YouTube has announced that it is hiding the dislikes count on the video-sharing platform, claiming that the decision was made after internal research over its impact on the mental health of creators and to tackle coordinated dislike campaigns. YouTube is not the first platform to explore this aspect of online social behavior. The ill-effects of metrics such as likes and dislikes count have also garnered much attention – and concern — from direct users, parents and health experts.
The Google-owned video-sharing platform first began toying with the hidden dislike count idea back in March this year. The company initially performed a pilot test amidst a small circle of craters and viewers to assess its impact. The company said that it began the experiment after receiving input from its creator community regarding mental health concerns and if it could be used as a countermeasure to targeted dislike runs.
Today, YouTube has announced that the test is expanding across the platform as a permanent UI change moving forward. In its official blog post, the company notes that the dislike button is not going anywhere. It's only the number of dislikes that will now be invisible, as the numerical figure below the icon is being replaced with the 'Dislike' text. Creators will still be able to see the number of dislikes from the YouTube Studio dashboard. However, YouTube says it has buried the option as another safety measure so that creators don't always see it on the home screen and get stressed. Instagram also made a similar change this year, but unlike YouTube, the Meta-owned company is letting users decide if they want to see the number of likes or not.
With the change, YouTube says it aims to create an "inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves." During the experiment phase, YouTube's team learned that the absence of a dislike count reduced the chances of a "dislike attacking behavior," which is apparently company-speak for a targeted, mob-like behavior to rake up the number of dislikes for a video or channel. The company also claims that small creators and newcomers felt unfairly targeted by such behavior. However, it hasn't shared any specific details or metrics about the research conducted before making the decision. The change is rolling out starting today on all platforms globally. On the other hand, it's pretty popular TikTok-clone called YouTube Shorts doesn't show the dislike count by default.
But there's a caveat. Dislikes count on these short videos is invisible when viewing them in the dedicated Shorts feed. But visiting the library and tapping on the short video appearing in the history carousel opens it in the regular landscape view and reveals the Dislikes count. That loophole will likely go away as well starting today. But dislikes count is not always a bad thing. It also served as a warning sign for bad videos that were scammy, dished out false information, or if their quality was genuinely bad. Take, for example, YouTube's 2018 Rewind compilation, which dons the undesirable crown of the platform's most disliked video ever. Such was the bad rep garnered by it that YouTube canceled the annual compilation video trend for good. However, YouTube says that its decision to hide the number of dislikes has nothing to do with the widespread loathing for its Rewind videos.
Source: YouTube
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