YouTube is removing dislikes.

Use this comment to put a dislike to this trash video

They just remove the "plebs'' ability to "censor" a content. Their own -supposedly- enlightened and impartial overseeing, power to demonetize and censor/remove remains 100% effective and in-place, and, at the end of the day, is all that matters. It also removes those awkward, polarizing situations where some controversial context has a near 50%-50% split between "good" and "bad". This is not unlike what they did when they ditched the old 5-star rating system. Most people either gave 0 or 5 stars, and polarizing content got a solid 2.5 in most cases, so why not make it Like/Dislike? IIRC Facebook used to have a dislike button at some point, as well...

Regarding alternatives... I suppose that just setting up a public video hosting platform where you just upload/host a bunch of browser-playable MP4 files and throw in an account/comment system is not technically very difficult, and there may even be out-of-the-box solutions for that.

The hard part is keeping up with the space (kinda trivial, even with HD content), bandwidth (that one not so trivial/cheap) and load balancing/distribution (once a single server over a single connection simply cannot keep up), once you grow even moderately to a few hundred videos. This is not really something you'd like to run on the same resources that would be adequate for a 1990s personal webpage, or with your spare pocket money (unless it's Elon Musk's spare pocket money...)

Even the few Youtube alternatives that still survive (e.g. Vimeo), their problem is the lack of new content. They might be OK for safeguarding stuff that Youtube has rejected or is way old, but very few content creators choose them as their primary outlet. Then there's that whole smartphone app integration...YouTube comes standard with (almost) everything, as part of gapps.

They actually teased this a while back, because to make the platforms more friendly if I remember correctly? That's really dumb. And honestly I don't really THAT much surprised if they do it anyway.

Also, don't open this spoiler box. It contains rant about youtube.

Gonna post some thoughts on this and try not to repeat what has already been said here. The way I see it, there are a couple likely outcomes for this:

1. Youtube walks back the decision after they get a sense of how immensely unpopular it is. No, I don't see this as being *especially* likely, but I wouldn't call it a remote possibility either. YT has walked back on decisions in the past when they proved to be unpopular, and they also killed YT Rewind after years of everyone tearing it to shreds. In fact, to me it seems likely that the corporate heads at YT actually use public announcements like these as a way of gauging where their userbase is at, rather than committing the immeasurable time and energy it would require to gauge the attitude of such a massive userbase by keeping their ears to the ground and interacting with them in any meaningful way.

2. The plan goes ahead and dislikes are removed in spite of the overwhelmingly negative response. In this case, the userbase at large simply changes how they percieve the 'likes' a video gets. It won't be hard to see that a video is unpopular, if for instance, it has a million views and less than 10k likes. In other words, people will use the metric of the views vs. the likes to measure how popular a video is or isn't. This, combined with the temperature of the top voted comments on a video, will likely become the de facto 'new' system for the like to dislike ratio.

To be clear, my personal opinion is that this is a shitty decision and decreases transparency for a site that quite simply needs it to thrive. But really, absent a like to dislike meter, it usually isn't hard to see how people really feel about a video if you spend 30 seconds scrolling the comment section. 

6 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Can we take a moment to acknowledge that a thread about how YT is going to remove dislikes is being posted on a forum that has no dislikes..?

Doomworld debatably doesn't have any likes either.  I guess a soulsphere is a like, a megasphere is a super like or maybe a wow, an invulnerability sphere is...an invincible like?  Is it laughing?  I'm not even sure what the hell a "partial invisibility" reac is supposed to convey.  Ooooh maybe that's the tack YouTube should take: instead of removing the dislike button, replace both buttons with cryptic symbols that are highly open to interpretation

I'm not too beat up about this, at least in the specific sense that the like/dislike ratio never meant that much to me anyway.  Granted it's a thoroughly pointless decision and I don't doubt that YouTube is making it entirely for the most cynical and ignoble of reasons, but it's also nothing we're not already used to.

28 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

Doomworld debatably doesn't have any likes either.  I guess a soulsphere is a like, a megasphere is a super like or maybe a wow, an invulnerability sphere is...an invincible like?  Is it laughing?  I'm not even sure what the hell a "partial invisibility" reac is supposed to convey.

They all mean "Like", mate. You're overthinking it, you Stupid Bunny! ;^) :^P

I don't see how this business venture is coming as a surprise, YouTube has always been a "Company first" kind of website, and the company is doing what a company does best: Adapting and surviving in a harsh economic time. The fact that it's taking people this long to realize how corporate first everything has become is the real baffling thing.

I'm surprised people are attached to the dislike feature at all. I never payed attention to it in all my years of youtubing. Once in a great while I'd thumbs-down a bad comment, but other than that my main experience with dislikes was noticing that a video I enjoyed had a lot of downvotes. I can't imagine using the vote count as a way to gauge the actual content of the video. I watch the video, if it sucks, I stop watching. Not gonna put my trust in a thousand monkeys slamming on their keyboards when I have my own faculties to rely on...

1 hour ago, Caffeine Freak said:

In fact, to me it seems likely that the corporate heads at YT actually use public announcements like these as a way of gauging where their userbase is at, rather than committing the immeasurable time and energy it would require to gauge the attitude of such a massive userbase by keeping their ears to the ground and interacting with them in any meaningful way.

Actually, making outrageous public claims/pre-announcements and gauging the responses is a valid and very commonly used tool in politics or in other decision-making processes.

Or, it can be part of a deliberate Nasreddin Hoca-esque ploy (TL; DR: getting you to gratefully accept something bad by backtracking on something even worse).

I think for a lot of people, the issue is not so much the removal of the dislike counter in and of itself, but rather that such a move is as much a statement from YouTube as it is a minor UI change.

There is a widespread perception, one that cuts across political lines, that the corporate and political elites of our society view the common person with a kind of contempt. Moves like this from YouTube feed this perception, and personally I don't think it's entirely incorrect. It also reinforces the notion that YouTube is more interested in getting into bed with Old Media, rather than supporting the creators and their audiences which brought YouTube to the position it is today.

The fact that YouTube is doing this rather than trying to deal with the porn, misinformation, abuse and spammers speaks a lot about where their true priorities lie. I don't think it's unreasonable for ordinary people to get pissed off when big corporations start jerking each other off at the expense of everyone else.

I would like to highlight that the idea of removing the dislike button isn't really the bad part, it's the framing for why they would do so.

blog entry

Quote

We want to create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves. This is just one of many steps we are taking to continue to protect creators from harassment. Our work is not done, and we’ll continue to invest here.

It's a half-measure. Inclusiveness and respectfulness aren't actually Youtube's goals, it's far more likely that someone with political weight leaned on Google because they got upset at some video they posted being bombed into oblivion for being bad. They would never admit this though, so they have to slather some predictable PR reason all over it. They've got all the time in the world to conduct studies about a dislike button and its ties to harassment, but they don't have any time to unfuck the recommendations system that can send you into a white supremacy rabbit hole when you wander into one fringe video? It's laughable, as always.

Anyway, I guess I'll plug invidious and freetube , not as alternatives to Youtube itself, but as much more usable front-ends.

Where's the dislike button on doomworld lmao?

while dislike bombing is most certainly a thing, I'd rather YouTube have worked on their reporting system if they were worried about people getting harassed. I mean, imagine ending up using a Verge tutorial on how to build a computer because you didn't know how bad the tutorial was because it was disliked to hell and back, but you couldn't see it.
and that's the other thing- why not make this optional for YouTubers to choose whether or not it's displayed? They've allowed them to choose to display comments, likes, dislikes, and subscriber count. Why force this particular thing?

I'm not surprised honestly 

This is actually a very stupid move. They don't project small creators with that, they project the corporations

45 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

 

That's the best bit, Arlene. It IS an option and has been for years! It's one of the main points YouTubers responded to them with.

This was one of my first thoughts as well. The thing is, disabling likes and dislikes on a video is often seen as giant flashing sign indicating a channel owner is fragile and can't deal with honest reactions from people. I don't entirely disagree with this assessment, even though dislike bombings are quite obviously real and have been a thing since Youtube has existed.

Still, removing the feature is going to hinder creators who pay attention to their audience reactions, especially smaller, newer creators---not that YT gives a shit about them. I suppose a possible side benefit is that creators will go and spend more time in the comment section, interacting with their audience in order to get a reading on how they feel.

If they’re going to remove the dislikes, they should remove the likes too. They already have the option to do that, so I see no reason why they should allow you to only see the likes. Boo hoo someone got a dislike and it tainted their ego. Get over it. The dislike is for more than just hurting feelings and if you’re that sensitive, turn the likes and dislikes off entirely. Problem solved. Besides, it’s a stupid system anyways. The old star ratings were much more enjoyable to use to rate the videos with. 

If there is one website that actually needs a dislike button, it's Youtube.

Let's use an example: Nintendo's announcement of their new N64/Genesis premium online service. The fact that the video got so many dislikes meant that it was discussed in many articles. It's a quick way to gauge community opinion without having to read two hundred pages on social media.

Now that the dislike button isn't a thing, big corporations don't have to worry about well-deserved backlash on Youtube. In terms of business, having a "this sucks" button can be a good thing.

The CEO must have had some kind of moment and confused everyone's criticism of reddit's dislike button with the non-existant criticism of their own. Or maybe it's all motivated by money or something insane like that. Nah, they are surely doing this because Joe Blow got his feelings hurt when Joe Schmo and his friends disliked his video that one time.

3 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

They all mean "Like", mate. You're overthinking it, you Stupid Bunny! ;^) :^P

lol yep if you hover over each one they all even say "like"! Also when I see a high reaction count I don't generally click to see what percentage clicked which powerup

2 hours ago, Major Arlene said:

I mean, imagine ending up using a Verge tutorial on how to build a computer because you didn't know how bad the tutorial was because it was disliked to hell and back, but you couldn't see it.

This is my main issue. Seeing a high dislike count is a note to take the video content with a grain of salt and maybe check the comments. Of course it's sometimes just an angry downvote brigade, but in any case it's a good reminder to not immediately trust everything you see/hear.

Sure, you could consider yourself superhuman and say "i view all media with a critical eye! behold my rational powers!" but folks with this attitude are often the first ones to get taken for a ride

2 hours ago, Major Arlene said:

while dislike bombing is most certainly a thing, I'd rather YouTube have worked on their reporting system if they were worried about people getting harassed. I mean, imagine ending up using a Verge tutorial on how to build a computer because you didn't know how bad the tutorial was because it was disliked to hell and back, but you couldn't see it.
and that's the other thing- why not make this optional for YouTubers to choose whether or not it's displayed? They've allowed them to choose to display comments, likes, dislikes, and subscriber count. Why force this particular thing?

Exactly. Sure removing dislike button helps against review bombing. But now, stuff like scams, clickbait videos and corporate shenanigans get a free pass.

Instead of removing them completely maybe having the creator decide whether then want them or not on their channel,  but I guess that could present its own set of  problems.

On other news:
Now i can finally upload a video of me hating youtube, with the comments closed, and nobody will ever dislike it!

I win!
Good world!
:D

I don't get it. Why do I still see the dislike counter?

5 hours ago, TelicAx7 said:

If they’re going to remove the dislikes, they should remove the likes too. They already have the option to do that, so I see no reason why they should allow you to only see the likes. Boo hoo someone got a dislike and it tainted their ego. Get over it. The dislike is for more than just hurting feelings and if you’re that sensitive, turn the likes and dislikes off entirely. Problem solved. Besides, it’s a stupid system anyways. The old star ratings were much more enjoyable to use to rate the videos with. 

Absolutely.

7 minutes ago, dmslr said:

I don't get it. Why do I still see the dislike counter?

Because it hasn't happened yet? :-/

I can't see the like/dislike counter anyway because I have a filter list called "YouTube: Yet Even More Pure Video Experience" installed for uBlock Origin that blocks a lot of YouTube annoyances.

6 minutes ago, dmslr said:

I don't get it. Why do I still see the dislike counter?

You do? I can't see the dislike counter now, both in the website and the app

8 minutes ago, HavoX said:

Because it hasn't happened yet? :-/

Maybe. I just assumed it has happened after googling "YouTube removing dislikes" and the first article was "YouTube Has Removed The Dislike Counter - Kotaku".

Also it seems YT works differently in my country, e.g. I can download videos in my app without having a premium status.

@Lol 6yes.

It'd be one thing if this was about removing an outlet for toxicity on the platform and improving the experience for viewers and creators alike. I've seen forums that used to have a downvote option for posts later remove it for that kind of reason. But they're still leaving the option there as something to click, and creators can still see the like/dislike ratio privately? Whoever this change is for, it doesn't seem like it's for the average users' benefit.

5 hours ago, TelicAx7 said:

Besides, it’s a stupid system anyways. The old star ratings were much more enjoyable to use to rate the videos with. 

It allowed for more versatile feedback than a binary like/dislike, but I like to refer to this xkcd classic when it comes to how star ratings really work in practice:

Ultimately the like/dislike system does what stars were actually used for, only in a more straightforward presentation.

I don't wanna give Facebook too much credit for things, but one thing they have that seems to be a step in the right direction for better ratings is the different "reactions" beyond the usual thumbs-up one can tap to convey if they thought something was funny, awesome, sad, pissed them off, etc. It's another way for people to get an impression at a glance of what kind of content they're about to see and how it's been received.

This was probably also likely done by YouTube to prevent announcements & trailers for upcoming movies, TV shows & video games still in production from being dislike bombed before their even released.