Youtube is now removing the dislike feature

[SilentPony]

Here's a question. Does the like/dislike ration affect the ads that run, or the level of monetization allowed on a video?
Like we know a large percentage of subs to a Youtube channel are paid for bots, and technically huge channels are defrauding their sponsors by charging them X amount for their millions of subs but having only a small fraction of that actual eyes to watch.
But does the like/dislike ratio change the rates Youtube channels can charge or get paid?

My thoughts here are this change has nothing to do with optics, or political discourse or helping growing channels, and all to do with paying channels less. Someone at Youtube thinks this is a money saver, pure and simple, and I'd love to know the actual goal of this change.

 

[Asita]

I think you misunderstand something. Corporations are not a single entity. You're talking about the perspective of someone working in a certain job within a corporation, someone who is meant to analyze data. Those people aren't the ones that push for this kind of thing.

Spec? I'm not talking theoretical stuff here. I'm literally talking about what I do for a living. Part of that job is communicating this information in broad terms to other parts of the business. Let me be perfectly clear here: nobody with a business mindset would be pushing for this kind of thing because it's free market research, and keeping your finger on the pulse of public opinion is invaluable for marketing, communication, public relations, and business strategy. if something is not performing well, you want to know immediately so you can determine what - if anything - you need to do for damage control.

You are right in that I'm speaking from the position of someone working with this data, but you're wrong in assuming that the data and the insights we glean from it isn't shared with the rest of the company; sharing that information is the whole damn point.

Didn't know they could. Which only begs the question why disabling dislikes does anything. This can only be for manipulative algorithmic purposes, I'd assume.


I'm not sure how telling dislikes are, though. I mean, consider how many people sit through an entire video's content... just to ultimately dislike it. I've started hundreds of videos and stopped them after a minute or two and they weren't even worth my time to officially dislike them. It takes a second to dislike a video. It also takes a second to like a video, but a like is more telling since it means someone ostensibly sat through it and enjoyed it enough to throw their hat in the ring of "yes, I want to see more stuff like that." I'm probably what most would considered a liberal; I could go on YouTube right now and click on as many conservative videos as I can find and dislike them within 5 seconds of the video even playing. Conversely, as a liberal, I could find as many liberal videos that align with my thinking, and I'd probably watch those videos in their entirety to appreciate the echo chamber of my beliefs, and I'd "like" them. Point being, I think dislikes should be less heavily weighted than likes for the simple fact that they can be easily weaponized.

You could, yes, but as I said, it's "another point of data", not the point of data. Much like most other data points, they're much less useful in isolation and bereft of context. Seeing that some rando disliked the video means very little on its own. Seeing, however, that there was a dislike spike on during the week of <insert week here>, during which time you saw a bunch of first-time viewers with a high bounce rate? That's a good indication that something other than the video was the cause. If your video is 10 minutes long and you see that it has a bunch of dislikes and the average view time is 4:32? That gives you a good starting point to figure out where you lost your audience and that the problem wasn't that you simply bored them.

While it does make it sound more glamorous than it deserves, market research and data analytics can be likened to detective work. A single clue will rarely solve the case, you have to be able to see how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

--

Regardless, I did some digging and it turns out that this is a moot point and everyone's barking up the wrong tree. YouTube is not, in fact, removing the dislike button. They are just making it so that the dislike count is not visible to casual viewers. https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/update-to-youtube/

You can still dislike a video, your likes and dislikes will still work to tune your recommendations, and creators still have the same data. It's just that when you pull up, for instance, the Neutral Response video, you will not see whether or not it's lopsided 1000 points in one direction.

 

[Agema]

I've never understood the need for it. If I'm going to dislike something, I won't click on it to watch in the first place. If I hate something so much I'd watch it just to "dislike" it, well its one of those thing's I find so objectionable that I'm likely to watch it to comb for a violation to report. If I then don't find a violation to report it for, I slap myself for adding to their views in the first place... and move on with my life. Then again, I click "like" on about .001% of Youtube videos I actually watch and enjoy... so I don't see much use out of any engagement tools.

I am pretty sure I have literally never liked a YouTube video. In fact, I never even log onto my YouTube account, unless I'm putting up a video (none of which are publically available), and that one time I left a comment on creator's vid where he was having a problem finding something in a computer game and I thought I'd be nice and tell him.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Spec? I'm not talking theoretical stuff here. I'm literally talking about what I do for a living. Part of that job is communicating this information in broad terms to other parts of the business. Let me be perfectly clear here: nobody with a business mindset would be pushing for this kind of thing because it's free market research, and keeping your finger on the pulse of public opinion is invaluable for marketing, communication, public relations, and business strategy. if something is not performing well, you want to know immediately so you can determine what - if anything - you need to do for damage control.

You are right in that I'm speaking from the position of someone working with this data, but you're wrong in assuming that the data and the insights we glean from it isn't shared with the rest of the company; sharing that information is the whole damn point.

No, I completely understand what you're saying. I also completely agree that that information is invaluable and makes the company you work for, better. The issue is size of the company and how far removed the people making decisions are from you.

As an example, there was a long time conspiracy that The Lion King ripped off Kimba the White Lion. When The Lion King released people started accusing Disney of "stealing the idea". The people that worked on the movie have said openly that they gained inspiration from Kimba the White Lion but anyone that's seen the two can tell that while the setting may be similar, the stories and plotlines are extremely different. However, once Disney was accused of this, the lawyers had it so the official statement was that the people working on the movie had never heard of Kimba the White Lion before. Because what the lawyers see as the best thing to do is to deny everything so they don't get sued even though the people that worked on the film think the best thing is to state that they gained inspiration but didn't copy anything 1 to 1.

This is the issue with giant companies. Person A doing their job can think something is very useful or critical for doing their job while Person B who's higher up the totem pole has no actual understanding of this because their job is far removed from Person A's job and yet they decide that after seeing, say, huge downvotes on their advertising videos, decides to make moves to influence Youtube to remove those downvotes. I work for a small company and this kind of thing happens where we get instructed to do something which we know is inefficient but we can't explain that to the higher up because we're supposed to just do what they say.

In a perfectly reasonable and logical world, this wouldn't happen, and people would keep out of making decisions on things they don't know anything about, but we don't live in such a world. People are unreasonable and do dumb things to their own detriment. Just because you share information with the rest of the company on a piece of paper or a file sent through an E-mail doesn't mean the person that reads that E-mail actually gets what you're saying or understands it fully. This isn't special to business, this is something true of everything us humans do. Like WW1 with how people that were miles and miles away from the frontline would be making command decisions that got thousands of people killed for no benefit because they had no first hand knowledge of what the conditions actually were on the frontline.

 

[Gyrobot]

Spec? I'm not talking theoretical stuff here. I'm literally talking about what I do for a living. Part of that job is communicating this information in broad terms to other parts of the business. Let me be perfectly clear here: nobody with a business mindset would be pushing for this kind of thing because it's free market research, and keeping your finger on the pulse of public opinion is invaluable for marketing, communication, public relations, and business strategy. if something is not performing well, you want to know immediately so you can determine what - if anything - you need to do for damage control.

You are right in that I'm speaking from the position of someone working with this data, but you're wrong in assuming that the data and the insights we glean from it isn't shared with the rest of the company; sharing that information is the whole damn point.



You could, yes, but as I said, it's "another point of data", not the point of data. Much like most other data points, they're much less useful in isolation and bereft of context. Seeing that some rando disliked the video means very little on its own. Seeing, however, that there was a dislike spike on during the week of <insert week here>, during which time you saw a bunch of first-time viewers with a high bounce rate? That's a good indication that something other than the video was the cause. If your video is 10 minutes long and you see that it has a bunch of dislikes and the average view time is 4:32? That gives you a good starting point to figure out where you lost your audience and that the problem wasn't that you simply bored them.

While it does make it sound more glamorous than it deserves, market research and data analytics can be likened to detective work. A single clue will rarely solve the case, you have to be able to see how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

--

Regardless, I did some digging and it turns out that this is a moot point and everyone's barking up the wrong tree. YouTube is not, in fact, removing the dislike button. They are just making it so that the dislike count is not visible to casual viewers. https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/update-to-youtube/

You can still dislike a video, your likes and dislikes will still work to tune your recommendations, and creators still have the same data. It's just that when you pull up, for instance, the Neutral Response video, you will not see whether or not it's lopsided 1000 points in one direction.

Still a good chunk of internet humor is dying with it, first YT Kids and now this. We will live in a post joke world and we will be woke and happy.

 

[BrawlMan]

Still a good chunk of internet humor is dying with it, first YT Kids and now this. We will live in a post joke world and we will be woke and happy.

You must love living in your own fantasy world don't you?

​

 

[MrCalavera]

Still a good chunk of internet humor is dying with it, first YT Kids and now this. We will live in a post joke world and we will be woke and happy.

Mmm yes a very happy and utopian society that will succesfully eradicate *checks list* humor.

 

[Gyrobot]

You must love living in your own fantasy world don't you?

​

Hurr Durr.

It's the bleak flaccid cyberpunk future we all live in right now

Mmm yes a very happy and utopian society that will succesfully eradicate *checks list* humor.

Most forms of humor has been deemed offensive and offenders be cancelled. So yes we do live in a post joke world

 

[BrawlMan]

It's the bleak flaccid cyberpunk future we all I live in right now.

Good for you.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Not really, removing a dislike button isn’t really gonna stop trolls from harassing someone.

The button will still be there just not a number on it lol

It does remove easy avenues of attack which is the main motivation of removing downvotes.

How many times I get Downvoted because I provided unpopular takes on a topic elsewhere

How many times does attempts at activism and corporate responsibility get Downvoted by people who wants the irresponsible status quo to continue?

By taking one step at a time, we can detoxify the internet and bring an end to the wild west.

How will that work when you can no longer downvote toxicity?

Like this has sort of shades of the 4chan vs Tumblr war. All it does it make sure people are in their little bubbles until some activist lot decides to try and fight some-one else so goes to their bubble and starts shit then start crying about how the other side were meant to sit there and take it when they retaliate. You're not getting rid of the idiots who will run to post peoples dox in said peoples comment section (like a certain activist professor did to a certain youtuber). You're honestly creating a way such hat the relatively contained toxicity of mere dislikes could become far worse toxicity as communities clash.

It Still eliminated an aspect of meme culture though. No more sick jokes or jokes in general on children shows

They probably just moved it offsite. That's all it did for youtube, shift the problem along to somewhere else

 

[Gyrobot]

If it is out of site it means lack of publicity, lack of publicity is the same as being silenced. No one but their circlejerk can exist anywhere but in an isolated pocket that is doomed to die out.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Here's a question. Does the like/dislike ration affect the ads that run, or the level of monetization allowed on a video?
Like we know a large percentage of subs to a Youtube channel are paid for bots, and technically huge channels are defrauding their sponsors by charging them X amount for their millions of subs but having only a small fraction of that actual eyes to watch.
But does the like/dislike ratio change the rates Youtube channels can charge or get paid?

My thoughts here are this change has nothing to do with optics, or political discourse or helping growing channels, and all to do with paying channels less. Someone at Youtube thinks this is a money saver, pure and simple, and I'd love to know the actual goal of this change.

Short answer: We don't know.

Long Answer: Like vs Dislike is all engagement as far as anyone is aware so both count the actual useful info is the engagement ratio which is how many people click like or dislike which shows engagement and I'm betting on some level youtube measure when the like / dislike happens or the % of video watched when it happens. Like vs Dislike then being used to analyse a user and determine probability they're real vs a bot.

From what I've heard sponsors care more for view counts these days and from the average video view counts they estimate a certain % of those will be bots or something but it would be expensive to consistently bot a channel.

Spec? I'm not talking theoretical stuff here. I'm literally talking about what I do for a living. Part of that job is communicating this information in broad terms to other parts of the business. Let me be perfectly clear here: nobody with a business mindset would be pushing for this kind of thing because it's free market research, and keeping your finger on the pulse of public opinion is invaluable for marketing, communication, public relations, and business strategy. if something is not performing well, you want to know immediately so you can determine what - if anything - you need to do for damage control.

You are right in that I'm speaking from the position of someone working with this data, but you're wrong in assuming that the data and the insights we glean from it isn't shared with the rest of the company; sharing that information is the whole damn point.

Ok to re-phrase what Spectre said and bring in other stuff and to explain stuff.

The company will still know like vs dislike numbers.
The argument is the idea of tribal dislike pushes happening on content because people report the dislikes are happening so others join in because they're part of or wih to be part of said tribes. So for example people disliking early Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle footage and promo stuff because "It's sexist for Karen Gillan to be dressed in shorts" see all these people disliking think so..... with the implication of if you're against sexism you'll go downvote it too because hey all these people already have.

In regards to advertising material (which you've stated as you job and I'm taking you as the expert on) yes that feedback is great to know what works and what does and you'll still get it. The thing being this move may come from the area of community management or "experience management". I think it was Moviebob who said in a video a fair few years ago now there are literal companies popping up in Hollywood specialising in managing fan reception and basically trying to spin reception to gain positive results. It could be something dumb like them buying lots of seats to showing then refunding them after tipping off the press about massive numbers of reserved seats for certain films. It was a trend for a while that films were reporting "The Most pre-bookings ever for any film" which happened with quite a few Disney / MUC films and people spotted the trend, the perception was there was a lot of people wanting to see it so clearly the mob are right better go find out why they're right and join them don't want to be left behind sort of thing. There was also reports (from a Star Wars Social media manage no less) who revealed the reason Star Wars official accounts had backed off from posting ReyLo content was because the ReyLo demographic were being seen as toxic because they were reacting negatively towards any other content and calling to #Bringbackbensolo and creative a negative engagement environment in the replies and the only stuff they were positive with was ReyLo content thus other people were seeing negativity or getting a negative attitude towards the Star Wars brand or fans because they were seeing people being negative in the replies.

To put it another way it's the Yahtzee Croshaw man covered in shit argument. No-one wants the man covered in shit to agree with them because he's a man covered in shit and if the man covered in shit is presenting themselves as the face of some fandom plenty of people fairly new to the fandom will see the man covered in shit and go "Yeh I want nothing to do with this fandom if that's who it is now".

There is a proper term for it other than tribal tendencies it's basically a sort of peer pressure thing but it's the same phenomena studied in relation to riots were one one person breaks the law or starts looting others will lose their inhibitions somewhat that stopped them from doing it thus then they do it which causes others to see more people doing it and join in. It's normalisation of the action or something like that. Like basically companies are worried people will see the dislike on a video and go "Most people dislike this and because I'm a drone who doesn't think for himself I shall follow the masses even if without the dislike ratio I may have given it more of a chance but I wanted to go with the crowd and not be excluded from 'the tribe' by acting against consensus"

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

If it is out of site it means lack of publicity, lack of publicity is the same as being silenced. No one but their circlejerk can exist anywhere but in an isolated pocket that is doomed to die out.

Yes and no you see if the place becomes "Known" for something it spreads round.

As an example because I think enough people have heard of it Stormfront the literal Neo-Nazi site that has / had (I dunno I don't follow things around it or care enough to find out) a forum which attracted a lot of Neo-Nazis to it. The people out there just subtly direct people they think are interested to that place or just from the infamy of the place people join there.

Communities don't die out anymore as long as people can find them like how Tumblr had for a while a growing shoplifting community (no really) and it only collapsed when others found out about it and shone a light on it. But it only happened because some-one randomly stumbled upon it but people searching shoplifting on tumblr wanted to know about it or engage in it and then found said community.

 

[Seanchaidh]

dislike

 

[Caperf]

this usually follows some video that got downvoted to oblivion and ced owner of video is suing youtube...

 

[BrawlMan]

​

 

[bluegate]

Big fucking whoop

 

[Schadrach]

Just feeds more fuel to the propaganda machine, by totally removing signs of dissenting opinion.

Which is the point. Too many "inconvenient" videos got too much dissent to allow it to be known going forward. Now if you want your ad, product launch or political tirade (or combination of more than one of those) to be seen as popular and not at all opposed you just have to buy a bunch of bots to upvote it and strictly moderate or disable the comments.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Which is the point. Too many "inconvenient" videos got too much dissent to allow it to be known going forward. Now if you want your ad, product launch or political tirade (or combination of more than one of those) to be seen as popular and not at all opposed you just have to buy a bunch of bots to upvote it and strictly moderate or disable the comments.

Like the Whitehouse official youtube channel videos maybe .........

 

[Gergar12]

I know no elite watches this forum, but if your an elite, or want to be. You have to have thick skin, it comes with being powerful. You will have people attack you in the most vicious ways with their free speech. You can ignore it, fight it, but you cannot censor it. That's not how democracy works. But people around the world, and in the US, and now on Youtube think otherwise. Because these people don't believe in democracy. I know CNN/Bill Maher likes to attack left in places like Berkley, and so fore for censoring Ben Shapiro, and comedians, and I agree. But if there is a wide mile-long chasm between death threats, physical attacks, and calling someone racist correctly or incorrectly or unfunny using implied means.

When I got attacked for saying we should have an arms race in this forum, I didn't go straight to Nick afterward and demand censorship, and I don't have that thick of skin. I feel like I am a baby boomer, or Gen X saying back in my day we had democracy and people saying I disagree but would defend your right to speak to the death, etc.

What the fuck happened to US democracy, and why are people so intolerant of words. For the record, I don't want wild west of the internet with silk road black market sellers, and people doing illegal, but most importantly immoral, dangerous bullshit. But I draw the line on the free speech of opinions, and the right to dislike something, and freedom of expression. I would argue the internet is some ways less free than it was in the 2010s.