r/technology • • 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/LegendOfBobbyTables 9h ago

I've been in content creation for a long time. Functionally, hitting dislike is exactly the same as hitting the like button. YouTube doesn't care if you like a video or hate a video, they only care that you interacted with said video. Advertisers pay more to be associated with an engaged viewer, and any action you take counts as engagement.

YouTube will happily feed you 100 videos in a row that you click dislike on and will be more likely to show those same videos to other users they believe have similar viewing habits as you. The only things that signal to YouTube that a video is low quality and shouldn't be offered to other users is to leave the video within the first 30 seconds or not clicking on it all.

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u/gabu87 8h ago

The problem is you assume people getting flooded with videos they dislike will actually still hate watch it.

Suppose I dislike MrBeast videos and see it fed to me, i would keep scrolling past it.

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u/couldbemage 6h ago

The only question for YouTube is: did you keep it on your screen long enough for them to play an ad?

That's it.

Clicking the downvote button just let's them prove to advertisers that you're awake.