What do you think the Like/Dislike buttons are for in Youtube?

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I understand how stupid of a question this seems like, but bare with me.

It seems we're possibly at another precipice at another controversy caused by Pewdie Pie.

While playing PUBG, mr. Pie got annoyed by a person he couldn't hit and called him the N-Word on screen.

A gaming channel I like, Pretty Good Gaming, just did a story on it. It's here
Essentially, they go on to talk about the troubles caused by youtube's biggest sensation in the past, and how his "Death to Jews" prank lead to a trick down affect that had advertisers pull their funding from youtube, not wanting to be associated with bad press. This led to youtube changing it's monetization policies and eventually hurting the bottom line of a lot of youtube creators for months.

At the end, they call for Senor Pie to think about his actions as he is viewed by mostly children and that it's already shown that being at the top affects all around him, even their own channel.

At the time of me posting this, the video has 1k likes, and 807 dislikes.

In scrolling through a few pages of the comments, people are talking about how Pie-san has done nothing wrong and how overly triggered society is nowadays.... blissfully unaware about how triggered they are as they are downvoting a source of news because they are unhappy that something is happening, not the content that was produced.

so, I bring it to you. Do you downvote due to the content that you've seen (how it was produced, etc), or do you downvote due to the feelings you have from the content, regardless of the true association of the message with the content (a news source reporting on Trump's actions, but you just hate trump so everything about him gets a downvote)?

 

[DefunctTheory]

I don't downvote at all, and honestly, I think having downvote options in most things, youtube included, is a detriment. At one time, it maybe have been a useful metric for gathering info by Youtubes algorithms, but I think they've gotten good enough to not need it. It's just a trolling tool now. Upvote and/or move on.

Also, in before this thread gets derailed into talking about what the Pew did and how he's racist/his detractors are SJW losers/Lizard people rule the Universe, rather than the voting system.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Just a tool to gauge the reaction of the audience

Green is good
Red is bad

Toddlers can understand it

I don't partake in the system

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Youtube is cancer. Like/Dislike is just playing into that cancer. The world would be a better place if Google just changed it so no one can get ad-revenue from YouTube ads, or sponsorship deals if they use that media form.

All the drama would die, people like Pewdiepie, Markiplier and Sterling would be gone, and God willing the Youtube comment section might finally die!

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

That 1 - 5 star rating system that YouTube had, back when I still had hope my life was going somewhere, was arguably unnecessarily specific and somewhat redundant so, of course, I'm kinda inclined to defend it.

All joking aside, I don't think simplifying everything to like or dislike is that great an idea. Sure, it gets the point across but, you know, I like a bit of nuance. I don't like looking at things in binary. I don't think it does you any good. Sometimes you just feel a 3 out of 5 about something and you should be able to express that.

But this is secretly a YouTube drama thread, isn't it? So... I always had a pretty strong feeling PewDiePie was probably a dick. Even before he pulled the death to jews thing. I have very little patience for rich manchildren making an ass of themselves and passing it off as being quirky and PewDiePie always seemed like the most inescapable embodiment of that attitude.

 

[DefunctTheory]

All the drama would die, people like Pewdiepie, Markiplier and Sterling would be gone, and God willing the Youtube comment section might finally die!

Uh... Sterling would be the 'Last Man Standing' in such a scenario.

 

[iwinatlife]

Youtube is cancer. Like/Dislike is just playing into that cancer. The world would be a better place if Google just changed it so no one can get ad-revenue from YouTube ads, or sponsorship deals if they use that media form.

All the drama would die, people like Pewdiepie, Markiplier and Sterling would be gone, and God willing the Youtube comment section might finally die!

Sterling does not monetize his videos through Youtube. He is Patreon funded and gets some money from his own site. and why don't you want people to make money on Youtube?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Youtube is cancer. Like/Dislike is just playing into that cancer. The world would be a better place if Google just changed it so no one can get ad-revenue from YouTube ads, or sponsorship deals if they use that media form.

All the drama would die, people like Pewdiepie, Markiplier and Sterling would be gone, and God willing the Youtube comment section might finally die!

Sterling does not monetize his videos through Youtube. He is Patreon funded and gets some money from his own site. and why don't you want people to make money on Youtube?

Because its turned Youtube into the video equivalent of the Tabloids. It's all about hits/likes, and the best way to do that is drama. That's why Youtubers have fights, and drama channels exists, and reaction channels that just put a small video of the tuber in a corner over someone else's video.
It is all in service of ad revenue. Take that away and drama channels die. Reaction channels die. Most lets players/reviews/critics die out. Those 'news' channels like MundaneMatt where he just reads news articles, or rant channels like RazorFist where he just has a thesaurus, they all die out.

It would actually be good for YouTube as a whole, 'cause at this point the FCC, or some other regulatory agency is going to step in and bring YouTube to heel.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I didn't see the video but I can't help but see a contradiction here, you describe the video as news but from what you said they also blame Pie chan as causing the adpocalypse which is entirely abject to debate and is more inline with an opinion piece.

Anyways I don't downvote, usually because if it reaches this level the video doesn't deserve the added effort of clicking the dislike button.

I can see your point. Honestly, I can. But their last point is actually tied into the news because they, themselves, are affected by the movement of Adpocalypse.

Few people can take strict news and extrapolate it to a broader situation. Pretty Good Gaming stating that their own channel can be hurt by another wave of Adpocalypse ad pulling and they can't do their job helps bring to light that it's not just let's players, but gaming media in general that can be hurt by Monsieur Pie's antics.

But this is secretly a YouTube drama thread, isn't it? So... I always had a pretty strong feeling PewDiePie was probably a dick. Even before he pulled the death to jews thing. I have very little patience for rich manchildren making an ass of themselves and passing it off as being quirky and PewDiePie always seemed like the most inescapable embodiment of that attitude.

What's a youtube drama thread?

 

[DefunctTheory]

It would actually be good for YouTube as a whole, 'cause at this point the FCC, or some other regulatory agency is going to step in and bring YouTube to heel.

I fail to see how wiping out half the content on youtube, and reducing it to a place to watch corporate media (label music, network television spots) and cat videos would save the site.

What's a youtube drama thread?

It's when you take something that happened on youtube and blow it way out of proportion. Like, way out there.

 

[DoPo]

All joking aside, I don't think simplifying everything to like or dislike is that great an idea. Sure, it gets the point across but, you know, I like a bit of nuance. I don't like looking at things in binary. I don't think it does you any good. Sometimes you just feel a 3 out of 5 about something and you should be able to express that.

I can immediately refute that: what is 3 out of 5? Perhaps, that question might look a bit too easy... However, it at least leads to the next one - what is 4 out of 5? Now that's tricky - it definitely means "I like this" but should be less strong than 5/5 which is "I really like this"...however, how do you really determine the distinction between the two? Moreover, how do you make that distinction universal? You may have very clear criteria for what goes into 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 stars but would everybody else share it? What if two people feel exactly the same about a piece of content, yet one rates it as 4 the other as 5? People are generally averse to giving out extreme scores, so the first person, let's call her Alice, might be thinking that 5 is "a bit too much" and scored the piece of content lower than what it rationally should be or perhaps the second person, say his name was Bob, was too excited and scored it higher than the "real" value.

Let's say you are tasked with figuring out a system that will give out recommended videos based on similar activity - how do you even consolidate the fact that 4 is equal to 5 for Alice and Bob so you can extrapolate that they may share interests? Well, if you have access to their voting habits you might compile a profile for them - Alice might be only voting at 2, 3, and 4s because of the extreme ends aversion while Bob might pretty much universally be scoring 1, 3, and 5s - in that case you can actually weight the options to make them equal. This does pretty much obliterate the difference between 1/2 and 4/5, thus proving that a five star system is inherently flawed.

Of course, that is only true if you do implement such a system...which Amazon has. OK, their algorithms are way more complex, however, this is one of the first problems they encountered with their five star ratings and they have had to work around it. They have already proven that five stars don't really accurately represent stuff, as different people will give different scores for essentially the same stance. In fact, if you're not convinced go ahead and browse some reviews for products on there - "works great" can be found under both 4 and 5 star reviews. Some people consider that a product they bought behaving exactly as expected is worth a 5 - you can't go any higher, after all. Others consider that it's a 4, perhaps because they fear the extreme rating, or perhaps because 5 is only if it manages to really wow them. Some even give the exact same thing 3 stars with a similar rationale as the latter for the 4 star people - for them works exactly as advertised is a neutral stance, if it's any better in some way then it deserves more. Which loops back around to what I started with "what is 3 out of 5? That question might look a bit too easy"

Speaking of Amazon reviews, you'll also find a lot that actually praise a product but give it a low score for stupid reasons - either it's because the customer did something wrong and were frustrated by that or for reasons unrelated to the product, like the seller or delivery service.

To bring this back to YouTube videos, though, you can easily imagine that all sorts of similar problems will crop up with a five star system there - what if Alice really likes a video but scores it a 4 instead of 5? What if Bob merely "likes" a video yet he scores it a 5? What if Carol thinks the video is "good enough" and gives it a 3 instead of using that for feeling neutral about it? And so on and so forth. Also, yeah, the thread is already about people using like/dislike differently, so I really cannot see how a five star system will make them unify their scoring.

 

[Saelune]

Well, the like/dislike bar -can- be informative. Like for troll videos. I have come to learn that maybe if there is a big dislike ratio on a video that I -think- is a clip of something, it might be a troll video.

Or it might be animals hurting eachother. I know some people overreact to animal videos if they -think- there is abuse, but generally the like bar wins out unless its something super unpleasant.

As for PewDiePie...he is a piece of shit and everything wrong with alot of things. He may be 'joking' but his fanbase isnt smart enough to get that and thus turns a joke into real views for many of them. Im tired of that BS.

I dont like/dislike, but I dont generally watch Youtube logged in.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

It would actually be good for YouTube as a whole, 'cause at this point the FCC, or some other regulatory agency is going to step in and bring YouTube to heel.

I fail to see how wiping out half the content on youtube, and reducing it to a place to watch corporate media (label music, network television spots) and cat videos would save the site.

If truly half the channels on Youtube are drama channels and lets players, then perhaps it shouldn't be saved.

 

[DefunctTheory]

It would actually be good for YouTube as a whole, 'cause at this point the FCC, or some other regulatory agency is going to step in and bring YouTube to heel.

I fail to see how wiping out half the content on youtube, and reducing it to a place to watch corporate media (label music, network television spots) and cat videos would save the site.

If truly half the channels on Youtube are drama channels and lets players, then perhaps it shouldn't be saved.

That's not what you said. You said you wanted to get rid of the Ad Revenue.

That's what props up a lot of channels, not just Drama Channels and Let Plays (Though there are a crap ton of those).

EDIT: Also, I'm amused to see you rolling out the Regulation Argument in a thread were you also blasted Jim Sterling, considering he just brought that up concerning Pewdiepie this morning.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

It would actually be good for YouTube as a whole, 'cause at this point the FCC, or some other regulatory agency is going to step in and bring YouTube to heel.

I fail to see how wiping out half the content on youtube, and reducing it to a place to watch corporate media (label music, network television spots) and cat videos would save the site.

If truly half the channels on Youtube are drama channels and lets players, then perhaps it shouldn't be saved.

That's not what you said. You said you wanted to get rid of the Ad Revenue.

That's what props up a lot of channels, not just Drama Channels and Let Plays (Though there are a crap ton of those).

EDIT: Also, I'm amused to see you rolling out the Regulation Argument in a thread were you also blasted Jim Sterling, considering he just brought that up concerning Pewdiepie this morning.

Getting rid of ad revenue would be a necessary evil. To bring up Jim Sterling, shitty devs were flooding Steam with shitty games through Greenlight, and making bank off trading cards. And Steam just ended Greenlight, despite the honest devs honestly trying to be honest and devy. There was no other way to fix the system. It was a broken system that led to titanic sized piles of shit and asset flippers.

Drama channels/lets players/reaction channels are the asset flippers of YouTube. And the easiest, quickest way to get rid of them is to end the cash flow.

Aside from that, if YouTube is so infected that half of it is drama channels and lets players, then it shouldn't be saved. we should just start again on a new site, this time learning from the mistakes of YouTube.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

What's a youtube drama thread?

It's when you take something that happened on youtube and blow it way out of proportion. Like, way out there.

What the hell is the purpose of that? Do people make money off of the drama? If so, then I get it.

I didn't see the video but I can't help but see a contradiction here, you describe the video as news but from what you said they also blame Pie chan as causing the adpocalypse which is entirely abject to debate and is more inline with an opinion piece.

Anyways I don't downvote, usually because if it reaches this level the video doesn't deserve the added effort of clicking the dislike button.

I can see your point. Honestly, I can. But their last point is actually tied into the news because they, themselves, are affected by the movement of Adpocalypse.

Few people can take strict news and extrapolate it to a broader situation. Pretty Good Gaming stating that their own channel can be hurt by another wave of Adpocalypse ad pulling and they can't do their job helps bring to light that it's not just let's players, but gaming media in general that can be hurt by Monsieur Pie's antics.

Yeah, but blaming it on a single invidual is just wrong. Youtube is absolutely huge and the idea that a single person can cause so much harm by doing stupid joke is taking it too far (especially as he's not american so the joke of ni**** has no actual undertones to it). Youtube will continue to have people putting insensitive things in it and if companies can't take that fact then it will share the fate of blip.

While you're right that it is wrong to do that, we have to consider the reality of branding. Disney and Youtube are all about that. If the biggest star on youtube goes off brand, it creates a controversy from a very unnecessary place. And like any business, Youtube would rather you and I be pissed at them than Coke, pepsi, and nike.

For some reason, this guy has 57 million subs. CNN, Fox News, TYT, Conan O'Brien, Alex Jones... they just reach a little under 14 million. One guy is more heeded than the top news and political figures. One single individual has a lot of sway.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler

It would actually be good for YouTube as a whole, 'cause at this point the FCC, or some other regulatory agency is going to step in and bring YouTube to heel.

I fail to see how wiping out half the content on youtube, and reducing it to a place to watch corporate media (label music, network television spots) and cat videos would save the site.

If truly half the channels on Youtube are drama channels and lets players, then perhaps it shouldn't be saved.

That's not what you said. You said you wanted to get rid of the Ad Revenue.

That's what props up a lot of channels, not just Drama Channels and Let Plays (Though there are a crap ton of those).

EDIT: Also, I'm amused to see you rolling out the Regulation Argument in a thread were you also blasted Jim Sterling, considering he just brought that up concerning Pewdiepie this morning.

Getting rid of ad revenue would be a necessary evil. To bring up Jim Sterling, shitty devs were flooding Steam with shitty games through Greenlight, and making bank off trading cards. And Steam just ended Greenlight, despite the honest devs honestly trying to be honest and devy. There was no other way to fix the system. It was a broken system that led to titanic sized piles of shit and asset flippers.

I really don't think Steam is an appropriate analogy.

Drama channels/lets players/reaction channels are the asset flippers of YouTube. And the easiest, quickest way to get rid of them is to end the cash flow.

It would likely stem the flow, but people are going to get caught in the crossfire.

Amusingly, everyone you've named in this thread would almost certainly survive.

Aside from that, if YouTube is so infected that half of it is drama channels and lets players, then it shouldn't be saved. we should just start again on a new site, this time learning from the mistakes of YouTube.

I didn't say half of Youtubes content was Lets Players and Drama Channels. I said half of it probably propped up by Ads.

There's a lot of overlap, but it's not absolute.

And there's also vid.me if you want a youtube substitute, that site I only remember because sfdebris is hosted on it.

Spoiler

What's a youtube drama thread?

It's when you take something that happened on youtube and blow it way out of proportion. Like, way out there.

What the hell is the purpose of that? Do people make money off of the drama? If so, then I get it.

People's names get passed around during youtube dramas, both in and out of youtube. The drama sparks interest, the name and google get you to an ad supported page, and bam.

Also, we homo sapiens just really like blowing things out of proportions. Probably almost as much as we like just blowing stuff up.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Youtube is cancer. Like/Dislike is just playing into that cancer. The world would be a better place if Google just changed it so no one can get ad-revenue from YouTube ads, or sponsorship deals if they use that media form.

All the drama would die, people like Pewdiepie, Markiplier and Sterling would be gone, and God willing the Youtube comment section might finally die!

Sterling does not monetize his videos through Youtube. He is Patreon funded and gets some money from his own site. and why don't you want people to make money on Youtube?

Jim doesn't monetize The Jimquisition, his Jimpressions and other videos are monetized.