This does not seem to me like a move to "improve the user experience", but rather to hide the public opinion about certain topics, such as politics or consumer media. Others name examples here in this thread, such as Ghostbusters (2016) and their trailers and recent Biden administration videos on the White house channel.
I am curious __in a genuine way__ if someone who might consider themselves "woke left" (at the lack of a better word) here on HN who sees this as a positive development? (I.e., someone who views both aforementioned examples very positively)
Or actually, anyone regardless of political leaning for that matter?
Because personally I find it hard to construct even a simple argument for the viewpoint that hiding this information in any improves the website and/or society at large, with youtube being an important piece of infrastructure for the entire world right now. This instead would just seem like google continuing down their path of abandoning their "don't be evil" slogan.
Crunchy granola digital soyboy here: I can't think of any reason why this is a good idea since tools already exist to disable voting and comments for PR.
Heat, kitchen, etc.
It's the money; probably Hollywood. Maybe the Whitehouse? If it's perceived as staving off a SV antitrust breakup a little longer but that just doesn't seem "big" enough of a concession. So I'm back to money.
What I'm a little more concerned about is the conspiracy-minded posters on this site coming out of the woodwork on this article who are about 6 parens away from saying what they really mean.
I am curious __in a genuine way__ if someone who might consider themselves "woke left" (at the lack of a better word) here on HN who sees this as a positive development? (I.e., someone who views both aforementioned examples very positively)
Or actually, anyone regardless of political leaning for that matter?
Because personally I find it hard to construct even a simple argument for the viewpoint that hiding this information in any improves the website and/or society at large, with youtube being an important piece of infrastructure for the entire world right now. This instead would just seem like google continuing down their path of abandoning their "don't be evil" slogan.