YouTube removes public dislike count on all videos

Google-owned YouTube, a popular online video sharing and social media platform around the world, recently announced that it’ll be hiding public dislike counts on videos across its site.

The social media platform said the change is to keep smaller creators from being targeted by dislike attacks or harassment, and to promote “respectful interactions between viewers and creators".  The dislike button will still be there, but it’ll be for private feedback, rather than public shaming.

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"At YouTube, we strive to be a place where creators of all sizes and backgrounds can find and share their voice. To ensure that YouTube promotes respectful interactions between viewers and creators, we introduced several features and policies to improve their experience," YouTube said in a blog post.

"Earlier this year, we experimented with the dislike button to see whether or not changes could help better protect our creators from harassment, and reduce dislike attacks — where people work to drive up the number of dislikes on a creator’s videos," the platform further added.

YouTube also said: "As part of this experiment, viewers could still see and use the dislike button. But because the count was not visible to them, we found that they were less likely to target a video’s dislike button to drive up the count."

"In short, our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike attacking behavior. We also heard directly from smaller creators and those just getting started that they are unfairly targeted by this behavior — and our experiment confirmed that this does occur at a higher proportion on smaller channels," the company wrote in post.