Isaac Week 8 - BIG YouTube SCANDAL
For those who don't know what is going on in the YouTube world, YouTube has announced last week that they are removing the dislike button from their platform. They said that they are doing this because they don't want people to dislike a video out of hatred for the content creator rather than out of hatred for the video.
Just after this announcement, some of the biggest YouTubers and many small YouTubers who this update is supposed to benefit have come out against this move by YouTube. People like Marques Brownlee, a famous tech reviewer on YouTube, have said that doing this will take away the component of a video that lets viewers know if the video is worth their time or not, and a lot of people will waste even more time watching terrible videos because of this.
I agree with this because when I click on a video on YouTube I could look at the ratio of likes to dislikes to let me know if the video was liked by the audience, but taking the dislike button away from me will limit my knowledge of this, and I might end up watching a lot of videos that are terrible.
Another thing that is bad about this move is that YouTube will not be removing the Like button. This means that people will be able to see the amount of likes on a video, but not the amount of dislikes. This just makes the situation even worse because when I go onto YouTube I will think a video is good by seeing that it has a lot of likes, but then it will be disliked just as much as it is liked and I wouldn't know.
This enters into the question of whether or not it is good to only see positive feedback on the platform and no negative feedback.
Another criticism is that if content creators wanted to remove the dislike button, they could do it themselves on individual videos, but the whole platform doesn't need to remove the button for everyone, especially because of how unpopular this move by YouTube is.
(After I wrote this, I saw that YouTube has clarified that they are removing the dislike count to viewers, but are keeping it to creators, but the blog still applies to that.)
Hi Isaac, you bring up a very good points. I am honestly not sure where I stand with this issue. From what I've seen, it seems that videos containing politicians such as President Biden are at the root of this desire to remove the dislike button. There are many of his videos that contain much more dislikes than likes. Maybe this is a solid representation of America's satisfaction with Biden. But what I would assume is that people who see the video and don't like Biden are more likely to dislike the video than Biden's supporters (who might neither like or dislike), and YouTube just becomes a platform for our country to become even more divided. While it is likely that a lot of people are dissatisfied by the Biden administration (based on the divide between Republicans and Democrats), I don't think that the numbers on YouTube accurately reflect the country's opinions on Biden. I think that for videos such as these, it might make sense to remove the dislike button.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I also understand that people should be able to express their dissatisfaction and see what others are thinking with certain content and political decisions, which is why I am unsure about whether or not YouTube's decision is smart.
Feel free to convince me either way.