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Hopefully this brings back the dislike button. Intellectually I know a change of CEO shouldn't/wouldn't impact a feature like this, but I am still annoyed at it

Hopefully this brings back the dislike button. Intellectually I know a change of CEO shouldn't/wouldn't impact a feature like this, but I am still annoyed at its absence and find it makes YouTube substantially less useful. Edit: I understand the dislike button is still there, I misspoke. But for my purposes of seeing like/dislike ratio, it might as well not be there.

aliqot 4y ago
http://returnyoutubedislike.com/ http://returnyoutubedislike.com/
- queuebert 4y ago
  Do these extensions track the dislikes externally, or do they somehow bring it back on YouTube's side?
  - fkarg 4y ago
    they track externally and extrapolate, so it's skewed based on audience (they also made a 'backup' from when yt still showed them) still, I found it more useful than not
kerpotgh 4y ago
Completely disagree. Getting rid of that button has significantly cleaned up the associated comments sections. I’ve also noticed a general improvement in my recommendations. Great move imo.
- ciberado 4y ago
  Can anyone please explain me why the parent comment deserves being voted down?
  - gowld 4y ago
    It's a bizarre assertion without evidence.
    - kerpotgh 4y ago
      There is evidence, it’s just anecdotal and every contrary comment is the same.
- rolobio 4y ago
  How can you tell when a video contains something misleading? For example, I struggle to find quality DIY videos without the dislikes warning me away. Dislikes are a great way for the community to clean house.
  - robmusial 4y ago
    DIY videos are my primary concern on this as well. It is also why browser extensions don't help me too much because my use case is usually in the garage, half way through a project having issues, on my phone furiously trying to get a solution to the problem I'm having. I had this exact scenario yesterday trying to remove rounded/stripped lug nuts off my wheels. It would've been very helpful to be able to see if the video I was watching had 1000 likes but 6000 dislikes to know if what I was about to do was advisable or not. Yes, I read the comments and it ended up being a simple fix with the right tools, but the like/dislike ratio is a great way to filter dangerous/dumb/unhelpful videos.
    - khazhoux 4y ago
      Isn't YouTube already pushing down the bad-ratio videos, though? I know it's not the same as you being able to filter the counts yourself... but the data is being used to try to hide crap.
  - 10xDev 4y ago
    Comments and general channel credibility. If channel deletes comments or is often misleading people will likely catch on and avoid.
    - strgrd 4y ago
      ...how can you tell if a channel deletes comments?
  - khazhoux 4y ago
    But YouTube is already using the dislikes to push content down, it's just not showing you the count (nor does it show you the many-other engagement signals it uses for its rankings and recommendations). Personally, I see the removal of visible dislikes as a net positive. They were used to rain down negativity and meanness on well-intentioned videos. I think YouTube is now a happier place when a kid's crappy singing video gets quietly ranked down, versus being shown to have 34 classmates (or 34,000 strangers) that hated it.
- 10xDev 4y ago
  The dislike crowd just came in and demonstrated exactly why dislikes were removed all while trying to defend their position.
- robmusial 4y ago
  I'm not expert on YouTube's algorithms, how did getting rid of visible dislikes help improve recommendations? I could see it having an impact on the comment section because rather than just dislike and move on people feel compelled to say what is wrong with the video, but I could also see the opposite effect where instead of just disliking and moving on now people spam the comment section with unhelpful attacks on the video/creator.
  - kerpotgh 4y ago
    Because people would brigade videos they politically disagreed with even if it was good content. I’m seeing those videos now. Taking away dislikes has a chilling effect on brigading.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  There's a lot more to YouTube than political videos. I'd estimate over 90% of "reviews" for exercise equipment are automated videos based on data scraped from Amazon. These used to get downvoted heavily, so you could quickly see which videos were worth watching and which ones were created by bots. Now you have to slog through a dozen bot videos to find even one created by a human, giving their actual review. But fuck those of us who use YouTube for something other than political porn because some politician got their feelings hurt by a high dislike count.
ajorgensen 4y ago
I've been using this chrome extension [1] and actually forgot they removed the dislike button. [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/return-youtube-dislike-bu/hkipgenlhedgfkjlajomnhaiafnhnjjf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/return-youtube-dis...
- joenathanone 4y ago
  It's just made-up or out of date data, the feature has been removed, not just hidden.
  - ajorgensen 4y ago
    ah, good point. I thought when this originally came out the data was still available via api call but it appears thats not the case anymore, or possibly never was. From the FAQ > Where does the extension get its data? > A combination of archived data from before the offical YouTube dislike API shut down, and extrapolated extension user behavior.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    It's not just made up, it tracks downvotes from extension users and combines them with a historical database. And I think some creators share new info with the database to help the accuracy.
    - progbits 4y ago
      Creators can only share own counts and would be heavily incentivized to lower their dislike count, no? How is this supposed to work?
      - bugfix 4y ago
        Many videos had the dislike count collected by the extension and stored before YouTube completely removed the counter from the videos. That number is now combined with dislikes sent by the users. New videos will only show dislikes sent by people using the extension. There's no way to know the real number anymore.
msikora 4y ago
There is a chrome plugin that brings the dislikes back.
sparrish 4y ago
Are you missing the dislike button? I still see it on Youtube and I'm not running any plugins.
- sadjad 4y ago
  The button is still there, you just don't see the number of dislikes without a plugin.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Is it? I see in the network requests where the "likes" button data is returned, but not the dislikes. It's possible I just can't find it though - there's a lot of data in a lot of shapes.
    - gowld 4y ago
      The dislike count is from an external tracker, not YouTube's own data.
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        That makes way more sense, but seems like it's a useless feature. I would assume that in that case it would be dislikes from the add-on (or some sort of federated dislike space?), which is really just going to tell you the opinions of people who like disliking things so much they downloaded an add-ons just to see others down-vote it as well.
jmyeet 4y ago
My experience in this space is you would be surprised how many thing slike this only exist because of as few as one person wants it to be that way. It's not even the leader necessary. A mid-level VP can have an outsized impact just based on their area of responsibility. It can be purely emotional too, no data whatsoever. If there is data it's just selectively chosen to support the preconceived view. It literally happens all the time. Just look at the changes to the Macbook following Johy Ive's departure or even the iOS UI changes following Forstall's departure. In the latter case, the removal of skeuomorphic design was so impactful Apple engineers called it "de-Forstall-ation". In this case, I see it being big brands pushing for the removal of dislike button. They simply don't want to be dislike-bombed for doing something unpopular. That's it. So I wouldn't bet on Wijicki leaving impacts this.
BitwiseFool 4y ago
The stated reason for getting rid of dislike visibility was very suspicious to me. While I don't deny that targeted harassment and bandwagoning with dislikes on certain channels/videos happens, there's no way it was happening frequently enough to warrant removing the feature from all videos. I saw no reason why individual creators couldn't stick with hiding the controls on a per-video or per-channel basis. Removing the dislike count takes away a valuable indicator of low quality and/or time wasting videos. Yes, it has false positives on charged topics, but I use it to help determine if an intriguing recommendation or search result is actually worthwhile or just clickbait. I suspect YouTube was pleased to remove the like/dislike visibility because it would boost engagement metrics. I assume any concerns about quality or the viewing experience are secondary or considered inconsequential. Edit: They removed the dislike visibility, not the dislike button.
- TchoBeer 4y ago
  I've never really found the like/dislike buttons useful, and tbh they could get rid of ratings altogether and not much would change for me.
  - stuckinhell 4y ago
    Just a counter opinion, I find them fairly useful. Not 100% useful, but more often then not very useful.
  - Minor49er 4y ago
    As someone who looks up tutorials on various pieces of software, the dislike ratio was a pretty good indicator as to whether or not a particular video would help me do what the title of it says without me having to sit or scrub through the whole thing
  - z3c0 4y ago
    Thanks to the idea of disliking as a meme, the ratings are essentially meaningless. An overwhelmingly disliked video is probably worth watching, if for the humor alone.
- 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dustedcodes 4y ago
Wow only now I noticed that the dislike button disappeared. That's a terrible decision. All social media should have dislike buttons. To many people with large following think they are clever because they only ever see likes and retweets, but if we could downvote/dislike some of their idiot comments on Twitter the world would be a better place.
toddmorey 4y ago
My hope is that coming AI can be used to help better discern and classify content. Essentially, "prewatch" videos and help filter spam. I would love to see incentives for creators reset towards making quality content rather than sensationalized content. So, so fatigued on the stupid thumbnails with surprised faces and shocking claims and they are everywhere from home repair guides to physics tutorials.
drevil-v2 4y ago
I am curious - Why shouldn't a CEO impact a feature like this?

aliqot 4y ago

http://returnyoutubedislike.com/ http://returnyoutubedislike.com/

queuebert 4y ago
Do these extensions track the dislikes externally, or do they somehow bring it back on YouTube's side?
- fkarg 4y ago
  they track externally and extrapolate, so it's skewed based on audience (they also made a 'backup' from when yt still showed them) still, I found it more useful than not

kerpotgh 4y ago

Completely disagree. Getting rid of that button has significantly cleaned up the associated comments sections. I’ve also noticed a general improvement in my recommendations. Great move imo.

ciberado 4y ago
Can anyone please explain me why the parent comment deserves being voted down?
- gowld 4y ago
  It's a bizarre assertion without evidence.
  - kerpotgh 4y ago
    There is evidence, it’s just anecdotal and every contrary comment is the same.
rolobio 4y ago
How can you tell when a video contains something misleading? For example, I struggle to find quality DIY videos without the dislikes warning me away. Dislikes are a great way for the community to clean house.
- robmusial 4y ago
  DIY videos are my primary concern on this as well. It is also why browser extensions don't help me too much because my use case is usually in the garage, half way through a project having issues, on my phone furiously trying to get a solution to the problem I'm having. I had this exact scenario yesterday trying to remove rounded/stripped lug nuts off my wheels. It would've been very helpful to be able to see if the video I was watching had 1000 likes but 6000 dislikes to know if what I was about to do was advisable or not. Yes, I read the comments and it ended up being a simple fix with the right tools, but the like/dislike ratio is a great way to filter dangerous/dumb/unhelpful videos.
  - khazhoux 4y ago
    Isn't YouTube already pushing down the bad-ratio videos, though? I know it's not the same as you being able to filter the counts yourself... but the data is being used to try to hide crap.
- 10xDev 4y ago
  Comments and general channel credibility. If channel deletes comments or is often misleading people will likely catch on and avoid.
  - strgrd 4y ago
    ...how can you tell if a channel deletes comments?
- khazhoux 4y ago
  But YouTube is already using the dislikes to push content down, it's just not showing you the count (nor does it show you the many-other engagement signals it uses for its rankings and recommendations). Personally, I see the removal of visible dislikes as a net positive. They were used to rain down negativity and meanness on well-intentioned videos. I think YouTube is now a happier place when a kid's crappy singing video gets quietly ranked down, versus being shown to have 34 classmates (or 34,000 strangers) that hated it.
10xDev 4y ago
The dislike crowd just came in and demonstrated exactly why dislikes were removed all while trying to defend their position.
robmusial 4y ago
I'm not expert on YouTube's algorithms, how did getting rid of visible dislikes help improve recommendations? I could see it having an impact on the comment section because rather than just dislike and move on people feel compelled to say what is wrong with the video, but I could also see the opposite effect where instead of just disliking and moving on now people spam the comment section with unhelpful attacks on the video/creator.
- kerpotgh 4y ago
  Because people would brigade videos they politically disagreed with even if it was good content. I’m seeing those videos now. Taking away dislikes has a chilling effect on brigading.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
There's a lot more to YouTube than political videos. I'd estimate over 90% of "reviews" for exercise equipment are automated videos based on data scraped from Amazon. These used to get downvoted heavily, so you could quickly see which videos were worth watching and which ones were created by bots. Now you have to slog through a dozen bot videos to find even one created by a human, giving their actual review. But fuck those of us who use YouTube for something other than political porn because some politician got their feelings hurt by a high dislike count.

ajorgensen 4y ago

I've been using this chrome extension [1] and actually forgot they removed the dislike button. [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/return-youtube-dislike-bu/hkipgenlhedgfkjlajomnhaiafnhnjjf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/return-youtube-dis...

joenathanone 4y ago
It's just made-up or out of date data, the feature has been removed, not just hidden.
- ajorgensen 4y ago
  ah, good point. I thought when this originally came out the data was still available via api call but it appears thats not the case anymore, or possibly never was. From the FAQ > Where does the extension get its data? > A combination of archived data from before the offical YouTube dislike API shut down, and extrapolated extension user behavior.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  It's not just made up, it tracks downvotes from extension users and combines them with a historical database. And I think some creators share new info with the database to help the accuracy.
  - progbits 4y ago
    Creators can only share own counts and would be heavily incentivized to lower their dislike count, no? How is this supposed to work?
    - bugfix 4y ago
      Many videos had the dislike count collected by the extension and stored before YouTube completely removed the counter from the videos. That number is now combined with dislikes sent by the users. New videos will only show dislikes sent by people using the extension. There's no way to know the real number anymore.

msikora 4y ago

There is a chrome plugin that brings the dislikes back.

sparrish 4y ago

Are you missing the dislike button? I still see it on Youtube and I'm not running any plugins.

sadjad 4y ago
The button is still there, you just don't see the number of dislikes without a plugin.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Is it? I see in the network requests where the "likes" button data is returned, but not the dislikes. It's possible I just can't find it though - there's a lot of data in a lot of shapes.
  - gowld 4y ago
    The dislike count is from an external tracker, not YouTube's own data.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      That makes way more sense, but seems like it's a useless feature. I would assume that in that case it would be dislikes from the add-on (or some sort of federated dislike space?), which is really just going to tell you the opinions of people who like disliking things so much they downloaded an add-ons just to see others down-vote it as well.

jmyeet 4y ago

My experience in this space is you would be surprised how many thing slike this only exist because of as few as one person wants it to be that way. It's not even the leader necessary. A mid-level VP can have an outsized impact just based on their area of responsibility. It can be purely emotional too, no data whatsoever. If there is data it's just selectively chosen to support the preconceived view. It literally happens all the time. Just look at the changes to the Macbook following Johy Ive's departure or even the iOS UI changes following Forstall's departure. In the latter case, the removal of skeuomorphic design was so impactful Apple engineers called it "de-Forstall-ation". In this case, I see it being big brands pushing for the removal of dislike button. They simply don't want to be dislike-bombed for doing something unpopular. That's it. So I wouldn't bet on Wijicki leaving impacts this.

BitwiseFool 4y ago

The stated reason for getting rid of dislike visibility was very suspicious to me. While I don't deny that targeted harassment and bandwagoning with dislikes on certain channels/videos happens, there's no way it was happening frequently enough to warrant removing the feature from all videos. I saw no reason why individual creators couldn't stick with hiding the controls on a per-video or per-channel basis. Removing the dislike count takes away a valuable indicator of low quality and/or time wasting videos. Yes, it has false positives on charged topics, but I use it to help determine if an intriguing recommendation or search result is actually worthwhile or just clickbait. I suspect YouTube was pleased to remove the like/dislike visibility because it would boost engagement metrics. I assume any concerns about quality or the viewing experience are secondary or considered inconsequential. Edit: They removed the dislike visibility, not the dislike button.

TchoBeer 4y ago
I've never really found the like/dislike buttons useful, and tbh they could get rid of ratings altogether and not much would change for me.
- stuckinhell 4y ago
  Just a counter opinion, I find them fairly useful. Not 100% useful, but more often then not very useful.
- Minor49er 4y ago
  As someone who looks up tutorials on various pieces of software, the dislike ratio was a pretty good indicator as to whether or not a particular video would help me do what the title of it says without me having to sit or scrub through the whole thing
- z3c0 4y ago
  Thanks to the idea of disliking as a meme, the ratings are essentially meaningless. An overwhelmingly disliked video is probably worth watching, if for the humor alone.
4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dustedcodes 4y ago

Wow only now I noticed that the dislike button disappeared. That's a terrible decision. All social media should have dislike buttons. To many people with large following think they are clever because they only ever see likes and retweets, but if we could downvote/dislike some of their idiot comments on Twitter the world would be a better place.

toddmorey 4y ago

My hope is that coming AI can be used to help better discern and classify content. Essentially, "prewatch" videos and help filter spam. I would love to see incentives for creators reset towards making quality content rather than sensationalized content. So, so fatigued on the stupid thumbnails with surprised faces and shocking claims and they are everywhere from home repair guides to physics tutorials.

drevil-v2 4y ago

I am curious - Why shouldn't a CEO impact a feature like this?