YouTube said that the dislike counts will be private across the platform, but the dislike button will remain.
YOUTUBE — The Google-owned video sharing platform recently announced that it decided to hide the dislike counts on videos across the platform.
YouTube said that the change was to keep smaller content creators from being targeted by coordinated dislike attacks or harassment and to promote “respectful interactions between viewers and creators” as well.
According to YouTube, the dislike button will still be available across the site, but it will be for private feedback rather than for public shaming.
“We’re making the dislike counts private across YouTube, but the dislike button is not going away. This change will start gradually rolling out today,” YouTube said.
The said move wasn’t out of the blue as the company announced last March that it was experimenting with hiding the public dislike numbers and individual creators have long had the ability to hide ratings on their videos.
However, the fact that the dislike counts will be disappearing for everyone (gradually, according to the company) was a big deal, viewers were used to being able to see the “like-to-dislike ratio” as soon as they clicked on a video and may use that number to decide whether to continue watching.
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According to the company, people were less likely to use the dislike button in order to attack the creator — commenting “I just came here to dislike” was seemingly less satisfying when people didn’t actually get to see the number went up — when it tested hiding dislike numbers.
The company also said that this still let well-meaning viewers leave private feedback to content creators or use dislikes in order to tune the algorithm’s video recommendations.
“We want to create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves,” YouTube said.
You can visit this link for more details about it.