[tauntz]

This is a weirdly polarizing topic. I don't think I've ever clicked on the dislike button, personally (but I do click on the like button, occasionally).

It would seem like people use the dislike button to signal that "I don't agree with the premise of the video" as much as it's to signal that "this video is actually crap". Same as with Reddit downvotes - it shouldn't be used for downvoting legit content that you don't agree with but.. we've all seen how that works in practice.

IMO the dislike count is useless for filtering out "bad" content - you have no idea if it's really a crap video or if it was just brigaded by people who live by "alternative facts" and don't like the specific video due to it having _actual_ facts (or.. politics). Other than certain genres.. like children videos/animations.. there's no political agenda there and dislikes are a genuine "this video is crap" indicator :)

Edit: as is rightfully pointed out in replies, tutorial/how-to videos are other some of the other genres of videos where the dislike count is actually really useful. I totally agree with this - I just gave one example of children videos but there are definitely others as well.

However I still think that in the bigger picture, these genres are popular amongst us, HN folks, but by far the most YT video views come from genres where dislikes are an indication of "I don't agree with you / I don't like this genre of music / I have a different political view / I'm too old to understand this crap that kids are consuming these days / etc". I hope I'm wrong though :)

[f1refly]

> IMO the dislike count is useless for filtering out "bad" content

I don't know what kind of content you consume on youtube, but this does not reflect my experience at all. I'm regularly researching repair/modding manuals or enthusiast videos and the dislike count is a very, very good way of telling how good a video will be. Sometimes things are done in a really bad or even dangerous way, or the whole video is just someone describing the problem and then skipping the actual fix.

The only other place I've seen dislikes is at pr videos that went viral for their outright offensive hypocrisy or otherwise badly formulated message, which I wouldn't call a bad use either.

[tauntz]

I do agree with you! Repair guides (and similar how-to's) are one of the genres where the dislikes are actually an indication of the quality of the content.

I'm just making an assumption that most of Youtube content that's consumed, is in genres where the dislikes are more a signal of "I don't agree with you/your political view/taste of music/etc". I hope I'm wrong.

[jonnycomputer]

Dislike buttons in special interest topics are probably a more informative signal than they are otherwise, but I've never personally spent much time looking at the likes one way or the other. Comments are usually much more informative. E.g. "these instructions for the EG1772Z worked for my EG1781T, except that I had to pry off the plastic plate that hides the access bolt first." or "Ok video, but if he had done X first, he could have finished with half the trouble." or "Be careful prying the case loose. I broke the plastic tabs with my screw driver."

[ehsankia]

I see quite a lot of news clips, and in that case, negative ratio is almost always the result of brigading. Here's an example I ran into this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kqEMLiE5CU

Out of nowhere, 95% dislike ratio. Any other video on that channel has maybe 400 votes total, this was has 5K dislikes out of nowhere, very clearly some group of antivaxxers brigaded it. The video is perfectly normal and nothing out of the ordinary, so the vote count is just misleading and useless.

[jjordan]

Outside of politics and other controversial topics, the dislike button is immensely useful in determining the quality of a video. If one has several thousand likes and just a few dislikes, you can be relatively certain that the video meets or surpasses expectations. If, on the other hand, it has a high number of dislikes, there's a good chance that the video will not meet the average user's expectations. If you play those videos, usually the issue will surface for you as well and you can save yourself the remaining time on the video looking for better content.

[breakfastduck]

Biggest miss is tutorials etc.

Dislike ratio really useful to judge which ones are not worth the time.

[dotancohen]

If I come across a low-quality rip of Dark Side of the Moon and dislike it, will Youtube recommend to me less Pink Floyd or less low quality rips? What if I dislike that horrible Barenboim performance of Beethoven's Ninth? Will I get less Beethoven or less horrible performances? What about reports of Israel killing Gazan children, when the video footage clearly shows children killed when a Hamas projectile they were "guarding" prematurely detonated? Do I get less news or less lies? What about that idiot who knows a lot about cars and car history (Donut maybe) but screams and acts like he graduated from Animal House? Do I get less informative car videos or less puerile screaming and sentences composed of 15 cuts, sometimes right in the middle of a compound word?

I think that basing recommendations on a single dimension is flawed in its own right.

[breakfastduck]

It's nothing to do with recommendations. You search a term, you look at the videos, ones with large amount of dislikes are usually crap so you choose another one.

[intpx]

yea, or product reviews (especially for more esoteric things). you can immediately tell if its real or a bot generated slideshow with a TTS of amazon reviews

[marcellus23]

> you have no idea if it's really a crap video or if it was just brigaded by people who live by "alternative facts" and don't like the specific video due to it having _actual_ facts

I feel like this would only apply to a few areas that are highly polarized (COVID stuff, political, etc.). But the vast majority of content I (and most people) watch does not fall into heavily polarized topics like that and the risk of brigading is zero.

[jterrys]

Its misuse is a smaller deficiency over the larger overall benefit of it though. For every oppressed and brigaded youtuber there's dozens if not hundreds of smaller channels that make crap content that don't deserve the algorithm boost because they gamed a certain keyword.

[praestigiare]

I am not sure that is it reasonable or desirable (let alone possible) to treat "like" and "dislike" as signals of the quality of the video in some objective sense. It is certainly not what the everyday English usage of the words means.

[tasogare]

It's a dislike button, the reverse of like button, so it's normal people use it for content they dislike, including political content.