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Comment by BbzzbB | Hacker News Reader

Because you can't see a video has a 1:9 like:dislike ratio to tell you it's not worth your time. Granted, you'll (probably) be able to tell from the comments, for now.

I'm not convinced how much it'd actually impact watch time, but it seems to be the thesis.

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Tricking users into watching low-quality content on YouTube seems like such an obviously bad strategy it would pierce through even a few layers of corporate madness. Their reasoning is in all likelihood different.

My first thought is that the reason is to take the incentive away from "dislike" trolls. I reasoned that trolls got some pleasure out of seeing that ratio being skewed and it would encourage them to continue disliking videos.

Hmm, I wonder if a campaign to tell everyone to go and dislike every video they watch would gain traction. The same way Google destroyed this metric for viewers, it would destroy the usefulness for creators.

Act of petty revenge for sure, and they'll probably remove you from their fiefdom for being a troll.

Why would anyone join that campaign? That would only hurt the creators they follow and damage their recommendations.

If there's enough traction, the creators would start complaining to YouTube, and they'd have to rethink it.

Also it would confuse creators: is this video shit, or is it the campaign?

Creators are already complaining to YouTube. So far they aren’t listening.

Let's not do anything then, and let the emperor do as he wish... /s

No, what we should be doing is figuring out a way to solve the root cause: that YouTube has this much power in the first place.

why would youtube care what the dislike trolls do or what gives these "dislike trolls" pleasure? I would think that youtube's business model would not include any plan to determine what gives "dislike trolls" pleasure

They already said but people are allergic to knowing what they're talking about.

They didn't remove the dislike button, they removed the count.

They removed the count because they found it reduced spurious usage.

That way they can use the dislike count for their algorithm ( and you can still use it for curating your content) without having it influenced by brigading.

I mean they still show it to creators anyways, so I don't get what the weird conspiracies are. Like this is such a nothing of an issue it's insane.

Imo, people get endorphine hit from hitting dislike and feeling like they publically revenged. You are taking that away.

There are of course also arguments there and back. But the emotional reactions are either about interests or feelings. More likely to be feelings here.

> Imo, people get endorphine hit from hitting dislike and feeling like they publically revenged. You are taking that away.

This is a wonderful case for removing it. Better than I could have ever proposed.

Youtube didn't add it for revenge and their statement on removing the dislike count shows this.

Might have to do with everyone downvoting the scary carona news from the major news channels

>Because you can't see a video has a 1:9 like:dislike ratio to tell you it's not worth your time

I see this argument every time dislikes are brought up but no one seems to ever mention views as a third data point. I've never really paid attention to dislikes (other than hearing about dislike raids), but you can still see videos' like:view ratio, which IMO has always been more significant than dislikes anyway.

I don't always like a video I've watched that I like. Especially when watching via a playlist with the video full screen.

No, you can't see it. You need to calculate it. Are you seriously suggesting that people will start doing math?

like:dislike ratio (grandparent comment) is same math as like:view ratio (parent comment). :)

Yes, except there used to be an extremely readable bar that would let you see the like/dislike ratio at a glance.

Sure, you and I can do the math, establish a threshold value above which a video is worth watching (this was _much_ more intuitive with a like:dislike ratio btw), and compare that for each video. But can your mom do that? Can your kids do that? Can you do that while drunk? Can you do that with mind fog and high fever from Covid? Can you do that during a schizophrenic episode? Can you do that when you have early stage dementia?

This change is an attack on the people most susceptible to manipulation. I am outraged that you're making up excuses.

1:9 was merely an example of a video that is likely to be garbage or highly controversial (with exceptions, namely COVID & governmental videos), there was also a visual bar indicating where it sits at for people who find it hard to tell which number is larger than the other. That ratio was irrespective of engagement which is highly variable per video, creator or topic. To pretend it conveys the same amount of information is plain disingenuous for the sake of it.

You cannot infer anything aside "engagement" from that actually, but that is still an bad argument against just displaying the information.

I never checked the likes to watch a video, I think if you have enough YouTube "experience" you can probably figure out what videos are good and which aren't.

(No hate, just my opinion, I don't care about the likes)

Same here, I didn't realize so many people relied on the voting metrics. Were they visible in the video list view or did you have to click through to see them?

I have no clue despite watching YouTube everyday. I'm using YouTube Vanced, so my YouTube will slightly differ?

Checking it back, I only see the likes when I click through them.

Tutorial videos are a great example why this is a big problem. I know nothing about replacing brake pads in a car but there are videos on YT that show you how to do it. Sadly among tutorials you will definitely find some that despite high view count are misleading or even dangerous.

High view count does not mean high quality. They are pretty orthogonal.

You are spot on here. I encountered a short viral video on YouTube the other day which used the dislike removal to their advantage. It was a clickbait titled video with millions of views, and oddly there were only two supporting comments that had several thousand likes. The rest of the comments that probably called out the video being clickbait were obviously deleted. Usually I'm able to parse the comments quickly to see what the video is really about, then navigate somewhere else, but not this time... I watched until the end.

That’s simply going to force users to do something else. YouTube still has plenty of great content, but if users can’t find it then it may as well not exist.

That’s because the like:dislike ratio on contentious issues no longer tells you if the video is worth your time but rather is a reflection of some manipulated brigading effort, atleast anecdotally. This actually does make the ratio useless.

The dislike ratio was never reliable when a downvote army comes through to kill anything that threatens their worldview. Play too roughly with a cat? The cat people dislike you. Promote an exercise of liberty some don't want you to have? Dislike.

The dislike ratio was very reliable when determining whether I should watch a video purporting to show a solution to a technical or home improvement problem. The dislike ratio was a sure way to know whether a video was a waste of my time, because for videos of that nature, either the creator offered a valid solution (and was heavily upvoted) or they did not (and was heavily downvoted). Now I'll have to trudge through the comments section like a savage beast.

OK, so it was inaccurate 0.1% of the time, and accurate 99.9% of the time. Let's scrap it!

This is nonsensical argument to use. Out of all the videos you've watched on YT in years how much do you really think got brigaded?

> 1:9 like:dislike ratio to tell you it's not worth your time

Is this really a good metric? Counterpoint: many news videos related to Covid are heavily downvoted. Does that mean that they're bad coverage? or that people don't like to hear what the news has to say?

This metric isn't meant for a bot, it's meant for people to use common sense on.

If I see a covid related news story, I'll just ignore the like/discount ratio. But if I see a tech tutorial or conference talk with 50% like/dislike, I'll be fairly confident that the video isn't worth my time.

Imagine the number of dead PCs if that Verge video hadn't been riddled with dislikes.

It’s pretty telling for some types of content and not so much for others. I’m more then capable of using it where it matters and understanding why some content might be massively downvotes (but then still often find it informative)

> many news videos related to Covid are heavily downvoted. Does that mean that they're bad coverage?

It does mean for sure many people don't agree with them.

> or that people don't like to hear what the news has to say?

ironic...

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