Throughout 2021, YouTube ran a exam where it hid the dislike count on its videos, in certain cases. In November 2021, this went from an experiment to a global change. Now, yous'll no longer see the dislike count underneath whatsoever YouTube videos.

Let's look at why hiding dislike counts is bad for the YouTube community.

No Dislikes, No Oversupply Feedback

Until now, the standard for YouTube videos was to accept a Like and Dislike push button underneath each video. Each button had a number to prove how many likes and dislikes the video had, plus a bar beneath those buttons to visualize the ratio.

Now, YouTube has removed the dislike count on all videos. Y'all can all the same click Dislike, simply the count doesn't appear on the video. Accordingly, the ratio bar is also gone.

YouTube New Like Panel

The biggest trouble with removing the dislike button is that information technology takes away the power of anybody watching the video to provide feedback on it. The similar-to-dislike ratio was an easy and important way to gauge the quality of a video before spending the time watching it.

This is especially important when checking out smaller channels that you lot're non familiar with. Seeing a loftier dislike count on a tutorial video is a good sign that it doesn't work properly. Sensationally-titled videos that have tons of dislikes tin help you lot avoid wasting time on clickbait.

Now, the boilerplate viewer has no like shooting fish in a barrel way to run into what other people call back of a video. The similar count is still public, but without the number of dislikes to put that into perspective, information technology's non very useful.

Imagine if online stores like Amazon just allowed 5-star reviews, and then people could never leave negative feedback on poor products. That's effectively what YouTube has washed here.

YouTube's Reasons Don't Hold Upward

YouTube'southward official declaration video, and blog post about this change, acknowledges the concerns people have with it. The clip says that this was mainly done to preclude "dislike attacks," which is when people mass-downvote a video.

While "dislike attacks" aren't pleasant, at that place's often a reason why lots of people feel the need to dislike a video, and these crusades usually don't last for long. The video too states that people sometimes dislike videos "because they don't like the creator or what they correspond."

Merely that's what a dislike button is for—it lets you express that, for whatever reason, y'all don't similar a video. If you can't take the well-nigh pocket-size criticism of someone saying that they don't like what you created, so y'all probably shouldn't be making videos for YouTube. Disliking a video is not the same as harassing the creators in comments or on social media.

YouTube points out that creators already had the option to disable the Like/Dislike buttons on individual videos, simply that they are often "bullied and harassed" for doing so. The company didn't give any information to explain how ofttimes this happens, or how much having visible dislikes actually has an effect on creators. It'due south thus hard to determine whether these reasons are justified.

Thankfully, nosotros can turn to creators to hear what they actually think of this.

Creators Hate This Change

YouTube claims that it'southward making this modify to protect smaller creators, but smaller YouTubers—likewise as almost anybody else on the platform—are overwhelmingly against the change. YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim changed the description of his "Me at the zoo" video (the first on YouTube) to explicate why he's against the decision:

Jawed YouTube Dislikes Description

Take a wait around Twitter and YouTube, and you'll run across plenty of videos from creators large and small talking about why they don't like this determination. Meanwhile, YouTube continues to ignore actual issues its creators accept, like demonetization and copyright strikes that happen without alert or explanation.

This move doesn't really protect creators; it instead takes away the voice of viewers. Now people won't know how many others feel the same way when they dislike a video.

Given YouTube'south bend towards mainstream media and entertainment over the years, one possible caption is that YouTube is doing this for companies that don't desire to face backlash when they put something out that isn't well-received. Authorities channels, movie trailers, and similar take been subject to this recently.

Dislikes Are Important

On a site with as much content as YouTube, letting people requite feedback is important. Removing the dislike counter hides useful information and doesn't help creators in the way YouTube says it volition.

Since nosotros won't take this information in the hereafter, at present is a fun time to look back at the most-disliked YouTube videos of all time.