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/
24k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

186

u/AstroPhysician 10h ago

I’ve seen correct answers im an expert in the field on downvoted very consistently lol. But yea

81

u/Brootal420 9h ago

Just like irl

33

u/Gh0stMan0nThird 9h ago

There are times I will see someone post misinformation, I will do nothing but say "Hey, unfortunately that isn't true" and post a source

Then I get -23 downvotes and nobody comments back to me

29

u/eseffbee 8h ago

I find there is a snowball quality to votes on some comments. The first few votes can really set the direction. You can often see two comments in a thread saying almost identical things yet one is minus and the other with dozens of upvotes. I think when people see something upvoted/downvoted it subconsicously influences how they approach reading the post.

4

u/AstroPhysician 8h ago

Yes I mean this is almost100% of the reasoning for it

3

u/blivet 6h ago

Yeah, it's really surprising how much influence a little number can have.

15

u/OldManFire11 8h ago

One of the most dangerous human traits I've become increasingly aware of over the last decade is that people largely don't give a shit about what's true or not. They only care about what they want to be true.

It's obvious in groups like Trump supporters or conservatives because they've become actively hostile to truth, but even progressives and moderates will soak up misinformation that they want to be true. Like all of the posts about how Ukraine has crippled Russia's social media bots last week. It would be nice if that were true, but it's not. The data centers destroyed had literally nothing to do with Russia's bots. The few charts that circulated showing a line going down were either completely fabricated, or utterly misrepresenting what data was being shown.

2

u/AstroPhysician 6h ago

Google “death of the expert”

13

u/baconboner69xD 9h ago

It’s because you posted a source. Nobody wants to read that crap. You’re supposed to tell the other guy to post a source that refutes your “trust me bro”

3

u/BirdlessLongdeal 7h ago

yeah, i'm not clicking on some link that takes me to a rick astley video.

2

u/AstroPhysician 9h ago

Nah, here it’s more democratic playing field. IRL if a professor was to give his commentary or a researcher it wouldn’t have as much perceived weight as trailer trash (which on this site are both anonymous usernmaes)

4

u/AppropriateCommand80 9h ago

I agree that there is a democratic upvote process but it’s not exactly an even playing field. Mods hold practically absolute power in what gets presented and further filters out posts/comments based on their own perception. It may be democratic to vote on what is presented but you’re only getting to vote on what mods agree with being presented. In the world of academics I feel you are far less restricted to state an opinion or test a hypothesis on any topic

1

u/Tonio_Akerbeltz 4h ago

It's more of a mob.

No matter how much of an expert you are, if you don't pass the vibe check you'll get downvoted to oblivion

29

u/HipToss79 9h ago

I've also had this happen. I'm a mechanical engineer and made some comments about the fury 365 rollercoaster incident that happened a few years back. The number of people that understood fatigue failures in structural steel grew exponentially overnight. I got down voted for stating basic engineering principles I use everyday.

21

u/bacon-squared 9h ago

This happened to me when I pointed out the ocean is not a perfect mixer for heat when they were talking about building server farms underwater. Just talking about basic science and how it applies to heat exchange and I got down voted. Also got downvoted for talking about the ways to do heat dissipation in space.

3

u/PiccoloAwkward465 7h ago

Yeah I made a comment and mentioned my literal experience doing installation and maintenance of actual off-shore wind turbines. I hired and worked with the divers... Downvotes.

11

u/timmybondle 9h ago

People here just down vote you for disagreeing with them whether your points are valid or not. I think discussions here are mostly ego-based and conceding anything would be a hit to that ego

4

u/blivet 6h ago

That, and I think that unfortunately it's becoming clearer all the time that a lot of people just have a deep-seated antipathy towards anyone who actually knows things. It seems to go beyond ego. No one expects the average person to know anything much about some specialized topic, but just the same, even when they are anonymous they will become furious when exposed to someone who does.

18

u/Aeroncastle 9h ago

Half of r/bestof is so nonsensical that I think that bots got the community for themselves Edit: things currently being posted, not things on "all time best"

32

u/_harveyghost 9h ago

I've been on this shithole website for two decades, that's always been an issue lol.

13

u/Sweetwill62 9h ago

It was at least better in the beginning when both upvotes and downvote totals were displayed alongside all comments.

1

u/blivet 6h ago

I've completely forgotten the reasoning behind not showing those, and showing the aggregate total only.

1

u/Sweetwill62 6h ago

Easier to manipulate is the actual real reason. The fake one they publicly said? I can't remember either.

2

u/PiccoloAwkward465 7h ago

Sure but it was significantly better back then. Today like 2% of comments are even worth reading. Same with posts.

8

u/HTPC4Life 9h ago

Still, world's better than no downvote button at all

3

u/Flesroy 9h ago

i think it's very effective for getting rid of the worst of the worst.

but then when you have mostly normal people remaining it can be very detrimental to productive conversation. it basically just becomes a popularity contest.

2

u/DrMobius0 9h ago

more sane, not perfectly sane.

1

u/AN3223 9h ago

I think an important factor is how many people are part of the discussion. Social media platforms usually push trending things onto users, so people are being herded into big discussions. We don't (yet) have a (good) algorithm for showing people the comments they want to see in those discussions.

A good example of this is when a post hits r/all. It invites a bunch of clueless people into the discussion. That wouldn't be an issue if they had their own bubble and the subreddit regulars had their own bubble. This exacerbates the issue of fragmenting communities but I think there are solutions available for that too and both problems can be worked on independently, solutions for either would be immediately beneficial.

I think recommendation algorithms (like what Youtube/Tiktok use for recommending videos) might work as a solution to this if executed well. Another idea I've had is using a program (an LLM) to distinguish comments based on various factors (types of statements made, topic, sentiment, etc.) which is interesting because that could be done client-side without depending on a social media platform to implement anything.

1

u/axle69 7h ago

Its definitely not perfect but when you go to YouTube and places like twitter my only thought is "I fucking wish they had reddits upvote and downvote system" would make both sites a lot fucking nicer.

0

u/BigWetPapaya 9h ago

Well yeah no one’s ever heard of a Space Doctor