This study investigates the impact of YouTube’s 2021 policy, which hides dislike counts and limits a form of negative social feedback. It examines how this change affects social media herding behavior—the tendency of users to align with the majority opinion. We adopted a mixed-method approach, incorporating an online experiment that simulates the YouTube interface and an Interrupted Time Series analysis of real-world user reactions, to assess how the policy affects user engagement. Specifically, we looked at how the absence of one-sided digital cues, combined with content characteristics and individual user predispositions, influences user behavior. Our findings suggest that YouTube’s initiative to boost platform positivity had limited success: user responses were more influenced by their ideological leanings than by visible digital cues; Hiding dislikes reduced commenting frequencies and inadvertently increased negative expression. These results highlight the stronger role of ideological beliefs over social cues in shaping engagement, challenging the presumed impact of audience conformity and the negativity bias on social media dynamics.

中文翻译：

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超越不喜欢计数：YouTube 用户对社交线索的可见度有何反应


本研究调查了 YouTube 2021 年政策的影响，该政策隐藏了不喜欢的数量并限制了某种形式的负面社交反馈。它研究了这一变化如何影响社交媒体羊群行为，即用户与大多数人意见保持一致的倾向。我们采用了一种混合方法，结合了模拟 YouTube 界面的在线实验和对真实世界用户反应的中断时间序列分析，以评估该政策如何影响用户参与度。具体来说，我们研究了缺乏单方面的数字线索，再加上内容特征和个人用户倾向，如何影响用户行为。我们的研究结果表明，YouTube 提高平台积极性的举措收效甚微：用户的反应更多地受到他们的意识形态倾向的影响，而不是可见的数字线索;隐藏不喜欢会降低评论频率，并在无意中增加负面表达。这些结果突出了意识形态信仰在塑造参与度方面的作用比社会线索更强，挑战了受众一致性和消极偏见对社交媒体动态的假定影响。