Starting today, YouTube is no longer making the number of dislikes on a video available for everyone to see
As of this evening, the dislike count still appeared on the iOS version of YouTube
Content creators will still be able to view the number of dislikes that one of their videos has received in YouTube Studio right next to other analytics that reveals information about the popularity of certain videos on the platform. Earlier this year YouTube ran an experiment to determine whether hiding the dislike button reduced attacks from “dislike mobs” and also reduced creator harassment.
YouTube is looking to protect its creators by hiding the “dislike count”
YouTube has told TechCrunch that its decision to remove the “dislike count” has nothing to do with any changes forced on them by a regulatory agency. The move was made by YouTube to protect its creators. Thanks to competition from short-form video platform TikTok, YouTube feels compelled to protect its creators and started a $100 million creator fund to give its own short-form video platform a good start.
In a statement, YouTube said, “We are proactively making this change because YouTube has a responsibility to protect creators, especially smaller creators, from harassment and dislike attacks,” Over the last few years, lawmakers have tried to create legislation that would protect minors from social media platforms that could damage their mental health. Besides minors’ mental health issues, lawmakers have also battled over ad targeting, privacy, algorithmic boosting of misinformation, and more.
To protect users in the 13 to 17 age bracket, YouTube has created privacy features and reduced the ability of creators to profit from content that is considered harmful to kids. The changes being made to the dislike count will start showing up today across all of YouTube’s platforms. This means that the “dislike count” will disappear from YouTube apps running on mobile devices and from the desktop YouTube website.
