Effective now in an announcement, YouTube has removed the ability to view the infamous Dislike button count on its services. However, they’re doing so in a rollout format, which means you might still be able to view some of the numbers. Publicly, at least – video creators will still be able to view such on their own uploads.
The biggest reason for this change? Targeted harassment and attacks on certain creators, which YouTube is attempting to halt.
As Yahoo noted, tests showed that “removing it did reduce “dislike attacking” as well as indicating that it tends to occur more on smaller channels.”.
Unfortunately, this may have unwanted side effects, as quite often a like-dislike ratio is telling of what you might find in a video. For instance, a YouTube star who posts an unpopular and damaging opinion might see their video with a lopsided ratio as such – but now you’ll have to watch the video or glean possible results from commentary on social media, depending on the creator. Or the comments section, which is always handy.
The ironic thing is, YouTube’s most disliked video at almost 20 million (and counting, but not for long), was uploaded by YouTube themselves in 2018. Good times.
