Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Dear YouTube!”.
So you know they say when you really love something you don’t go easy on it. You actually critique it more because you want it to be better and you have higher expectations for it because you want it to be so good. So i’ve already made a dear youtube video, where i talked about some of the qualms i had with youtube and the experiments they were running and the weird stuff they were doing with thumbnails a little while ago. You guys might not know this, but after that video they reached out to me they listened and they reacted and youtube’s one of the only platforms that actually does that that listens to their creators and actually does things about it. So that’s why i wanted to talk about this new thing.
That’S come up which is removing public dislikes, so there was a youtube blog post yesterday with a video explaining that they will be slowly hiding the dislike counter for all videos on youtube starting today. So the dislike count, information will still be available to the uploader in the back end, but that dislike count will now be hidden for all viewers of all videos and i don’t think that’s a good move. I think there are more downsides than upsides to this. Now youtube they have their reasons and we’ll go over each of them, because they were very clear about why they’re doing this, but something to keep in mind here context matters like we have to remember what youtube is.
So the reason for this that they’re, citing the most and i’ll just take their word for it, is that first of all, public dislike counters can impact creators, well-being and it can also enable targeted, dislike campaigns on certain videos and so there’s a pretty simple three-minute video From matt koval at youtube, explaining youtube’s thinking and how it came directly from some of the smaller experiments, they’ve run and the findings from youtube’s research teams. Now, removing information from the site isn’t totally unheard of uh you’ve probably seen instagram is giving some users the ability to remove public like counts from posts, that’s already happening, and some of you might be old enough to remember when youtube itself here was on a 5 Star rating system, so every video you could rate one two, three four or five stars, and it would show you the average rating under the video they switched from that to the current like dislike system around 2010 and it’s technically less information. But it was fine, because here’s the thing about the like and dislike count when you put them together, it forms a ratio and that ratio is the immediately glanceable piece of information that i can look at when i arrive on a video to know. If it’s going to be worth my time to watch it or not, and that that little glanceable thing is super useful in lots of context. So if i, if i show up here to watch uh a home improvement video how to install a new smart doorbell – and i click on a video about it and the first video i select – has uh five dislikes and 20 dislikes – that little glanceable red flag is My cue to scroll down to the comments section to find out just like that. You know. Oh, they they installed this one incorrectly or this is an older version of the doorbell or the install didn’t work. Something like that. Okay, backing out onto the next article or, if i’m on here, looking for a way to fix something or learn. Something then arriving at a video with a high dislike ratio.
Lets me know that this video probably won’t do a good job of helping me fix the thing or learn the thing, and, if i’m on here looking to be entertained, basically the like to dislike ratio can help me possibly determine if this video will be entertaining fun To watch or not so that like to dislike counter, isn’t always just an indicator of the quality of the video. But it’s more of a review of your experience watching the video, whether it’s satisfied, which you came for the video for or not, and that’s all with the given context. So when you hide the dislike counter, it’s no longer a ratio and basically you hide a very useful piece of information to determining if a video is worth spending your time watching or not. Now matt makes an interesting point in youtube’s official video that other platforms don’t have a dislike button. Honestly, i think you’re going to get used to it pretty quickly and keep in mind other platforms, don’t even have a dislike button, so this is technically true, but i don’t think that’s the best way to think about this, mainly because, when they’re talking about other platforms, I think they’re referring to the facebooks and instagrams and tick tocks of the world, so those other platforms might not have a dislike button, but the thing is youtube. Isn’T like those other platforms, those other platforms are mostly content. Recommendation engines where youtube is also a massive search engine, so if you are comparing to tick tock or twitter, one of these sites sure there’s no dislike button on these sites. But there is always still some version of a way to give feedback to the algorithm to decide what content to surface so likes comments shares people getting ratioed whatever it’s all happening. Facebook – i don’t know if you really want to be like facebook, but youtube is not just a video recommendation engine. It’S also the second largest search engine in the world behind google, so this uh feedback that we give content, isn’t just for surfacing it through a recommendation.
Engine, but it’s also to sort of understand if people are having a good time while they’re on the site, so youtube is, we already know they’re always tweaking their algorithms and their features and the ui, even with the general goal of making sure people have a good Time on the site so that they stay here longer, that’s what they’re, ideally they’re gon na have people stay on the site for many hours in a row and they’ll watch lots of videos and, as a result, watch lots of ads and make them lots of money. So, generally, they’re gearing this to make sure we have a good time on youtube.com. So to me, hiding dislikes actually hurts the experience of the vast number of people using youtube as a search engine, because it removes that glanceable bit of information that was going to help you decide if the thing you just landed on was worth spending your time on, Or not so, instead of looking at uh, tick, tock and instagram youtube really feels more like netflix or amazon or etsy, even because you get to the site. There’S this huge thing at the top.
It’S a search bar, and so when you get to the piece of content you’re looking for, there is a way for you to review. If that piece was what you were looking for or not, if it’s good or not, and so that’s the like or dislike ratio like, can you imagine if etsy got rid of one star ratings to protect the mental health of its sellers and to combat review bombing? Like it would work, but it would also decrease the usability of the entire site, so the only difference is on etsy you’re, trying to decide where to spend your money and on youtube you’re trying to decide where to spend your time. So you might not hear a ton of creators saying it, but i’m here for the dislike button and the public dislike count. Now, as a creator, i can agree that the dislike counter, racking up in front of you and in front of everybody over time can be mentally taxing.
But i also think that’s something you put less and less weight on over time and then i also think hiding the public counter just removes that scoreboard, but then also leaks. All of that negativity into the comments section, which is worse right, like the comment section on youtube, is already where most of the mental health conversations i think happen. When i talk to other creators – and you know, there’s already some tools that they’ve built – you know they can, you can block people of course, but you can hide others from your channel. You can assign moderators to your comments section.
You can filter out certain words so that they aren’t allowed to be used in the comments they get hidden automatically, but they still have a long way to go. We all know about youtube comments, and so, if i think they put their energy towards that, they could make a bigger dent, a bigger difference towards the mental health of creators than just blanket erasing the public like dislike count. Now there is no video on youtube with like a lot of views and zero dislikes. There’S always some people disliking for whatever reason like sometimes it’s a news, video with bad news and people dislike the video because they dislike the news, even if it’s a good video.
Sometimes it’s a political, video and people on the opposing side of the political aisle dislike it, because they just don’t like what you have to say. But if a video is getting overly disliked for no reason at all, essentially as a targeted attack like a review bomb, then yes, there should be ways to mitigate that, and you know you can already disable ratings entirely on a video. But maybe that means youtube working on new tools for this specific, pretty small use case, maybe there’s like you can have you can only rate the video if you’ve watched a certain proportion of it. Something like that. So, overall, i think you know this change that they’re making is well intentioned, and i give them credit for that because they are thinking about creators, but i think just blanket. Removing the dislike count from all videos on youtube does more harm to the user.
Experience than problems it solves, so we all understand that dislike bombs are a thing, and we all know that the mental health of creators is very important, but i do think a more nuanced solution than just carpet. Removing the dislike counter from every video would probably work better, but hey that’s just my opinion, and maybe you agree. Maybe you disagree matter of fact. If you do agree, you can leave a like on this video.
If you don’t agree, you can leave a dislike. That’S how it’s used. Sometimes we can use the comments section to talk about it and, if youtube, if you’re watching this, maybe some creators will chime in in the comments section below about what we think either way.
That’S just been it thanks for watching catch, you guys in the next one peace you .