Jawed Karim is one of three YouTube founders. He has criticised YouTube’s decision not to allow dislikes on videos. This he claimed will make YouTube a place where ‘everything is mediocre’, and cause its demise.
YouTube decided to conceal the number clicks of other users who clicked on the thumbs down icon below videos in protest.
YouTube said the change will prevent groups of malicious YouTube users from deliberately going after other users by bumping up the dislike count on their videos – what it called ‘coordinated dislike attacks’.
But according to Karim, the ability to easily and quickly identify bad content is ‘an essential feature’ on YouTube, and taking this away could lead to the site’s decline.
Karim made his displeasure known by editing the description of the first ever video uploaded to YouTube – entitled ‘Me at the zoo’ – in which he stars as a 25-year-old.
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Jawed Karim, one of the three founders of YouTube, appeared in the first video ever uploaded to YouTube, on April 23, 2005. Here is an image of the clip, titled “Me in the zoo”.
Karim, now 42, founded YouTube with Chad Hurley and Steve Chen in February 2005, but it was sold to Google less than two years later.
“Why would YouTube create such a hated change?” says Karim in the updated description. “There’s a reason for this, but it is not good enough and will not be made public.”
A platform that allows users to create content from their own content must have the ability to identify and remove bad content quickly. Why? Why?
YouTube made the announcement that they would not reveal dislike numbers to the public in a blog posting on November 10.
Matt Koval is YouTube’s ‘creator liaison.’ He also discusses the decision in video.
As Koval explains, the dislike button is staying where it is, so users can still hit the thumbs down if they don’t like a video, but how many dislikes a video has is only visible to the video’s creator.
YouTube creators who have videos that get a higher number of dislikes could be negatively affected, which can lead to a decrease in income.
‘Unfortunately, research teams at YouTube has found there’s this whole other use for disliking a video that I had never experienced,’ Koval says.
YouTube stated that it hides dislike scores on YouTube videos because it believes groups of users could use it to harm creators.
“Apparently, groups of viewers have targeted a video’s like button in an effort to increase the dislike. [dislike]count and make it look like a game. It’s often because they don’t like their creator or the values they hold.
But Koval seems to address the decision without much passion, prompting Karim to say in his post: ‘I have never seen a less enthusiastic, more reluctant announcement of something that is supposed to be great.’
Karim compared Koval’s announcement to footage of US soldier and prisoner of war Jeremiah Denton, who famously blinked the word ‘torture’ using Morse code in a Vietnamese propaganda video in 1966.
‘The spoken words did not match the eyes,’ Karim writes.
Karim never actually had a formal role at YouTube, according to the New York Times, before it was sold to Google in October 2006 for $1.65 billion.
After the platform was bought out, Karim perused a master’s degree in computer science at Stanford University.
He is a YouTube legend despite this. His appearance in the original YouTube video was his first.
YouTube uploaded ‘Me At the Zoo’ on April 23 2005. It only lasts 18 second.
Karim, who is shown standing in front an exhibit of elephants at San Diego Zoo tells the camera that they have “really long trunks”.
YouTube has uploaded many more video clips over the past 16 years.