[datenarsch]

> Some subgroups -- motivated groups who seem to have endless free time and a lot of passion to click little arrows and leave comments -- brigade and basically remove any functional utility of likes, dislikes and often even ratings. Hateful groups tend to particularly dominate, and weird agendas dominate.

And who exactly are these nebulous people? This sounds like something O'Brien from 1984 would say about Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers.

[defaultname]

Any asymmetrically engaged group is going to lead to metrics that aren't generally useful. In little bubbles, sure, but to everyone else it's just digital pollution.

Imagine that there was a group that really, really hated the color green, and they're so passionate that they fly "We Hate Green" flags outside their house, completely tie their identity with hating green, go to we hate green rallies (imagine having that little respect for your own time?), wear we hate green shirts, make up childish "We Hate Green" code words (e.g. Let's Go Purple!) for when they are among the greenies, and these people seemed to have endless idle time to sit brigading every bit of content to downvote it or leave nasty comments because something in the video was green. That is just noise to everyone else. Everyone else -- the majority of the public -- finds no value in their hyper-polarized, agenda-driven contributions.

And I'm not just talking about people who like green, but people who are indifferent or even anti-green but they don't find any value in having a review bombed because this idle group was mad that they thought it was "green woke".