This practice leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Presents an inauthentic vision of what people are.
Anger and other negative emotions are part of the human condition. Suppressing their expression doesn't change the underlying issue that caused the emotion.
The prior algorithm was also "inauthentic". There is nothing about anger or negative emotions that are inherently more authentic than positive emotions. And because anger tends to increase engagement (be less "bland"), algorithms tend to amplify anger artificially in order to juice their own metrics. This is why Twitter was a shithole even before Musk took over.
I think Google is doing this to protect creators. There have been a lot of people speaking out about burnout and severe mental health struggles on YouTube for a while now. A big contributor to this is toxic engagement from the community. Some people get very upset when they see a whole bunch of negative comments directed at them.
You might want to say “these people should just suck it up” but that’s not a road Google wanted to head down. They see healthy and happy creators as more productive and hence more profitable. Hiding downvotes and sentiment analysis on comments are two ways they can protect creators from this stuff.
I constantly see creators stress over unclear guidelines from YouTube with inconsistent enforcement on what content is or is not allowed or will or will not be monetized.
If YouTube's priority was creators they'd give clearer guidelines to creators and broaden the range of personal expression that can still get ads put on it.
No - YouTube's push for positivity at all costs is to appease investors and media critics who've complained about comments and downvote campaigns and to appease advertisers who were seriously uncomfortable with the media attention given to them during the initial media push for the adpocalypse.
It's concerning, yes. But before this, YouTube comments were complete toxic garbage fire for _years_. It's definitely a much nicer experience than it used to be.
that's only if you're viewing "people" as a whole. If you instead view each commentor as an individual, it only makes sense that you would promote what improves the health of your service and punish those who stir up strife.
In general, anyone can find some reason to criticize even the best things, and if there's one lesson humanity can take from social media it's that negativity and cyber-bullying is contagious. I am completely in favor of YouTube for creating a comment section that I actually enjoy reading; one that enhances the video-watching experience. Not even a single flavenoid of bad taste in my mouth about this.
People suck online. It's rare to have interactions IRL that are as bad as what you see in the old Youtube comments section. So which is more authentic? How people behave in person or in unfiltered comments/fora?
I think that's part of it, and part of it is that we curate real-life interactions a lot more than online. There are plenty of places I would never show up to / people I wouldn't talk to in real life (precisely because they would be the sort of people who troll online).
Whether that filtering is done explicitly or implicitly (i.e. neighborhood wealth)
Thanks for highlighting that point, the geopolitical filter,along with 'physical availability' (as you stated) are likely larger contributing factors than I had initially considered.
It's pretty clear that the people who engage in toxic behaviours online are no different than they were prior to the emergence of those environments. It's the environment itself which triggers that behaviour.
That's baked into HN's philosophy:
"As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will decline in quality. Our hypothesis is that this is not inevitable—that by making a conscious effort to resist decline, we can keep it from happening." <https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html>
One of dang's fairly frequent observations is that HN tends to operate at the edge of chaos:
- "if moderation doesn't evolve as a community grows, one ends up with the default dynamic of internet forums: decay followed by heat death." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20435202> (2019)
- "If 500-point stories on hot topics were dispositive, HN would be a 500-point-stories-on-hot-topics site. It isn't that kind of site, and intervention is required to keep it from going that way." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14306144> (2017)
- "Our job is to somehow balance the conflicting vectors. That's not so easy, and also not so easy to articulate. The idea is not to maintain a centrist position, it's to try to keep the community from wrecking itself via ideological fracture." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34025076> (2019)
Anger and other negative emotions are part of the human condition. Suppressing their expression doesn't change the underlying issue that caused the emotion.
Makes YouTube feel more inauthentic and bland.