This still seems like a huge disconnect to what people use youtube for vs. what google thinks it should be used for.
Google wants youtube to be all network and brands making content. ie. a future version of what TV is now. What actual people want is creator made videos(diy/review/podcast videos and everything else that make youtube wonderful).
This disconnect has been happening since google bought youtube and this recent change only reflects google wanting to hide backlash/or dislike from who it sees should rightfully be on youtube, brands/networks/corporations.
You could see that with how YouTube Rewind evolved over the years. It started out highlighting popular videos from original YouTube creators and at some point became Jimmy Kimmel doing Fortnite dances.
It's all about Wojcicki. The fact she runs YouTube never ceases to amaze me given that she ran Google Video, which failed largely because she was obsessed with 'professional' content and bet against user generated content. That bet was wrong to such a huge extent she was reduced to recommending Google buy her only competitor.
Somehow, despite this failure as an executive - a failure of the kind that got Vic Gundotra fired - she has not only not been fired but ended up running the site that beat her, where she has spent the last half decade trying to turn it back into Google Video.
100% agree, the only reason Wojcicki is still there is she is the sister of founder Sergey Brin's ex-wife and that family supplied the "garage" that started google.
I have a small child (14.8 kg) so I know a lot more about children's shows on Youtube than I want to. People use Youtube to publish lots of videos aimed at children. Some of which is inappropriate, BTW; keep an eye on what your kid is seeing.
In 2018 some TV executives with Disney ties founded Moonbug Entertainment, which proceeded to swallow up lots of the more popular channels. Sound familiar? Such as Little Baby Bum, Cocomelon and Blippi, the last two of which were $120 million. All excellent programming. This seems to be the way of the World.
My son also loves Vlad and Niki. They make cute, silly videos that gross millions of US dollars per month. There is serious money involved in this now.
It sounds like you read the headline and came to post your already held views on Google and Youtube hoping that it would be relevant.
From the article:
> We’ve also heard directly from smaller creators, and those just getting started with their YouTube channel, that they are unfairly targeted by dislike attacks. Our experiment data confirmed that this behavior does occur at a higher proportion on smaller channels.
If that was truly their primary concern, why wouldn't they limit the scope of the change to smaller creators? Could it be that they were looking for a post-hoc justification for a desired policy change?
Would you trust YT to define what a "small creator" is? It opens the door to other policies being applied only to "small creators" as well, and I don't personally like that thought
They already apply different rules to small creators. For instance, you must have 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time per a year in order to monetise videos.
My point was that your slippery slope argument was a bit bonkers because YouTube already has a mechanism to impose varying rules on channels based on size.
Couldn't smaller channels be getting hit by more dislikes because videos produced by smaller channels are actually just plain bad?
People who are just getting started on YouTube tend to have poor production quality and editing skills compared to established channels. That might have been acceptable in YouTube's early days when there were no standards, but now we're at a point where we've all seen thousands of videos on YouTube, and we all collectively expect high quality content.
Seems quite natural that smaller channels that are just getting started by people who are still learning will be disliked more often than large channels. Hardly a valid reason to eliminate the dislike button.
It sounds like you're very much predisposed to believing that all press releases are 100% truthful -- and you would never consider that they might be intentionally misleading.
For all we know, they could be making up bullshit to cover up the real reason; e.g. Disney/Marvel (a source of revenue) or the White House (with the threat of potential regulations or maybe just the political bias of YT staff) or YouTube themselves (YouTube Rewind) are very unhappy that their videos are so unpopular.
Since we can't access their data, we will never know one way or the other. We either have to trust their corporate PR, as you seem to have done, or analyze their possible motives for making a decision that is seemingly user-hostile.
You've framed a plausible hypothesis - which is the best any of us can do given a complete absence of any data - as "invent[ing] unfounded theories that can't be falsified". That's effective rhetoric, but it isn't really an argument.
Instead, "I uncritically accept corporate PR as objective analysis" is what I consider to be a stupid way to go through life.
Maybe your priors include "corporations always tell the truth", but mine don't.
That obviously doesn't mean we should accept some alternative conspiracy theory X as the truth, but it does mean we should be skeptical and open minded about other explanations, especially given the context in this particular case of: (i) zero supporting data provided by YT, (ii) a very plausible set of alternative explanations that would be political suicide for YT to publicly state, (iii) the apparent anecdotal user-hostility of this decision.
"Google is a bad faith actor, this is a PR piece, and so it is unwise to take them at face value on anything", on the other hand, is pretty reasonable.
I think there can be a difference between how people behave and what people want. Which means there is a huge difference between what people want to engage with and what they do engage with. For example, TikTok will aggressively optimize your feed based on what you watch. If you get hooked on a video which makes you angry or reactive (like a political take), TikTok will show you more of it. You end up engaging with that content despite not wanting to.
None of social media is optimized around what people like or enjoy watching. It is only optimized on one thing: engagement to drive ad revenue via addictive practices. Engagement != enjoyment. That especially includes YouTube.
Google wants youtube to be all network and brands making content. ie. a future version of what TV is now. What actual people want is creator made videos(diy/review/podcast videos and everything else that make youtube wonderful).
This disconnect has been happening since google bought youtube and this recent change only reflects google wanting to hide backlash/or dislike from who it sees should rightfully be on youtube, brands/networks/corporations.