Rating systems

The fact that social media are changing their rating systems is nothing new. The community often initially counteracts such changes with criticism. Most of the time, however, you get used to it quickly.

Netflix

There was a violent shit storm against Netflix when they moved away from their star-based system. The reason for this was that isolated female comedians are said to have received too much hatred.

Amy Schumer, a controversial comedian from the USA, is said to have been solely responsible for the fact that Netflix no longer shows a star rating. Her comedy special was so badly rated by fans that the streaming service unceremoniously issued the rating across the entire platform.

Facebook

Facebook’s system has also changed drastically. In the past, you could only rate postings with a like. A required dislike button was never introduced. Instead, more like variants were introduced, in which you could rate a post using emojis.

Actually not a bad change, because thanks to the selection of emojis, you can give more detailed feedback than just a like or a dislike.

Youtube

Youtube didn’t always have the like-dislike rating that everyone knows these days. Until 2009, the videos could still be rated with 1 to 5 stars. Years later, the rating system was refined again on the desktop version. With the help of a green-red bar you can see the ratio of likes and dislikes underlined again.

Now, however, the video platform wants to take a step in a different direction. A new design is announced on Twitter. There shouldn’t be any more dislikes visible. The creators can still see the number, but viewers can no longer see it.

According to YouTube, this is a reaction to the feedback from the creators, whose well-being you want to take care of.

The measure makes the button almost obsolete, since nobody can see whether the majority thinks the video is good or bad. In a few cases, it can help to invalidate targeted dislike campaigns. On the other hand, it can also suppress opinions and fair evaluations. Especially if the comments are also issued under the videos.

The announcement from Youtube

“In response to the creator feedback around well-being and targeted dislike campaigns, we’re testing a few new designs that don’t show the public dislike count. If you’re part of this small experiment, you might spot one of these designs in the coming weeks (example below!).

Creators, you’ll still be able to see the exact number of likes and dislikes in YouTube Studio. For viewers, if you’re in the experiment, you can still like or dislike a video to share feedback with creators and help tune the recommendations you see on YouTube.”

Here you can see the design example

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