# Should Youtube abolish Dislikes?



## mediumaevum (Aug 23, 2020)

EDIT: I've shortened the OP and made it a bit more specific.
---

I hardly see the purpose of the youtube dislike button. I only rarely use it, and when I do it is because I felt a video was so poorly made/poor quality/crappy content that I don't ever want to come across that video again.

But I think that an Ignore Function is way better. So, you can choose to ignore specific videos, playlists or the entire channel.

Isn't it that sometimes, people use dislikes to downrate good videos without explanation?
Isn't that a problem?

If you don't like a channel, you should be given an option to ignore it.
If you don't like a video, ignore the video.

Do you agree youtube should abolish dislikes and provide an Ignore Function instead?

What about explanations for dislikes - like a comment explaining why a video wasn't helpful/poor quality etc.?


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## tav.one (Aug 23, 2020)

This is something that I wouldn't worry about much. Neither as a creator or as consumer on YouTube.


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## purple (Aug 23, 2020)

I don't know of anybody that really uses dislikes as a serious gauge of anything about a video. I don't ever look at like and dislikes. The only exception is when it is used by a community as a demonstration of anger i.e. a game developer or film studio puts out a trailer for something that looks like a punch in the face to their community and consequently the video receives millions of dislikes. Other than that, I don't ever see it mentioned. I think "likes" have an impact on youtube's algorithm for promoting videos (which is why so many creators tell you to like _and_ subscribe) but I'm not sure if dislikes have the reverse effect or not.


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## Polkasound (Aug 23, 2020)

I was never a fan of the dislike button for anything online, because almost no one in the general public uses it objectively.

I used to be a Top-1000 reviewer on Amazon, and I got there simply by writing concise reviews with information people need to know about the product. When one of my positive reviews would get downvoted, I noticed all the positive reviews under me would get downvoted as well, so the downvote didn't have anything to do with my review -- it was just an outlet for someone who disagreed to the point of having an axe to grind with the product or manufacturer.

YouTube giving the general public a dislike button is as practical as inviting 10-year-olds to be judges at a "best broccoli" contest.


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## mediumaevum (Aug 23, 2020)

When viewing the results, there is an overwhelming majority in favor of keeping the dislike button.
Why? So far, no arguments for dislikes has been presented in this thread. I'd like to know the arguments.


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## Jdiggity1 (Aug 24, 2020)

When there are multiple videos on the same topic, such as a review for a piece of hardware or a tutorial for a piece of software, a quick glance at the like/dislike ratio can let you know whether it's worth your time.
Or rather, if you see majority dislikes, you know to be sceptical of the video or simply go back and select a different one.


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## Bluemount Score (Aug 24, 2020)

And then, there is the dislike button for YT comments, which you can press, but does absolutely nothing?!


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## MartinH. (Aug 24, 2020)

Polkasound said:


> YouTube giving the general public a dislike button is as practical as inviting 10-year-olds to be judges at a "best broccoli" contest.





mediumaevum said:


> When viewing the results, there is an overwhelming majority in favor of keeping the dislike button.
> Why? So far, no arguments for dislikes has been presented in this thread. I'd like to know the arguments.





Bluemount Score said:


> And then, there is the dislike button for YT comments, which you can press, but does absolutely nothing?!




The dislike button is a way for people to voice their negative emotions in the most concise and non-damaging way possible. If you take the dislike feature away, a portion of people who just disliked and moved on will convert to writing angry comments, and once you're already writing an angry comment, it's easy to throw in some insults too.

And like/dislike ratios are also easier to make sense of at a glance as a creator. Past a certain channelsize, reading all comments to get a general sentiment of your viewers is no longer feasible and retention as a metric is a poor indicator for how much people liked your content because hate often drives compulsively high viewer retention.

The algorithm doesn't always punish videos for dislikes, if the ratio is about 50/50 and there are a lot of dislikes and comments, it treats it as a "high engagement" video, something that "must be interesting to people if they're getting this riled up about", so the algorithm promotes it. Afaik low viewer retention is the thing that you should fear in terms of being punished by the algorithm.

I don't remember ever using the like/dislike ratio to decide whether I watch a video or not. Usually I don't even intentionally look at it unless a comment mentions it. Comments I do read, often straight away. So if I start a TED talk and scroll down to find a top comment with 1000+ likes that says "Well that was a long winded way just to say "_____________ _____ _ ____ _______", what a waste of time!", I'll likely skip the video.


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## MA-Simon (Aug 24, 2020)

I like the dislike button, so I can dislike things. While I am shure it sucks for creators, it does help me a lot.

When I am searching at 3 in the night for a quick solution to a windows problem, I don't want voice-to-text powerpoint slides, I want results fast.
It helps weed out the "creators" from the tutorials and helps keep big companies honest.
Imho, worse are videos with the comments turned off. That immediately puts it in the "hiding 80% dislike" category for me.


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## Stringtree (Aug 24, 2020)

I don’t think I’ve ever used it. If I see a terrible video I just click on something else. The meaning of the button can be unclear, as opposed to the upward one. Didn’t like the content? The perspective? The presenter? 

Giving encouragement to people who make fantastic stuff is more fun.


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## mediumaevum (Aug 24, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> The dislike button is a way for people to voice their negative emotions in the most concise and non-damaging way possible. If you take the dislike feature away, a portion of people who just disliked and moved on will convert to writing angry comments, and once you're already writing an angry comment, it's easy to throw in some insults too.



As a creator, I'd rather like some critical comments/questioning of my content, than a dislike. 
A dislike says nothing, whereas a critical comment sheds new light and perspective which you - as a creator - can react to in future videos or at the very least in case of disagreement, tell the user who wrote the critical comment, your perspective and challenges you faced when making a video, ie. a historical video, documentary etc.


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## davidson (Aug 24, 2020)

I find the dislike feature great. I've found that if a video has a large amount of dislikes, it's for a legit reason. Something like the creator using click-bait titles or simply a terrible video. I'm struggling to think of a time that the dislike numbers mislead me.


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## Bluemount Score (Aug 24, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> The dislike button is a way for people to voice their negative emotions in the most concise and non-damaging way possible. If you take the dislike feature away, a portion of people who just disliked and moved on will convert to writing angry comments, and once you're already writing an angry comment, it's easy to throw in some insults too.


Makes sense!


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## C.R. Rivera (Aug 24, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> If you take the dislike feature away, a portion of people who just disliked and moved on will convert to writing angry comments, and once you're already writing an angry comment, it's easy to throw in some insults too.



Ah, you of little faith in your fellow humans. Try political videos and newspaper stories. They find time to do both, and it is not just one side. It is all sides. Can you imagine the data wasted if the "LGM", er, I mean, Little Green Senient Beings of no discernable race, religion, color, ethnicity or politics, ever showed up?


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## Polkasound (Aug 24, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> The dislike button is a way for people to voice their negative emotions...



That's my point. I could be totally wrong about this, but I don't think dislike buttons were ever intended for emotional responses over a video's subject matter. I think they were intended for one's objective opinion of the quality of a video's content.

If someone writes a song about a controversial issue, no matter how creative and well-produced the song or video is, it's going to be emotionally downvoted by people who disagree with the song's message. Those public downvotes could shoo away potential listeners who might otherwise enjoy the song, so for this reason I think YouTube should do what Amazon did — give viewers the choice to either like it or leave it alone.




MartinH. said:


> If you take the dislike feature away, a portion of people who just disliked and moved on will convert to writing angry comments, and once you're already writing an angry comment, it's easy to throw in some insults too.



This would be a wonderful thing. If I were a content creator and created a song about a politician, I'd much rather brush off a comment like "that politician is a crook!" or "you're an idiot" than receive a downvote with no explanation behind it.




davidson said:


> I've found that if a video has a large amount of dislikes, it's for a legit reason. Something like the creator using click-bait titles or simply a terrible video.



I have to concede this is a very good point. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's when a creator uses a deceptive thumbnail image showing a scene found nowhere in the video. I've discovered that these videos often get large numbers of downvotes. I use that information to skip over them.


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## MartinH. (Aug 24, 2020)

MA-Simon said:


> Imho, worse are videos with the comments turned off. That immediately puts it in the "hiding 80% dislike" category for me.



Totalbiscuit had comments turned off when he was still around. His content was good, well liked and he didn't have anything to hide. He just didn't want to deal with all the toxicity in the comment sections. He didn't believe in "dialog" with fans. Most creators leave them on because they know it would hurt their viewcounts to switch them off, because the algorithm doesn't like it.





mediumaevum said:


> As a creator, I'd rather like some critical comments/questioning of my content, than a dislike.
> A dislike says nothing, whereas a critical comment sheds new light and perspective which you - as a creator - can react to in future videos or at the very least in case of disagreement, tell the user who wrote the critical comment, your perspective and challenges you faced when making a video, ie. a historical video, documentary etc.


Fair enough, but that doesn't scale well to videos with 10k+ comments. You can just read the most upvoted ones, but then you're back to needing the up/down votes there to make sense of the 10k comments.





Polkasound said:


> This would be a wonderful thing. If I were a content creator and created a song about a politician, I'd much rather brush off a comment like "that politician is a crook!" or "you're an idiot" than receive a downvote with no explanation behind it.



That's a very special case though, like what percentage of youtube content do you think is remotely comparable? Maybe they should let you as a creator opt out of the up/downvote system entirely then, or just disable downvotes as a feature on your videos and still allow likes if that's what you prefer. Youtube definitely is to blame for many bad aspects to the implementation of their site. I don't want to look like I'm defending them, I'm just trying to show a perspective of rational usefullness for a downvote feature. I'm not sure if they do this but downvotes could be used to shape your recommendations better in the future. I'm almost certain though, that as long as you watch the video to the end, it won't suggest you similar things less frequently, because ultimately keeping you on the site is all it cares about.




Polkasound said:


> If someone writes a song about a controversial issue, no matter how creative and well-produced the song or video is, it's going to be emotionally downvoted by people who disagree with the song's message. *Those public downvotes could shoo away potential listeners who might otherwise enjoy the song,* so for this reason I think YouTube should do what Amazon did — give viewers the choice to either like it or leave it alone.



I don't think there are a lot of people that start listening to a song, look at the like/dislike ratio and then think "Oh, nevermind then. I thought it's ok, but those xxx downvoters surely know better." and close the video just because of that ratio. When they click on a song they're not sure about, they probably click on 3 random places in the timeline and decide in 5 seconds if it's worth listening too or not.
For the success of a song it's many many orders of magnitude more important whether the youtube algorithm shoves it in front of other people or not. That's the only thing that really counts to get views on youtube.

So everyone is trying to game the system and that leads to all the clickbait bullshit that you see. Almost everything that's bad about youtube is driven by the way it pays people. Like those 10 to 12 minute videos that really all could have been much better as 5 minute videos are stretched to that length because they can run more ads on them and the algorithm favors longer content. Those daily/weekly uploads that really all would be better if people uploaded only half as often, happen because the algorithm rewards regular frequent content and it's the way to go if you want to grow your channel and turn it into a proper source of revenue.

I don't use youtube with a logged in account, and I can't like/dislike/comment anyway, so I genuinely don't care if the dislike feature goes away tomorrow. At least it would remove the lame jokes about " x ___ disliked this video because of ___" in the comments. I could do without reading those under almost every video.

There are a lot of things that are very bad about youtube though and I wish they'd care more about their content creators and viewers, and their own responsibility towards society, but they really seem to be dragging their feet about even slightly mitigating the damage that they do.


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## Polkasound (Aug 24, 2020)

Excellent post, Martin. I don't have a YouTube account, plus I disallow cookies, so I can neither leave nor read comments. (I've also added filters to AdBlock so I no longer see ads or end screen cards... it's like the way YouTube used to be 10 years ago.)



MartinH. said:


> I don't think there are a lot of people that start listening to a song, look at the like/dislike ratio and then think "Oh, nevermind then. I thought it's ok, but those xxx downvoters surely know better." and close the video just because of that ratio.



I don't know, but I am definitely one of them, and its for the reason @davidson mentioned above. Before the video starts, I instinctively glance at the like/dislike ratio. If it has an unusually proportionate number of dislikes, I immediately skip the video without giving it a second thought.

--

Unrelated Thought: I like the old YouTube where everyday people were uploading video clips of things that were happening instead of making things happen just to seek fame. I like seeing the latest police chase or volcanic eruption, not "I let my dog pick my makeup colors!" I've since made LiveLeak my main video site to watch, because they are what YouTube used to be.


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## bill5 (Aug 30, 2020)

mediumaevum said:


> The problem with dislikes that what you may dislike, other people may like.


That's a problem because-?



> If a video has got a lot of dislikes, or just 1 dislike and 0 likes (simply due to not enough logged-in google users), a new viewer would see this and judge the video beforehand - and skip to the next video.


To each their own I guess, but I will never understand people who don't think for themselves, i.e. check it out and decide for themselves vs assuming popular opinion is always right, which is ludicrous....



> The other problem with dislikes is that they are sometimes abused by bullies to throw off a lot of dislikes only to make the videos less likely to be visible. This is done by trolls who just happens to disagree in politics with the owner of the channel, and not because they felt the video had crappy content (which may be totally void of politics/religion/philosophy).


My impression is that this is very rare, and most videos aren't political anyway, and I very rarely see a video with more (never mind many more) likes vs dislikes.



> If you don't like a channel, you should be given an option to ignore it.
> If you don't like a video, ignore the video.


If you don't like dislikes, ignore the dislikes. 

I see no problem with people voicing their opinion. In fact I think that's kind of the point.


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## bill5 (Aug 30, 2020)

Polkasound said:


> I think YouTube should do what Amazon did — give viewers the choice to either like it or leave it alone.


? Amazon has the 1 to 5 star rating system. 1 star is to me even harsher than simply "dislike." And I love that they have that system. I like to read the comments all along the 1 to 5 star system and associated comments to see which sounds more justified or backed up. It is a good way to get advance warning of products which are faulty or poor quality or bad customer service etc


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## bill5 (Aug 30, 2020)

Stringtree said:


> I don’t think I’ve ever used it. If I see a terrible video I just click on something else. The meaning of the button can be unclear, as opposed to the upward one.


I'm sorry but that doesn't make any sense, nor do any of the comments saying or implying that a "like" is well and fine and valid, but a "dislike" is just being mean or a troll etc. Why? It's not OK to dislike something? The reasons for disliking something can be just as valid as liking it. Two sides of the same coin. As far as people clicking dislike only because they disagree with the "politics" or opinions stated vs the quality of the video itself, I'm sure there are just as many likes because they DO agree etc. I put little stock in either frankly and pay little attention to it, and the comments from what I've seen (the last time I looked that is, it's been a long time) are mostly mindless and worthless.


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## Polkasound (Aug 30, 2020)

bill5 said:


> ? Amazon has the 1 to 5 star rating system.



I'm not talking about the five-star rating system for products, but the old voting system where people could mark a review as either helpful or unhelpful.


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## Pier (Aug 30, 2020)

I don't think dislikes have much of an impact on Youtube. Obviously Google and Facebook don't want you to have an impact on their algorithm which is tuned to increase user engagement so that they can a) monitor your behavior for longer and b) show you more ads.

Personally I wish more sites implemented a dowvote/dislike feature and that was used to influence the algorithm. Reddit for example is great in this respect. In general I think the content of each community is curated democratically. If you don't like how a Reddit community behaves, there are thousands of other communities with different interests, rules, etc.


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## mediumaevum (Sep 1, 2020)

bill5 said:


> That's a problem because-?



Why the need to be negative, without explaining what's the problem?

Written critique is way better and more constructive way of addressing different perspectives.


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## mediumaevum (Sep 1, 2020)

Polkasound said:


> I'm not talking about the five-star rating system for products, but the old voting system where people could mark a review as either helpful or unhelpful.



That's a good idea, of which I can agree.


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## Crowe (Sep 1, 2020)

The like button is there so that a person can express their emotion regarding the creator or video. The dislike button is there for the same thing.

I've seen a bunch of comments saying that it's a way for people to just hate on something, but I don't see how the general failings of the human race should mean yet another means of expression gets taken away. There's been a *lot* of that going around recently.

If a content creator can spew whatever they want on a platform, any viewer should have the right to express their opinion on that same platform. 'Why be negative without explaining why'? Why be positive without explaining why? Why should I only explain myself when you don't like my opinion? These are internalized double standards and quite frankly I'm getting tired of them.

We need to stop trying to silence people.

Edit: On a side-note, I've always felt that Facebook's lack of a dislike-button makes the entire system utterly pointless and saturated with nonsense an popularized lies. There *needs* to be a balance, a black to the white, a Yin to the Yang. "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything" has always sounded wrong to me, even when I was a child.


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## mediumaevum (Sep 1, 2020)

Shiirai said:


> If a content creator can spew whatever they want on a platform, any viewer should have the right to express their opinion on that same platform. 'Why be negative without explaining why'? Why be positive without explaining why? Why should I only explain myself when you don't like my opinion? These are internalized double standards and quite frankly I'm getting tired of them.




The difference from my perspective on likes/comments is that
if you agree with something the creator said in a video, you don't need to explain why - the creator already explained it. You just agree to it.

If you disagree on the other hand, you lack an explanation for that. That's why you need to explain dislikes instead of likes, except in cases where a critical comment was already posted explaining the issues, and you click "like" to show agreement on that critical comment. That's all fine with me.

The problem is not that you may dislike something. I think we have a big misunderstanding here. The problem is lack of explanation for why someone may find a video not helpful or poorly made.


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## Crowe (Sep 1, 2020)

mediumaevum said:


> The difference from my perspective on likes/comments is that
> if you agree with something the creator said in a video, you don't need to explain why - the creator already explained it. You just agree to it.
> 
> If you disagree on the other hand, you lack an explanation for that. That's why you need to explain dislikes instead of likes, except in cases where a critical comment was already posted explaining the issues, and you click "like" to show agreement on that critical comment. That's all fine with me.
> ...



Maybe, but I think this is fully dependent on what point of view you're operating from. There's been multitudes of youtube videos with many thousands of likes that make me scratch my head.

But to get more to the basics, the following is something that happened last week:

I was watching a podcast (as we do these days) and someone said something I found incredibly witty. Even though the video was an hour long, this was the *only* thing that made me press the Like button. It hadn't even occurred to me before this point.

Nobody in the world is going to know why I liked that video.

But had I disliked it, I should've explained myself? That's a double standard.


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## mediumaevum (Sep 1, 2020)

Shiirai said:


> But had I disliked it, I should've explained myself? That's a double standard.



Yes, I understand your point, and to some extend I do agree with you.


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## Stringtree (Sep 1, 2020)

If there were a "dislike" or "downvote" button here, it would be a very different place. Sometimes it's a matter of tone, or facts, or taste, or perspective that leads me to dislike a post.

Among people engaged in creative pursuits, dialog is illuminating. Helpful. I may be introduced to something I hadn't considered before through discussion. 

Maybe it's the kind of videos I watch. When I give a "like," it means I want it to keep going, or I share the pride of the maker. There's good and bad on YouTube. So much bad it's not worth the click.

I do see the value of the votes. Consider a big potluck picnic, with tables laid out with food. Is something sitting there largely untouched? Or is the item mostly gone? But also, it's the talk with friends, when we could do that kind of thing. "You really need to try the..."

As someone who makes things, sometimes terrible things, I learn from the good and bad assessments of others I trust. Sometimes I'm brave enough to try that thing on the table that hasn't been touched. 

The algorithm is doubtless including likes and dislikes, but also watch time, engagement, repeat visits, sharing, comments, creator subscriptions, and long-term loyalty to channels. 

YouTube is one of the most revolutionary inventions of all time. It is our Library of Alexandria, and a scrapbook of humankind. It is the stuff written on parchment as well as the unpleasant stuff scrawled on walls. Anyone can participate at any level. If I don't like something, I look somewhere else. There's plenty to see. I can discover, learn, study, feel something, reminisce, grow, or just laugh. 

A little like this place?


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## Polkasound (Sep 1, 2020)

Shiirai said:


> The like button is there so that a person can express their emotion regarding the creator or video. The dislike button is there for the same thing.



If we encourage people to vote with emotion, the Like/Dislike feature will become nothing more than a straw poll on issues. What good would that do content creators or viewers? The only people who would benefit from this kind of YouTube data are anthropologists and sociologists.

YouTube is a video site, so I'd much rather see a dislike rating relate to video quality alone, not subject matter. But this is impossible to ask, because humans are wired to vote with their emotions, especially when they disagree with something.

On Yelp, a towing company can have an excellent rating for providing great service. Then one day, someone posts a photo of a political campaign poster on their lawn. The photo goes viral and people from around the country, who never heard of that towing company before, will leave hundreds of negative reviews to destroy the company's reputation for towing services. This is what emotional voting does.

If people want to vent their disapproval of a topic by downvoting, I think there should be a separate site dedicated for that — some sort of a straw poll site. I personally don't think YouTube should be used as that kind of a site.


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## Greg (Sep 1, 2020)

The algorithm needs that data, it is kind of pointless for users though.


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## TomislavEP (Sep 1, 2020)

I'm using YouTube strictly as a consumer for now, so I don't really care. But when I think about it a little I find this question not as straightforward to answer. On the one hand, having an option to express your feelings and attitude about the particular YouTube content using the Like / Dislike options is certainly in a spirit of democracy. On another hand, many active content creators put immense efforts and resources in their work, so it makes me sad when some people are deliberately trying to undermine this through negative and hostile comments as well as by using the Dislike option without a truly justifiable cause. From that point of view, the "take it or leave it" option is perhaps fairer toward CC's themselves.


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## Crowe (Sep 1, 2020)

Polkasound said:


> YouTube is a video site, so I'd much rather see a dislike rating relate to video quality alone, not subject matter. But this is impossible to ask, because humans are wired to vote with their emotions, especially when they disagree with something.



I understand what you're saying and I'm pretty sure I agree on all your points. The above is what I'd say is the crux of the issue. If you're allowed to 'upvote' something based on emotion, or in agreement with whatever kind of point made, you *must* be allowed to downvote based on those same parameters.

This is simply fair.

I have no problem with liking or disliking something based on quality. If we could trust humans to any extend to behave like that, that's how I believe it should operate. Yet even writing that sentence makes me low-key giggle, as we all know that could never happen. We simply aren't wired like that.

Hence, we must take the good with the bad.

In the case of your mentioned Yelp example, it should be obvious that one should only be allowed to 'vote' if they can prove they have worked with the business in question. I agree that review-bombing is a real problem, but removing the 'downvote' button is not the solution. It would make the whole system a joke.

In the case of youtube, removal of the dislike button necessitates the removal of the like button.


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## mediumaevum (Sep 1, 2020)

Shiirai said:


> In the case of youtube, removal of the dislike button necessitates the removal of the like button.



What about facebook? They only use likes. That works very well.


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## mediumaevum (Sep 1, 2020)

TomislavEP said:


> On another hand, many active content creators put immense efforts and resources in their work, so it makes me sad when some people are deliberately trying to undermine this through negative and hostile comments as well as by using the Dislike option without a truly justifiable cause.



Agree.

It's sad to see lots of dislikes on content that must have taken months or even years to produce.


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## Crowe (Sep 1, 2020)

mediumaevum said:


> What about facebook? They only use likes. That works very well.



I would argue that it doesn't work at all and that I left Facebook because it's a cesspool.

And to your subsequent post, it's also very sad when a video-game devloper spent years upon years working on a game that turns out to be awful.

Time spent =/= quality.


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## mediumaevum (Sep 1, 2020)

Shiirai said:


> And to your subsequent post, it's also very sad when a video-game devloper spent years upon years working on a game that turns out to be awful.



True. But define what awful content is.


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## Crowe (Sep 1, 2020)

mediumaevum said:


> True. But define what awful content is.



Fair point. I guess it makes me look for the dislike button


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## Quasar (Sep 1, 2020)

I've never once used the dislike button on YouTube. If I don't like something I just ignore it, and I don't need an ignore button to do that. I've been ignoring specific people, places and things my whole life without having or needing a button for that purpose.


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## bill5 (Sep 1, 2020)

Shiirai said:


> The like button is there so that a person can express their emotion regarding the creator or video. The dislike button is there for the same thing.
> 
> I've seen a bunch of comments saying that it's a way for people to just hate on something, but I don't see how the general failings of the human race should mean yet another means of expression gets taken away. There's been a *lot* of that going around recently.
> 
> ...


Bravo. Someone else gets it. Thank you for reminding me I'm not the only one, though we seem to be rapidly shrinking in number.


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## mediumaevum (Sep 1, 2020)

Shiirai said:


> I've seen a bunch of comments saying that it's a way for people to just hate on something, but I don't see how the general failings of the human race should mean yet another means of expression gets taken away. There's been a *lot* of that going around recently.


I don't think anyone in this thread have said anything about taking away the means of expression.

From my point of view, I'm merely suggesting some alternative ways of expressing a dislike than a simple click on a button.

We can't all like everything. I'm only asking for some opinions and the arguments behind them.


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## bill5 (Sep 1, 2020)

mediumaevum said:


> True. But define what awful content is.


Define what great content is. Both are totally subjective...as are the like/dislike options.

It always gets back to being two sides of the same coin.


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## bill5 (Sep 1, 2020)

mediumaevum said:


> I don't think anyone in this thread have said anything about taking away the means of expression.
> 
> From my point of view, I'm merely suggesting some alternative ways of expressing a dislike than a simple click on a button.
> 
> We can't all like everything. I'm only asking for some opinions and the arguments behind them.


It sounded like you were asking for opinions and arguments behind a dislike, but not a like. Pardon if I misunderstood...


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## Polkasound (Sep 1, 2020)

Shiirai said:


> If you're allowed to 'upvote' something based on emotion, or in agreement with whatever kind of point made, you *must* be allowed to downvote based on those same parameters.



I agree with this whenever the goal is to acquire public opinion on a topic. Both up and down votes are necessary. But when it comes to sharing one's opinion about the quality of something regardless of the subject matter, either you like it or you don't. If you like it, press the like button. If you don't like it, don't press the like button. A dislike button is basically a redundant gift given to people who like to anonymously sow negativity.

I personally think people are not inclined to press a like button unless they actually enjoyed what they viewed, but a dislike button is likely to be hit for a much wider variety of reasons:

- The voter has a different set of beliefs
- The voter is jealous of the YouTuber's success
- The voter thinks the YouTuber is ugly
- The voter is envious of the YouTuber's good looks
- The voter doesn't like the YouTuber's race, hairstyle, accent, etc.
- The YouTuber reminds the voter of a bully from middle school
- The voter is just having a bad day

Here's another example of button abuse:

Amazon Reviewer: _"I see you marked my review for Studio Line Mega Hair Spritz as unhelpful. Why?"_
Consumer: _"Because I was shopping for light bulbs."_

Obviously the consumer had no proper business marking a review for hair spritz as unhelpful, but since it didn't help him choose any light bulbs, technically it's a legitimate downvote. But who is going to benefit from this downvote?

For this and the reasons above, I think Dislike buttons should be univerally deprecated unless a site is specifically designed to serve as a straw poll.


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## Crowe (Sep 1, 2020)

Polkasound said:


> I agree with this whenever the goal is to acquire public opinion on a topic. Both up and down votes are necessary. But when it comes to sharing one's opinion about the quality of something regardless of the subject matter, either you like it or you don't. If you like it, press the like button. If you don't like it, don't press the like button. A dislike button is basically a redundant gift given to people who like to anonymously sow negativity.
> 
> I personally think people are not inclined to press a like button unless they actually enjoyed what they viewed, but a dislike button is likely to be hit for a much wider variety of reasons:
> 
> ...



I understand, but I think the argument you present is flawed in at least one way. Let's take Facebook as my favorite example.

I quit facebook because of a lot of things, but first and foremost was the propagation of blatantly false information. This problem solely exists because users are *only* allowed to like something. Your amazon reviewer nicely illustrates that people are idiots. Not all of them, not even most of them. But if 1% of a 10 million users are idiots and like the false information, it is then launched into *everyone's* view with _no way to defend yourself against it but do the research disproving the false information. _Or ignore it, which helps nobody but yourself. People will *not* listen to your arguments, proof even, when they see 10.000 likes. Not when there aren't a 100.000 dislikes to put weight behind the argument.

As we know that spreading false information is infinitely simpler than weeding it out, the fact that Facebook has no way to weed it out to begin with, except for ignoring it, the result is huge amounts of people being misinformed.

Which is a very bad thing if there's, say, an epidemic going around.

I cannot, in any way, condone this.

Therefore if dislike buttons must be deprecated, the like button *has* to go as well.


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## Polkasound (Sep 1, 2020)

Shiirai said:


> I understand, but I think the argument you present is flawed in at least one way. Let's take Facebook as my favorite example.
> 
> I quit facebook because of a lot of things, but first and foremost was the propagation of blatantly false information. This problem solely exists because users are *only* allowed to like something. Your amazon reviewer nicely illustrates that people are idiots. Not all of them, not even most of them. But if 1% of a 10 million users are idiots and like the false information, it is then launched into *everyone's* view with _no way to defend yourself against it but do the research disproving the false information. _Or ignore it, which helps nobody but yourself. People will *not* listen to your arguments, proof even, when they see 10.000 likes. Not when there aren't a 100.000 dislikes to put weight behind the argument.
> 
> ...



False information has been on the internet since the inception of the internet. Social media has simply made the dissemination of false information to the masses much more convenient. I don't think the ability to dislike things would change that. Let's hypothetically say, for example, that in the Jacob Blake investigation, it turned out he had a knife and threatened to kill his kids in the car. Even if it were true, such a story would get so many emotionally-charged downvotes from people who'd refuse to believe it, that it could be obliterated from news feeds. The last thing I want is for people's emotions to wield the power to obstruct content delivery to me.

In a perfect world, both likes and dislikes would be objective, but that will never happen. The only reason a likes-only voting system doesn't bother me is because likes can't be vindictive. Only dislikes can. Only dislikes can leave content creators stumped.

Does anyone remember when a Justin Bieber video achieved the distinction of becoming the most disliked video ever? It was a campaigned effort among non-Bieber fans. Had there been no campaign, the video's stats would probably be no different than the others.The notoriety obviously brought Bieber extra fame, but it also exposes the dark side of dislike buttons.

Nobody, however, had to campaign to like the Bieber video. It simply got likes on its own, and they came only from Justin Bieber fans. This is how voting should be — from one's target audience. If I created a tennis instruction video and put it on YouTube, I'd only want the opinions of people who play tennis. Since that's impossible to control, removing the dislike button would at least weed out the opinions of people who hate tennis.

This would mean that anyone with anything negative to say about my video would have to use the comments section. By commenting, they'd either reveal their true colors or provide helpful feedback. Rather than receive two dislikes, I'd rather read, "Tennis is for dorks!" and, "Your backlighting was too bright and it was hard to see the ball." I'd ignore the first comment and pay attention to the constructive criticism of the second. But a like is simply positive reinforcement and would not need an explanation.


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## bill5 (Sep 1, 2020)

Polkasound said:


> I agree with this whenever the goal is to acquire public opinion on a topic. Both up and down votes are necessary. But when it comes to sharing one's opinion about the quality of something regardless of the subject matter, either you like it or you don't. If you like it, press the like button. If you don't like it, don't press the like button. A dislike button is basically a redundant gift given to people who like to anonymously sow negativity.


Hardly. How will other people know who didn't like it, which they have as much right to know as those who did? As Shiirai pointed out, without the dislike button, they've no idea and you have skewed results. That button is not redundant at all and is obviously not reserved for people who like to anonymously sow negativity.



> I personally think people are not inclined to press a like button unless they actually enjoyed what they viewed, but a dislike button is likely to be hit for a much wider variety of reasons:
> 
> - The voter has a different set of beliefs
> - The voter is jealous of the YouTuber's success
> ...


This is opinion with no basis in fact IMO. Sure those people exist, but to act like that's mostly or entirely all there is just doesn't hold up. And the like button can and I'm sure is just as easily is used because:

- The voter has the same set of beliefs
- The voter is trying to help the YouTuber's success (regardless of a valid reason based on the video itself)
- The voter thinks the YouTuber is hot
- The voter is appreciative of the YouTuber's good looks
- The voter likes the YouTuber's race, hairstyle, accent, etc.
- The YouTuber reminds the voter of a buddy from middle school

Again: two sides of the same coin. Keeping a like button while eradicating a dislike button simply makes no sense. Again: do you want people's opinions or not? Anyone who can't handle a dissenting opinion shouldn't post on youtube in the first place and oh btw remember that it's the internet so there will always be a pecentage of people who vote based on something other than the content itself and the likes/dislikes thing isn't really indicative of how good or bad it is anyway.



> The only reason a likes-only voting system doesn't bother me is because likes can't be vindictive. Only dislikes can. Only dislikes can leave content creators stumped.


Maybe, but basically so what, they can be just as bad in other ways. If someone for example posted a video condoning pedophilia, likes would be quite nasty.

I'd just as soon they get rid of the whole like/dislike thing entirely. I get it for a message board like this which is far more niche and moderated, greatly minimizing emotional/irrelevant responses, but for something as wide open as youtube, it's rather pointless. If you feel strongly enough about liking or disliking a video, make a comment. Then people will see if you have a valid reason for doing so.


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## ProfoundSilence (Sep 1, 2020)

ka00 said:


> That’s a great argument for abolishing both likes and dislikes in favour of comments.
> 
> But everyone is so inundated with posts/images/videos made by people dying for a thumbs up that in the end maybe a ‘like’ is all most of us end up having the time to contribute.


its not feasible or useful to have to read every single comment on something to understand the reaction to it. 

If anything, youtube giving creates the ability to enable/disable comments as well as likes and dislikes seperately solves the issue. Don't want a like to dislike? don't take one... it'll hurt your discoverability, but it's a choice you can make if you simply don't like the system. 

The problem most people in this thread have, is that they treat every piece of content like it's a discussion of some kind - when in reality, that's only a portion of the content. 

If someone dislikes an entertainment based video, they don't get more of that channel in their feed, so that single dislike from "reminds me of highschool bully" is a drop in the bucket. 

If someone dislikes an informative video, it means that some of the information was possibly incorrect, or miscommunicated. 

If someone dislikes a political video, then who cares, it's literally a divisive topic - if someone doesn't share the views of the creator, and doesn't want to explain why, as much as I'd say that's healthy - YOU CANT FORCE THEM TO WATCH THINGS THEY DONT WANT TO WATCH. It's not youtube's job to feed people opposing viewpoints(or even filter information **ahem** susan) It's youtube's job to have a system that merely helps guide what content is worth suggesting to it's viewers so that they can show you more adds and make more money. Nothing more, nothing less. Their job isn't to protect creator feelings, or convert dislikes into meaningful criticism. The viewers don't feel like typing anything out, and they are there to be entertained(not inconvenienced for the sake of creators)

If you can't figure out why things aren't performing well and you've got a lot of dislikes, thats life... if you open up a shop and no one wants to buy from you, that's up to you to figure out... they aren't forced to give you a yelp review to tell you why they don't want to shop there. 

And lastly, it's okay for people to dislike what you've done and not have a good reason. You can do everything "well" by reasonable standards and someone still not enjoy it. This does not represent the vast majority of people who will interact with content, and theres absolutely no reason to try to re-design a platform for a fraction of users that like I pointed out above, will dislike you once and never get you back in their feed.


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## Polkasound (Sep 1, 2020)

bill5 said:


> How will other people know who didn't like it, which they have as much right to know as those who did? As Shiirai pointed out, without the dislike button, they've no idea and you have skewed results. That button is not redundant at all and is obviously not reserved for people who like to anonymously sow negativity.



Suppose the dislike button were taken away. If a video had a lot of views and almost no likes, that would give me the most important piece of information of all: the people who ought to be liking the video are the ones not liking it.




bill5 said:


> Keeping a like button while eradicating a dislike button simply makes no sense. Again: do you want people's opinions or not?



Yes, I want opinions, but if they are negative, I want them in the form of a comment so that I can weed out whether or not the criticism is constructive, and whether or not it's coming from someone whose opinion matters. A dislike button can't do that. The reason I support a like-only button is because I don't recall anyone ever complaining about trolls anonymously sowing positivity.




bill5 said:


> Maybe, but basically so what, [likes] can be just as bad in other ways. If someone for example posted a video condoning pedophilia, likes would be quite nasty.



That is a good point. I suppose some trolls, just for the heck of it, could upvote videos about things like pedophilia, satanic animal sacrifices, and neo-nazis. But it's my opinion this doesn't happen too often, because an upvote is ultimately a compliment toward an individual, and trolls don't get their jollies from handing out compliments.


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## Crowe (Sep 2, 2020)

Honestly, the problem is only really a problem because Youtube allows all kinds of video.

If it were only artistic works allowed on the platform, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care at all about the disappearance of the dislike button. But as all manner of content is allowed, it inevitably gets used for politics, misinformation etc. Thus the dislike button is necessary.


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