Google makes 'dislike' count private on YouTube

YouTube video platform has everything from tutorials on how to use daily gadgets to history lessons and millions of content. On average, it sees more than 3.8 billion searches a month and is only second to Google Search.

To drive more interactions between video creators and viewers, YouTube has been proactively bringing new features including chapters. The latter allows creators to break up a video into sections, each with an individual preview. This also helps users to jump from one segment to another within the same video. For instance, if a user is watching a phone review video and wants to directly watch just the camera segment; he/she can just hover over the timestamp line and see the chapter to directly check out the camera review.

Now, YouTube, after taking feedback from video creators, has come up with a thoughtful decision to make the dislike button private.

It has been reported that people or sometimes an organisation, just for sake of spite, used to organise attacks (cyberbullying) on a specific creator by disliking all his/her videos. This kind of mental harassment used to hurt creative artists and discourage them from releasing more videos.

Google conducted an experiment on some users and made the dislike button count on YouTube private. Though the thumbs down icon is present, the number details of dislikes weren't shown. This discouraged users to continue with dislike attacks on a particular creator.

"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 behavior1. 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," YouTube team said.

Going forward, YouTube will no longer show dislike count on any of the videos. However, creators will still be able to find their exact dislike counts in YouTube Studio, along with other existing metrics, if they would like to understand how their content is performing.

"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," YouTube concluded.

Watch YouTube's announcement video:

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