r/technology • u/Dilpickle2113 • 10h ago

Social Media YouTube is testing hiding the dislike button entirely and users aren’t happy

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtube-is-testing-hiding-the-dislike-button-entirely-and-users-arent-happy-3420822/
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u/EbonySaints 10h ago

I actually miss having five stars as a rating system. I like a lot of things, but I don't "five star" like them. The problem is that with certain things like ridesharing, I really can't give anyone less than five stars even if I don't think they're perfect because it will fuck them over. Then there's the stuff that I kinda like but don't love. I want to show that I like it, but just giving it a like feels like it pollutes my feed and it's not really an honest assessment of how I feel. Liking something these days means that I'm now associated with it until proven otherwise.

I understand why they got rid of the five star system, since everyone who isn't riddled with indecisiveness obsessed either defaults to five or one, but it really is a sign of the death of nuance. Everything has to either be the GOAT or slop. Sometimes, I just want some three star, comfort food, semi-guilty pleasure, mid tier stuff.

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u/ReadyForShenanigans 9h ago

Another issue with stars is vagueness. Different people have different standards over what constitutes a 4-star rating, and once you get into half-star granularity (or out-of-10), it basically becomes random vibes. Whereas "monkey like it" vs "monkey not like it" is a distinction everyone understands equally.

Though on youtube scale (in the modern day) that would probably get averaged out.

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u/EbonySaints 9h ago

But personally, is vagueness really that bad of a thing when it comes to what ultimately boils down to a personal opinion on artistic media? Someone's 7/10 might be someone else's 9/10 which might be another's 6/10. I might agree with the 6/10 and think that it was okay, but under a like/dislike system, they're all likes. Or if you're like me and kinda lump in anything that fits in my imaginary scale from a 4 to a 7 as mid, you just don't like or dislike it at all.

I think the real problem is that the way the internet is set up, you can't just let things exist as they are. There has to be some sort of binary engagement for the sake of metrics and that means liking things that I otherwise wouldn't like because I like them, but not "like" like them.

Plus, I have 4,221 liked videos and I'm bumping up dangerously close to that 5,000 cap. I can't like everything I think is neat.

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u/teaguechrystie 9h ago

i just had to run that watch later remover extension 😒

...cuz there's no provided way to clear it. 😒

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u/DeskMotor1074 6h ago

But personally, is vagueness really that bad of a thing when it comes to what ultimately boils down to a personal opinion on artistic media?

It's a problem if the purpose of the rating system is to provide an indicator to others. If you're giving something a 6/10 because your real opinion is "it's ok but not great", but then a bunch of people see that and think "6/10 means it's trash, I won't watch that", then the rating system has failed. A like/dislike doesn't let you get as specific on what your opinion is, but it does largely unify what people understand the rating system to mean.

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u/indoninjah 9h ago

Tbh I think that vagueness is kind of the point. If we were in an ideal world, everyone would rate what they think is fair, and the average product would probably be somewhere around a 3 ("it's fine, I don't regret my purchase"). It makes it harder to parse a rating when almost everything is 4 point something

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u/brutinator 8h ago

Yeah, but is a product rated 3 stars by 100 people better than a product rated 2 stars by 50 people and 4 stars by 50? Like it doesn't seem like a great system if 2 products can have the same score, calculated in a fair way, and yet have wildly different reasons for whatever their aggregate score is.

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u/indoninjah 7h ago

I mean what you're really speaking to is variance, which would also be captured in the 5 star system if it were used properly. It would be valuable to see that a product has a consistent 3 star rating or if 50% of people were very satisfied and 50% of people returned it because it broke

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u/gumbo_chops 9h ago

It's not random "vibes", it's called statistics. Like, how the average family has 2.5 children...folks aren't going all King Salmon on their kids.

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u/ReadyForShenanigans 9h ago edited 9h ago

The difference between giving a 6/10 and a 7/10 is very much arbitrary and can depend on your humor at the particular moment. This isn't statistics; I'm talking about individual datapoints.

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u/gumbo_chops 9h ago

Yeah, no shit that's why it helps to aggregate it over thousands/millions of ratings. I'm not even sure what point your trying to make.

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u/ReadyForShenanigans 8h ago

Which is why I did say that this would probably get averaged out on YouTube, but having thousands of datapoints can't always be taken for granted (like in the aforementioned ridesharing example).

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u/gumbo_chops 7h ago

Well ridesharing gets even more fuzzy because the things being rated are 'dynamic' as opposed to a 'fixed' piece of media, so I don't think that's a good comparison.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 6h ago

Yeah I've had an Airbnb host message me, begging to change my 4 star review to a 5 star one. We were having an event and they showed the property to 3 different small groups WHILE we were there. Including one woman who walked up to the main house, clearly saw us through the sliding glass doors, and walked in anyway.

I told her that 4 stars was generous and it was really just that the staff were super great. So yeah this idea that everything is 5 stars or the fucking worst is insane.