(upbeat Hip Hop music)
- 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 is 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 disliked count information will still be available
to the uploader in the backend,
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 wellbeing,
and it can also enable targeted disliked 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.
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 five-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 little glanceable thing is super useful
in lots of contexts.
So if I show up here to watch 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 five dislikes and 20 dislikes.
That little glanceable red flag is my cue
to scroll down to the comment section,
to find out (snaps) just like that,
oh, 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, on to the next video.
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 gonna 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 TikToks 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 TikTok 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 dunno 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 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, 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 gonna 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 TikTok 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.
Can you imagine if Etsy got rid of one star ratings
to protect the mental health of its sellers
and to combat review bombing?
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?
But the comment section on YouTube is already
where most of the mental health conversations
I think happen when I talk to other creators,
and there's already some tools that they've built.
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 a lot of views and zero dislikes.
There's always some people disliking for whatever reason.
Sometimes it's a news video with bad news,
and people dislike the video
because they disliked 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,
'cause 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 can already disabled ratings entirely on a video,
but maybe that means YouTube working on new tools
for the specific, pretty small use case.
Maybe you can only rate the video
if you've watched a certain proportion of it,
something like that.
So overall I think, 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,
and we can use the comment section to talk about it.
And YouTube, if you're watching this,
maybe some creators will chime in
in the comment section below about what we think.
Either way, that's just been it.
Thanks for watching, catch you guys in the next one, peace.
(upbeat music)