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YouTube is trying to prevent angry mobs from abusing "dislike" button
YouTube's dislike button can be a source of anxiety for many creators, and now YouTube is considering a number of options to prevent viewers from abusing that tool. Tom Leung, director of project management at YouTube, posted an update to the Creator Insider channel recently in which he detailed some "lightly discussed" options for combatting "dislike mobs," or large groups of users who slam the dislike button on a video before watching the whole thing, or even watching the video at all.
[...] One of the new options YouTube has talked about is making those ratings invisible by default, so you wouldn't be able to see the number of likes or dislikes a video has. Other options include asking users to provide more information about why they disliked a video (possibly in the form of a checklist), removing the dislike count across the board, and removing the dislike button entirely.
Leung acknowledges that all of these options have pros and cons, and YouTube may not implement any of them after testing. Particularly, he notes that removing the dislike button from YouTube isn't the most democratic option, and it's quite extreme. Leung invites users to leave their own suggestions as to what YouTube should do in the comments of the update video.
While plenty of creators have fallen victim to dislike mobs, YouTube itself experienced a massive mob recently when its 2018 Rewind video became the most disliked video on the platform last year (as of today, it has 15 million dislikes). Millions of those dislikes may have been genuine, but it's possible that millions of other dislikes came from users hopping on the negativity bandwagon.
Is review/dislike mobbing a real problem? Is there a positivity bandwagon?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 04 2019, @09:28PM (14 children)
Some of those "creators" need to be abused.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @09:37PM
So do you, gonna step up and take it like a man?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @09:51PM (2 children)
It's "abuse" that the YouTube Rewind promo with Will Smith got millions of dislikes, and became the most disliked video int he history of online videos because people were fed up that YouTube is trying to turn mainstream media and shit on all the original content creators that made ti what it is today. This is the real issue YouTube has, it wants to control everything, and they cannot control this. I'm sorry YouTube, if you got a 30 second, minute or 10 mintue video that is pure shit, I'm not gonna waste my time and watch it.
Same issue with reviews for games on steam, now developers are flocking to distributors that do not allow reviews so they can continue to sell their shit games unabaited.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @03:47PM
funny, i dont read reviews on steam nor care about the curators. I'd block all of that if I could. i didnt have any idea distributors are flocking to sites that let them sell shit games.
uh what games are you playing that you found out were shitty after reading the reviews and had to go elsewhere to be surprised the wisdom of the crowds didn't influence your purchase of more shitty games?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 07 2019, @02:56AM
Even the YouTube CEO's kids thought that Rewind video was 'cringey' [engadget.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday February 04 2019, @10:27PM (5 children)
Idiotic reaction, a waste of time/effort to deal with.
Indifference/ignorance is all they need, not attention in the negative sense - negative as it may be, it's still attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Monday February 04 2019, @11:07PM (4 children)
Speaking of which, I haven't seen any followup on Gillette.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 04 2019, @11:25PM (3 children)
Followup from Gillette? The mob?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Monday February 04 2019, @11:59PM (1 child)
That whole massive downvote and negative comment storm ('mob') they were purging at top speed after the men-are-puds commercial. I took a look while it was hot to see what the fuss was. The commentary was pretty brutal but i haven't checked since to see how it has developed (or if it has.)
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Tuesday February 05 2019, @05:31PM
I don't know, but I watched the thing, Disliked it (fairly enough), then discovered that if you'd already Disliked it, you were blocked from commenting. That was a new one on me...
Just leave the damn like/dislike thing alone. If you don't like getting mob-disliked, don't make content that shits on your own viewers or customers -- cuz that's really the only time these mobs materialize.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @11:48AM
Gillette, the best an angry violent humanoid with destructive tenancies can get
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:42AM (3 children)
We have youtube premium for the family (don't judge me)
I leave it autoplaying on demonetized creators when I sleep as Youtube is totally trustworthy and promises to pay them when premium watchers watch their content regardless of demonetization. Sadly the best ones to sleep to aren't demonetized (what is it about Isaac Arthur? Start him playing and I'm out inside of ten minutes...)
Anyway, it's my small rebellion.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Funny) by NPC-131072 on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:59AM
He narrates from a deep space habitat.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 05 2019, @06:15AM
I'll admit it. I fell asleep during Space Prison Colonies.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @11:56AM
I judge you!
What's wrong with Netflix?
(Score: 5, Touché) by DannyB on Monday February 04 2019, @09:31PM (3 children)
Can't they just bring out the torches and pitchforks like the good ol' daze?
Or is a public bunch of dislikes an even worse humiliation? One that a person can no longer bear to live with?
Oh the world we live in today. Seriously? A bunch of dislikes is a source of anxiety? Like a Facebook user claiming that someone's post gave her PTSD? Do they even know what PTSD is?
Go ahead. Mod me down into oblivian. I won't cry. (very much . . . sniff!)
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snow on Monday February 04 2019, @09:52PM (2 children)
Back in my day the other kids would dislike you to your face.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Monday February 04 2019, @11:26PM (1 child)
Even behind your back would be an improvement, :-)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday February 05 2019, @02:14PM
Maybe that is what the Journal feature is for?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by EEMac on Monday February 04 2019, @09:46PM (17 children)
Our SJW policies are pissing off users, and our "2018 Rewind video became the most disliked video on the platform last year". What should we do?
Get rid of the dislike button?
Brilliant!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @10:21PM (13 children)
Every bullshit, neo-prog video gets the ratio. Almost as if the public might be trying to tell "creators" something about their "woke" politics. Ditto Ghostbusters 2016, The Last Star Wars, Star Trek Diversity, SJW comic books, the NFL and any other manifestation of "Social Justice".
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @10:50PM (11 children)
Oh GODS they started showing women and MINORITIES in lead roles???? WTF THIS COUNTRY IS GOING STRAIGHT IN THE CRAPPER!!!
pffffft
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @11:04PM (10 children)
Nobody objected to Sigourney Weaver or Sidney Poitier having lead roles. Could it be that their movies offered more than vapid identity politics? Pffft!
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @11:45PM (8 children)
Didn't see Ghostbusters so I can't comment, but from the comments I read it wasn't that big of a deal except the people triggered by switching out male for female. Plenty of racist comments about the black chick.
The latest Star Wars movies are pretty crap, but not for SJW reasons. The most "SJW" thing you can say there is the fleet leader had dyed hair and boobs, with a bit of "rich people are assholes living off the poor" here and there. Hardly "SJW" politics.
SJW comic books? lol, how dare people push their personal beliefs in their artwork! back to mein khampf....
NFL and taking I knee, you have to be racist or racist friendly to get bent out of shape by that. Not shocking that
TL:DR - racists are upset that western culture no longer caters to their shitty world view and are unable to simply NOT WATCH it.
Wake me up when there is something more to worry about then your delicate fee fees
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:00AM
Really? [thewrap.com] If your world view centers on calling people "racist" to sidestep criticism of your easily disprovable narrative, it's you with the shitty world view!
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:05AM
N.F.L., we're not boycotting N.F.L. anymore. Thanks to those who did -- because of you, we won. But that one wasn't about race. It had nothing to do with race. ZERO. It was about RESPECT. For Anthem, Flag and Country. God Bless the U.S.A.! 🇺🇸
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:33AM (2 children)
> The latest Star Wars movies are pretty crap, but not for SJW reasons. The most "SJW" thing you can say there
> is the fleet leader had dyed hair and boobs, with a bit of "rich people are assholes living off the poor" here and there.
> Hardly "SJW" politics.
They forgot that you are supposed to package your social commentary as the normal consequence of actions undertaken in the logical context of a well-built story.
In Ep. VIII, too much of what we got were illogical actions which didn't make sense in the context of a story that didn't make sense, didn't fit its own universe canon, and even defied the in-universe laws of physics. When you throw social commentary at people who don't see it justified or useful in any other way than "because I just decided so" (Dumbledore is gay...), then you deserve the flak you get.
Said flak should be delivered in the form of an energy beam NOT magically curving in space (a contradiction with literally the first SW scene ever)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:42AM
I said the movies were crap, I just disagree that they were pushing some evillll "SJW" narrative. What exactly was the social commentary? Are we trying to shift the overton window so far right that decrying slavery becomes boorish?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday February 05 2019, @06:23PM
The whiny brat in Ep. VII was enough for me to swear off Disney's main star wars series. In contrast, Rogue One was really well done and Han Solo was just fun.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Tuesday February 05 2019, @02:59AM
So, sure, maybe there are a dozen people somewhere that were upset by females on screen per se, but I really doubt that was any significant part of the backlash. Most people were upset at what felt like a rip-off, they went to see that long awaited Ghostbusters sequel and they didn't get it.
Incidentally, we might take note that the studio has implicitly recognized this, and is now talking about *another* new Ghostbusters movie - a sequel with some of the original stars at least getting cameos rather than a "reboot."
"The latest Star Wars movies are pretty crap, but not for SJW reasons. The most "SJW" thing you can say there is the fleet leader had dyed hair and boobs, with a bit of "rich people are assholes living off the poor" here and there. Hardly "SJW" politics."
I guess you could say that's technically correct, as it's not their *politics* specifically so much as the underlying philosophy. It's a collectivist philosophy and committed collectivist ideologues seem to have great difficulty writing what we of more classical and liberal leanings consider good characters - precisely because good characters are fundamentally *individual* and individual journeys are not what they want to focus on. So they write one-dimensional cutout characters, characters that are mostly just there to represent a group, with no real life of their own and no individual importance. Without personal reasons for the plot to advance, there's a tendency to rely on Deus ex Machina, and with no desire to portray the struggles and triumph of a flawed hero against an implacable and ultimately unconquerable universe, the 'hero' role is usually filled by a Mary Sue.
"SJW comic books? lol, how dare people push their personal beliefs in their artwork!"
There's absolutely no problem with pushing personal beliefs in artwork - granted.
But consider the situation. You push your personal beliefs in your comic - your fans don't like it. They say they feel you're just preaching, and not writing good stories; but they were fans for the stories so they're dissatisfied. So you're find to do it, and they're fine to quit buying it if they don't like it. All good so far. But THEN you don't like that and you start calling your ex-fans racists? See that's where things went over the line, and you did it. The insulted fans won't be back, and the only ones that you did NOT insult were the ones that actually are racists, can't you see how that works?
"NFL and taking I knee, you have to be racist or racist friendly to get bent out of shape by that."
Well apparently not, because that's exactly what you're doing here.
And I actually *applauded* the first guy that did that. I absolutely respect not just their right to do it, but the point which they are trying to make. I'm not sure it's the best way to make the point but that's their call to make.
But to say that to disagree with me you have to be a racist? That's offensive, that's slanderous, and just think about it tactically for a moment. Do you want to sling the racist accusation around so freely that it loses all meaning? That's just about where we're at. Not long ago it was universally acknowledged as one of the worst things you could possibly be accused of in America - the only thing worse than a racist was a child molester. But we have people throwing around the insult so promiscuously so shamelessly so reflexively at anyone that disagrees with them, that this is changing. People have already become desensitized to it. It's like the boy that cried wolf. Keep crying that every little thing you don't like is racist and you'll wake up one day to find that no one pays any attention to it at all.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:03PM (1 child)
Is it still racism if you just want to watch stuff from and about your own culture?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 05 2019, @06:57PM
Is it still racism if you just want to watch stuff from and about your own culture?
Probably not. But, getting angry when minorities do the same probably is.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @09:36AM
(source [nytimes.com])
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @09:43AM
The new She-Ra (the one where the young girl trans-forms into a boy)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 04 2019, @10:35PM
I thought SOMEONE must be getting pissed off or on.
There was a great disturbance in the force. SN pages timing out. Not loading.
I thought I was going to cry. Or something of equal or lesser value.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday February 05 2019, @02:19PM
IDEA:
YouTube, and other platforms: entice SJWs and Racists, Sexists, etc to mod! Yes, really. Create a shadow mod system where they can mod away to their hearts content! All they will see the virtual effect of this moderation as if it were real. It will keep them busy so that they are modding instead of replying. (Thus a requirement to not be able to both post and reply.) As long as they think their mods are "having an effect" they'll keep doing it.
Just be sure that each polar opposite group of shadow modders only see the virtual effect of their own group's mods.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Tuesday February 05 2019, @04:21PM
The problem is that advertisements are not displaying as much as they *should*, based on their sales metrics, thus denying profit from the actual customers purchasing ad impression space. They threatened to take their business elsewhere, because the problem is so severe it even has affected Google themselves, and it's clear they are having a hard time overcoming user behaviors.
Blaming SJW stuff is just fantasy! There is some of that, yeah -- about half the people out there are on the left, but the real bleeding hearts aren't the problem. And you failed to mention conservative ire that rankled to the degree that alternate social media sites were created purely for the freedom of unrestricted speech--such as what may have been suppressed by disliking videos and downmodding posts. But that's not what I am whining about--it's the myopic focus on blaming The Other instead of the real problems.
I agree, most people that cry about dislikes are flakes that aren't special. You can be left, center, right, or be like Bartleby and always prefer not to do anything different or uncomfortable. Takyon has a point in his comment that a hit counter could suffice-but it can't not for Google. It's all about personalized tracking, and people are poisoning the well so effectively while being trolls that it's reducing profits quite measurably. It has to be fixed, such as making it so the videos are fixed. You won't skip something that sucks if you don't know it sucks.
In order to show the advertisements, the goal is to prevent people from deciding not to watch videos that had prominent placement. Usually good shows on TV had high priced ads, because people watched. Online its different. Implusive behavior drives most of the non-"subscription" channel views. The dislikes are ruining the profit model. Remember when Facebook came out with a "Like" button and not "Dislike" button at the same time? The idea was to TRACK INTERESTS AND MARKET TO THEM! Disliking anything--like videos, and then doing it in bulk really drives down ad impressions and they have the data to prove it. So, to improve things, they are trying to make it easier for their paying customers to get what they paid for--ad views.
Yeah, people get upset and boo hoo someone made fun of my video or post or weight loss photos or whatever. But that has *nothing* to do with this. Alphabet or Google or whatever power that is in place may use it as cover, but it's not why, that's just social engineering--and it's working on a lot of people who are tossing about SJWs. Divide the people if it helps them cope; they'll still watch the ads.
Google does not care a tiny bit about our feelings as long as we act as the products we agreed to when consenting to the EULA. Remember how they are set to modify Chrome to break adblockers? Now we're talking about them removing the ability to discern what videos to watch--if they roll out the safety and privacy function that breaks adblockers, and remove some of the barriers to people clicking play, they'll increase shareholder value. SJWs and everyone else can pound sand or just click play because they can keep watching videos that interest them whether they like it or not.
This is the problem: People not watching the programming after Google went through the trouble to work out a way prevent the ads from getting blocked (even if that isn't implemented just yet--but the timing is quite coincidental that they are considering doing both at the same time...) After promising to eliminate ad blockers, people avoiding videos with prominent ad placements because of dislikes just isn't going to make the paying customers happy--they'll go to some place they can trust that will deliver the views, like Facebook or Microsoft. So, the option to remove choice (and call it a benefit) is likely to be exercised.
(And count our blessing--the 'disable auto-play' button hasn't been removed yet!)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Monday February 04 2019, @10:08PM (6 children)
It's unfortunate they choose to ignore the real problem, the broken three-strikes system. A tiny amount of users can submit enough "community" reports to demonetize any video. Appealing that takes days and you don't get the money back when the videos are re-listed. Further, if you lose 1 appeal, you can't appeal after that for a period of time. Three strikes knocks you off the YT platform permanently.
The platform is broken for creators.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Monday February 04 2019, @10:58PM (3 children)
The system is far worse than you describe. For example, companies can auto-claim videos and if the claim is appealed, they get the power to review the claim, typically rejecting it (maybe this is automated as well). If this repeats a couple of times, you get a copyright strike unless you take the claimant to court and win. Each active strike disables features, and three strikes kills the account. I don't think the "community" strikes you describe and the "copyright" strikes mix, which is a small consolation.
You've got videos being demonetized very quickly after being uploaded, which is when a large amount of the revenue is made typically. The video gets remonetized, but you don't earn what you could have gotten during the demonetization period. I believe claimed videos siphon off money to third parties without it being returned if the claim is dropped, although I might be wrong about that.
It's not just isolated incidents that blow up, these are things that many uploaders, big and small, face nearly constantly, even if they are using little or no copyrighted material. YouTube is like a war zone, or hell. But everyone is stuck there because it is the dominant platform. If you want to earn a living from making videos, you have to stick with YouTube. Maybe you can use Patreon to supplement your income if you are popular enough. Even if you don't care about earning a cent, if you intend for your videos to have a large reach, you need to be on YouTube.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @11:47PM (2 children)
So was MySpace. Then it wasn't.
I'm old. I remember when people put stuff up on the internet and didn't expect to get paid for it. Hell, I remember when people put stuff up on YouTube and didn't expect to get paid for it.
There are several other video sites. If you want to get people to go there, put interesting content up there and not on YouTube, and don't expect to get paid for it, at least not at first.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:39AM
I've been so lucky in terms of that whole world. I don't need the money. And it's not a lot of money. Even though I'm one of the biggest Vloggers. Not only on YouTube. I'm very big on Insta and Twitter. Very "successful." And I cash every check. But I wouldn't count on it to pay the bills. It is a dangerous world out there, folks!!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:42AM
Attempts have been made, and there are YouTube alternatives that do just fine, except with a small fraction of the traffic. But the YouTube exodus hasn't happened yet despite years of complaints. There was a lot of hope for Vidme during the height of the adpocalypse but that fizzled.
Maybe YouTube will ease the transition by kicking off more big channels, forcing them to pick Dailymotion, Vimeo, or wherever while monetizing through the likes of Patreon, PayPal, cryptocurrency, etc.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @04:05PM (1 child)
What money is there to get back if no one watched to make an ad impression? is this entitlement money based on what one hoped would have been earned?
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday February 05 2019, @07:03PM
> is this entitlement money based on what one hoped would have been earned?
Yes, it is. I get that puts YT on the hook for money they didn't earn from advertisers, but that's the fault of their broken system that I protested against, pointed out the glaringly obvious flaws in, and am powerless to change. Who else should be on the hook for it if not them?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by inertnet on Monday February 04 2019, @10:12PM (11 children)
Funny how even the biggest corporations can't get this moderation problem solved. In the basis moderation by users is a great idea, but abuse of the system is always right around the corner.
New idea (for the Soylentnews site), how about you can only downmod a comment after an upmod, meaning you get as much downmod points as you have upmodded comments (with a max per day). A variation could be that you have to upmod a user's comment, before you can downmod another comment of that same user. Balanced moderation so to speak.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday February 04 2019, @10:21PM (5 children)
How about if your downmods must not exceed a certain percent of all of your mods ever. That way there could be some days where one can legitimately mod a bunch of troll posts. Even for days in a row if you have plenty of history of up modding.
What would the percentage threshold be? 50% 24% 13% ?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Monday February 04 2019, @11:03PM (4 children)
No. Many people are better at doing one rather than the other. That's why we have both artists and accountants in this world - one dreams big and throws paint all over the place with wild abandon and the other is detail-oriented and ensures everything is in order. Both types of people have value. Same with mod-points - some people are more interested in praising (up-mods) and others find themselves drawn to keeping things in order (down-mods).
Further, enforcing a [permanent] up/down ratio will have a chilling effect on participation. It's a little like draconion speed limits - you spend more time watching your speedometer than the road.
= = =
SoylentNews avoids this mobbing problem in a simple and elegant fashion - moderation is capped in the range -1 to 5. It's complicated for YouTube because they are owned by an advertising company and likes/dislikes is one of the primary metrics for monetisation.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Monday February 04 2019, @11:13PM (3 children)
I remember someone on SN commented that they used all their mod points for months to get their up/downmod ratio to a certain point.
I'm not sure why it matters, or if this was just a subtle troll to make gullible people like me look for it, or even where you would find what your ratio is (I sure don't' see it)
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 4, Informative) by Sulla on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:15AM (2 children)
TMB posted a journal a while back where he calculated peoples ratios
https://soylentnews.org/~The+Mighty+Buzzard/journal/2568 [soylentnews.org]
I decided that I wanted to be on that list so I made a spreadsheet and tracked daily to see how far I could get. I got to around 98% based on my calculation but that asymptote was getting too smooth so I stopped bothering to track.
It is pretty easy to do. Cruise the site at -1 and give people points for moderately interesting comments that to me appear to have been moderated down for no reason. Feels like most down mods are used as "disagree" instead of what they actually are, and an interesting post I disagree with still deserves a +1 interesting.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:19PM (1 child)
so I made a spreadsheet and tracked daily to see how far I could get.
why not just ask buzzy to post your stats?
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Tuesday February 05 2019, @05:30PM
I begged on the IRC and someone calculated my score for me so I had a starting, but I didn't want to bug them a bunch over it, easy enough to just run a calculation in Excel. If you have 77 downmods and X upmods and you get 10 more upmods a day then its pretty straightforward.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:38AM (3 children)
> Balanced moderation so to speak.
Shouldn't it be "fair and balanced" ?
Some people only contribute positively. Some people are always trolling (mildly or not).
There's not reason to enforce fairness where it doesn't belong.
Let me call Bill-the-Exxon-shill, I need to balance my latest Australia weather report.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:51AM (2 children)
Meta - is attempting to build up Karma and a positive reputation so you can troll more effectively later a form of trolling in and of itself?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:00AM (1 child)
It's easier to grab the jewels if they don't expect a person like you to be a thief.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:25PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @09:59AM
Easily abused. Upvote some ac just to down vote.
stack overflow is good. Up vote x times per day. Down vote burns your karma.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday February 04 2019, @10:15PM (2 children)
Its Double Plus Ungood Bad Think to not like blatant propaganda, according to our corporate masters.
Next up, a TV set to CNN that can't be shut off by viewers; Oh shit that was me at the gym a couple hours ago not a theoretical product.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Monday February 04 2019, @10:25PM
While in the Philippines I was forced to watch @CNN [twitter.com], which I had not done in months, and again realized how bad, and FAKE, it is. Loser!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @10:52PM
I'm gonna take the GOP approach and say "VLM is mad? This must be the best thing ever!! #SoMuchWinning"
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @10:39PM
-- Appendix: Principles of Newspeak
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Monday February 04 2019, @10:41PM (5 children)
The real problem is people having too much time on their hands. I've personally paid zero attention to likes and dislikes on videos. If it has a billion dislikes, it may actually be worth watching.
Maybe they should expand their rating system to show "interest" in a video, as in, they have a billion dislikes and a million likes, which makes it one of the most popular videos on the site!
Sounds like its time to write a 3rd party app for these kiddos to spend their days voting 18 different ways on how they like a video to completely take this control out of google/youtube's hands. We can simply add a little CSS to add our plugin. While we're at it, lets port it to Facebook and the rest of the 10 sites that get 90% of the web traffic and begin to remove any control they have over the "content" they publish.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday February 04 2019, @10:59PM
There is a little something called "views".
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Monday February 04 2019, @11:16PM
I think you are thinking of critics on rotten tomatoes (Recent reference: The Orville)
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @11:30PM (1 child)
Maybe they should stop unsubscribing people and randomly deciding which subscribed channels actually notify users. If they're having too many dislikes, perhaps they should show better videos.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @10:03AM
Redtube respects me votes
I is moving there's
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:23PM
Their system knows dislikes show "interest" - I followed a link someone sent me to a video which turned out to just be a stupid and rude joke. I clicked the dislike button. For a full year I had similar jokes appearing in my queue as "recommended" videos; for the first week or so they were 50% of my queue, probably partly because I don't utilize the like/dislike system much so it was one of their few data points. I have since learned not voting unless I genuinely care about the subject matter keeps this from happening as much.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday February 04 2019, @10:41PM (3 children)
If they drop dislikes, I'm going to mourn the end of this longstanding Futurama joke [youtube.com].
That said, there are people and organizations trying to game Youtube's algorithms by targeting channels for "like" or "dislike". You can really see them in action when somebody posts a video and they receive thousands of reactions long before the length of the video has elapsed. There are also people who are more than willing to sell Youtube reactions from fake accounts for an appropriate fee, and PR scumbags who are more than willing to pay that price. So there's a real problem they're trying to address, but taking away one of the tools for people to express themselves probably isn't what's needed.
My suggestion, if they're really trying to address this: Rate each account based on their likelihood of being a bot/paid troll/unpaid troll. Instead of just using the straight up like/dislike number, weight each like/dislike based on that rating algorithm for purposes of determining the video's placement in search and suggestion algorithms. That way, real people's opinions continue to be displayed, but the monetary effects of those opinions will be diminished for people acting maliciously, thus reducing the incentive to do this kind of thing.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Monday February 04 2019, @11:46PM (2 children)
Some people freely and cheerfully admit liking a video before watching it. And their comments saying so get hundreds of likes. Are these people doing a bad thing?
I think giving more weight to likes/dislikes based on % of the video watched would be a fair change (and sure, ignore those detected as bots, if accurate). The view count is based on a number of factors, so like/dislike counts seem like fair game. It could be used instead of the real like/dislike counts (your likes/dislikes are tracked for each account, so coming up with these numbers are not as hard as with views).
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(Score: 1) by mmarujo on Wednesday February 06 2019, @03:40PM (1 child)
...is there any doubt?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 06 2019, @04:19PM
Yes, there is. People treat the like action differently because they can and there are no rules saying that everyone has to like/dislike videos for the same reasons. Some people could just be using it as a bookmark, for example.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 04 2019, @10:43PM (2 children)
The problem that 'likes/dislikes' creates is modifying the chance to find the content, presumably a content with a high number of dislikes being burried in the search. A high number of dislikes still indicates attention grabbing - even in the negative sense.
Since eyeballs is what Google wants, it will make absolutely perfect sense to allow search results sorting in the results by the number of dislikes. Not only is a trivial amount of code to adjust, but it will cut down the mod bombing: the higher number of dislikes, the higher prominence in the negative sense. You want to bury something, abstain from mod-ing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 05 2019, @02:26AM
The thing is: something that is truly disliked by many WITHOUT an also large number of likes probably does deserve to be ranked lower.
Things that are horrible but still grab attention likely still grab a significant number of likes. Eliminating "dislike" probably won't lose a lot of those, because with only one option, someone who is drawn to a video -- even for a bad reason -- may hit the like button.
Anyhow most of the discussion here is completely irrelevant to what Google wants, and that isn't moderation or allowing certain content to rise in rankings. Google wants to sell ads on YouTube --always remember that is Google's prime focus.
A "like" button makes a connection and gives Google a datapoint to target better ads for you. I'm sure the SOLE motivation really behind this proposal is someone did a statistical analysis and realized removing dislikes could likely raise ad revenue and/or improve the ad algorithm.
Does anyone here really think Google gives a rat's ass about better moderation unless it led to a positive impact on their bottom line?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @04:37PM
See, the thing is that good has been very clear about both likes and dislikes counting as engagement for the algorithm (sorting, as you put it), so all we are really talking about here is people's feelings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @06:53PM (1 child)
"large groups of users who slam the dislike button on a video before watching the whole thing"
Only give people the option to dislike once they've seen a substantial portion of the video and perhaps even answered some questions about what it's about?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @07:00PM
Maybe make them also answer one of those I am not a robot questions.