Crossposted from https://thebrainbin.org/m/enshittification@lemmy.world/t/1996619
Crossposted from https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1480679/google-is-testing-the-hiding-of-youtube-s-dislike-button-entirely-from-all-forms-of-vide
Source: User reports, reported on by couple of news outlets:
This is probably bad for the YouTubers actually making content, despite it all. They can see whether people disliked their video.
“Return YouTube dislikes” exists right now to approximate dislikes, and it will continue to exist, and review bombers are more likely to use it and therefore disproportionately influence approximate statistics. But at least for now, YouTubers can dispute those guesses. They won’t be able to do that if they lose the metric.
It’s kind of conceding to the mob.
Agreed.
Some also argue dislikes are used for censoring, but I’d conter-argue that dissidence is a form of opinion. If people are using the tool illegitimately, it doesn’t make the tool itself illegitimate. Rather, investigating suspicious behaviour, of which there are tools one can use on Youtube, should be the way.
And I’d further say the removal hurts not just the content creators, but their followers too. If the creator uses likes ratio as a quality assurance metric, or to know what they should or shouldn’t focus on, the lack of the metric will make the service he/she provides worsen, and by extension the experience of their followers.