Woz wanted an open hardware platform. He co-created Apple, but got silenced by his co-founder. Yeah, and, so, what? Just because a co-founder has an opinion just means another person with an opinion.
What is this co-founder's current position at YT? "When the site was introduced in February 2005, Karim agreed not to be an employee and simply be an informal adviser, and that he was focusing on his studies."--wikipedia So, not very influential.
Again, it's just another person's opinion.
* Also from wiki: "In November of 2021, Jawed updated the description of "Me at the zoo" to "When every YouTuber agrees that removing dislikes is a stupid idea, it probably is. Try again, YouTube ".
What people? Fellow tech nerds? Of course, he has a cult-like following of people. Apple decision makers? Hardly. I love Woz, but I'm just looking at this realistically and not dream-a-dream-with-rainbows-and-unicorns level of what-if outlooks.
People build up this mystique around founders/co-founders that borders on religious. I don't drink that kool-aid. I've been in/around too many cults in my life to fall into that trap.
Mr Wozniak is a thoughtful, intelligent guy who can clearly articulate his position on many topics and the reasoning behind it. Jawed Karim says it is stupid to remove dislikes.
When you sell the product you co-founded, you no longer get to have say. You can have opinions, but those opinions are no more important than those actually in charge. Those opinions might lean in the direciton of the general opinion or not, but it's just another tear drop in the rain.
If that opinion was so important that caused the co-founder to launch a campaign to wrestle control back, then let's get the popcorn. Now we have something interesting and that former co-founder's opinion suddenly has meaning. Otherwise, they really don't care and are just mouthing their opinons to see their like counts go up (but not their dislikes because, phew, those are hidden now)
> [Co-founders who sold] can have opinions, but those opinions are no more important than those actually in charge
Many HN readers think the visionaries who actually create billion dollar businesses have more valuable opinions/insights than the visionless corporate bureaucrats who ultimately end up in charge.
"In November of 2021, Jawed updated the description of "Me at the zoo" to "When every YouTuber agrees that removing dislikes is a stupid idea, it probably is. Try again, YouTube ". --wikipedia
For reference, "Me at the zoo" was the very first video uploaded to YT.
"Currently I don't want to upload it to Chrome web Store because I will have to pay a 5$ fees and there is a high chance google will reject this extension."
It's classic A/B testing in action. A lot of controversial anti/feature roll-outs on YouTube either take months or years to be applied to my account or never happen, and I have a hunch it's because they know I'm the type to openly bad-mouth those changes or reduce my usage of YT.
Couldn't we just use ratio of overall views to likes? Videos that are highly disliked won't have a good views/likes ratio compared to a video that is highly liked.
I had a very similar thought! Much of the discourse around the removal of visible dislikes revolves around lost utility. Finding another way to provide similar utility value feels like a highly palatable solution to me.
I'm not exactly a Google-tier product designer, so I have to imagine such a proposal has already been seriously considered... Perhaps they're waiting for the dust to settle before trying other approaches?
In any case, the idea is not necessarily novel in the social media space. I recently learned that Twitter has a similar strategy for discerning content quality: the ratio[1]. It's not something that's explicitly exposed to users as a statistic, but it's basically just one step away.
Because then someone (e.g., YT or advertisers) would use this as a monetization KPI and then creators would get punished for users not hitting the like button when they fell asleep and YT auto-played 37 videos overnight.
I use blockers, best decision I ever made. However, ads have nothing to do with YT not wanting to waste bandwidth by streaming 24/7 if nobody is viewing it. Netflix does it (the first I noticed doing it), Amazon does it. I'm assuming HBOMax will get to it.
What is needed is an extension that provides a separate upvote/downvote system and its own comment system with better forum like tools than YouTube provides.
Rather than just begging to see YouTube's historical dislikes use it as a start to completely replace YouTube's manipulated and untrustworthy under video section.
You could have it in a window beside the YouTube video or in its own box below and just move on from YouTube comments and dislike control. In the long run it sounds like something better that could pressure YouTube to improve their own meagre and useless comment system.
I guess if you provide the caveat that it can't be successful sure. But YouTube comments are a garbage system and providing a better comments section than YouTube does with proper forum tools and maybe tagging etc might make for a much more compelling product, especially if you can take advantage of the backlash from this dislike issue
I've seen projects before that take this a step further and let people leave comments on any site on the web for other users of the same project to see. Unfortunately, they don't see a lot of adoption. But there always seems to be a small crowd ready at any time to try out one of these projects.
I imagine a better than Disqus system - something with better forum like tools that make the YouTube comments section look bad in comparison. YouTube videos can get thousands of views and their system or disqus' isn't really built to handle search, discovery, etc etc.
None that really come to mind, unfortunately. There was one called Fanbrowser that used to do this briefly a very long time ago, but that project has been torn down and rebuilt from scratch so many times that none of that functionality is left. One iteration of it let you browse through a directory of interests (sourced from the DMOZ). When you found a site, or if you typed in a URL, it would load that page in an iframe. You could bookmark pages and leave comments which other users would be able to see. Unfortunately, it didn't get much further than that, so it never had things like being able to follow other users or anything else. Plus, iframes became increasingly difficult to work with since web browsers started adopting a lot of privacy and security measures like CORS. But for a brief while, it was fun.
You could launch it today if you felt like it, but only if you charged money for it and paid moderators to enforce an AUP.
It's trivial to write such a thing, but someone has to host the content at an https:// endpoint for browsers to access it, and so someone has to pay money for hosting, and someone has to charge users for it, which means enforcing an acceptable use policy, which requires staffing abuse reporting and moderation to keep up with usage, which requires charging users for that, too. Anyone who tries to skip any of those steps ends up going broke and shutting down or losing payment and hosting providers. And you might still find that the target market for this is very small (thousands of users worldwide), or that the target market is largely unwilling to tolerate enforcing a code of conduct. And don't forget the guaranteed lawsuits from companies who think they have a right to disallow you from recording comments about their site! Oh, and spammers and abusers, you'll have to have a plan for dealing with those, except that your target market may be largely unwilling to tolerate identity verification checks (simply charging money isn't enough).
None of this is an obstacle to launching a site that charges users from day one to participate, as long as you build it lean, with a cost model that effectively scales as users participate, and with a working anti-spam/abuse model. It's just that most modern startups want to launch with a 'free' tier, and that's simply not compatible with this idea on the modern anonymous internet.
You're on someone's platform. Whether it's the T-1 to your hosting server or the datacenter in which your site resides or the CDN provider, you are always at the mercy of someone else's Acceptable Use Policy. There is no alt-Internet using mesh-networked radio transmitters that's accessible from within a browser today, and so you will, by definition, be subject to being kicked off "at a whim" for violations of AUP or simply "we don't wish to serve you anymore", no matter what decisions you make.
So go on Rumble or Odyseey's hosting and don't worry about it.
It's ok to have acceptable use policy and moderation, but when you aren't running on google or amazon computers there's a lot more leeway and less sudden termination.
Don't forget the AUPs of the advertising networks, and the financial institutions that receive deposits from them, and the sites that convert cryptocoins into usable currency, and the tax/currency 'acceptable use' laws of the country(s) of all parties and currencies involved.
You can, of course, choose to violate any/all AUPs, but it's best to be aware of them before doing so. Unwitting AUP violations are still sufficient cause for enforcement.
YouTube staff seems to be running out of ideas on how to improve their service. That's when you start trying things that most people would consider stupid.
I disagree, it is not matter of running out of idea's it is that YouTube does not desire to be YouTube anymore.
They want to be CorpTube. Allowing just anyone to upload videos is $$$$ and the vast majority of content I assume likely does not do very well for ads.
They are putting their efforts behind attempting to be another Over the Top cable services plus a clearing house for Corporate media "Clips" and redistribution.
> That's when you start trying things that most people would consider stupid.
YouTube (as well as Facebook and Instagram, and to a lesser extent Twitter) are under considerable pressure by media and activist groups to combat trolling, hate speech and mental health effects.
Organized "dislike" raids are one of the most annoying things on the Internet - even right here on HN, there are somewhat regular complaints about people wading through entire pages of an user's comments just to downvote them. Reddit is orders of magnitude worse.
Ok, that explains how it works for now. Still not sure what the "we will do something even better" (after the removal of official API on disliking) part means in the following statement:
>Hey there, I have just checked the Youtube's official change-logs and it seems that they will stop providing dislikes in the youtube Data API. That's why I am launching an archiving API that will allow anyone to see dislikes of any videos. This package will keep logging number of dislikes of any video and feed it to the API. In future, we will do something even better!
I'd imagine the plugin will end up morphing into a dislike button, so users of the plugin will be able to dislike a video and see the dislikes from other users.
I dont watch enough content on YT that would require I care about the up/down - heck - I have been on reddit for 15 years and I also dont care about voting there as well...
But removing this ability to see sentiment toward a vid (irrespective of gamification of such) is a stupid idea.
I'm sure this was brought up in the previous thread, but who is relying on the YouTube demographic to inform their opinion of a video's quality? I've been using YouTube for years and never gave a second thought to likes/dislikes. If the content is good, I'll keep watching. If not, I move on. Why not just watch for ten seconds and decide for yourself?
If likes actually meant anything, then the YouTube front page wouldn't be a microcosm of cultural decline.
In the case of an instructional video, it can really be frustrating to watch 10-20 minutes of something before realizing that the maker did it wrong, didn't document it adequately etc. Those videos tend to have a high ratio of dislikes to likes and that can easily prevent one from wasting their time.
I've been doing a lot of home renovations this past summer and watching instructional videos to help guide me. There's a lot of trash out there and it's not always immediately obvious as so without watching for a decent chunk of time. Conversely, there are a lot of videos with low-production values that are highly useful, so judging alone based on ten seconds can be misleading.
Same goes for e.g. car repair stuff and even some solutions people post to weird software issues.
There are lots and lots of very niche videos posted by normal people who aren't professional "youtubers" and really just want to help someone out and document things they've done. Video quality, editing, etc. can be crappy, but the information within can be just what you need. Unfortunately there are also lots of absolute trash videos that sort of claim to show you what you need but in the end they don't. Same format. You can't tell which is which before you watch, unless you see that at least half of the thumbs are down in which case it's probably a trash video.
It's so obvious what the real solution is now that you have laid it out like this. Your use-case was never best fit through YouTube. Doing so was always harmful to getting the job done, it's just even worse now.
Your use-case was always best fit through the Home Improvement/DIY StackExchange site[0], where an answer is a link to a YouTube video. You can then easily compare different videos, comment and dislike them, and the best videos for that use-case would get to the top of the page.
This may very well be a repeat of Digg 4.0. If we can get the word out that everyone should move their queries from asking YouTube to asking StackExchange, the entire space can be improved over-night. It's all already waiting for us.
I used it to skip through howto self repair videos for some damaged hardware I had. Faster than watching every video in the hope that one will be useful and I have come across some troll videos that will show you the fastest way to completely fry your phone, etc. .
There's such an interesting p2p search problem here, once YouTube does remove the API endpoint too. What would or could we do to share our votes among ourselves?
IMO one small step towards corporatism/away from democracy for youtube, one huge hallmark event showing which way the winds are blowing.
If YouTube removes dislike YouTube should also remove likes. Otherwise it will be misleading the community.
Imagine you got 11M dislike and 10K likes. Without without likes obviously people will be mislead.
Why do people hit Like anyways? Enjoy the content, leave a comment. If the creator actually reads comments, a positive comment in lieu of a Like will have much more benefit to the creater. Except maybe for what ever ulterior algo purposes YT has for these metrics.
Why is your opinon important to other viewers, or why do you think your opinion is relevant to others?
this is my thing about social media in general. i don't mean for this to sound attacking, but more of an open discussion. i'm also not a big fan of "ratings" which is essentially what the likes/dislikes/views ratios equate.
91 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadBecause it's from the co-founder of YouTube? Surely that gives their opinion more weight and notability than the Average Joe/Jane online?
What is this co-founder's current position at YT? "When the site was introduced in February 2005, Karim agreed not to be an employee and simply be an informal adviser, and that he was focusing on his studies."--wikipedia So, not very influential.
Again, it's just another person's opinion.
* Also from wiki: "In November of 2021, Jawed updated the description of "Me at the zoo" to "When every YouTuber agrees that removing dislikes is a stupid idea, it probably is. Try again, YouTube ".
People build up this mystique around founders/co-founders that borders on religious. I don't drink that kool-aid. I've been in/around too many cults in my life to fall into that trap.
I think you've answered your own question "why is it any more interesting" in this (HN) context.
If that opinion was so important that caused the co-founder to launch a campaign to wrestle control back, then let's get the popcorn. Now we have something interesting and that former co-founder's opinion suddenly has meaning. Otherwise, they really don't care and are just mouthing their opinons to see their like counts go up (but not their dislikes because, phew, those are hidden now)
Many HN readers think the visionaries who actually create billion dollar businesses have more valuable opinions/insights than the visionless corporate bureaucrats who ultimately end up in charge.
The best argument I've seen so far is that it just makes all videos look "liked", and none "disliked" because likes are still shown.
Dumbing down the platform in pursuit of simpler interfaces (however you want to justify it) isn't always what actual users want and or need.
For reference, "Me at the zoo" was the very first video uploaded to YT.
In case clicking the link is just too hard /s
Also, RIP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussCHoQttyQ
I'm not exactly a Google-tier product designer, so I have to imagine such a proposal has already been seriously considered... Perhaps they're waiting for the dust to settle before trying other approaches?
In any case, the idea is not necessarily novel in the social media space. I recently learned that Twitter has a similar strategy for discerning content quality: the ratio[1]. It's not something that's explicitly exposed to users as a statistic, but it's basically just one step away.
[1]: https://eclincher.com/your-tweet-got-ratioed-what-next/
fUCK IT i AM NOT HITTING THAT BUTTON NOW. dOUBLING DOWN!
Rather than just begging to see YouTube's historical dislikes use it as a start to completely replace YouTube's manipulated and untrustworthy under video section.
You could have it in a window beside the YouTube video or in its own box below and just move on from YouTube comments and dislike control. In the long run it sounds like something better that could pressure YouTube to improve their own meagre and useless comment system.
Surely Google is gonna feel pressured because of extension that will have few thousands active users at most.
It's trivial to write such a thing, but someone has to host the content at an https:// endpoint for browsers to access it, and so someone has to pay money for hosting, and someone has to charge users for it, which means enforcing an acceptable use policy, which requires staffing abuse reporting and moderation to keep up with usage, which requires charging users for that, too. Anyone who tries to skip any of those steps ends up going broke and shutting down or losing payment and hosting providers. And you might still find that the target market for this is very small (thousands of users worldwide), or that the target market is largely unwilling to tolerate enforcing a code of conduct. And don't forget the guaranteed lawsuits from companies who think they have a right to disallow you from recording comments about their site! Oh, and spammers and abusers, you'll have to have a plan for dealing with those, except that your target market may be largely unwilling to tolerate identity verification checks (simply charging money isn't enough).
None of this is an obstacle to launching a site that charges users from day one to participate, as long as you build it lean, with a cost model that effectively scales as users participate, and with a working anti-spam/abuse model. It's just that most modern startups want to launch with a 'free' tier, and that's simply not compatible with this idea on the modern anonymous internet.
Spam/abuse is always an issue but matter less because you're not on someone else's platform who will kick you off at a whim.
It's ok to have acceptable use policy and moderation, but when you aren't running on google or amazon computers there's a lot more leeway and less sudden termination.
You can, of course, choose to violate any/all AUPs, but it's best to be aware of them before doing so. Unwitting AUP violations are still sufficient cause for enforcement.
They want to be CorpTube. Allowing just anyone to upload videos is $$$$ and the vast majority of content I assume likely does not do very well for ads.
They are putting their efforts behind attempting to be another Over the Top cable services plus a clearing house for Corporate media "Clips" and redistribution.
Instagram reming likes, reddit hiding upvote/downvote count, etc.
There has to be some data about how this actually increases engagement.
YouTube (as well as Facebook and Instagram, and to a lesser extent Twitter) are under considerable pressure by media and activist groups to combat trolling, hate speech and mental health effects.
Organized "dislike" raids are one of the most annoying things on the Internet - even right here on HN, there are somewhat regular complaints about people wading through entire pages of an user's comments just to downvote them. Reddit is orders of magnitude worse.
(The source code isn't helpful since it just pulls the number from author's server.)
>Hey there, I have just checked the Youtube's official change-logs and it seems that they will stop providing dislikes in the youtube Data API. That's why I am launching an archiving API that will allow anyone to see dislikes of any videos. This package will keep logging number of dislikes of any video and feed it to the API. In future, we will do something even better!
But removing this ability to see sentiment toward a vid (irrespective of gamification of such) is a stupid idea.
If likes actually meant anything, then the YouTube front page wouldn't be a microcosm of cultural decline.
In the case of an instructional video, it can really be frustrating to watch 10-20 minutes of something before realizing that the maker did it wrong, didn't document it adequately etc. Those videos tend to have a high ratio of dislikes to likes and that can easily prevent one from wasting their time.
I've been doing a lot of home renovations this past summer and watching instructional videos to help guide me. There's a lot of trash out there and it's not always immediately obvious as so without watching for a decent chunk of time. Conversely, there are a lot of videos with low-production values that are highly useful, so judging alone based on ten seconds can be misleading.
There are lots and lots of very niche videos posted by normal people who aren't professional "youtubers" and really just want to help someone out and document things they've done. Video quality, editing, etc. can be crappy, but the information within can be just what you need. Unfortunately there are also lots of absolute trash videos that sort of claim to show you what you need but in the end they don't. Same format. You can't tell which is which before you watch, unless you see that at least half of the thumbs are down in which case it's probably a trash video.
Your use-case was always best fit through the Home Improvement/DIY StackExchange site[0], where an answer is a link to a YouTube video. You can then easily compare different videos, comment and dislike them, and the best videos for that use-case would get to the top of the page.
This may very well be a repeat of Digg 4.0. If we can get the word out that everyone should move their queries from asking YouTube to asking StackExchange, the entire space can be improved over-night. It's all already waiting for us.
[0]: https://diy.stackexchange.com/
IMO one small step towards corporatism/away from democracy for youtube, one huge hallmark event showing which way the winds are blowing.
For example Likes/Views ratio.
If a video has 1M views but 1000 likes I can most likely ignore it
If a video has 1500 views but 1000 likes now that's something I should be looking at
this is my thing about social media in general. i don't mean for this to sound attacking, but more of an open discussion. i'm also not a big fan of "ratings" which is essentially what the likes/dislikes/views ratios equate.
What am I reading for? Hell I haven't been asked that before" --Bill Hicks
No, print is dead. So sayeth social media
Neither HN or YT are social media.
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