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Comment by jjcon | Hacker News Reader

But youtube isn't removing the button or the signal from their algorithms - they are just removing the optics of having a disliked video (which a lot of users including myself found useful)

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Because the channels they want to protect are politically aligned with YouTube.

It’s a business decision. Based on view count vs like/dislike ratio a lot of these videos are obviously brigaded. Most people aren’t engaged enough to represent themselves in the like/dislike ratio. It doesn’t make sense to bury them for the vast majority.

>Based on view count vs like/dislike ratio a lot of these videos are obviously brigaded.

That's your belief but you have no evidence to prove this. And even if true, why does the entirety of content of YouTube need to be punished for the undesired behavioral patterns that YouTube has cultivated on controversial videos they've pushed on everyone?

View count vs like/dislike ratio is an incredible accurate metric for my point.

Can you please elaborate? You have a way to compare a raw metric (counts) against a ratio (like vs. dislike) that yields useful insights as to whether the like vs. dislike ratio was the product of brigading?

This makes me think of how steam does indeed have some smarts to warn users when a game may be getting review brigaded. I think it's a combination of volume of reviews by time, and perhaps the referrer (?). It does seem to work fairly well afaict.

Steam also allows a user to view the raw information if they want. At least the last time I looked. The option could definitely be more obvious though. Giving the user the ability to see the like/dislike data over time gives them their own ability to decide whether likes/dislikes come from an external source to the page. This information should include a graph of the total views over time as well as likes and dislikes over time in parallel.

Not giving users this information and removing like dislike counts just makes it so that a small number of people at YouTube have even more ability to control what is pushed on that site. With this change users have even less ability to check the validity of a video; validity means different things to different users here. People who stay at YouTube will just have to deal with the fact that they will have videos pushed to their screen for reasons that are hidden to them, that they don't have the ability to check out anything other people think about the video, and can't even signal that there is something wrong to them about the video (sure, they could comment, but any comment can be deleted by the video author and there is the fear of losing your Google account, which can include their email contact to everyone and authentication information also, which can have huge consequences for their ordinary life).

It's not the worst idea but it also triggers when developers do something to the game and many players want to review that change.

What if they are?

Why is this a bad thing exactly?

Smells a lot like democracy and a platform worth of people telling the creator they aren't welcome.

Maybe YouTube doesn't like that but that doesn't make them right.

Sometimes the users are right, it's their platform to. Going against them just drives them away further.

With the hostile actions of YouTube over the last couple of years YouTube is asking for disruption.

This is to kiss the ass of big corporate creators and protect their brand when it becomes unpopular

This, imo. Netflix did the exact same thing.

Like I mentioned somewhere else, for recommended videos I see two binary paradigms

- videos with >95% like ratios

- political videos that have obviously been brigaded

Assuming most normies don’t have great engagement rates with the like/dislike button based on view count, this change is doing the vast majority a service.

If it is easy to believe some videos get a natural >95% rating; isn't it just as likely some content would evoke a <5% rating without 'brigading'? I am not saying that this doesn't sometimes occur, but I also don't believe it's the only case.

Agreed, people made the same argument for removing 5 star ratings from Netflix ('people only ever vote 1 star or 5 stars'). If this were an input for the decision making, these platforms could very easily present that evidence.

I do miss the Netflix of years gone past.

How can you know?

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