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YouTube is Removing the Dislike Count on All Videos Across its Platform (techcrunch.com) 148

YouTube today announced its decision to make the "dislike" count on videos private across its platform. The decision is likely to be controversial given the extent that it impacts the public's visibility into a video's reception. From a report: But YouTube believes the change will better protect its creators from harassment and reduce the threat of what it calls "dislike attacks" -- essentially, when a group teams up to drive up the number of dislikes a video receives. The company says that while dislike counts won't be visible to the public, it's not removing the dislike button itself. Users can still click the thumbs down button on videos to signal their dislike to creators privately. Meanwhile, creators will be able to track their dislikes in YouTube Studio alongside other analytics about their video's performance, if they choose. The change follows an experiment YouTube ran earlier this year whose goal was to determine if these sorts of changes would reduce dislike attacks and creator harassment. At the time, YouTube explained that public dislike counts can affect creators' well-being and may motivate targeted campaigns to add dislikes to videos. While that's true, dislikes can also serve as a signal to others when videos are clickbait, spam, or misleading, which can be useful.
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YouTube is Removing the Dislike Count on All Videos Across its Platform

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  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @12:31PM (#61975539)

    They plan to do a Rewind Video this year!

    • No Kidding (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @12:48PM (#61975613)
      The dislike ratio is a reliable sign that something is legitimately unpopular or "off the mark" about a video, and rarely an "attack." This has the same vibe of movie and TV series creators attempting to ignore criticism by pretending it's harrassment and bigotry.

      At the time, YouTube explained that public dislike counts can affect creators' well-being and may motivate targeted campaigns to add dislikes to videos. While that's true, dislikes can also serve as a signal to others when videos are clickbait, spam, or misleading, which can be useful.

      I suppose the best solution is to allow the channel owners who are somehow theoretically harmed by dislikes to disable them entirely or on individual videos.

      Oh wait, they could already do that. And in practice, wouldn't you know it, seeing disabled ratings was also a signal that such "videos are clickbait, spam, or misleading, which can be useful." Thanks for completely removing that that last bit of useful user feedback, Google.

      • Re:No Kidding (Score:5, Insightful)

        by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @01:16PM (#61975729)

        Indeed. The problem is you have Stupid Juvenile Whiners who use the bullshit excuse "dislike == hate" because all they can do is parrot the "haters gonna hate" excuse. They are incapable of understanding:

        * There is a wide range between loving, liking, feeling neutral, disliking, and hating something.
        * It is possible to dislike one bit of incorrect information but still like the rest of the video. All they can do is spew some myopic narrative by pretending every "issue" only has 2 sides. If you don't agree with me then you MUST be against me. They are more interested in "feelings" then (inconvenient) facts.

        At least /. has context for why something is +1 or -1. YouTube has no context. It isn't "hating" a video that is clickbait or spewing incorrect facts (lying.)

        I wouldn't be surprised if YouTube eventually removes the "thumbs down" button because it is "an attack".

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Dislikes count as engagement and mean that someone probably watched an ad, so creators will often tell people to like or dislike because either way it helps them.

        Another issue is that people dislike videos just to stop them getting recommended. They might want to watch the video, but not get bombarded with similar ones afterwards.

        Brigading is a problem too, and apparently Google has no answer to that other than to turn off the dislike count.

      • by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @01:35PM (#61975817) Journal

        It's OK, if enough people figure it out, the top rated comment on many videos will be, "This video is shit."
        Just sort the comments appropriately. :)

        • It's OK, if enough people figure it out, the top rated comment on many videos will be, "This video is shit."
          Just sort the comments appropriately. :)

          They'll just do like eBay, where first they removed the option to leave negative feedback for buyers, then they made it so if you leave positive feedback saying "Great transaction except the part where you pay", they'll remove it and send you a nasty warning saying not to do it again or you might get Cancelled. So then sellers thought of cancelling sales to anyone without recent positive feedback, and eBay started cracking down on that.

          None of this "metrics" stuff is about anything meaningful or helpful to

          • Agreed. There's nothing like watching a 45 second action video with a 25 minute add beforehand. I'm sorrry, Google, not even a 45 second video of Jesus pushing the stone aside would be worth watching a 25 minute advertisement.

        • by djinn6 ( 1868030 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @03:12PM (#61976207)

          It's easy for the video owner to delete negative comments. They can't do the same for the like / dislike bar without removing it entirely, which arouses suspicion from viewers.

          • by Kisai ( 213879 )

            You've clearly never made any youtube content.

            You don't get "just one" negative comment, you get brigaded with 10,000 comments. Per hour. Why waste your time on that. Make comments "by approval only" if it's not your core content.

            Go to any popular video, and you will see every second or third comment be some spam link. Who is going to spend days babysitting videos to remove spam? Nobody. Especially when then content creator is responsible for the comments, and ads will be affected if they don't delete negat

            • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

              You've clearly never made any youtube content.

              And you clearly don't watch it.

              Go to a video with 10k views and say all that to me again. Most videos (>99%) don't have thousands of comments.

      • It's all engagement. What they care about is views and engagement because that's what drives YouTube to recommend their videos to non-subscribers and that's what grows to channel and brings in revenue.
      • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        I see most of the low number dislikes as being automated bots just dropping one during a flyby anyway and then a few from some trolls.

        The primary reason for me to do a dislike is a robot voice since they always get the intonation entirely wrong so it's hard to understand them sometimes even if the words are right.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by mspohr ( 589790 )

          If a video is peddling misinformation or cruelty or hate speech, you can report it (three dot menu).
          Dislikes count the same as likes as far as YouTube is concerned so they are ineffective.

          • They're engagement and all engagement is good as far as google is concerned. Engagement means people are on the platform watching ads.

      • by Kisai ( 213879 )

        No it isn't. The dislike count just means it's highly-engaged in a negative way. That's why it gets promoted.

        Every time I've seen an argument in favor of having the dislike button or counts, it's always in some sociopathic way. "how will I punish this crappy creator I don't like every time they post a new video" "how will I direct my chan/cow/drama channel's viewers to dislike-bomb it now?"

        Nobody stops to ask "does my dislike of this video do anything to the video-maker", rather it's about the youtube algor

        • by piojo ( 995934 )

          Every time I've seen an argument in favor of having the dislike button or counts, it's always in some sociopathic way.

          You must be listening very selectively. The downvote ratio tells me whether a video is likely clickbait, has poor audio quality, or doesn't offer much eventual value after a long setup. I don't want to hurt content creators (except in the case of intentional clickbait), but other viewers have the right to do what they can to avoid wasting their time.

    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      Sorry, but I don't get the joke. The resulting discussion seemed to ignore your FP. No explanation there, and the obvious websearch came up dry. Doesn't seem funny as the J-key 7-second rewind feature of YouTube. So how about a hint?

      (What I'm looking for (but so far haven't found) in the discussion is either consideration of why simpleminded absolute solutions so often fail (though there are many comments suggesting why this one will fail) or deeper analysis of the stinking EVIL that is YouTube.)

      (My own (si

      • YouTube posted the past couple years "Rewind" videos at the end of the year. Until the 2018 "Rewind" video [youtube.com] became the most disliked video on YouTube [wikipedia.org], eclipsing everything that came before, or since.

        In 2019, they tried to play it safe and released what was essentially a "top 10" video like many others that litter YouTube. It was equally "well" received (though it's "only" place 6 on the most disliked YouTube videos).

        • by shanen ( 462549 )

          Thanks for the clarification. Reminds me of the composite videos and pictures that I used to get from Google Photos. Same technology? Some sort of AI, I guessed.

          I didn't hate them, but I can't recall ever liking or trying to save any of them, which was a standard option. Well, except for a couple of the automatic panorama videos it stitched together from sets of pictures that I deliberately hoped would be stitched together. (Then it apparently automatically decided to erase the panorama shots even though I'

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @12:32PM (#61975543)
    Only positive feedback allowed; please do not hurt our precious snowflakes.
    • "Only positive feedback allowed; please do not hurt our precious snowflakes."

      Sadly, your comment is not very far from the truth.

      Q: How do you kill a room full of people?
      A: Just say the words "personal responsibility".

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @01:38PM (#61975833)
      Than anything else.

      Also participation trophies are a thing that came about because professionally trained educators noticed that young children often didn't get any positive reinforcement or feedback at home because, this is a dirty little secret you're not allowed to talk about, the majority of children are accidents and unwanted. Educators studied this and found that giving them positive reinforcement rather than discouraging them from achieving prevented them from giving up entirely.

      A long time ago in a galaxy far far away people on slash dot would follow the science and evidence. That was before the dark times when everything became reactionary b.s.
      • ...professionally trained educators noticed that young children often didn't get any positive reinforcement or feedback at home because, this is a dirty little secret you're not allowed to talk about, the majority of children are accidents and unwanted.

        Sources please.

        You are stating two things:
        - Most children are accidents
        - Because they were accidents, they are unloved

        Even if the first statement were true, which I don't believe it is given that birth control and abortions have been commonplace for decades, the second is most certainly not true. Accident or not, and regardless of socioeconomic status, parents love their children immensely. It is biological; instinctual; as hard-wired into part of being human as eating or breathing is. Only a tiny fraction

        • because it's taboo to discuss it. You wouldn't be able to survey people on it because they would lie, often to themselves. What I can tell you is that a lot of people treat their kids like shit.

          Also parents love for children is most certainly not biological, at least not with the fathers. Men caring for children in the slightest is a relatively recent thing (relative, e.g. last few thousand years) and even then kids were generally pack mules to men until very recently. e.g. you had a lot of them to tend
    • by Osgeld ( 1900440 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @01:39PM (#61975839)

      you can still click thumbs down ... it just wont show the number to you anymore, the "precious snowflakes" still get to see how many people hate them

    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYOKMUTTDdA

      But seriously, the protection of people against anything negative, from the education system, and now through young adulthood on video sites, is a little much.

      What are these people going to do when they encounter their first REAL WORLD negative thing, IRL? Melt and faint? Have a coronary like a chickadee?

      The world can be tough out there folks. There's an age-old and probably reasonably valid argument that people should get a gradual intro to that before they fully
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @12:35PM (#61975549)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Disney probably handed over the largest sack of cash.

    • They need to get rid of the likes as well.

      You can't have one without the other.

      So now as it stands we will have a completely lopsided likes/dislikes indicator that is useless for estimating how people feel about a video, and we will have 'like mining' operations to make a bad video of misinformation and propaganda look legit. Great way to contribute to the underworld economy, with a bit of paid like mining.

      • I believe the likes/dislikes are also used as a decent portion of the algorithm that determines to how many eyes will see your video.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by fazig ( 2909523 )
          According to what the YT content creators tell me, the metric that matters for that is the number of views (also re-views from the same users count for something) and how long the video was watched.

          Likes/Dislikes ratio isn't really that important for the videos themselves. Perhaps the total absolute number of likes/dislikes could be another possible metric to measure engagement, after all it's a sign of the viewer having bothered to click one of those. But if we can assume that YT acts on a rational basis
          • Interesting.

            I do notice, however, that pretty much EVERY YouTube channel I follow, on every freakin' video they ask you to hit the Like button and subscribe.

            (to the point of annoyance).

            • by fazig ( 2909523 )
              As far as I know subs and likes/dislikes (both alike) contribute to the 'importance' of a channel. Supposedly this affects how much resources YT will allocate to processing your uploads and so forth.
              The number of likes can affect how advertisers see your content. Which is probably the main reason why such services that increase the likes on your videos are offered. I've got such offers on my small time gamedev YT channel myself, where they want to sell you 'likes' to boost your channel. Of course I'm not i
            • There are Android apps that demand that you give it a 5 star rating before it will actually let you do anything. To me this is a huge red flag for possible malware, but most 'lay users' would just go ahead and give it the 5 star rating just to make the stop screen go away.

              And there are countless stories of Amazon products, Google Play apps, and such given artificially high like counts to get people to use those bad apps and products.

              I think "Like" is a far bigger problem than "Dislike". In

          • by epine ( 68316 )

            For videos with 700 likes and 300 dislikes I know better than to even begin to view the video. Now what happens when I have to watch the first 60 seconds of some execrable POS that I previously managed to filter? Does that count as a "view"? Does that count as positive engagement?

            Sometimes it sucks to be alive.

            This particular choice at YouTube makes me feel like it sucks to be alive. Fortunately, the feeling will only last five or ten minutes, because YouTube is just as disposable in the long run as every o

            • by fazig ( 2909523 )
              The best thing I could suggest is to take a quick look into the comment section. That should be faster than watching the first 60 seconds.

              Though if you watched that video, while it ought to count as a view but neither as positive nor negative engagement unless you click the like/dislike buttons or write a comment.
              Because in the end it's all engagement.
              From my personal experience with "like bot army" offerings to boost YT channels, these entities, if not straight up scams, also do not bother to dislike y
              • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

                The best thing I could suggest is to take a quick look into the comment section.

                That's assuming Youtube doesn't bury 'unpopular' comments. If you write a comment on a video with some already well-liked comments then your comment instantly gets buried near the bottom and seen by no-one because you have to sort by newest first on every single video you watch. Youtube is dystopian these days.

            • As another poster here said, there had to have been some backroom deal going on to get Youtube to consider doing this. YT has been around for roughly 15 years, and all of a sudden the "dislike" button has become a problem.

              This whole thing stinks to low hell, and I have no doubt that the other poster is correct in his assumption.

              Yeah, take a page from the politician playbook, and accept "gifts", and muddy or flat out lie about the reason a change is taking place.

              Seriously, fuck this w

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        I am good as long as they continue to publish the number of total views - I move we all just assume Views - Likes = Dislikes.

        • I think someone should start a website, that places the dislikes of a video on another site, maybe make a plugin that displays it on the youtube page. Maybe that could bypass videos who want to disable comments and dislikes as well.

          I see a business opportunity here. I am just to lazy to do it.

          While we are at it do it for news sites that refuse to let users comment as well.

      • by mark-t ( 151149 )
        I agree completely. If viewers knowing the number of dislikes is a problem, then viewers knowing the number of likes may also have issues for what are amounts to the same line of reasoning (albeit with reverse motives).

        Give the ratio of likes to dislikes as a percentage score, and leave it at that.

    • I see future in a browser plug-in, or an "app" if you will, which would post per-defined comments to videos.
      So instead of an innocuous dislike we may in the future see a comment section flooded with phrases such as "This looks like shit", "This is pure garbage", "Whoever made this shit should have been aborted" and various other anatomical and vegetable references.
      Hell, why not have a random insult generator [sweary.com] built in as well. Have technology work FOR US once again.

    • by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @01:02PM (#61975675)

      ... I don't buy those arguments. No, I get the feeling this is all about the various big entities like e.g. EA or Ubisoft or similar ones wanting to hide the dislikes from the public...

      Correct, but it's neither of those. It's Disney, tiring of Marvel movie trailers getting ratioed.

      I would hazard a guess there has been a fair amount of lobbying and several bags of cash changing hands to make this happen.

      Well yeah, but not unusual bags of cash. YouTube is listening to their customers, i.e. people who pay them money, which is not us. Disney is a huge advertiser on YouTube, including for the aforementioned Marvel movies, but many other things besides. YouTube is making a radical change to the presentation of videos because a customer complained, and the customer is always right.

      YouTube doesn't give a rat's ass what we think. We're the product, lining up to be sold. YouTube doesn't give a rat's ass what "creators" think. Creators are a cost center for them. YouTube has literally billions of reasons to want to minimize the number of creators. YouTube would prefer not to have any creators at all if they could manage it. Why pay more? YouTube does not care if any particular creator or group of creators is upset with them, because there's literally a million more where they came from.

      People keep thinking that YouTube is some sort of public benefit organization because they accept uploads from the Internet. They are not. YouTube is voracious commercial for-profit entity in one of the top ten most evil lines of business humanity has ever invented, namely advertising, and the public would do well to remember it.

    • They can already disable comments or scores on the videos.

      I'm really not sure how this is supposed to work now. I need the ratio, rather than the absolute like # to know if I should waste my time on a particular video.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They can already hide the like and dislike counts, as well as disable comments. Those features have been there for many years now.

    • by anegg ( 1390659 )

      I'm not quite as cynical about this change.

      A "dislike" count is subject to manipulation. It may represent actual unique dislikes from multiple individuals, or it may represent a concerted effort from one or a small number of individuals.

      The absence of "likes" still conveys the message that something was not liked, but in a manner that is less subject to manipulation.

      (But the "like" count can be manipulated upwards by someone who would stand to benefit by it.)

      • by fazig ( 2909523 )
        Be absence of 'likes' is contextual and works by direct comparison.

        For example if you have a comment section and some of the comments to the same article have a high number of likes, while others don't you can assume that those are the unpopular comments.
        So that can work on twitter or facebook, or even YT's comment section (it also likely works like that here on Slashdot, if they removed downmods or no longer displayed downmods publicly).

        But with every video being on its own, it becomes more difficult.
    • You are no synic. No one can sea the future...

  • All of a sudden the dislike count has become a huge problem for some reason.

    But, but feewingz!

    • by narcc ( 412956 )

      I highly doubt it's about that. Right now, it's popular for groups of trolls to 'bomb' videos they don't like. Most of those people probably wouldn't have seen the target videos at all if not for the organized trolling. I can think of a few reasons why YT thinks this is a problem. I suspect that trolls wreck the data, making their recommendation system less accurate, and thus less profitable. As these bombings also tend to flood comments with irrelevant nonsense, it's not unreasonable to assume that th

      • and thus less profitable.

        Haven't you heard? Capitalism is now a woke tool of the radical snowflake left.

        It's definitely more fun when the invisible hand is punching someone else in the nuts that's for sure.

  • They exist only to make you feel better. The YouTube algorithm should only care that clicked the video, and the amount of it you watched. Why do likes or dislikes even matter?

    If I click on the video and bail after 10 seconds, the video probably sucked. If I clicked on the video and watched the whole thing, it was probably good.

    • My thought is related - what I would like the "dislike" button to do, is make my view not tally in the View Count. That is what matters. But it counts as a View after only a few seconds. So the "made you look!!" phenomenon is alive and well.
    • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      I've watched entire conspiracy videos to properly debunk it. That does not mean I enjoyed watching it or that I think more people should watch it.

  • Now with even more Chinese faked videos and Tumblr headlines.

  • by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @12:38PM (#61975563)

    I find that the dislike-to-like ratio is often useful in determining if a video is on-topic and good content, or if it is just click-bait or an ad.

    I wish that Youtube's search algorithm would take it into account, because it often presents those click-bait videos with high dislike-to-like ratio as its top search results above videos that are more worth watching.

    • I find that the dislike-to-like ratio is often useful in determining if a video is on-topic and good content, or if it is just click-bait or an ad.

      I wish that Youtube's search algorithm would take it into account, because it often presents those click-bait videos with high dislike-to-like ratio as its top search results above videos that are more worth watching.

      Unfortunately many people use the thumbs down as a "I don't agree with you" checkbox. When topics like politics, religion, etc are encountered the dislike ratio is always much greater. It's not fair to count those dislikes in the algorithm just because the topic is controversial.

  • Cool! Now I can post a nasty video to spread misinformation, and get those same guys to initiate a like attack to make my video look even more legit. And scince nobody disliked it, and so many love it, it has to be valid and correct!

  • The dislike button didn't do squat showing your displeasure.

    The algorithm counts it as an interaction and that helps the author.

    In a way doing away with it is more honest.

  • by eepok ( 545733 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @12:46PM (#61975603) Homepage

    There's a significant population of Youtubers who only seek to gain click/view revenue by exploiting the big rush to see new, current events on Youtube. Of course, they don't have anything to add. Their videos are usually just slideshows of screen shots from news sites backed by some of the default Youtube music.

    How do you avoid these? You look at the downvotes. When downvotes > upvotes, just don't even bother.

    If you get ride of downvotes, you eliminate the only crowdsourced anti-spam feature for the platform.

  • That makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @12:46PM (#61975605)
    Dislike counts are being removed because dislike counts can affect creators' well-being but they'll still be able to see them. That makes sense.
    • Dislike counts are being removed because dislike counts can affect creators' well-being but they'll still be able to see them. That makes sense.

      The point is that without the numerical feedback to show them that they're having an effect, the people who organize group "dislike" attacks will give up.

  • When you click on anything in an attention economy sewer, you are the product! Smile!
  • Do people even care how many dislikes a video has? Do they know it even exists?

    At the time, YouTube explained that public dislike counts can affect creators' well-being

    Oh. Never mind.
  • While that's true, dislikes can also serve as a signal to others when videos are clickbait, spam, or misleading, which can be useful.

    Then use your fancy-pants algorithms to demote such "unliked" videos - it'll probably end up being more accurate without users knowing exactly how many others disliked it as well (since it can be a false flag anyways due to abuse).

  • Ever notice that pretty much every video has dislikes?

    A video of a kitten or puppy, a rainbow, whatever. There are dislikes.

    I swear there are people out there who just go to each video and hit dislike.

    • That's because there are a lot of people using the internet (billions), so some are bound to dislike anything no big deal, I see no reason to stress about it. I personally don't like kitten or puppy videos, I do like kittens and puppies, but I think the videos are a waste of time. That being said I have never pressed the like, or dislike button on any video on youtube.

      • Right, but if you don't like something, why are you even going to go watch videos on it? It's just really weird regardless..

        They could also go with a rating model similar to Slashdot, where you can only downvote (or upvote!) on occasion. Or, maybe limit how much you can downvote, like maybe once every 10 upvotes you do. 10 upvotes, you're entitled to a downvote. Would make people use a bit more discretion at least.

  • by Babel-17 ( 1087541 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @01:38PM (#61975831)
    And allow people one last chance to respond with a down vote. I guest that more comments sections will need to be closed as a result of this.
    • I guest that more comments sections will need to be closed as a result of this.

      Perhaps. My thought too. But, I have another thought...since we'll all now have to leave a comment stating that said video is shite, it will increase the engagement count for the vid (a win for the YT) and promoting its visibility (a win for the creator).

  • ...to not work the gears in unintended ways to force their preferred outcomes...

    But, on Slashdot people use "Troll" for "disagree". And on youtube, bands of both mindless sycophants and blind haters get together to abuse the tool.

    People suck.

  • ... remove the likes count display as well.

    Give the ratio of likes to dislikes as a percentage, approximated to one decimal point. If viewers don't need to know dislike counts, then they don't need to know like counts for basically the same reason.

    The video creator would be able to see the exact like and dislike counts, however.

  • double edged sword (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PinkyGigglebrain ( 730753 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @02:17PM (#61975997)

    "dislike attacks" are only one edge of the blade. Fake "likes" are the other.

    If YouTube is going to remove the former because it can be manipulated then they have to remove the latter for the exact same reason.

    • "dislike attacks" are only one edge of the blade. Fake "likes" are the other.

      If YouTube is going to remove the former because it can be manipulated then they have to remove the latter for the exact same reason.

      I think you're ignoring the fact that there's an inherent asymmetry between likes and dislikes, and the reasons they may be applied.

  • ... waving some 'reason' to go to war we can only thumbs up it eh?

    what's next? removing the comment feature like they did on Netflix after they started getting slammed on their garbage 'history' content?

    how far are we going to go with suppression of those daring to contradict the narratives we are fed? re-education camps?

    • by labnet ( 457441 )

      Yep. With main stream media’s narratives, it a sanity restorer to know the huge dislike to like ratio is calling out their BS.

  • Hands up all those who remember when YouTube let you rank videos by using stars.

    One star for a bad vid, five stars for a good one.

    This is a much better method (IMHO) because it is a less granular way of rating what you're watching.

    However, like most of the best bits of the old YouTube, Google decided to change it ... because they can :-(

  • It's not an attack if the videos really do suck.

    ...laura

  • Videos from political figures are technically public records, including the meta data associated with them. I'm quite sure one of the driving forces behind this is to hide the unpopularity of some public figures but just as they are not allowed to block followers on twitter, I don't believe they will be able to hide the public record associated with their videos either.

  • Down vote each and every YouTube video you watch, whether you like it or not.
  • No voting and ratings? :( I think YouTube used to have five stars ratings during its early days.

  • by Tom ( 822 )

    Fuck them. The option to dislike something is the #1 thing that makes YouTube better than Facebook.

    But I guess one of the internal scientists came to the conclusion that the dopamine addiction cycle doesn't run so well if it stays enabled, resulting in fewer ad impressions. That's what you get when the platform sells you as the product to its actual customers.

  • by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @10:53AM (#61978517)

    So that no one can ask "why are you promoting a video that everyone hates?" And, because the answer would have to be "because we like their politics."

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