YouTube will soon remove the public dislike count on every video, instead making the dislike count visible only to creators.The company announced the move on Twitter, explaining that the decision was made in an attempt to mitigate targeted mass disliking of certain videos. YouTube claims "lots of research, testing & consideration" were involved in the choice. The company also clarified that the dislike button will still be visible for viewer use, but only the creator of a given video will be able to see the number of dislikes it receives.
The usefulness of being able to see dislike counts, as well as the ratio of likes to dislikes, is relatively straightforward. Up to this point, the function has allowed viewers to see up-front how other users have responded to a video and draw conclusions as to its quality or helpfulness based on the number of likes and dislikes displayed. However, according to YouTube, these counts may no longer be reliable due to the prevalence of what it calls "dislike attacks."
"Apparently, groups of viewers are targeting a video's dislike button to drive up the count, turning it into something like a game with a visible scoreboard, and it's usually just because they don't like the creator or what they stand for," says YouTube creator liaison Matt Koval in the explainer video attached to the tweet. "That's a big problem when half of YouTube's mission is to give everyone a voice." Earlier this year, YouTube ran an experiment with a limited number of users that involved privatizing dislike counts. Based on the data YouTube collected from that sample group, the company concluded that a site-wide dislike count removal was warranted. "After analysis, [YouTube] did see a reduction [in dislike attacks]," Koval says.
Despite the apparently well-considered reasoning, the move is proving to be unpopular among users. Many are concerned that the change removes an important way viewers can judge whether a video is misleading or spreading false information. Koval attempts to alleviate some of these fears in the video, saying, "While viewers might use the dislike count to give them a sense of a video's worth, when the teams looked through the data across millions of viewers and videos in the experiment, they didn't see a noticeable difference in viewership. In other words, it didn't really matter if a video had a lot of dislikes or not -- they still watched."
Koval also addresses claims that YouTube is making the change to protect its own assets, considering the platform's own YouTube Rewind recap videos from 2018 and 2019 are some of the most-disliked videos in YouTube history. "Is this because YouTube Rewind got lots of dislikes? No," Noval says. "This is, again, about protecting all creators and making sure they have a chance to succeed and feel safe in doing so."
YouTube says the dislike count removal will gradually take effect starting Nov. 10. Ironically, since the change has not yet hit the explainer video as of this writing, it's sitting at a very public 9,000 dislikes to 5,000 likes.
Source:Â Twitter