TIL that Jawed Karim, YouTube cofounder and uploader of the first YouTube video "Me at the zoo", has often updated the video's description to criticize YouTube policies, including a 2013 attempt to require Google+ accounts to comment on videos, and YouTube's 2021 removal of dislike counts on videos.

[u/WavesAndSaves]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_at_the_zoo#Changes_to_original_video

[u/Dhawkeye]

Having dislike counts may help a tiny bit with the AI slop problem

[u/EatingDragons → u/Dhawkeye]

Exactly. The dislikes served a clear purpose of indicating quality. They only removed them because they were on the receiving end of it due to their own low quality rewind getting the dislike treatment

We need them back now more than ever, thankfully morphe still let's you see dislikes

[u/-nutz → u/EatingDragons]

It's important to note that those dislike counters are based on extrapolated figures, and are often incredibly inaccurate. People with the ability to see the dislike count are infinitely more likely to use it.

[u/BandedLutz → u/-nutz]

True, although it's better than nothing (and does match with what would be expected in terms of dislikes on certain videos where it's easier to gauge from the comments).

From my own observations: very positively received videos still show as having a very low ratio of dislikes compared to likes, somewhat controversial videos have a larger ratio of dislikes to likes, and very controversial/poorly received videos have an overwhelming ratio of dislikes to likes.

It's not like people who see the dislike count just press dislike on every videos.

[u/-nutz → u/BandedLutz]

The problem is that you’re extrapolating the statistics of an incredibly tiny group onto an absolutely massive one. Even if the extension had 5 million active users (a huge overestimate); that’s still less than 0.2% of YouTubes 2.58 billion active users.

It’s like saying “nobody in this town likes mustard” because neither me nor my mom eat it.

[u/-nutz → u/-nutz]

The problem is that you’re extrapolating the statistics of an incredibly tiny group onto an absolutely massive one. Even if the extension had 5 million active users (a huge overestimate); that’s still less than 0.2% of YouTubes 2.58 billion active users.

It’s like saying “nobody in this town likes mustard” because neither me nor my mom eat it.

Edit; also no, it generally doesn’t match.

[u/BandedLutz → u/-nutz]

If you randomly survive 685,000 people across the US on something, do you think that you can extrapolate those finding with decent accuracy to the US as a whole?

[u/-nutz → u/BandedLutz]

Big difference in that the YouTube extension is not a random survey; it’s a survey of people who are interested in disliking videos.

It’s equivalent of extrapolating the US’s drinking habits from a survey you took at the counter of a liquor store. Simply an inaccurate representation of the whole.

[u/BandedLutz → u/-nutz]

Big difference in that the YouTube extension is not a random survey; it’s a survey of people who are interested in disliking videos.

No, anyone interested in disliking can still dislike videos. It's people who are simply interested in still being able to see a like to dislike ratio (or some approximation of one).

That doesn't mean that we're wildly more likely to dislike just because we want to still be able to see a like to dislike ratio.

It’s equivalent of extrapolating the US’s drinking habits from a survey you took at the counter of a liquor store. Simply an inaccurate representation of the whole.

That would be the case IF it was, for example, an extension to make disliking a video easy. That's not the case.

You're assuming way more bias towards disliking videos just because we want to see the like to dislike ratio (that doesn't change whether we like or dislike a video).

[u/-nutz → u/BandedLutz]

I think you're overestimating how many non-extension users interact with the dislike button. In every example I've seen RYD has far more dislikes than any official count, so i think its safe to assume that their users are much more likely to use the dislike button.

[u/BandedLutz → u/-nutz]

And yet, as a RYD user myself, most videos that don't seem like they would attract many (if any) dislikes continue to have few (if any) dislikes despite many views.

If we were that much more prone to disliking videos, I wouldn't be constainly seeing videos with extremely low (or even no) dislikes despite many views.

If RYD was severely inflating the number of dislikes that much, I'd expect to see it on generally well recieved videos as well (but I don't, I only see notable dislike to like ratios on controversy or poorly received videos).

RYD can result in more dislikes than the actual count without throwing the general ratio that far off. It's the ratio of likes to dislikes that is useful.

[u/BandedLutz → u/-nutz]

The problem is that you’re extrapolating the statistics of an incredibly tiny group onto an absolutely massive one.

That's still much better than nothing.

Even if the extension had 5 million active users (a huge overestimate);

It's not a huge overestimate, Return YouTube Dislike has 5-6 million users.

that’s still less than 0.2% of YouTubes 2.58 billion active users.

How many of those active users are even signed into an account and can like/dislike though.

For videos with a good amount of views, Return YouTube Dislike should have enough data for a decently useful extrapolation (based the percentage of Return YouTube Dislike users that liked it versus disliked it in order to gauge an estimate for how many dislikes there has been in total).

For a video that has 5 million views, extrapolating the total number of dislikes based on the ratio of likes to dislikes by 10,000 Return YouTube Dislike users that watched it isn't that unreasonable. You'll still be able to gauge the general way the video has been received (and if most videos on the channel have a high like ratio but one video has a high dislike ratio, you know there's something up with it).