this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2024
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[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 38 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The fix was there, but they removed it.

Return YouTube Dislikes still exists. The likes and dislikes of RYD users are stored in an external database, so Google cannot take them away.

[–] nulluser@lemmy.world 47 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Unless YouTube is using that data to not recommend crappy videos, then it's completely pointless. If YouTube was going to use that data, then they would, oh, I don't know, maybe still have a dislike button?

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Unless YouTube is using that data to not recommend crappy videos, then it’s completely pointless.

YouTube never did that anyway. YouTube recommends videos on user engagement. Thumb buttons in any direction are engagement. They have slightly hidden "don't recommend video/channel" options for that.

What RYD does is to show what others think.

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The fact they never used that data in video recommendations is surprising, and if they started to factor it in would have probably helped make this less of an issue

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

The fact they never used that data in video recommendations is surprising

So you never clicked dislike, just to get recommendations for the same channel / type of video over and over again? I thought everyone figured that out by now. These are the menu items that actually do the trick:

[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's completely inaccurate though. It can show massive amounts of faux dislikes that don't actually exist. This has been confirmed with youtubers, who still see the dislike ratio on their backend.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It’s completely inaccurate though. It can show massive amounts of faux dislikes that don’t actually exist. This has been confirmed with youtubers, who still see the dislike ratio on their backend.

I'd say the "actual" dislike numbers are completely inaccurate because what's the point of disliking a video in an environment where the dislikes don't count?

RYD extrapolates the like/dislike ratio as stored on their own server to the like numbers as displayed by YouTube. That's not secret information. They spell it out in their FAQ.

If anything, if you like more representative numbers, get more people to install RYD.

[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So a video getting like 80% dislikes in the addon, but like 90% likes in the backend, is an okay and totally not misleading metric to you? And I uninstalled the addon because of this.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

When the only people hitting the dislike button are the people using the addon (because that's the only circumstance in which it counts), WTF else did you expect than for the dislike ratio with the addon to be higher?

[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 1 points 2 days ago

If that's the only people using the addon, then they should adjust their extrapolation formula to account for the bias of their user base. Because like this it will only feed people's confirmation bias through literal disinformation, making content look heavily disliked even when it isn't.

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is not official and not many people (relatively speaking) know about it. My wife, for example, still uses the official YouTube app on her iPhone with all of its ads and garbage.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world -3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is not official

Neither was the previous workaround which IIRC required some JavaScript trickery with the web player.

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

What are you talking about??? The previous WAS MADE BY GOOGLE. 😂
Edit: it wasn't a workaround, it was a feature built into the YouTube app that is made by Google. I can't believe I have to explain this. Lol

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

it wasn’t a workaround, it was a feature built into the YouTube app that is made by Google. I can’t believe I have to explain this. Lol

You wrote "there was a fix" which I assumed you meant one of those user scripts / browser extensions that let users access removed features for a while. Pretty sure this worked with downvotes for a while but not in an official capacity.

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago

Ok. I see where the confusion lies. My bad. It was just me being sarcastic that those dumb asses created an unnecessary problem and now they're trying fucking fix it. They could just bring back the dislike button. Sorry