• There may be a time in the near future when the YouTube homepage no longer shows video views and upload dates on videos suggested there.
• YouTube removed the ability to see dislikes in 2021 in a bid to stop the dislike bombing of videos.
• YouTube has not officially said that it is making any changes to the YouTube homepage as of right now.

Supremely popular video streaming site YouTube is reportedly testing a set of new features for a revamped homepage that will no longer show view counts and upload dates on videos. This means that the page will look more like an over-the-top streaming platform, such as Netflix.

Spotted by Dexerto, the X account of VidIQ – a company that users can pay to boost their videos – reported that YouTube is testing the changes to the homepage and even shared a screenshot of what the new homepage could look like if changes are applied.

You can see video titles, channel names and the thumbnail, but nothing else. Currently on YouTube, view counts and how long ago a video was uploaded, be it 11 months ago or 2 minutes ago, shows underneath the channel name.

Users on social media have reacted to the news with either mixed or mostly negative thoughts, including Marques Brownlee who believes that YouTube should stop trying to be something it’s not.

YouTube has been making changes to the mainstays of its UI over the last several years. In 2021, it got rid of the Dislike count on videos. Users can still see the dislikes on a video using browser extensions since dislikes are still allowed.

“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 said in a blog post at the time.

It also means that users can’t show their dislike for YouTube’s own videos, such as the previously yearly YouTube Rewind, which were often panned.

YouTube has also been in an ongoing battle against adblockers. Going as far as to make its website more complicated and increase buffering and load times to inject ads on the server side instead of the browser-side to finally break the most popular adblockers.

There has been no official word from YouTube on tests to remove views and upload dates from videos on the homepage, so right now we don’t know if these changes will affect any other part of the platform. On the topic of why it maybe removing these pieces of information, it could be that some users do not click on videos with too few views or videos that are too old.

Creators may benefit from the change, but it could make it more confusing for users on the platform if it ever does come to pass.

[Image – Photo by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash]