YouTube is Hiding the Number of Dislikes on its Videos Across Its Platform
In bid to deter harassment
YouTube has always allowed people to like and dislike videos. It also shows the number of likes and dislikes garnered by a video beneath every video published. But now, YouTube is making a tremendous change. It has decided to hide dislike counts to combat dislike attacks and harassment. This was confirmed in an official blog post by the company.
YouTube hiding the number of Dislikes
YouTube stated that an experiment that hid the number of dislikes on certain videos unveiled that hiding the dislike numbers reduced the frequency of dislike attacks (when users decide to target a video with dislikes as a part of a harassment campaign). It could prevent certain videos from being targeted, especially new or smaller channels where the dislike attacks usually happen at a high rate.
It should be noted that though dislike counts will not be visible, the dislike button will still be there. After YouTube begins rolling out the change gradually (it has already begun), the precise count of dislikes will be private and visible to the creator of videos only. A creator can see the dislike counts in YouTube’s dashboard after visiting the engagement tab.
Matt Koval, YouTube Creator Liaison, explained the decision by the company via a short video. He said that likes and dislikes were originally seen as a simple method available to viewers to mark if they liked a video or not. But now, users have started using dislike counts to attack videos just because one person had a grudge against the creator of the videos.
Koval also highlighted that research was done by the company also revealed that the number of dislikes on video on average did not impact the overall viewership. So, the number of dislikes did not serve as a tool to decide the video quality (which was the main purpose). He mentioned that hiding the specific figure deeper in the dashboard helped reduce the possible anxiety and stress a creator had to endure.
Koval joked that some people might wonder that the change regarding dislike counts was partly made to hide the company’s embarrassment regarding the 2018 YouTube Rewind that has 19 million dislikes. It is the most disliked video in YouTube history. He added that the update is actually aimed at protecting content creators across YouTube.
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