Crossposted from https://thebrainbin.org/m/enshittification@lemmy.world/t/1996619

Crossposted from https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1480679/google-is-testing-the-hiding-of-youtube-s-dislike-button-entirely-from-all-forms-of-vide

Source: User reports, reported on by couple of news outlets:

• Reddit: 1, 2;
• X/Twitter.

Either remove it entirely or keep it as before, not this alogical confusing system. /srs

I think they're going for the former in slow steps, so the impact is not as quickly noticed.

I'm not keeping up with YouTube, but didn't they already remove it a few years ago?

logical next step. sounds like they just wanted to wait until the controversy blew over.

Removed the tally of totals

That's how enshittification works.

We should quit watching YouTube. YouTubers are more proof of overconsumption. People should not be willingly shilling for corps for ad revenue. Just turn it off.

I mean, not like people would go anywhere.

I'd say Youtube is a case of lack of competition making an oligopoly. And sadly for quite a few matters, it's still the "least worse" option.

Still, I'd urge to people, though I know it's an uphill battle, to at least keep alternatives at hand.

This is probably bad for the YouTubers actually making content, despite it all. They can see whether people disliked their video.

"Return YouTube dislikes" exists right now to approximate dislikes, and it will continue to exist, and review bombers are more likely to use it and therefore disproportionately influence approximate statistics. But at least for now, YouTubers can dispute those guesses. They won't be able to do that if they lose the metric.

It's kind of conceding to the mob.

Agreed.

Some also argue dislikes are used for censoring, but I'd conter-argue that dissidence is a form of opinion. If people are using the tool illegitimately, it doesn't make the tool itself illegitimate. Rather, investigating suspicious behaviour, of which there are tools one can use on Youtube, should be the way.

And I'd further say the removal hurts not just the content creators, but their followers too. If the creator uses likes ratio as a quality assurance metric, or to know what they should or shouldn't focus on, the lack of the metric will make the service he/she provides worsen, and by extension the experience of their followers.

Yeah, and it's unfortunately a very hard monopoly to break due to the nature of videos being extremely expensive to host at scale, even in a decentralized way with Peertube

So where else do I watch Vlogbrothers, Time Ghost or Tasting History?