YouTube Announces the Removal of Public Dislike Count

On the 10^th of November 2021, YouTube announced its decision to remove the public dislike count, and instead make it private for the video creators; the company believes that this change will better protect consumers and creators from harassment, as well as improve users’ mental health.

Starting yesterday, users will not be able to see dislike counts, though the button will not go away, meaning people can still dislike a video, but they cannot see who else and how many others are disliking the same video – as that remains private with the creator of the YouTube video.

This step was taken to ensure that respectful interactions are promoted between viewers and creators, as mentioned on the official update via the blog post, which is available to read HERE. It said, “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. And 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.”

YouTube completed an experiment and tested out whether this feature would help, especially in terms of mental health, for users to tune in their recommendations and privately share feedback, while also not exchanging ‘mean’ feedback in public for everyone to see. “We heard during the experiment that some of you have used the public dislike count to help decide whether or not to watch a video. We know that you might not agree with this decision, but we believe that this is the right thing to do for the platform.

We want to create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves. This is just one of many steps we are taking to continue to protect creators from harassment. Our work is not done, and we’ll continue to invest here.”

If you would like to know more about the changes to YouTube’s features, then check out the video below and see what changes you have notices when you go on YouTube now.