Return YouTube Dislike - Extension | Hacker News Reader

Return YouTube Dislike - Extension

returnyoutubedislike.com

41 pointssaaspirant33 comments

> With the removal of dislike stats from the YouTube API, our backend will switch to using a combination of scraped dislike stats, estimates extrapolated from extension user data and estimates based on view\like ratios.

In case anyone is wondering, the extension seems to calculate the dislike count from the average rating, which is something that the YouTube API still returns. The average rating is calculated as follows [1]:

(like * 5) + (dislike)

---------------------- * 5

(like + dislike) * 5

If you do some algebra, the dislike count is calculated as (likes * (5 - rating)) / (rating - 1), which is what the author uses in their code [2]. I'm not sure what they mean by using "a combination of scraped dislike stats, estimates extrapolated from extension user data, and estimates based on view\like ratios" because I don't see them explicitly using anything like that in their code. Maybe it's something for the future. Hopefully someone can clarify what they mean by this statement.

[1] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29663#issuecom...

[2] https://github.com/Anarios/return-youtube-dislike

With all of the backlash over this decision, Google still decides to move forward with it.

I understand they are trying to protect the sanity of the content creators, but they are doing so at the expense of the user experience.

I used to use the likes:dislikes ratio to determine if a video is worth watching. Now I either have to quickly scroll the comments or skip around the video to determine if the info is valid.

> I understand they are trying to protect the sanity of the content creators

sure they are lmfao

Yeah... It's incredible how blind people are in this day and age. Google is clearly trying to control narratives, not "end the sadness".

I think the reason they removed dislike counts may be exactly because people (like you) tended to click away immediately on seeing a high ratio of dislikes. It's game theory.

If people do that, it means their recommendation algorithm's watch time and retention metrics get bad data; users aren't actually assessing how good the video is, but assessing previous viewers' assessment of it, so you get signal feedback.

If someone can get a good snowball effect going by brigading a bunch of dislikes on a video, they can reduce its reach even if the algorithm is showing it to people just as much. And it can snowball the other way too; people watching a long video a bit more hoping it will get good eventually because it has such a high ratio of likes.

Just speculating of course.

I think it’s much more likely that the videos they promote to protect their political interests get large amounts of downvotes, and removing ratings looks like bending the knee.

> I understand they are trying to protect the sanity of the content creators

more like advertisers, brands, and corporations

>I understand they are trying to protect the sanity of the content creators

by displaying dislike counter exclusively for those content creators, riiiight

A better solution is to display the ratio of likes to views.

I'm sad about them removing the dislike because I would always calculate the like:dislike ratio for kicks, and one of my hobbies had a uniquely consistent 1000:1 ratio.

Storing the dislike counts for each user takes a binary state at the minimum, and a byte of storage typically. Considering the HUGE global user base, that would be too much data storage and maintenance required for a company like Google/Youtube to invest their resources in. It also improves user experience by minimizing the data transfer requied to consume products in the platform, thus improving the efficiency and speed in the platform.

It is for the best of the users, and is a great design for the user. User's will learn to love them in time.

How is it a great design for users? Then why even show like count?

Edit: I thought about what you said, and your claim is simply wrong. It still stores the per user reaction, otherwise it won't be able to show me that I've disliked a particular video. There's honestly no good reason to hide the dislike count, other than to please a certain group of users.

Overall, it definitely makes YT a worse site in terms of UX compared to what it was before this change. F for YT

I think this is a really neat project, but I'm still confused on why YouTube would remove dislikes in the first place.

One reason is perhaps because the dislike button is used to show political discontent. Just look at any whitehouse.gov youtube video, which clearly get brigaded with dislikes (or perhaps people really aren't that enamored with their politicians...)

This extension works flawlessly.

Maybe it was low hanging fruit? Removing the counter might eliminate easy coordination of distributed automated attacks. It could make botnet brigading less nuanced, and possibly easier to detect and mitigate. It also disincentivizes human brigading by removing context.

Channels get shadow banned by activists through manipulation of automatic moderation. This required keeping the activity under the threshold needed to bring a human in the loop. It's been a while, but there are guides on dark web forums on targeted harassment and manipulation of auto moderation of various platforms.

It's always frustrating to see non techy creators wail and gnash their teeth about being banned or harassed by a platform, when it's a million times more likely that a small group of dickheads manipulated automated rules using downvote and channel reporting features.

Not sure why captcha or other barriers aren't required for the use of abusable functions on social media, that's always seemed very user hostile.

It very well could be the mitigation of coordinated botnet attacks and the like. But the other possibility is the removal of a very easy method of showing disapproval. Youtube has been pushing more MSM sources on the platform and they don't want to harm their brand/product. Check out this Fauci Documentary trailer (with the extension, hehe) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJYnE1xWdZI

And the above example also plays into the political angle of removing the dislike button. ie antivaxx narrative.

People will now be able to perfectly manipulate their audience by deleting every unwanted comment and hiding behind the fact that dislikes not being present is not their fault. I'd argue that viewers need more protection than creators.

If you are actually confused about it, you have not noticed how big tech is censoring and blocking people from displaying their dissent about what's happening in the world.

because YouTube's own video are among one of the most disliked video. And they want to appease politicians, big companies etc.

My takeaway was that they're not getting rid of dislikes, just not showing them to creators on their own videos. Something to do with less negativity for creators.

I might be misremembering though.

You have in entirely backwords mate.

Indeed, I stand corrected.

https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/update-to-youtube/

Because the system is not working well enough on scale. People manipulate it for various reasons and use it the wrong way. At the end, there is more damage than benefit. The same happens at other platforms too, and they all are experimenting with alternative solutions for this problem. But so far nobody seems to have found a good solution for this. I would even say, it's unsolvable, because humans.

To benefit old media channels, entertainment companies posting trailers for games/movies/shows, less negativity for ads. A great example is the White House channel which gets a lot of negativity via the dislikes.

Also, they're not removing dislikes, they're removing the dislike counter.

Dislikes still exist for me even without the extension. Did Youtube chicken out on their decision or is it just me who sees them.

Dislike count or dislike button?

YouTube didn’t remove the dislike feature they just stopped showing the counts for dislikes.

The rollout of this has been quite slow. It took almost a week before the counts disappeared for me.

The thumbs-down, dislike button is still there and much more prominent than ever!

Dislike button still exists. However the number of dislikes has been removed.

This visual change is now live in the YT app

was confused initially, i read that YouTube wouldn't be serving dislikes with its api, so was wondering how this could work.

turns out using the extension helps the app gather likes which it caches for later ie: YouTube still serves dislikes for now and this ext takes advantage of that.

after YouTube removes dislikes from the api they have a strategy but somehow i think it'll be unreliable

I don't know the Youtube API, but the current method of viewing dislikes is to log out or open a private window. Dislikes are shown just as before.

youtube is probably a/b testing it.

No, they're not showing dislikes to creators on their own videos. The rest still gets to see dislikes.

At least, that was my takeaway.

The other way round. Only creators will be able to see the dislike count, probably in their dashboard

this is correct i read the article... dunno why we have a chain of speculation here

no, they just havent completely rolled out the change yet. it has 2 parts

- removing the UI element: half done

- removing the server data: todo

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