• LeHappStick@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Here I am wondering why there is still a downvote button in the YouTube comments… it does nothing!

    • Poob@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      The same reason that a lot of crosswalks have fake buttons. So you feel like you have control.

          • faladorable@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            true, it definitely depends where you live. If you’re in the US then it’s definitely a case of most don’t work, because most elevators at this point have been made after 1990, but if you live somewhere else then it can definitely be a case of some, or even none

            but that said there definitely are functioning crosswalk buttons that work so being pedantic about some, most, etc, is irrelevant because as long as there are any that dont work its relevant to the topic

    • BeegYoshi@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Actually it’s worse than nothing. Youtube promotes comments based on engagement, so while only an upvote increases the tally, voting at all still makes it more visible.

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The downvotes are still counted, just not displayed. You can re-enable it via browser extensions.

      • ultimate_question@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Pretty sure those extensions all use some sort of estimate methodology, the dislikes aren’t available via any apis or anything

          • ultimate_question@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’ve never used one myself but I’ve heard talk of various ones either A) taking the public (real) like number and extrapolating the dislikes based on an old like/dislike ratio available for the video from before the dislike removal (doesn’t work on new videos) or B) the extension includes a feature where the user can like/dislike the video within the extension and then the dislike number is extrapolated using the public (real) like number and the extension’s private like/dislike ratio. In either case the number is not connected to the “real” dislike count that YouTube would have access to internally

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          some sort of estimate methodology

          Hey GPT4 watch this video and tell me what its ratio of likes to dislikes would be