For a while now the YouTube dislike functionality has been teetering on the verge of deletion with the platform one of the few remaining large social media platforms where viewers can actively display their discontent with content. Now the decision has been made the dislike button will stay, but its count will go.
This means that viewers are still free to hit the thumbs down on videos but the number next to the button will no longer reveal how many other users did the same. You can see what this looks like in the header image above.
The like button and its public numbers will remain as is.
“To reduce targeted dislike attacks & their impact on creators (esp on smaller creators), you’ll no longer see a public dislike *count* on YouTube starting today (the dislike button is staying). This comes after lots of research, testing & consideration,” YouTube writes.
This change has already gone into affect but will be rolled out gradually. The video announcing this, which you can watch in the embed below, currently has more than 16 000 dislikes compared to around 6 400 likes.
It will be interesting to see the former number disappear in the coming days (or weeks, no timeline is given for the rate of the rollout).
YouTube has recognised that this move will be unpopular so it has taken some steps to soften the blow of this decision.
Firstly video uploaders will still be able to see the number of dislikes through the YouTube Studio backend. The logic here is that creators can use this as a form of feedback to gauge what the interests of their views is.
“Viewers can still dislike videos to tune their recommendations and privately share feedback with creators. 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 announcement adds.
That announcement points out the biggest function of the dislike buttons for users: the ability to quickly see if a video is worth watching simply by the number of dislikes.
Just today we looked up a guide for a niche topic and found only a handful of videos on the topic. The top result on YouTube had more dislikes than likes but we watched it anyway and, guess what? The video was bad and didn’t at all address the topic in its video title. Going forward this kind of helpful crowdsourced feedback won’t be available to the public.
Infamously the yearly YouTube Rewind event was cancelled earlier this year with the last edition from 2018 still one of the most disliked videos on the site.
At the time of writing the video has more than 19 million dislikes compared to over three million likes.
YouTube provides more reasoning for this decision in an FAQ and the 2018 Rewind video is mentioned by name. It denies that this influenced the decision, and it denies protection of big brands also factored in.
Regardless of YouTube’s spin it’s another step at making the platform more homogenous with other content sites on the internet. Giants like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more all lack the ability to express dislikes, and now YouTube will also scrub this away.
