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Ask HN: Why is the ratio of upvotes/downvotes on social media so consistent?

by markhall on 8/27/20, 7:49 PM with 1 comments

I watch a lot of YouTube videos in any given week. I've consistently seen that any video with a moderate/meaningful amount of views tend to follow a typical trend. The ratio of upvotes to downvotes seem to always follow a 10-1 pattern. I've seen this for videos with 3 million upvotes (300k downvotes) and vidoes with 1k votes. Any idea how this pattern appears so consistently.

Additional note: My company has a similar voting function that we use for important topics and I've seen the same pattern shape out consistently.

Why would this be so consistent?

  • by meiraleal on 8/28/20, 12:57 AM

    Because most people clicking a Youtube video will probably like it (title, recommendation, etc). Especially the ones doing the effort to click.