Please “Mod Down” All My YouTube Videos
Why a troll’s campaign to negatively impact my channel has the opposite effect.
A troll posted the following anonymous comment on Slashdot, encouraging users to “mod down” all my YouTube videos.
Make sure to go to YouTube to mod him down, any kind of Google account will allow you to mod him down. I use my Gmail account. Don’t mod too many of his videos down at once since YouTube will shadow-ban and ignore your mods while still making you believe they count.
- I mod down 3 of his videos every day.
- I wait a bit and watch a few videos between modding each of his video down.
-Watch a minute or two before modding it down, then click next video.Don’t bother to go to YouTube if you don’t have some type of Google account, it’s definitely not worth the time.
I want everyone from Slashdot (and Medium) to click the dislike button on all my videos. If the above steps were consistently applied, each person would add over six hours of watch time to my channel in 83 days. Watch time, not the like/dislike ratio, is the metric that that the YouTube algorithm cares the most about.
UP/DOWN VOTES (SLASHDOT)
Slashdot periodically awards “mod points” for users to become moderators (or mods) that allow them to up vote or down vote comments. The score range is -1 (terrible) to 5 (excellent). A mod can apply only one point per comment. A group of mods can push the score in either direction.
Users can set their comment reading threshold for raw (-1 or higher) or to a specific score (0 to 5). Since threaded comments look like swiss cheese with missing comments at higher thresholds, most users read at -1 to see every comment.
Every user has “karma” that ranges from Terrible to Excellent. Up voted comments increases karma, down voted comments decreases karma. A user with Terrible karma can only post two -1 comments per day.
In theory, mods are supposed to up vote comments worth reading and down vote comments not worth reading. In practice, many mods use their points to punish users they don’t like.
Trolls over the last four years had routinely down voted my comments to trash my karma. These days I post one -1 comment per day with the link to my latest tech video in the signature block. That’s enough to get them triggered and post stupid comments in response.
LIKE/DISLIKE BUTTONS (YOUTUBE)
YouTube videos have the like (thumb up) and dislike (thumb down) buttons. If you like the video, it will be saved to your “like” playlist. If you dislike a video after liking it, it will disappear from the “like” playlist.
The troll is under the mistaken assumption that the more dislikes my video gets the algorithm will stop recommending to viewers. That’s not how it works. The YouTube 2018 Rewind video broke the record for 10 million dislikes while trending number one. All those dislikes were counted as positive engagement by the algorithm.
Someone who didn’t like the video would click off in a heartbeat. Someone who watches a minute or two before hitting the dislike button is engaged with the video. The troll is doing me a huge favor by accumulating hours of watch time on my channel.
I posted “6 LITTLE KNOWN Updates About Fry’s Electronics” nine days ago. The video has accumulated 186 views, 6.6 hours of watch time, and one subscriber. That info is on the front page for video analytics. Nowhere does it mention the 1-to-5 like/dislike ratio (that’s under the “Engagement” tab). If a negative ratio was a factor, the video should be trending downward and not upward over time.
Please mod down all my videos. While you’re at it, take a moment to subscribe to my channel. I’m currently 665 subscribers and 2,832 hours short of qualifying for monetization. Your support is greatly appreciated.
