YouTube will now hide public dislike counts on videos

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Nov 11, 2021: YouTube has rolled out a much-needed update that will be highly beneficial for the creators across the website. The company has announced that it would stop displaying dislike counts on videos. This does not mean that users will not see the dislike button or will not be able to use it, it just means that the dislike count would not be visible to the visitors. The company says that this step would protect the creators from targeted harassment.

 

YouTube is often misused by people to take out their personal vendetta against an actor or an influencer. People from groups in large numbers and deliberately hit the dislike button in a video of a person they dislike. Sometimes only motive of such groups is to increase the dislike count. When the entire Bollywood was targeted after Sushant Singh Rajput’s untimely death, users purposely tapped on the dislike button on any video that featured the top Bollywood actors including Salman Khan or any film song from Karan Johar’s movie. However, things are changing now on YouTube and changing for good. The dislike count which fancied a lot of people will not be visible anymore.

“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. 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,” YouTube blog read.

YouTube revealed in its blog post that a lot of small and first-time creators were unfairly targeted. The company confirmed that online harassment does occur at a higher proportion on smaller channels.

“Based on what we learned, we’re making the dislike counts private across YouTube, but the dislike button is not going away. This change will start gradually rolling out today,” the blog said.