@ ytKARL

 

You said: "We got rid of friends because it was a confusing system in a lot of cases, especially if you were both friended and subscribed to someone. If a story appeared in your feed from someone who was a friend AND a subscriber, it would be hard to tell why you got that feed story - and if you didn't want to see something like that again, it'd be difficult to tell whether you should stop being their friend or stop subscribing to their channel."

 

So basically you're saying that because you perceive many YouTube users as stupid (unable to comprehend the differences between subscriptions and friends), you have unilaterally chosen cater to the lowest common denominator by dumbing everything down a notch.

 

People are smarter than you think. Most people can figure it out. Assuming they are both subcribed and friended to a particular channel and then they get stories they don't want from that channel, they can unsubscribe, and when that doesn't fix it, they can unfriend. Problem solved.