YouTube's "like" and "dislike" counters have been fixed at the bottom of videos since the beginning, but now to combat harassment and so-called "dislike" attacks, YouTube is now hiding the "dislike" count.
In YouTube's official blog, the company said, an experiment, hidden in some video display, don't like Numbers hide don't like to reduce the frequency of attacks (when the user target video don't like the activities of harassment), can prevent the highly specific video targeted new or smaller channels don't like the attack occurred in one place higher interest rates.
But the dislike button hasn't completely disappeared. The change will be "rolled out gradually" starting today, after which the precise "dislike" count will be private and visible only to video creators under the "Participation" TAB on the YouTube dashboard.
In a short video explaining YouTube's decision, YouTube founder Matt Koval said that while likes and dislikes were initially seen as a simple way for viewers to mark whether videos are good, some users who recently didn't like counters have turned into a game that often tries to drive up dislike and is sometimes even part of a coordinated attack, Just because users might not like the creators of the video.
Mr. Koval said that research done by YouTube found that the average number of dislikes in a video had no discernible effect on overall views. So in essence, the number of dislikes isn't a tool for judging video quality.
While video creators can still see the total number of dislikes, Mr. Koval said that by hiding specific numbers deeper into YouTube's dashboard, YouTube says the number of dislikes is less likely to cause additional stress or anxiety for creators.
Koval joked that some people may not know this change is made by partially hiding YouTube's awkward 2018 YouTube retape, with 19 million dislikes still historically being the least liked video on YouTube, but added that the update is only designed to protect content creators of all types on YouTube.
