YouTube has made a bold move of removing the “Dislike” counts on YouTube videos. You will still be able to give a “Thumbs down” to a video. However, you will no longer be able to see the number of dislikes a YouTube video has.
YouTube said that this change is made to prevent “dislike attack” harassment campaigns. These campaigns are the ones where a group of people plan and intentionally dislike a video to make the dislikes count rise up.
Both viewers and creators on YouTube are expected to be affected by the shift. Viewers will no longer be able to publicly express their dissatisfaction with the video. For Creators, however, YouTube will reveal the Dislike count in a private way (via YouTube Studio). This will help creators to effectively access the performance of their uploaded videos. This, according to YouTube, will encourage respectful relationships between viewers and creators.
People on the internet aren’t entirely convinced of the reasons for the shift. Some users believe that dislikes can alert others whether videos are clickbait, spam, or deceptive, which can be quite valuable.
YouTube has responded to such comments: “We heard during the experiment that some of you have used the public dislike count to help decide whether or not to watch a video. We know that you might not agree with this decision, but we believe that this is the right thing to do for the platform.”
The news that social media is harming people’s mental health has been making the rounds on the internet. Following a test in 2019, Facebook and Instagram made it possible for all users to hide their public like counts earlier this year. In the same year, Twitter considered whether likes and retweets should be hidden.
YouTube announced the removal of dislike counts on Wednesday, November 11th, 2021, as part of a larger effort to improve the service’s diversity, respect, and safety, calling it one of many actions YouTube is taking to continue to safeguard creators from harassment.
YouTube said it had also heard from smaller creators and others who were just getting started on the platform that they felt they were being unfairly targeted by dislike attacks. The experiment confirmed this was true — creators with smaller channels were targeted with dislike attacks more than larger creators were.
Some believe that, with the growing popularity of TikTok, the battle for creator talent is becoming extremely fierce among internet companies. For example, YouTube launched a $100 million creator fund this year to help launch its short-form video platform. In the last year or so, it added a number of new features and policies geared at enhancing the creator experience.
This Wednesday, the new change has started rolling out globally across the web and all devices. You may watch the video below to understand more about YouTube’s motivation for eliminating the Dislikes counts:
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