YouTube Hides Dislike Counts

[engine]

YouTube has said it'll hide dislike counts to the public, but they will still be able to hit dislike, and creators will still be able to see the dislikes counts in stats.

This move, it says, follows earlier tests and is to reduce "dislike attacks."

[blog.youtube...]

[southernguy]

This move, it says, follows earlier tests and is to reduce "dislike attacks.

Yes, there have been many attacks on unpopular political figures, I guess Google decided they needed to step in and add another layer of censorship. Doesn't bother me cause I hardly use their add-riddled platform anymore.

[engine]

@southernguy, it has zero to do with your suggestion. People have been gaming the system to stop the smaller accounts from getting a foothold, and by hiding the dislikes other users will be able to make their own decision.

[southernguy]

@engine Yes, I agree that the system has been gamed for years, that is why it surprises me that they waited till now to do something about it. This leads me to think it's in line with other recent policies that YouTube has imposed.

[lucy24]

another layer of censorship

Please learn what the word “censorship” means.

[southernguy]

@lucy24

I have and fully understand.

The action of preventing part or the whole of a book, film, work of art, document, or, another kind of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because it is considered to be offensive or harmful, or because it contains information that someone wishes to keep secret.

[Achernar]

I've started to see this modification today, in an incognito window.
So, this renders the like count completely useless.

[koan]

The like system works well 95% of the time but it's definitely vulnerable to attacks from organized extremists. For example, I see decent media segments on the coronavirus get downvoted to near zero by conspiracy theorists on a regular basis.

[Achernar]

Fanboys will massively upvote and others will do the opposite. I see that too on imdb (mainly when some agenda is involved).
The problem here is that upvotes have no meaning/value when there is no downvote count. As pointed out in a thread elsewhere, this will hit hard on most users:
- when using how-to's, how do we know if this is good or still up-do-date.
- how would we be able to know if a video presents bogus info (maybe in the comments, maybe not).

[tangor]

This kind of interaction has ALWAYS been subject to abuse.

Hiding half of it is---well---half as--d.

Whatever value that might have existed is now distorted and probably not useful. Time will tell.

Me? Most times I don't pay attention to these signals, tend to make my own judgements.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I think someone forced Google's hand with a youtube-watch website that, despite not ranking on Google, is gaining traction quickly.. It's even turned up in a few political lawsuits. Youtube had already been erasing dislikes for some political content and it was being noticed

[tangor]

Heh! If you don't like the results, change the method. :)

(Will Twitter do same to prevent ratioing?)

[glitterball]

The latest trend in gaming the YouTube algorithm is to put a howler of a falsehood into the video (usually something that does not take away too much from the main concept), and let the comments section explode. Taking away the downvote count does nothing to discourage this practice (maybe Google want this to encourage engagement no matter the cost).

[FranticFish]

YouTube needs to protect users from being influenced to dislike a video because lots of other people already have.

OK, if that's a thing (and I despair that it does indeed appear to be a thing) they why not do the same thing for likes?

[tangor]

Money.

And other things, most of which are political or correctness or some other thing. :)

[mack]

With smaller accounts trolling is always going to be an issue, many users have been hiding their like/dislike count for some time. I personally don't think this will make a lot of difference. The same people will hit dislike regardless. Even although it will not be visible to the viewers, it will still be visible to the creator (within YouTube Studio) and will still play it's part (if any) in the YT Algo.

I think a better approach would be to have a scoring system where a "like" puts it up and a "dislike" puts it down (similar to what Reddit do).

Mack.

[Achernar]

A scoring system is fine when the number of voters is limited. With potentially millions of voters, how to you know if a score of 10000 is 10001 up and 1 down, or 210000 up and 200000 down?

The current system was fine. Even if played with, (by fans or haters) the info was there. Now there will be no info. And if likes are still displayed it'll be false information; crooks will thrive now.

[mack]

I'm not sure displaying the numbers was ever providing any real value. Today with more and more people viewing YouTube on TVs through Smart sets or plug in devices like Roku or Firestick. It does seem a bit pointless.

Mack.

[Achernar]

It means a lot for any informational video (how-to's, ...). You could tell its value from the quantity of downvotes.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

What a mess these layers of arbitrary rules are creating!

[aristotle]

In my opinion they should get rid of both of them. Not just hide them, but eliminate them completely. That's the only way to stop the abuse.

For that matter, I don't know why a like button was implemented here. How many like votes did tedster have?

Edited to add an afterthought (the last sentence)

[tangor]

tedster, alas, was pre-voting and will never get the shine deserved for all the years and kind advice.

That said, voting is a form of audience engagement and is as important as serp ranks and page placement...

[aristotle]

voting is a form of audience engagement

Yes that is certtainly a benefit.

In my view the problem is the stream of new members who come here and repeatedly give each other "like votes" for daily rants against google and mistaken explanations for why their sites have lost traffic.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

OH WOW, I found a new song suggestion on YOUTUBE.

It says "Rebecca Black - Friday" has 156 million views and a million likes, it must be an awesome song.

Here, let me tell my ad exec to get right on advertising on that song page!

/sarcasm off, nothing against Rebecca but the song had what, 100m dislikes as well?

If you have likes you must have dislikes.

[Achernar]

This is the right example. I've seen someone else mention it elsewhere.
It must be famous (not).

With the userscript the unlike count appears:
Likes: 1.3M - Dislikes: 4,016,358

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I'm seeing more and more useless(to me) videos with inaccurate english titles and one sentence of english at the start of the video that promptly switches to a language I don't speak.

I must not be important enough not to treat this way.