        | knowing exactly how it works.
 
    | zo1 wrote:
    | That's not a very honest way of phrasing whats happening
    | there. Sure it "leaks" that you are retrieving this VideoID
    | from this IP, but you make it sound like it's sending your
    | youtube viewing _history_ to some random website.
    | 
    | Either way, I'm fine with this type of "leak" of data, as
    | it's fundamental to an open web and can't be easily solved
    | without cryptographic/hashing hoops. What's next, you want
    | anonymity from the server that you're requesting content
    | from, really?
 
    | emodendroket wrote:
    | How else could it work? I guess maybe a one-way hash would
    | provide some level of anonymity but that's the best I can
    | think of.
 
      | pests wrote:
      | How would a one-way hash even work? They already have a
      | database of views for a video by its ID. If they hash those
      | beforehand that solves nothing. They have the actual ID for
      | that hash - they have to, cause they need to provide you
      | data on it.
      | 
      | It could work similar to how haveibeenpwned works - send a
      | prefix of the video ID and respond with a list of all
      | matching IDs with that prefix. The server only knows the
      | list not the actual video. The client can pull the correct
      | ID out of the list.
      | 
      | (this was how HIBP worked before at least, IIRC)
 
        | emodendroket wrote:
        | They'd have to key the votes by the hash.
 
        | pests wrote:
        | A lot of trust they don't keep a map from hash->id behind
        | the scenes though for data they already have.
        | 
        | Hell, a YT ID is 11 characters in a base64 character set.
        | While a lot of possibilities, I do think the entire
        | domain can be precomputed for some amount of costs.
 
        | emodendroket wrote:
        | I didn't say it was a wonderful or even good scheme; I
        | said it was the best I could think of.
 
    | girishso wrote:
    | Well, YouTube already has it.
 
| nativeit wrote:
| Honestly, it isn't hard to justify Youtube's choices on this very
| specific issue. The dislike button presumably has a function
| beyond public shaming. I expect it's primarily for tailoring
| recommendations and tuning their algorithms, but in any case it
| was clearly being abused by troll hordes.
| 
| If Youtube devs could see that significant amounts of dislikes
| were coming from users who hadn't watched the video, or could
| identify other statistical aberrations, it stands to reason that
| such abuse would actively interfere with the legitimate
| functionality it was intended for and/or work against the
| interests of YouTube, advertisers, as well as authors and
| viewers.
| 
| I personally think that removing the public counter was an
| elegant solution in this case, as it suppresses the worst
| excesses of trolling while maintaining the original intent of the
| dislike feature, which should improve the overall experience for
| most users, generally speaking.
 
  | Bellend wrote:
  | I was an old YouTube "Paid" subscriber. I can't remember what
  | it was before "Red" or even if it was a thing? Anyway it's been
  | quite a while. The dislike removal annoyed me but the straw was
  | the whole "Shorts" thing.
  | 
  | My subscription feed almost 10x'd overnight to the point that
  | it had no value. I started unsubscribing from the "short"
  | spammers which were genuinely good channels and this got my
  | subscription feed as to be very little. Not enough to be worth
  | paying for so I cancelled.
  | 
  | I put the money to Audible now.
  | 
  | I find it staggering that youtube didn't know I was a paid
  | member as far as a product. I wasn't allowed to filter shorts.
  | I was still (before) Sponsor Block being fed in-video ads. So
  | the only thing they ended up offering me was a very limited
  | paid UBlock/SponsorBlock experience which is already free. I
  | don't think I have actually lost anything by not paying
  | "premium".
 
  | bobajeff wrote:
  | That's nonsense. That *might* be a good reason to block users
  | from using the dislike button but that's no reason to make it
  | invisible.
  | 
  | The reason to make it invisible is so more users waist their
  | time on clickbait garbage.
 
  | clnq wrote:
  | I think just having to watch a significant portion of the video
  | before you can leave a like or a dislike would have largely
  | mitigated the brigading issue. Besides, it would have made the
  | reviews more thoughtful overall.
  | 
  | Maybe removing the dislike count is a simple and effective
  | solution, but I would not call it good or elegant because of
  | its downsides.
 
  | peoplefromibiza wrote:
  | > it was clearly being abused by troll hordes.
  | 
  | same goes for the like button.
  | 
  | but, apparently hacking likes it's ok...
 
  | fl7305 wrote:
  | I watch a lot of Youtube videos for DIY stuff like car repair
  | and home improvement.
  | 
  | The like/dislike ratio used to be a very good way to quickly
  | see if the person who made it knew what they were talking
  | about.
  | 
  | Now I instead have to spend a bunch of time reading through the
  | comments to make that determination.
  | 
  | Not that bad DIY videos are useless. They can be a good way of
  | reading a lot of comments on not how to do things. So they have
  | their place. But I want to know that going in.
 
    | Nas808 wrote:
    | I completely agree with that, in the past if I saw a DIY
    | video with a 50% upvote rate, I'd know that it should
    | probably be ignored and to look for a better source. Now, I'm
    | not sure. I have to comb through the comments to find out if
    | that particular uploader missed something, left a bolt loose
    | that should be tightened, etc.
 
      | paulpauper wrote:
      | and also negative comments can be removed
 
    | khazhoux wrote:
    | Maybe YT already incorporates ratio in its ranking algo and
    | has been helping you all along
 
      | mike741 wrote:
      | If it is incorporated, its definitely not effective.
      | Clickbait dominates Youtube's recommendations and search
      | despite consistently low thumb ratings. An easy example
      | would be a procedurally generated channel such as this one:
      | 
      | https://www.youtube.com/@futureunity5129/videos
      | 
      | Sort by "Popular" and you'll see that their most watched
      | videos have consistently low like/dislike ratios yet are
      | still being actively recommended. If you use Youtube's
      | search feature, these same channels and videos will come up
      | long before the actually informative channels do.
      | 
      | You could argue it's been helping Youtube by wasting
      | viewer's time and making them watch extra ads but its
      | certainly not helping the viewers find what they're looking
      | for. Even mass reporting the channels doesn't seem to stop
      | them.
 
        | paulpauper wrote:
        | a 15 minute DIY video in which 12 minutes is ads and
        | sponsorship and rambling intro a
 
      | oars wrote:
      | Doubtful that they can do this in a way that accurately and
      | effectively helps the user compared to showing the dislike
      | count.
      | 
      | YouTube is plagued by low quality content with clickbait
      | titles, descriptions, and images. Often they outright lie
      | about the content. The recommendation algorithm prioritizes
      | these videos first.
      | 
      | Users can't determine in advance that these videos are poor
      | quality, so they'll be forced to watch those poor quality
      | videos until they find a good one. YouTube wants it to be
      | like this because it increases time on the platform and
      | their advertising revenue.
      | 
      | Along the way, users can dislike these videos but that
      | video still gains views which helps push itself upwards in
      | the recommendation algorithm. Particularly videos with
      | clickbait titles, descriptions, and images tend to amass
      | large numbers of views in short periods of time, which
      | YouTube may recognize as "going viral" and give it an
      | additional push in its recommendations when searching for
      | important keywords.
      | 
      | Furthermore, many users are also watching these videos
      | whilst not logged in or don't care to click dislike, which
      | is another lacking signal to help tune YouTube's ranking
      | algorithm correctly.
 
  | HPsquared wrote:
  | Public shaming is essential. Anyway it still happens, even more
  | brutally, in the comments.
  | 
  | What they should have done is add more detail on the nature of
  | the downvotes, like the Steam store does for negative reviews.
  | That is, have graphs of positive and negative ratings over time
  | to make any downvote brigading obvious. Maybe have a way to
  | exclude "less-verified" votes, or allow the viewer to look at
  | only e.g. YouTube Premium votes (which are more likely to be
  | real people given the cost). And so on...
 
  | ricardo81 wrote:
  | did they state as much? I don't know, beyond ignoring automated
  | means, I don't think there should be much more debate on who
  | and why.
 
  | Nextgrid wrote:
  | It actually makes perfect sense considering YouTube's business
  | model of advertising and "engagement".
  | 
  | While advertising-based business models are ultimately always
  | at odds with the user, they _can_ (and have successfully)
  | coexisted in the past - a product can have a _certain amount_
  | of advertising /user-hostility and still remain usable. That's
  | what YouTube used to be until now - they had to keep the
  | advertising/user-hostility somewhat tame in order to keep
  | growing their marketshare.
  | 
  | The problem is that in a monopolized vertical, there is nothing
  | preventing the product from going "all-in" on advertising and
  | we're now seeing the late/terminal stages of this cancer in
  | action.
  | 
  | Removing dislikes and having people watch videos that are known
  | to be bad still counts as "engagement", especially if people
  | have to waste time watching the video fully before realizing it
  | is bad. Even better, if they end up doing so and then have to
  | try a _different_ video then it 's even more engagement.
  | 
  | The nasty side-effects of this change (up to life-threatening
  | consequences in case of DIY videos for example) aren't their
  | concern nor liability.
 
  | NigelThornberry wrote:
  | [dead]
 
  | dale_glass wrote:
  | Not only I want it back, but I want it right in the search
  | results.
  | 
  | It would be great at filtering prank videos which pretend to be
  | something else, then switch to a Rickroll or something.
 
  | overgard wrote:
  | I can't think of anything that's been ratio'ed hard where it
  | would make me think that the dislike count needs to be hidden
  | everywhere. For instance , Rings of Power trailers got hit
  | pretty hard, and some of the more woke hollywood adaptations,
  | but those things also bombed (at least given expectations) so
  | it's hard to say the ratio didn't represent public sentiment.
 
  | matteoraso wrote:
  | >If Youtube devs could see that significant amounts of dislikes
  | were coming from users who hadn't watched the video, or could
  | identify other statistical aberrations, it stands to reason
  | that such abuse would actively interfere with the legitimate
  | functionality it was intended for and/or work against the
  | interests of YouTube, advertisers, as well as authors and
  | viewers.
  | 
  | But if you can see that these dislikes were from trolls, then
  | you can account for that and not have the algorithm register
  | them.
 
    | hnarn wrote:
    | > then you can account for that and not have the algorithm
    | register them
    | 
    | It's an unsolvable problem which is why they disabled it
    | entirely. If you "account" for "bad" input the only
    | consequence is that those responsible for that bad input
    | figure out how to get it classified as good input.
 
      | pessimizer wrote:
      | > It's an unsolvable problem
      | 
      | If it's an unsolvable problem for downvotes, it's an
      | unsolvable problem for upvotes, too. The reason they took
      | away downvotes is because they started to partner with the
      | networks, to artificially boost their posts, and to
      | deemphasize and demonetize their traditional amateur
      | comment (inspiring a shooting.)
      | 
      | The mainstream content gets ruthlessly downvoted because
      | polish doesn't equal quality, and the networks (wisely)
      | don't want their stuff distributed by a platform that
      | allows users to mark it as bad. So Youtube took away the
      | ability to mark content as bad. It's no more complicated
      | than it looks.
 
        | paulpauper wrote:
        | I am sure the removal had more to do with certain
        | ideological views/content being more likely to be
        | downvoted. The decision came soon after the critically
        | panned Susan Wojcicki YouTube CEO 2021 Free Expression
        | Awards. This probably has the record for the worst ratio
        | of any video in the site's history.
 
      | s3p wrote:
      | What? Suddenly we are in a ficitious world where there are
      | droves of trolls disliking videos, and somehow they are
      | sentient as to YouTube's recommendation algorithm, and they
      | _desperately_ want the video to disappear from everyone 's
      | recommendations, so these trolls come up with new and
      | inventive ways of DISLIKING videos?
      | 
      | I don't think I've ever read more made-up scenarios than on
      | this website.
 
        | Kiro wrote:
        | You don't even need to be famous in order to get trolls
        | who are hating you so much that they make it their job to
        | ruin your life. When you get above a certain size you
        | will have organized troll armies coordinating attacks on
        | private Discord servers.
 
        | rale00 wrote:
        | Groups of trolls banding together to down-vote people
        | they dislike is as old as down-vote buttons. Surely
        | you've heard of brigading?
 
        | sojournerc wrote:
        | right, I don't think the comment was disregarding
        | bregading. That a multi-billion dollar company's
        | algorithm is too dumb to deal with it is what astounds.
 
        | johnfn wrote:
        | You really don't think there's a single person out there
        | who wouldn't pay 20 bucks to a farm to downvote a
        | competitor's video? Not a single one?
 
        | Ntrails wrote:
        | Obviously, now they pay to upvote their own.
        | 
        | What have we gained?
 
        | [deleted]
 
        | nerbert wrote:
        | Google didn't think it'd be worth it to pursue a solution
        | that would solve this, and probably nobody internally
        | wanted ownership of it. The second best solution is the
        | one that doesn't cost much and solve the problem. Youtube
        | being the only game in town, where are people gonna go
        | anyways? Daily Motion? Post implementation KPI probably
        | showed that traffic hasn't budged, and the problem has
        | been solved. As far as Google is concerned, it was a
        | rational decision.
 
      | Spivak wrote:
      | Ding ding ding!
      | 
      | You basically can't allow people to give negative feedback
      | for a thing and have that feedback mean anything (ie affect
      | recommendations for anyone but you or show it to other
      | users) without insincere feedback being used to hurt the
      | reviewee.
      | 
      | There are ways to counter this, the easiest is to not show
      | negative reviews but count them positively, a dislike
      | actually boosts them just like a positive review would. Not
      | really recommended due to promoting rage bait but brigading
      | would stop working.
 
        | cellularmitosis wrote:
        | Counting them positively results in the problems which
        | tiktok is currently facing with "rage bait" content.
 
        | Spivak wrote:
        | That would be the other consequences, yes. So can't say I
        | recommend it.
 
        | anonymouskimmer wrote:
        | > There are ways to counter this, the easiest is to not
        | show negative reviews but count them positively, a
        | dislike actually boosts them just like a positive review
        | would,
        | 
        | I think it would be better to just merely count the
        | number of upvotes and complete, or almost complete views,
        | for boosting purposes.
        | 
        | The downvotes should be for tailoring feeds, whether
        | personal, or the aggregate feeds of people with similar
        | interests and like/dislike votes.
        | 
        | Any specific criticism can be saved for the comments.
 
    | jayd16 wrote:
    | Why waste the bandwidth, click through rate hit, and drama
    | over users getting shadow banned for their trolly opinions?
 
      | scraptor wrote:
      | Because users clearly care about the information it
      | provides them, to the point of implementing third party
      | solutions to restore it as best they can.
 
    | valianteffort wrote:
    | How would you even distinguish people who immediately
    | realized the video was shit and so downvoted and didn't watch
    | from trolls?
 
      | zakki wrote:
      | I think we can infer that troll doesn't need time to watch
      | video. So if a dislike came from a user with watching time
      | is less than 10% (just as an example) it can be categorized
      | as troll.
 
        | mattl wrote:
        | I've definitely watched less than 10% of a lot of videos
        | and would downvote them if it was easier on TV.
        | 
        | Lot of videos either start with a nonsense intro/bad
        | audio.
 
| frou_dh wrote:
| Something else strange is that they removed the dropdown option
| to sort videos in a channel in chronological order ("oldest
| first").
 
  | quaintdev wrote:
  | Probably assuming oldest one like archived data and storing
  | them accordingly.
 
  | Tokkemon wrote:
  | Are you sure this isn't just an option for some channels to
  | decide if they want it? Some channels definitely still have
  | this sort option available.
 
    | doodlesdev wrote:
    | No, they removed it. While I believe they haven't shared the
    | reason they do it, I think it's probably due to backend
    | changes to reduce costs of hosting older less popular videos
    | (maybe moving them to nearline storage?). Some previous
    | discussion here:
    | 
    | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33559888
 
      | Lockal wrote:
      | Yes/no, "Some channels definitely still have this sort
      | option available". Many smaller (?) channels still have
      | this button. Also sorting by date still works for all
      | channels after editing URL.
      | 
      | I don't know exactly, what is the criteria for hiding that
      | button, but consider size/geography/political views/ability
      | to inject ads/etc. YouTube shadowbanned comments, likes,
      | videos for a long time; consider this as another technique
      | of shadowbanning without explaining anything.
 
  | gniv wrote:
  | It's been a while since they removed it. It's probably because
  | playing rarely-played videos costs more in bandwidth. You can
  | still find them, of course, but it's more work.
 
    | matteoraso wrote:
    | >It's probably because playing rarely-played videos costs
    | more in bandwidth.
    | 
    | Huh? Why would that be the case?
 
      | s3p wrote:
      | Azure, AWS, Google cloud all pay less for data that gets
      | accessed regularly.
      | 
      | Google Cloud charges $0.02 / month for each gigabyte of
      | storage, but if you store it in an infrequently accessed
      | volume you can qualify for special pricing of $0.0012 / GB
      | / month. That's a 177% difference in storage costs for cold
      | storage vs hot storage.
      | 
      | So yeah, it's MUCH cheaper to store it in infrequently
      | accessed volumes. And stopping people from finding the
      | oldest videos allows them to do that.
 
        | matteoraso wrote:
        | According to Google Cloud, archival storage is only meant
        | to be accessed once a year at most. Even infrequently
        | watched videos should be considered hot (i.e. likely to
        | be accessed more than once a month).
 
      | Fauntleroy wrote:
      | They exist on fewer servers, so they have to be pulled from
      | deeper levels of cache, or maybe even no cache. Popular
      | videos will be cached on edge servers all over the place,
      | and will be quick and easy to deliver.
 
        | matteoraso wrote:
        | That's a good point that I didn't consider. Still, I
        | don't think this was the right direction to go. If the
        | videos were already rarely watched, going out of your way
        | to make them less watched isn't going to save much
        | bandwidth.
 
    | secret-noun wrote:
    | I feel that this change served creators (too): Long-running
    | channels transform over time, in production value, niche,
    | style, messaging, etc. Creators want you to look at this new
    | image instead of their old one.
    | 
    | (Imagine looking through your old vs new social media
    | posts... which would the current-you agree with more?)
 
    | colejohnson66 wrote:
    | True. The most recent videos of popular channels would be
    | cached in multiple locations to improve latency, but rarely
    | accessed videos would exist at only one (or two for
    | redundancy) data center.
 
    | terinjokes wrote:
    | It's one reason why I love channels that take the time to
    | make meaningful playlists: they're in whatever order the
    | channel decides, which is often oldest-first in the context
    | of a regular series.
 
      | MikusR wrote:
      | In my experience that kind of playlists are always newest
      | first.
 
        | terinjokes wrote:
        | I watch a channel that has hundreds of videos playing a
        | city builder, with playlists for each city they've
        | streamed. I just looked and they're all oldest to newest,
        | but yeah, I guess its up to the creator.
        | 
        | The frustrating bit if they get it wrong is YouTube
        | autoplays the next video, which would be going backwards
        | for you.
 
    | sircastor wrote:
    | I think they also realized they didn't want to be a video
    | archive service but a "come back for the new thing" service.
    | Otherwise they're just holding everyone's home movies
 
  | pessimizer wrote:
  | It's not too strange if you think that YouTube is trying to
  | abandon its past to become another also-ran on-demand broadcast
  | service.
 
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| There are browser extensions that get you the dislike counts, and
| they are accurate.
 
| mr-pink wrote:
| somebody should take youtube private and get rid of all the shit
| videos
 
| bitwize wrote:
| Is it going to put its thumb on the scales to counteract "review
| bombing/troll campaigns" for widely disliked but powerfully
| backed YouTube videos the way RT does?
 
  | minimaxir wrote:
  | It's impossible to feasibly counteract review bombing.
  | 
  | It's even worse when you have to release a non-native
  | extension, as that introduces a selection bias among people who
  | _want_ to review bomb on the main site but can 't.
 
    | hutzlibu wrote:
    | "people who want to review bomb on the main site but can't."
    | 
    | We all have different hobbies it seems.
    | 
    | What happened to the good old punching ball, to blow off
    | steam?
 
      | minimaxir wrote:
      | You can do that offline where it doesn't affect other
      | people.
 
  | watwut wrote:
  | Yeah, cause they are not that much widely disliked, it is just
  | an attempt at political pressure and attempt to make them see
  | widely disliked.
 
    | mike741 wrote:
    | if its "not that much" and creates deception then why make
    | site-wide changes that make it even _less_ transparent? If a
    | video had 4k dislikes and 46k likes then you knew that 4k
    | accounts disliked it. There 's little room for speculation
    | there. Now you have to go to the comment section to get an
    | idea of public opinion, where the theorized vocal minority
    | have far more potential influence (because they can leave
    | multiple comments, but only one thumbs down)
 
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| How long before youtube removes everything but "what's next" and
| turns into a TV channel?
 
  | usernew wrote:
  | honestly I hope not long. I could not care less about what
  | random people like or dislike, what they comment on videos, or
  | anything else. what's next is a great feature since I put on a
  | song and it plays something similar next. a TV channel is the
  | perfect use case for youtube, where instead of selecting a
  | channel like on TV, you select a channel by type of video you
  | first play.
  | 
  | sidenote: I had no idea youtube had likes or dislikes until I
  | read this post. I have however, used youtube to, you know, play
  | a video and look at that video. I have zero idea about other
  | components of the site, outside of the video playing, and a
  | list of what's next. I've used youtube since before it was
  | owned by google.
  | 
  | now I don't know if I'm the target demographic, but it seems to
  | me like youtube is doing the right thing and focusing on it's
  | core feature while removing screen spam. and w/ ublock, I
  | haven't seen an ad on there in a decade.
 
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