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Users can't tell misinformation and information apart when the dislike count is hidden. Who would've thought.

Removing the dislike count was YouTube's renunciation of democratic ideals.

Now it's a media outlet just like the others.

I don't think like/dislike counts were ever a good way to identify misinformation, and I would argue that even if they were, they shouldn't be.

When it comes to political stuff it was a good way to identify "contraversy" which is very useful in this world of information: should I research this further or can I trust this? Is there more going on with this subject?

I think our minds naturally stray to find these patterns to reduce computational load. For example, reading news on reddit and seeing hundreds of comments and very few upvotes puts your mind into "investigation mode" while seeing something average makes you much more trusting of it.

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