There's great content on YouTube but there's a lot of garbage. AI-generated slop, clickbait thumbnails/titles that actually don't payout, sales pitches, and plain old low-quality garbage. The lack of a thumbs down really makes it hard to avoid these. I realize that thumbs down is also used to punish "wrong" political viewpoints and companies, so it's a hard problem. But as a viewer who never uploads content, it only makes my experience worse.
My recommended feed mostly consists of chess, machining, Mario Maker, fighter jets, and assorted other things like that, which is exactly what I want to see. There's some dumb stuff in there, but it's easy to skip over and it learns to recommend what I actually watch. And there is a thumbs-down button, at least for me.
Well when normal news like NBC just got immediate front page stuff with super low engagement people downvoted the crap outta it because it was showing such preferential treatment. Feels like they deserved it, they bought their way in.
Little did we know how far YouTube would go for them.
