I Am Boycotting YouTube's Like Button

> Once again, Google is following in Facebook's guidebook on how to implement 1984.

I dislike Youtubes transformation towards TV as much as anyone, but we should stay reasonable here. This just makes complaints seem infantile.

Yes, this move is to shield large publishers, their business partners, looking for success in a new digital world instead of the "small contributors" as Youtube itself claims.

I believe this will make Youtube worse and other platforms might take its place. People will invent other metrics like being ratio'd on Twitter. Not that their algorithm didn't already show you heavily disliked content from "reputable" news sources anyway.

Haven't met anyone that likes this move, but they are still in a dominant market position for now. I doubt they will stay there honestly if they continue to consolidate content.

Teaching people that dissent is illegal and/or not tolerated is not infantile. Orwell discussed it at length in his book ;)

There should be a browser extension which overlays YouTube with likes / dislikes / comments coming from a different site (a Reddit or HN just for YouTube). So people can still see and add dislikes and also unfiltered comments.

Excellent idea.

That could be generalised to any URL too.

I understand why a lot of creators need to use Youtube (revenue, discoverability) but I suggest that anyone who doesn't strictly depend on them to upload their content to random other video websites. Video streaming is a solved problem and there's no reason Youtube should have a near-monopoly on it. The more you limit their market share, the more likely they are to listen to their "customers".

For low bandwidth you can just chuck the video on a HostGator shared hosting or similar. Nothing magic - just upload and MP4 and embed a video element in HTML and you are done. Ad free and cheap for low volume sites.

This can probably be scaled up by using S3.

One man's lost feature is another man's business opportunity. I thrive on building the products and services that the mainstream, particularly Google or Facebook and now YouTube see as their downfalls. Sucks they did it and I don't think anyone will ever create anything as popular as YouTube, though we have examples of TikTok and Vimeo that certainly have their market share.

It is wrong to move the dislike button. Even I published a video for my business and got a dislike on it -- I took notice and moved on with my life. It does suck and I think you're on to something: without a dislike button, there's really no reason to use a like button. However, Facebook has never offered a dislike button, only an angry button, and we all tend to use it.

BUT... you are right about one thing: less focus on your like or dislike which doesn't even really do anything in the first place.

They gave "official" sources preferential treatment in the SERPs. Now you are bombarded with shitty TV news anchor videos. There are also government videos pushed to the top like from the CDC. People (or bots, who knows) dislike these videos. And they end up with a overwhelming dislikes. I don't think Google wants other people to be influenced by the majority dislikes. They want their authority news sources to be respected.

I actually support the removal of the dislikes. Before, YouTube would just change the dislike count. You could go to a video and come back later and the dislike count would be lower. (Maybe they are banning bots? Or maybe just manipulating the result. Or maybe just eventually consistent haha)

Your argument cuts both ways - why not just have a bot that likes and comments on the videos that you want to push. So now by your logic, we should BAN all likes and comments. So now nothing means anything, and YouTube will just tell us if a video is good or not.

Doesn't sound like a great plan. How about Google re-instates the Dislike button and works harder to filter out the bots. i.e. Don't harm the product and the UX.

You might be reading too much into this action.

I have long ignored the number of dislikes on a video, because you cannot discern if the dislike was genuine dislike or offense—not a cancel mob, or a troll. Is it possible to look at 2000 dislikes, and then somehow rule out "bad" or "invalid" dislikes? Completely innocent videos get thousands of dislikes, even if it's only a kitten walking across the screen.

So... the dislike button has already meant nothing. The data was skewed to begin with, in my opinion.

If you wish to dissent I suggest you do so in the comments. I read those, and I count the number of "likes" on the comments. That says something far stronger than an arbitrary "10000 / 2000" count.

I respectfully disagree. The dislike button definitely had value. You cannot read 10,000 comments on a video with 1.5 million views. Like/Dislike ratio was a fast way to ascertain quality. Maybe it was incorrect 20% of the time (and I'm being generous there), but even that means that it was helpful 80% of the time.

And according to your logic, the Like button is also useless and should be deleted as well, since you can equally have a mob of people hitting it without really "liking" the video. The same is true of the comments.

there is an Arabic saying:

a fly sat on a big Palm tree. when the fly was going to take off, it told the palm:

"i am leaving you!"

to which the Palm tree replied:

"who are you? I don't know you. neither did I notice when you came, nor will I notice when you leave"

Fly then attempts to land on another palm tree. “You are most welcome to land mr fly, but first you just need to authenticate with the first palm tree”.

And yet you care enough to write a comment... So I guess you really do care and you do know who I am. Thanks for the love Amigo ;)

If an arthritis remedy video has 11K likes, but 250K likes, that suggests there is some problem with the content of the video. Those users should be clicking "report" rather than "dislike".

Not at all. Youtube content moderation is not intended for things like content quality, only for egregious breaches of YouTube policy like harassment, abuse, or hate speech.

If a guy in the video says "bend your foot at the ankle all the down until you hear a loud pop and feel something give", then reporting the video will do nothing. Downvoting it will inform other users that this is maybe not a good idea.

I just use the like button as a bookmarker tbh

I am so tired of everything becoming a morals issue. Who cares! It's pretty simple; If you don't like it then don't use YouTube.

I grew up with the internet and the two absolute rules were don't tell anyone your personal information and never believe anything you see or read on the internet.

Somewhere along the path those rules were forgotten. 95% of the content out there is complete and utter bullshit. Regardless of some arbitrary like or dislike system.

You’re ignoring your second rule very time you try to learn something online.

We can do better than “just don’t use it”. The point is that I still want to use it but it’s worse than it used to be.

How so?

I respectfully disagree. Morals matter. Your point is like saying, "if you don't like the printing press/hydrogen bomb/automobile, then just don't use it.".

YouTube is an integral part of sharing information, and the like/dislike ratio is a crucial yardstick of if the content is trustworthy. 95% of the content is not bullsh*t in my mind, and if it is, then why not have the dislike button anyway?

The world isn't so absolute. To be clear here we are talking about pixels on a screen from a website that's sole purpose is to show you as many ads as possible, and not weapons of mass destruction.

The like/dislike ratio only shows how many people (maybe) clicked a button. Nothing more. It has nothing to do with how trustworthy content is.

Infact I would argue that the moral thing to do would be to remove both the like and dislike count altogether. The like should just tell the system "Yes, I would like to see more content like this" and "No, don't show me content like this".

As far as why not have the dislike count. It isn't up to me or you. We don't own or control YouTube. But what we do control is our own actions and what we choose to use or don't use.

>If you don't like it then don't use YouTube.

Mmm, but I still have to live in a universe where YouTube exists and everyone else uses it, which impacts my life in a great many ways. Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away.

Does it though? And is it such a problem that your life is measurely worse than before?

I would argue that more things need to become "morals issues". Morals are a better motivator than profit margins.