Jawed Karim, the third co-founder of YouTube, condemns the removal of the count of “dislikes” from the platform and believes that this decision will lead to the decline of the site. Karim made his opinion known by posting a comment under the first video ever uploaded to YouTube.
For the YouTube co-founder, removing the “dislikes” will destroy the platform
A few days ago, YouTube announced that it would remove the “dislike” count from the platform. The decision had been made for limit the phenomena of harassment on the platform and using bots to bury a video for no real reason.
But the decision sparked many dissensions. Including that of Karim who posted his comment under the first YouTube video: “When every youtuber agrees that removing dislikes is a stupid idea, it probably is. Try again, YouTube “. His opinion appeared below the video “Me at the zoo”, in which then 25-year-old Karim shows his trip out of town.
But today Karim returns to post with a much more detailed comment, to explain his position. “The skill of identify bad content quickly and easily is an essential function in a user-generated content platform. Because? Because not all content is good. They can’t be. In fact, most are not good ”.
According to Karim, “The process works, and there is a name for it: the wisdom of crowds. The process breaks down when the platform interferes with it. Then, the platform inevitably begins to decline. YouTube wants to become a place where everything is mediocre? Because nothing can be good if nothing is bad“.
Karim had already posted under this video in the past, to criticize Google’s choice (in 2013) to request a Google+ account to post comments. YouTube backed off that choice. Who knows if he will do it again this time.