1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,060 on November 10th YouTube announced that whether this impacts you negatively or 2 00:00:03,899 --> 00:00:10,920 not the dislike counter was going away the stated purpose of this change was to 3 00:00:08,460 --> 00:00:14,340 reduce dislike attacks a kind of targeted harassment that YouTube 4 00:00:12,300 --> 00:00:18,960 confirmed disproportionately affects smaller channels it's a valid problem 5 00:00:16,260 --> 00:00:23,520 and a noble goal to be sure you'll just have to forgive me for doubting that 6 00:00:20,760 --> 00:00:27,960 that was Google's entire motivation like the are you okay book that they left on 7 00:00:25,980 --> 00:00:31,199 my bed at a summit their public concern for Creator mental health brings a 8 00:00:29,699 --> 00:00:35,340 little Hollow to someone who has lived inside the machine for as long as I have 9 00:00:33,180 --> 00:00:40,260 not because I cynically believe that they are too heartless to care but 10 00:00:36,899 --> 00:00:41,820 rather because they cannot care the 11 00:00:40,260 --> 00:00:47,100 platform fends off competitors like twitch and Tick Tock by frantically 12 00:00:44,340 --> 00:00:51,719 serving his viewers that's you as many hours of satisfying content as possible 13 00:00:49,500 --> 00:00:56,460 regardless of the Creator's feelings about it and the cold hard truth is that 14 00:00:54,480 --> 00:01:02,039 no machine learning algorithm is capable of caring about your sadness or mine I 15 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:07,020 don't blame them for any of this I mean all they did was build the wheel when we 16 00:01:04,739 --> 00:01:11,939 choose to run on it but the road that I travel is littered with dead and dying 17 00:01:09,299 --> 00:01:16,619 internet Superstars and as sure as the sun sets each day I will join them at 18 00:01:14,040 --> 00:01:20,280 some point maybe soon and YouTube's wheel is going to keep on turning 19 00:01:18,479 --> 00:01:25,380 without me I promise so if removing dislike counters is 20 00:01:23,220 --> 00:01:29,159 unlikely to change this ruthless meritocracy that uncaringly churns 21 00:01:27,720 --> 00:01:33,180 through its stars like professional sports and 22 00:01:30,900 --> 00:01:37,619 what was the actual point of any of this and what can we do about it well step 23 00:01:35,520 --> 00:01:41,820 one is to get our dislike counter back and I'm going to show you guys how after 24 00:01:39,780 --> 00:01:46,680 I show you my sponsor thanks to jackery for sponsoring this video their Explorer 25 00:01:43,560 --> 00:01:48,840 1500 power station provides a huge 1500 26 00:01:46,680 --> 00:01:53,520 watt hour capacity support for up to seven devices charging simultaneously 27 00:01:50,939 --> 00:01:56,880 and it takes four hours to go from zero to eighty percent battery get 10 off 28 00:01:55,380 --> 00:02:01,320 with code Linus Tech tips at the link below restoring the YouTube dislike 29 00:01:58,979 --> 00:02:07,079 counter takes less than 30 seconds head to return YouTube dislike.com install 30 00:02:03,780 --> 00:02:08,520 click your browser icon and add it you 31 00:02:07,079 --> 00:02:12,599 can also manually look it up in the Chrome web store if it doesn't work just 32 00:02:10,860 --> 00:02:16,020 uninstall the extension and try again according to Dimitri the Project Lead 33 00:02:14,459 --> 00:02:20,220 there are some bugs in the Chrome developers manifest V3 that make it 34 00:02:18,300 --> 00:02:25,080 randomly fail about five percent of the time once that's done voila your dislike 35 00:02:23,459 --> 00:02:29,459 counter might take a second to load in but it's back the incredible speed with 36 00:02:28,379 --> 00:02:34,200 which the open source Community identifies and wreck defies problems 37 00:02:31,920 --> 00:02:38,160 like this never ceases to amaze me I mean huge props to the dozens of 38 00:02:35,940 --> 00:02:43,920 contributors and donors who are keeping the dream alive but as cool as it is on 39 00:02:40,920 --> 00:02:45,840 the surface this project raises a lot of 40 00:02:43,920 --> 00:02:49,440 questions for me which is why I made this video starting with is it even 41 00:02:48,180 --> 00:02:55,200 accurate well immediately following Google's announcement it was extremely accurate 42 00:02:53,340 --> 00:03:00,660 because the workaround was a relatively simple one you see the YouTube app and 43 00:02:58,019 --> 00:03:04,980 the website had been updated to hide the dislike counter but the YouTube API 44 00:03:03,120 --> 00:03:09,420 which allows developers to access key stats on the back end was still 45 00:03:07,019 --> 00:03:13,560 reporting true dislike counts so creating an extension that would just 46 00:03:11,159 --> 00:03:18,480 pull that data and then automatically inject it once your page loaded was 47 00:03:15,360 --> 00:03:22,319 simple enough but then on December 13th 48 00:03:18,480 --> 00:03:23,580 API access to dislikes went dark so how 49 00:03:22,319 --> 00:03:28,140 does it work now the bad news is it involves a fair bit 50 00:03:25,379 --> 00:03:32,159 of guesswork Dimitri who goes by anarios on GitHub pulled as much data as 51 00:03:30,540 --> 00:03:38,040 possible in the time between YouTube's announcement and the API cut off true 52 00:03:34,620 --> 00:03:39,659 stats for about 250 million videos but 53 00:03:38,040 --> 00:03:44,819 while that's going to allow you to smugly affirm how right you were that 54 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:48,780 YouTube Rewind sucked it is far from a complete picture and it only allows the 55 00:03:46,860 --> 00:03:51,480 extension to show historical data for videos that were uploaded prior to the 56 00:03:50,400 --> 00:03:55,920 cutoff good news is that YouTube already uses a 57 00:03:54,360 --> 00:04:01,440 lot of guesswork in its analytics anyway so no loss there and the project is 58 00:03:58,920 --> 00:04:05,340 poised to become a lot more accurate and useful in the short to mid term first up 59 00:04:03,900 --> 00:04:11,239 thanks to the efforts of a digital Heritage preservation group called archive team Dimitri is working on 60 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:18,000 integrating the metadata from a whopping 4.56 billion videos it's going to take 61 00:04:14,879 --> 00:04:20,459 some time since that's 69 terabytes of 62 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:24,180 data to ingest nice but once that's complete extension users will have 63 00:04:22,260 --> 00:04:29,340 accurate historical counters restored for nearly every video on the site that 64 00:04:27,300 --> 00:04:33,720 is pretty incredible like this new hoodie on hiltetstore.com 65 00:04:31,259 --> 00:04:38,040 but what about new videos that's where you come in by using the extension 66 00:04:36,060 --> 00:04:42,180 you're going to be contributing your own likes and dislikes which can then be 67 00:04:40,380 --> 00:04:47,699 compared against publicly available views and light counts to extrapolate a 68 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:51,660 probable dislike value in theory then the more people install the extension 69 00:04:49,680 --> 00:04:55,979 and interact with videos the more accurate it'll become 70 00:04:53,340 --> 00:05:00,840 unfortunately this raises some serious privacy concerns your YouTube viewing 71 00:04:58,560 --> 00:05:05,220 behavior is extremely valuable particularly to advertisers and while 72 00:05:03,360 --> 00:05:11,840 there's an argument to be made that once you've given your data to Google Pandora's Box is kind of open anyway 73 00:05:10,020 --> 00:05:16,860 I don't wish to promote that attitude thankfully as Dimitri lays out in this 74 00:05:14,699 --> 00:05:21,840 document addressing privacy concerns the project code is mostly publicly 75 00:05:19,320 --> 00:05:26,100 available and open source and it appears as though he is collecting nothing more 76 00:05:23,340 --> 00:05:29,340 than what's required to log dislikes and prevent the same kind of spam behavior 77 00:05:27,780 --> 00:05:32,940 that contributed to Google's removal of the counter in the first place 78 00:05:31,199 --> 00:05:37,139 or at least that's what he's collecting from viewers one of the ways the project 79 00:05:35,160 --> 00:05:42,960 could really get to the next level is a commitment from YouTubers both large and 80 00:05:39,660 --> 00:05:44,699 small to share their own true stats to 81 00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:50,880 help the extension validate its own guesswork but this gets pretty hairy 82 00:05:47,220 --> 00:05:53,400 pretty quickly while I could use oauth 83 00:05:50,880 --> 00:05:57,960 to Grant access to my own stats even with the limited scope of YouTube 84 00:05:55,740 --> 00:06:02,699 analytics read only which can be configured to exclude Revenue numbers 85 00:05:59,660 --> 00:06:04,560 there's some really sensitive data in 86 00:06:02,699 --> 00:06:07,979 there and it's not the kind of thing that we give away willy-nilly even if 87 00:06:06,840 --> 00:06:14,520 someone that I've never met before offers a pinky promise not to misuse it 88 00:06:11,400 --> 00:06:16,800 torn right because how complain about 89 00:06:14,520 --> 00:06:19,979 the lack of accurate counters if I'm not willing to do my own part to ensure the 90 00:06:18,720 --> 00:06:24,539 restoration well maybe they can be good enough without my help let's take a look at a 91 00:06:23,220 --> 00:06:28,500 couple of my own videos that were published after the changeover here's 92 00:06:26,580 --> 00:06:32,940 one that was well received the ratio of likes to dislikes is actually very close 93 00:06:31,199 --> 00:06:36,900 when I compare the YouTube player page to my own stats 94 00:06:34,919 --> 00:06:40,620 meanwhile here's a sponsored showcase that didn't perform well for us at the 95 00:06:39,180 --> 00:06:46,800 time of writing this my browser extension reported 12 000 likes to 940 96 00:06:43,560 --> 00:06:49,080 dislikes a ratio of about 12.77 to 1 97 00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:55,620 while the true stats tell a slightly less favorable story putting us at 11.63 98 00:06:51,960 --> 00:06:57,660 to 1. so that's a bit farther off but 99 00:06:55,620 --> 00:07:01,500 still accurate enough to reflect the audience's general displeasure with that 100 00:06:59,639 --> 00:07:05,759 video it's possible though that extension users are over represented in 101 00:07:03,780 --> 00:07:10,380 our audience meaning that our videos might be more accurate than say for 102 00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:14,880 example a video on a makeup Channel our upside down build video for example had 103 00:07:12,419 --> 00:07:19,919 a whopping 2 000 votes from extension users out of 14 000 total though 104 00:07:17,819 --> 00:07:24,539 curiously I wasn't able to verify this one because I believe YouTube is doing 105 00:07:22,139 --> 00:07:29,460 some funky things with the counter after live streams so I would love for other 106 00:07:27,300 --> 00:07:32,160 creators particularly if you're from a different vertical to chime in in the 107 00:07:31,080 --> 00:07:36,960 comments with a couple of your own comparisons if you'd be willing for my 108 00:07:34,680 --> 00:07:41,460 site though it's looking pretty good so far which you might have realized 109 00:07:39,419 --> 00:07:47,039 doesn't help anyone that wants to use a mobile app for YouTube unless this is 110 00:07:44,580 --> 00:07:52,500 the straw that finally breaks my back and makes me install YouTube vanced yeah 111 00:07:50,039 --> 00:07:56,639 I went there Dimitri is currently in talks with that team to include his data 112 00:07:55,259 --> 00:08:00,960 and for those who haven't heard of it vanced is a side load only alternative 113 00:07:58,860 --> 00:08:06,319 YouTube app that among other things enables background playback and ad-free 114 00:08:04,080 --> 00:08:12,120 Playback without a premium subscription both things that hurt my livelihood as 115 00:08:09,720 --> 00:08:16,680 well as those of my employees and my fellow creators 116 00:08:13,380 --> 00:08:18,720 and advanced isn't my only unlikely Ally 117 00:08:16,680 --> 00:08:22,500 here one of the policies that served me very well in my life is to never take a 118 00:08:21,060 --> 00:08:26,400 deal where I don't understand what's in it for the other party Dimitri claims 119 00:08:24,660 --> 00:08:30,120 that the project started as a simple effort to restore the dislike counter 120 00:08:28,020 --> 00:08:34,260 for his own use presumably so he can quickly and easily filter out junk 121 00:08:31,560 --> 00:08:37,680 content that's fair enough that's a pretty big deal for anyone who's ever 122 00:08:35,760 --> 00:08:42,719 tried to find any kind of obscure DIY tutorial especially anything to do with 123 00:08:40,020 --> 00:08:45,779 software but by his own account he hasn't even had time to actually watch 124 00:08:44,159 --> 00:08:50,220 any YouTube video since this project began surely that's not sustainable and 125 00:08:48,720 --> 00:08:56,279 that's even ignoring the fact that running the infrastructure to support this extension is a non-trivial Endeavor 126 00:08:54,000 --> 00:09:01,260 that may not be able to rely on donors or a small patreon forever I see a 127 00:08:59,279 --> 00:09:04,620 sponsorship link from a VPN that I've never even heard of at the bottom of the 128 00:09:02,820 --> 00:09:10,680 page so it makes me wonder what's his end game 129 00:09:06,720 --> 00:09:12,360 here truthfully I don't know is getting 130 00:09:10,680 --> 00:09:16,440 my dislike counter back really worth violating my principles here promoting 131 00:09:14,580 --> 00:09:20,580 online content piracy groups and collaborating with parties whose 132 00:09:18,300 --> 00:09:24,300 motivations I don't fully understand I'm not sure yet 133 00:09:22,019 --> 00:09:28,500 what I do know is I sure as hell didn't choose this path YouTube chose it for me 134 00:09:26,640 --> 00:09:32,580 when instead of coming up with better ways for creators to moderate their 135 00:09:30,300 --> 00:09:37,860 communities they decided to just get away one of the few publicly available 136 00:09:35,220 --> 00:09:41,100 video quality markers that we still had left 137 00:09:39,060 --> 00:09:44,580 the only answer I've been able to get from YouTube is that going forward 138 00:09:42,660 --> 00:09:49,620 you're supposed to just use comments to gauge video quality or validity but it 139 00:09:47,459 --> 00:09:54,060 takes about 30 seconds in a YouTube comment section to figure out why that 140 00:09:51,300 --> 00:09:59,040 is not a silver bullet they're full of spam and misinformation and they are 141 00:09:56,160 --> 00:10:04,680 much easier for a malicious actor to control I see the benefit of this 142 00:10:02,040 --> 00:10:09,899 control four marginalized creators I truly do having a bunch of jerks come in 143 00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:13,560 storming from some hateful subreddit to dislike Brigade you is something that 144 00:10:11,459 --> 00:10:20,700 nobody should have to endure but I also do not believe I just do not 145 00:10:17,700 --> 00:10:23,279 believe that YouTube a multi-hundred 146 00:10:20,700 --> 00:10:28,320 billion dollar company or at least their parent company couldn't combat this 147 00:10:25,320 --> 00:10:30,899 through a combination of origin and user 148 00:10:28,320 --> 00:10:35,880 Behavior tracking and all kinds of other AI black magic that they have access to 149 00:10:33,360 --> 00:10:39,360 and if they really felt that these negative interactions weren't valuable 150 00:10:37,440 --> 00:10:44,220 all they had to do was remove the button altogether so if YouTube still thinks 151 00:10:42,180 --> 00:10:48,300 it's useful and it's still going to affect your video performance anyway and 152 00:10:46,140 --> 00:10:52,140 so far anecdotally it doesn't seem to have actually changed how many people 153 00:10:49,920 --> 00:10:57,000 are interacting with the button what purpose are we really serving here 154 00:10:54,839 --> 00:11:01,320 I mean I've seen every conspiracy theory Under the Sun YouTube wants to protect 155 00:10:58,920 --> 00:11:06,660 itself and its corporate Partners from embarrassment or the woke mob is running 156 00:11:04,560 --> 00:11:12,000 the show over there now blah blah blah blah blah but honestly the more likely 157 00:11:09,420 --> 00:11:18,060 one to me is the simplest explanation monkey see monkey do so many platforms 158 00:11:15,959 --> 00:11:21,480 are removing any way of negatively interacting with anything and YouTube 159 00:11:19,620 --> 00:11:25,560 seems like they just wanted to follow suit and probably the most frustrating 160 00:11:23,519 --> 00:11:30,120 thing about all of this is the dismissive way that Google has addressed 161 00:11:27,660 --> 00:11:33,480 the collateral damage here I mean I'm glad that creators can protect 162 00:11:31,440 --> 00:11:40,800 themselves from unwarranted attacks I really am but malicious actors can and 163 00:11:37,019 --> 00:11:43,079 will use these same tools to create fake 164 00:11:40,800 --> 00:11:48,660 positivity around their content and to moderate negative comments mark my words 165 00:11:46,260 --> 00:11:54,240 the number of kids that are gonna get fished with Robux scams is going to 166 00:11:51,839 --> 00:11:58,920 increase and making the internet safer for one vulnerable group while making it 167 00:11:56,640 --> 00:12:03,540 more dangerous for another is not a clear-cut win and some of the benefits 168 00:12:01,140 --> 00:12:07,860 of dislike counters like nuking misleading content and punishing 169 00:12:05,399 --> 00:12:12,540 creators who honestly really had it coming are going to be sorely missed at 170 00:12:10,920 --> 00:12:15,360 least by you maybe I'm going to be running the return YouTube dislikes 171 00:12:13,920 --> 00:12:20,160 extension and I'll be telling you about our sponsor thanks to nordpass for 172 00:12:18,420 --> 00:12:24,180 sponsoring today's video do you know what the most popular 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to something hey but 182 00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:04,500 listen even though Christmas has come and gone don't worry you can still get 183 00:13:01,800 --> 00:13:10,260 70 percent off nor pass premium at nordpass.com Linus or by using the code 184 00:13:07,740 --> 00:13:14,220 Linus plus you get an additional month for free so check it out at the link 185 00:13:12,660 --> 00:13:18,839 below if you guys are looking for another video to watch maybe you could check out I don't know the last time I 186 00:13:17,279 --> 00:13:23,720 was this mad is probably when they renamed USB again it's over on the tech 187 00:13:20,940 --> 00:13:23,720 quickie Channel though