YouTube to remove dislike count on all videos

The video streaming platform is not removing the dislike button, but only making the count private to reduce ‘dislike attacks’.

YouTube, on Wednesday, announced its decision to make the ‘dislike’ count on videos private across its platform. YouTube believes the change will help those small creators that are being targeted by dislike attacks or harassment. With the latest development, YouTube wants to promote “respectful interactions between viewers and creators.”

“Earlier this year, we experimented with the dislike button to see whether or not changes could help better protect our creators from harassment, and reduce dislike attacks — where people work to drive up the number of dislikes on a creator’s videos,” the company said in its blog.

YouTube is not removing the dislike button and users can still click the thumbs down button to signal their dislike to creators, but only as a private feedback. Viewers will not be able to see how many people have disliked it. Meanwhile, creators will be able to track their dislikes in YouTube Studio alongside other analytics about their video’s performance, if they choose.

The company decided to remove the count after its experiments showed a reduction in dislike attacking behaviour. Because they couldn’t see how many had disliked the video, viewers were less likely to target a video’s dislike button to drive up the count.

The experiment also revealed that smaller creators and those who were just getting started were unfairly targeted by this behavior.

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