[beezischillin]

This is part of a wider trend in the corporate internet of getting rid of visible user interaction to stop publicising user opinion. News publications have slowly gotten rid of comments sections, Google itself (an entity quite close to the USG) is following suit. Of course I suspect that the idea here is less about creator choice, since they can already hide and filter user interaction to their hearts content and more about some high profile channels of some importance being able to save face since manually disabling interactions looks worse for them.

I’ve seen some interesting projects in the past that were browser based and made the entire Internet be equipped with comments sections, including YouTube. I wonder if something like that would be viable, maybe with the addition of a like dislike bar.

[franciscop]

Do you mean like Youtube's own Youtube Rewind 2018, which it became the most disliked video surpassing even Justin Bieber's Baby? To add extra irony, it was subtitled "Youtube Rewind 2018 - Everyone Controls Rewind". It seems that everyone controlling the dislike button was not appreciated, and while I find this downvote session brilliant I've been waiting since then for Youtube to remove the downvote button.

[ehsankia]

Isn't that a perfect example of Dislike button being used mostly as a meme or to bully / pile-on? Or do you truly believe that video was somehow literally the worst video on Youtube?

In most other websites and contexts anyway, like/dislike is used to share your taste with the algorithm or to the author, and neither of those are disrupted here. The only thing that is disrupted is the tribal action using the dislike button as a way of publicly and anonymously showing hatred towards content.

[beezischillin]

The interesting thing about that video was that the Internet took it as a win, YouTube apparently took it as a learning opportunity.

[Thorentis]

Yes, Gab made their own browser called Dissenter that added a comment section to every page of the Internet. Interestingly, I can find very little when Googling for it now. I'm sure other projects have tried this too.

[HNo]

It was deemed too dangerous by the powers that be, so it was banned from app stores, the extension was banned by Firefox and Chrome, etc.

[BizarroLand]

Yep. Corporations are working hard to turn the internet into broadcast TV, back when the broadcaster had all the power and you took what they gave you and you liked it because you didn't have a choice.

What is the average person going to do now that they have a dopamine response addiction to instant feedback and immediate knowledge at their fingertips? Read a book? Go for a walk where they're not constantly scouting for a situation where they can take a picture and receive happy brain chemicals from thousands of people?

[feanaro]

> I’ve seen some interesting projects in the past that were browser based and made the entire Internet be equipped with comments sections, including YouTube.

Hypothesis is such a tool: https://web.hypothes.is/

[Galaxeblaffer]

Isn't Reddit and hackernews a comment section with upvote and downvote for the entire internet ?

[iratewizard]

Reddit is a comment section filled with insufferable morons who allowed their website to become a way of repackaging fun parts of the internet with astroturfing.

[a5aAqU]

> I’ve seen some interesting projects in the past that were browser based and made the entire Internet be equipped with comments sections, including YouTube. I wonder if something like that would be viable, maybe with the addition of a like dislike bar.

If something like that ever took off, it would devastate independent publishers and a huge part of Internet culture by draining interactions out of websites. Google tried it before, and fortunately it failed. I think it's one of the worst possible things that could happen to the Web.

[beezischillin]

A lot of mainstream media sites have removed comments sections from their articles, there's no user interaction left on those.

[lbriner]

My experience is that in many scenarios, comments were an attempt to create sticky relationships when the comments themselves add very little.

Take a news site, an article about, say, Trump becomming President. Comments are likely to range from "I can't satnd the guy" though to "I'm so happy he got in". They aren't going to add much of any value to the conversation.

I am seeing more attempts now of people attempting to be "clever" in their comments and start dropping 'facts' taken from various places. Again, interesting at best but at worst it doesn't add anything.

Votes are perhaps less contentious but what are they really saying? I like the article because it is factually correct or I dislike the article because Trump is President?

[nicbou]

Then again YouTube comments can be pretty funny and interesting these days. They're a nice way to interact with the content creators, and with other followers.

[tester756]

>News publications have slowly gotten rid of comments sections,

Slowly? I havent seen comment on majority of new sites for years.

On the other hand: I'm not shocked, majority of stuff written there was basically trash.

[lelanthran]

> They are only really doing this to hide political dissent against the current administration and provide some cover. Both the president and vp are polling at historic low approval ratings right now.

I disagree that this is the only reason; there are other reasons that make sense as well - for example, every political movement benefits from making their movement appear larger and more inclusive than it really is.

It's easier to stifle dissent by saying "If you don't agree with us you're in the minority" and then hide the actual headcount of your movement.

It's all very 1984-esque, TBH. You cannot form an opposition if you think you're the only one who opposes.

[dannyw]

Yep, have a look at dislikes of anything on the white house channel!

[alex-ant]

Exactly