# YouTube is removing the dislike count on all videos



## Darrell (Nov 13, 2021)

In short: *The dislike count will be private across YouTube, but the dislike button will remain.*

From YouTube official blog:

_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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

We want to create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves._


Full post:






An update to dislikes on YouTube


Discover why the updated video dislike button on YouTube will remain public for viewers but the dislike count will be private for creators




blog.youtube


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## PatrickS (Nov 13, 2021)

I think that is a great move. I have seen the most ridiculous dislikes on very helpful and informative videos. If you really take exception to something, be up-front and comment.


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## AudioLoco (Nov 13, 2021)

_"We want to create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves."



Interesting quot from a company that helped to create and promote extremism, terrorism, hate, racism and dangerous conspiracy theories for the last 10 years...._


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## Drundfunk (Nov 13, 2021)

I kinda don't care, but at the same time I've seen dislikes on videos which were just extremely helpful and well made and I often wondered "wtf is wrong with people. Who would downvote this?" So I actually think it's for the best. To many trolls and miserable people on the internet.


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## ka00 (Nov 13, 2021)

I agree with the sentiment. It’s important to prevent bullying. But I will miss being able to quickly spot a bogus or factually incorrect how-to video (or similar type of video meant to provide some quick “explainer” info) if I can’t see the ratio of likes to dislikes.


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## Yellow Studio (Nov 13, 2021)

I think this is a very good move by YT. And I think it could be useful with the private dislikes too if they were constructive.
It's so easy to dislike a video and to me it seems like a cultural thing too. In some countries it seems like people just dislike a video, probably believing they're telling YT that they don't want to get notified with this content.


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## d.healey (Nov 13, 2021)

I don't agree with less choice.


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## Gerbil (Nov 13, 2021)

68 people are morons. By all means take it out of view!


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## Tatiana Gordeeva (Nov 13, 2021)

They could simply force dislikes to be accompanied by a valid comment. Their super-powerful AI system (that they use to analyze us and sell us stuff) could make sure that this comment is not nonsensical like "I don't like that". The video owner could also intervene.


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## davidson (Nov 13, 2021)

I find the dislike numbers helpful in making a decision on whether to watch a particular video. I'd say the vast majority of videos with large dislike percentages are completely justified and like that for a reason. You get some absolute tools on youtube who create videos just to spread false info or generally try to spoil your day.


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## Crowe (Nov 13, 2021)

I think this is a horrible move and I'm fully convinced that our society's collective spine is slowly disintegrating. In a couple of years we'll be unable to walk. It's disgusting.

If you're to be allowed reacting positively to something, you must be allowed to react negatively. There must be balance.

I've also never seen an excessive dislike-to-like ratio on anything that didn't completely deserve it.


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## dcoscina (Nov 13, 2021)

My feeling is if you don’t like something,
Move on.


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## M_Helder (Nov 13, 2021)

We wanna be more inclusive, so your dislikes aren’t included.

On a serious note, if you intend to make a more neutral playing field, why not just omit both likes & dislikes then? Leave them for the content creator to see and let people express themselves in the comments.

Until negative comments themselves become private only. But that would never happen, right? 
🤔


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## Rossy (Nov 13, 2021)

My opinion is remove them both and go by people who watch the video say up to 75% - 100%


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## Tralen (Nov 13, 2021)

Requiring people to actually watch the video, before they can like/dislike, would be, perhaps, a better step.


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## Mr Greg G (Nov 13, 2021)

It's not that simple. I stumble from time to time on videos that are supposed to be informative but are just clickbaits for Amazon affiliate links and content = 0.

It's easy to spot these videos because the amount of dislikes surpasses the number of likes. So from now on each time I see that for videos that total more than 100 likes/dislikes, I don't even bother watching.

Time saver.


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## Mr Greg G (Nov 13, 2021)

Tralen said:


> Requiring people to actually watch the video, before they can like/dislike, would be, perhaps, a better step.


At least requiring to watch a good chunk (1/4? 1/3?)


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## d.healey (Nov 13, 2021)

Mr Pringles said:


> At least requiring to watch a good chunk (1/4? 1/3?)


Some videos you click on and see in the first couple of seconds that it's spam, you should be able to downvote these without having to suffer through any more of the video


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## Tralen (Nov 13, 2021)

Mr Pringles said:


> At least requiring to watch a good chunk (1/4? 1/3?)


It doesn't need to be much, just enough so that it can't be abused.


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## whinecellar (Nov 13, 2021)

Like many others, it’s disheartening to see (or create!) so many good, informative videos only to have them trolled by people for sport. I wouldn’t be opposed to keeping dislikes visible if there were some accountability: people should have to comment on why they’re hitting thumbs down, and it should only be allowed after watching a certain percentage of the piece. As it stands, it’s not at all useful, and only serves to feed the need to be a jerk.


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## CeDur (Nov 13, 2021)

Expected, but terrible move from YT.

'Inclusiveness' ends as soon as someone is not thinking like YT or any other company like that thinks people should think. All those 'everybode is a winner' or 'don't say that because you might offend somebody' are factors leading society to being weak, over-sensitive and depressed. There is no possibility of any kind of discussion without being able to criticize. There is no motivation for self development if the winner is not the one who gets the prize. Because why should I train, learn or work hard if I'm getting the same outcome that person who didn't bother to move his ass lying on the couch in front of TV?

By the way, history repeats itself. If anyone is actually interested in 'what's going on', I strongly recommend reading some literature from beggining and middle of XX century. 

How is it connected with YT disabling dislike count, such a small and insignificant thing? It's just a sign of 'what's going on'.


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## SteveC (Nov 13, 2021)

I would be for two buttons: "like" and "like it very much". It would be the same - but more polite.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Nov 13, 2021)

davidson said:


> I find the dislike numbers helpful in making a decision on whether to watch a particular video.


That's kinda shocking.


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## AudioLoco (Nov 13, 2021)

It means you now cannot dislike the thousands and thousands of Nazi and Isis Youtube videos...


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## d.healey (Nov 13, 2021)

AudioLoco said:


> It means you now cannot dislike


The dislike button is still there, they are just removing the count so you don't see how many dislikes a video has.


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## handz (Nov 13, 2021)

A horrible decision, there were always trolls giving great videos dislikes but of course there are many crap content channels, who totally deserve dislikes to be higher than likes and this is just a blessing for them.


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## dcoscina (Nov 13, 2021)

Mr Pringles said:


> It's not that simple. I stumble from time to time on videos that are supposed to be informative but are just clickbaits for Amazon affiliate links and content = 0.
> 
> It's easy to spot these videos because the amount of dislikes surpass the number of likes. So from now on each time I see that for videos that total more than 100 likes/dislikes, I don't even bother watching.
> 
> Time saver.


I've seen way more cases where people just disagree with the content no matter how thoughtful it is. I've seen dislikes for outstanding performances of classical works, who knows why? Maybe because a Taylor Swift fan didn't like the Boulez performance of Varese's Arcana? I think removing both thumbs up and down is the easiest solution.


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## Marko Zirkovich (Nov 13, 2021)

AudioLoco said:


> It means you now cannot dislike the thousands and thousands of Nazi and Isis Youtube videos...


For those kind of videos it would be better if one would NOT be able to dislike a video. In many instances a dislike actually can boost a video and its channel because it counts as engagement and that's a big factor for the almighty YouTube algorithm.


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## Mr Greg G (Nov 13, 2021)

dcoscina said:


> I've seen way more cases where people just disagree with the content no matter how thoughtful it is. I've seen dislikes for outstanding performances of classical works, who knows why?


True, but when people just disagree with the content or dislike it for some reason you will very rarely see the number of thumbs down > to the number of thumbs up. Or something is very wrong.

So when I stumble on videos that are supposed to be useful content/information but have a negative like/dislike ratio because this is just affiliate content, or very bad recording, or you can't even hear the speaker and can't get anything from what he/she's saying, or the guy is filming his ceiling when he's supposed to film his carpet or whatever, it's easy to move on.

There are a lot of videos trying to dupe people on youtube. And I'm not even talking about videos sharing political opinions.


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## handz (Nov 13, 2021)

Gerbil said:


> 68 people are morons. By all means take it out of view!



68 out of 8k - which is quite nice proof that the content is really good (views does not say anything) 

When there is 6k dislikes and 8k likes then it is really controversial


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## AudioLoco (Nov 13, 2021)

Marko Zirkovich said:


> For those kind of videos it would be better if one would NOT be able to dislike a video. In many instances a dislike actually can boost a video and its channel because it counts as engagement and that's a big factor for the almighty YouTube algorithm.


Erm.... What I was implying is that YT should not allow for this kind of content in the first place.
Let alone liking (or disliking it).


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## Hunter123 (Nov 13, 2021)

How are we able to determine if the ratio from likes to dislikes is based on people downvoting who have a legit issue on the video vs malevolent trolls who dislike bomb? Also, how are we able to determine this without our own subjective bias getting in the way?


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## pixel (Nov 13, 2021)

It's great. Removing any form of negativity, including criticism, even when well deserved, is terrific. 
Let's remove the dislikes and the comment section. We all know from history that hiding from reality is the best way of solving problems. Not to mention that censoring freedom of expression and letting only one narrative always worked well for humanity. 
Stick your head in the sand like an ostrich = solution for all problems.


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## tack (Nov 13, 2021)

The status quo was not good. Drive-by dislikes are one of the many scourges of YouTube. Something had to change.

I see this as an improvement overall. However, my preference would have been to preserve dislike visibility but before any thumbs down is registered require that a sufficiently large percentage of the video be watched, and they have to provide some form of feedback as to _why_ they didn't like it.

I'm not a prolific content creator, but I have a few videos, and I am always perplexed when a video gets a thumbs down. When I receive a thumbs down on a video, the message I read from that is "the Internet is better off without this video existing. Fuck you, and fuck your free content." When I have no idea why someone disliked it, I'm helpless to improve myself. But I'll gratefully take a critical comment any day of the week.


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## Tralen (Nov 13, 2021)

AudioLoco said:


> It means you now cannot dislike the thousands and thousands of Nazi and Isis Youtube videos...


The opposite is also true. Totalitarian regimes can't abuse this to oppress dissidents.

Here in my country, there are some journalists that I follow that will get ~1000 dislikes as soon as their video is posted. The supreme court is currently investigating the presence of a "hate cabinet" in the presidential palace itself.


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## ResidentSmeagol (Nov 13, 2021)

The way around it, is to comment "Dislike" so everyone can upvote it. That way the most upvoted comment will be the one saying dislike and everyone can still see how many people dislike a video. 

Until youtube does away with comments because of it.


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## tack (Nov 13, 2021)

Also, at least at the moment, I've noticed you can see dislike counts if you're not logged in. Though I'm not sure if that's by design, so may change.


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## Crowe (Nov 13, 2021)

There's a bunch of nonsense to be found here. Things like 'trolls being the scourge of Youtube' (they're the scourge of everything internet, but that's not the point). Your like-to-dislike ratio is still going to be positive if the content is good. The amount of normal people vastly outweigh the amount of trolls on the internet, even if trolls yell loudest.

But guess what? A troll can only dislike once. If you find you've received disproportionally many dislikes, the likelihood that your content is simply *not good* is vastly larger than that people are trying to bully you.

Honestly, they should've removed the comment section instead.


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## tack (Nov 13, 2021)

Crowe said:


> But guess what? A troll can only dislike once. If you find you've received disproportionally many dislikes, the likelihood that your content is simply *not good* is vastly larger than that people are trying to bully you.


I once uploaded a video that got 15 dislikes inside of 10 minutes (and mine is a very small channel, ~500 subs, so that level of engagement is highly atypical). Then, over the course of the next few days, the likes ticked up and organically took over. I don't know what actually happened there, but there's frequently something else at play than one-off trolling.


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## Crowe (Nov 13, 2021)

tack said:


> I once uploaded a video that got 15 dislikes inside of 10 minutes (and mine is a very small channel, ~500 subs, so that level of engagement is highly atypical). Then, over the course of the next few days, the likes ticked up and organically took over. I don't know what actually happened there, but there's frequently something else at play than one-off trolling.


The Algorithm being what it is, it's quite likely those dislikes actually came from your subs. Which is also odd, but still.

Thing is, you yourself indicate that it pulled itself straight within days. The issue corrects itself. Trolls are not the majority and there is no real issue we need this censorship for.


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## Jotto (Nov 13, 2021)

Good News


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## MarcusD (Nov 13, 2021)

tack said:


> I once uploaded a video that got 15 dislikes inside of 10 minutes (and mine is a very small channel, ~500 subs, so that level of engagement is highly atypical). Then, over the course of the next few days, the likes ticked up and organically took over. I don't know what actually happened there, but there's frequently something else at play than one-off trolling.



It happens, videos can rack up dislikes quicker than they do likes. Not all of it is YouTube messing things up. It's likely to be YouTube for one or two, less likely to be trolls for a lot. For a lot, most likely to be genuine.

Something learnt, not everyone will understand your language. Often find dislikes come from people who find it difficult to follow what's being communicated. Some examples would be: accent too strong, too much slang talk, speaking too fast etc... then there's the other stuff like; too much nonsense, too much filler, video too long etc...

Content creators (hate the term) are guaranteed to get dislikes, no matter what. Whenever I've had a disproportionate amount dislikes to likes, it's just because the video was substantially shitter than most of the shit Ive uploaded. 🤣 It's just a shame YouTube doesn't encourage constructive feedback. You'll hardly ever get people leaving a comment that's useful in that regard.

Edit: correcting my poor grammar.


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## kevinh (Nov 13, 2021)

Jotto said:


> Good News


I would dislike you to be funny but vi-control has no dislike button haha


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## Hadrondrift (Nov 13, 2021)

Crowe said:


> A troll can only dislike once.


...if he does not run a few dozen fake accounts. And just as likes can be bought, so can dislikes, the latter being more damaging to those affected.

I think it is a good move, which unfortunately seems to be required at the current state of human civilization.


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## Crowe (Nov 13, 2021)

Hadrondrift said:


> ...if he does not run a few dozen fake accounts. And just as likes can be bought, so can dislikes, the latter being more damaging to those affected.
> 
> I think it is a good move, which unfortunately seems to be required at the current state of human civilization.


Who have been assaulted by these bought 'dislikes'? And how is 'remove the dislike button' the solution? Why is this hypothetical someone who gets their feelings hurt because of a hypothetical bully more important than a hypothetical propaganda video that has bought a thousand likes? 

Why the hell does America still have guns if this is the zeitgeist?

More censorship and weak-willedness is the last thing our civilization needs. Our society is weak and getting weaker every year. The double standards are mind-boggling.


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## Quasar (Nov 13, 2021)

SteveC said:


> I would be for two buttons: "like" and "like it very much". It would be the same - but more polite.


Word inflation LOL, like when the sizes of the milkshakes at the ice cream store are Large, Xtra-Large and Jumbo.

I echo some of the earlier comments. If a review channel has 12 likes and 380 dislikes, there is a very small chance that the presenter is getting trolled, but it's far more likely that the reviewer is a shill or is otherwise issuing a terrible review, so you don't have to waste your time with it.

So I would vote to keep the dislike button, and I will make a very long post in which I expand upon this opinion in great detail just as soon as I become so well-adjusted and problem free that this becomes the central concern of my life.


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## szczaw (Nov 13, 2021)

It's bizarre. You're not allowed to dislike youtube content.


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## Quasar (Nov 13, 2021)

Crowe said:


> Why the hell does America still have guns if this is the zeitgeist?


So we can shoot anyone who doesn't display the proper degree of courteousness and tolerance, of course.


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## Crowe (Nov 13, 2021)

Just cancel the like-to-dislike ratio, like we're cancelling everything else that doesn't give us exclusively positive vibes.


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## SteveC (Nov 13, 2021)

Crowe said:


> Just cancel the like-to-dislike ratio, like we're cancelling everything else that doesn't give us exclusively positive vibes.


Then we finally have our own private life!


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## Nova (Nov 13, 2021)

SteveC said:


> Then we finally have our own private life!



Boingo is in my top 10 all-time bands but I disliked the video just in the spirit of the thread.


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## Living Fossil (Nov 13, 2021)

PatrickS said:


> I think that is a great move. I have seen the most ridiculous dislikes on very helpful and informative videos. If you really take exception to something, be up-front and comment.



I have to disagree.
If i only refer to some youtubers who talk about music without having the slightest clue about music, and the impact it has on unexperienced young people who not only watch that video but also trust that the creator has some "authority" then i see rather a tool in dumbing down society than anything other.

Come on, there are youtubers with thousands of followers who make e.g. videos about "orchestration" without having spent a single minute of their life in front of an orchestra. They talk bullshit from the beginning right to the end, instead of spending some quality time with a book of orchestration.
Or they talk about harmony without having the slightest clue of the historical cornerstones that were responsible for the evolution of tonality (e.g by trying to explain harmonic structures that were motivated by semantical reasons with superimposed functional theories).
Etc. 
The list of popular garbage on youtube is quite an endless one.

And: no, i don't think it's useful to be _upfront_ in such cases.
Because usually these phoneys have quite lots of followers who take their "teacher's" word for granted. And they would brutally downvote your rational critique, hereby giving the moronic creator even more self confidence.
Also: i don't want to discuss with idiots. If i have the impression that a video that i watched (even if only parts of it) stole valuable lifetime of me, i downvote. If you think about it: Lifetime is the only real thing we have. Persons who trick you into believing that your time is worth the information they provide, deserve a downvote if the provided content turned out to be crap.
Because they stole a part of your life with their pretension.
And by downvoting such a mess you can indicate towards other that it's not worth _their_ time.


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## whinecellar (Nov 13, 2021)

tack said:


> The status quo was not good. Drive-by dislikes are one of the many scourges of YouTube. Something had to change.
> 
> I see this as an improvement overall. However, my preference would have been to preserve dislike visibility but before any thumbs down is registered require that a sufficiently large percentage of the video be watched, and they have to provide some form of feedback as to _why_ they didn't like it.
> 
> I'm not a prolific content creator, but I have a few videos, and I am always perplexed when a video gets a thumbs down. When I receive a thumbs down on a video, the message I read from that is "the Internet is better off without this video existing. Fuck you, and fuck your free content." When I have no idea why someone disliked it, I'm helpless to improve myself. But I'll gratefully take a critical comment any day of the week.


^^^ This. As mentioned previously, the current "dislike" with no feedback requirement and/or no minimum time watched is simply useless.


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## Hadrondrift (Nov 14, 2021)

Crowe said:


> Why the hell does America still have guns


I don't know, hardly anyone here in Europe understands that. 

There is a fundamental difference in the understanding of free opinion ("Meinungsfreiheit") between America and Germany/Europe, which we will certainly not resolve here. At the very least, insult, defamation, slander and the like are criminal offenses at least in Germany and can be legally prosecuted. Especially in the U.S., the concept of freedom of expression is much broader than that, and in both societies there is obviously a different understanding of what the individual has to endure and what not. 

I'll not judge what attitude is "right", just point out the fact that there are very different views on the subject around the world. What one understands as censorship is for the other the protection of personal rights to which this person is entitled, perhaps especially in a world that is getting tougher and tougher.


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## Crowe (Nov 14, 2021)

whinecellar said:


> ^^^ This. As mentioned previously, the current "dislike" with no feedback requirement and/or no minimum time watched is simply useless.


I would argue that the current "like" is then also useless for same reason.


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## CeDur (Nov 14, 2021)

Hadrondrift said:


> I don't know, hardly anyone here in Europe understands that.
> 
> There is a fundamental difference in the understanding of free opinion ("Meinungsfreiheit") between America and Germany/Europe, which we will certainly not resolve here. At the very least, insult, defamation, slander and the like are criminal offenses at least in Germany and can be legally prosecuted. Especially in the U.S., the concept of freedom of expression is much broader than that, and in both societies there is obviously a different understanding of what the individual has to endure and what not.
> 
> I'll not judge what attitude is "right", just point out the fact that there are very different views on the subject around the world. What one understands as censorship is for the other the protection of personal rights to which this person is entitled, perhaps especially in a world that is getting tougher and tougher.


Actually, Germany has quite high gun per capita (civilian) rating compared to rest of the Europe. I don't live in US, but from the available data and (I must admit) anecdotal evidence which come from my family or friends living there, it's much easier to be sued for deflamation, slander and the likes in US than in Germany.

Regarding being entitled to some 'rights' - I think in a so called modern, Western societies 'rights' are quite often confused with 'privilages', which is a completely different thing. Being able to posses a gun is a mean of excercising the right for self-defence. Banning guns is limiting this right (and freedom) with (imo naive) hope that it can be outsourced to the government.


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## rgames (Nov 14, 2021)

I think it has more to do with money than any kind of egalitarian, make-the-world-better motivation at Google.

If you promote a video using Google Ads it increases the odds that it will collect dislikes compared to a video that is not promoted. Because, despite the fact that the people at Google are geniuses (sarcasm) their algorithm still shows ads to a lot of people that aren't at all interested in the content. This is a well-recognized fact for many content creators.

While it's true that using Google Ads is still a net positive (it does increase subs and revenues) there is the problem of an increase in dislikes. While there is no correlation between dislikes and revenues, they are kind of a pain from a perception standpoint, especially for smaller channels who are just starting to use Google Ads to grow their channels. So if you get rid of the dislike button you're removing the one thing that causes problems for promoting videos and, thereby, increases the odds that someone will pay Google.

rgames


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## bill5 (Nov 15, 2021)

Tatiana Gordeeva said:


> They could simply force dislikes to be accompanied by a valid comment. Their super-powerful AI system (that they use to analyze us and sell us stuff) could make sure that this comment is not nonsensical like "I don't like that". The video owner could also intervene.


That would be a step in the right direction, or so you'd think, but then the losers who dislike something just to be losers would make stupid comments and YT would be chasing their tail trying to filter out the stupid ones. I doubt it's workable. Another idea is they could categorize videos and only posts made with certain categories would have the dislikes, so the poster would have the option of posting something where dislikes are or aren't allowed and take their chances. Not sure that would work either though. Not a perfect solution by any means.

I don't like it exactly but get it and unfortunately it probably makes sense. I think. Although the more I think about it, it's extremely rare for me to see any video with way more dislikes. Even the really bad ones. Maybe my experience isn't the norm?


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## bill5 (Nov 15, 2021)

Crowe said:


> I think this is a horrible move and I'm fully convinced that our society's collective spine is slowly disintegrating. In a couple of years we'll be unable to walk. It's disgusting.


That's true of course, but it has little to do with YT dislikes. The emasculation of our society began a long time ago and IMO is probably unstoppable. 




> If you're to be allowed reacting positively to something, you must be allowed to react negatively. There must be balance.


Nah. It's not a zero-sum game. There is no balance and nobody has a "right" to be a jerk. Yeah some people who down vote do so for valid reasons and aren't jerks, but again it's really hard if not impossible to separate the two. If you don't like it, simply don't up vote it.


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## Rossy (Nov 15, 2021)

Out of curiosity, if you went to a video with more dislikes than likes, how likely are you going to watch it anyway?


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## bill5 (Nov 15, 2021)

The same. I don't pay attention to it.


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## easyrider (Nov 15, 2021)

Couldn’t care less tbh….


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## NekujaK (Nov 15, 2021)

For those who feel the removal of visible dislikes will lead to a proliferation of spam, hate, or misleading videos... remember you can still (and always have been able to) report offending videos. Just pull down the 3-dots menu by the video's Share/Save links, and you can pick from a wide variety of reasons the video should be removed.

Unfortunately, "Doesn't know sh*t about orchestration" isn't one of the reasons 



​


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## NekujaK (Nov 15, 2021)

ka00 said:


> Let’s say you report some dude who doesn’t know sh*t about orchestration. And let’s say you pick “spam or misleading” as the only applicable reason. How does YouTube decide who is right? The dude or you? Is it just dependent on YouTube receiving over a threshold level of similar reports? How many would they need? What if dude is right and the 10 people who report are wrong?
> 
> I still prefer having a like vs dislike ratio.


That's why I mentioned it. You can't report videos for having substandard or inaccurate content. There would be no workable way to evaluate and enforce that.

But quite frankly, I've never used the likes/dislikes ratio when making my viewing decisions. I'll watch one video to see if the person knows what they're talking about, and I'll also read the comments. People are pretty quick to call out bad content in the comments. And if the content creator has suppressed comments... well right away, that's cause for suspicion.


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## rgames (Nov 15, 2021)

NekujaK said:


> There would be no workable way to evaluate and enforce that.


Yeah and that's not just a YouTube problem, that's an internet problem. The internet showed humanity what free speech really looks like.

I expect the ramifications of that realization will start to materialize in societal norms and laws over the next couple centuries.

Regarding likes/dislikes: I've never paid attention to them unless I find a video really bad, then I look to see if I'm alone. I almost always feel that a video with a huge percentage of dislikes deserves them.

However, a more common experience for me is wondering why there are *so many* likes for something that is, to me, crap.

So the problem that I see is too many likes, not too many dislikes. But hey, let them do as they please. As soon as you have a brand with a strong following that like button will light up no matter what you post. But that's been true for all of human history, so there's no reason to expect YouTube to be different.

It's what I call the "New Coke" problem. Anyone of a certain age will remember the TV commercials where they did cola taste tests. The tests (which were real) showed that when hidden from the brand, people didn't like Coke as much as other brands. So Coke decided to act and created a "New Coke" formulation. And people revolted against it. The Coke brand was so strong that people demanded a switch back to the formulation that blind tests showed they actually liked less. Thus the birth of "Classic Coke" and a staple lesson in the marketing department of all business schools.

In the music biz, this element of human behavior results in "Sell the brand, not the music."

rgames


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## Crowe (Nov 15, 2021)

bill5 said:


> Nah. It's not a zero-sum game. There is no balance and nobody has a "right" to be a jerk. Yeah some people who down vote do so for valid reasons and aren't jerks, but again it's really hard if not impossible to separate the two. If you don't like it, simply don't up vote it.


Actually, it *is* a zero-sum game. 'Positivity' is not this magical boon to society that makes everything magically better.

The fact that you seem to think disliking something automatically makes you a jerk is extremely worrying. Removing something because a small amount of people misuse something is never the correct solution. The people are the problem, not the functionality.

You completely ignore the fact that videos can have misleading and plain wrong content. No amount of 'not upvoting it' is going to help curb the proliferation of bad information.

This isn't My Little Pony, this is the real world. Positive thinking may fix your unhappiness, but it can never fix what's actually wrong.


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## Loïc D (Nov 16, 2021)

I don't have any opinion about this.

I'm just waiting for an official video on YouTube by Google explaining exactly why they changed.
Then I can dislike it.
Then I can watch the video. I mean, the first 15 seconds, and skip back to get back to my favorite kitten channels.


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## Darrell (Nov 16, 2021)

This is the official YouTube video explaining the change (and below the capture with the like/dislike count.)


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## Lionel Schmitt (Nov 16, 2021)

One example of the usefulness of the dislike button was when looking for computer improvements or fixes (certainly also regarding other things).
Sometimes when trying to fix and issue it needs to be as quick as possible and I don't want to first read comments on every help-video, but just quickly skip through and avoid destroying my computer with a nonsense video.

Also important - comments can be removed individually if I remember correctly, so the uploader might remove all negative comments and only keep the good ones. You can also set up that all comments must be approved first before they show, so you might filter all comments and only approve good ones.

So, no - reading comments won't give you the same insight as a non-alterable like to dislike ratio for instance. Yes, you can buy likes and thus alter it, but you can't remove dislikes. In the case of a very popular video with countless dislikes it would probabably be rather expensive to buy so many likes to sway the balance around. Whereas filtering comments is free and quickly set up.

Now YouTube is basically doing the job of filtering dislikes - all of them. Great job.
Either remove the like function altogether or keep it altogether.
Now the only way to actually tell how many people liked it is to somehow compare the like ratio to the viewer count and then compare that back to the like vs viewer count on videos most people actually like.
Rubbish! Useless!


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## Ivan M. (Nov 16, 2021)

We need more competitive platforms, competition drives quality and consumer satisfaction. YT would not be able to do stuff many creators and viewers complain about if there was an equally good alternative. 
As for the dislike button, never used it, don't care that much. However, I do believe it's political...


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## bill5 (Nov 16, 2021)

Crowe said:


> Actually, it *is* a zero-sum game. '


Hardly. Just because someone likes something doesn't mean someone else has to dislike it. 




> Positivity' is not this magical boon to society that makes everything magically better.


? Never said it was. If you somehow got that I'm advocating "golly gee let's all just be smiley and 'positive' all the time and never criticize anything, we are the world," you misread me, to say the least.



> The fact that you seem to think disliking something automatically makes you a jerk is extremely worrying.


No idea where you got that. Again you're make inaccurate assumptions.... 



> Removing something because a small amount of people misuse something is never the correct solution. The people are the problem, not the functionality.


Yeah but you can't remove the people. No matter how this is handled, it's an imperfect solution. As for "a small amount of people," the % is debatable but even if so, it's the old "one bad apple spoils the bunch" thing. Removing the dislikes takes that away and doesn't IMO do any harm. Or at least less harm. 



> You completely ignore the fact that videos can have misleading and plain wrong content. No amount of 'not upvoting it' is going to help curb the proliferation of bad information.


I think it would, at least to some extent.



> This isn't My Little Pony, this is the real world. Positive thinking may fix your unhappiness, but it can never fix what's actually wrong.


That is quite the oversimplification. Positive thinking can be of great value in a wide variety of ways. That doesn't mean it's a panacea. This is not an all-or-nothing thing.


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## PaulieDC (Nov 16, 2021)

Darrell said:


> In short: *The dislike count will be private across YouTube, but the dislike button will remain.*
> 
> From YouTube official blog:
> 
> ...


I'm late to the party (as usual) and will probably repeat what has been said, but I'm all for this move for two reasons... one, how many people including ourselves have had aggravations and conversations about why someone would dislike a video? Countless I dare to say. Two, why did it ever exist? You either like what you saw, or you move on. We do this every day with TV... don't like it? Change the channel. Instead the dislike seems to allows an unnecessary judgement in a way. If the post is really bad, meaning truly nasty/etc, we can always report it.

OTOH, I'm sure their will be times when you want to smash the dislike because someone's vid is just plain stupid, lol! It's just like when cellphones became the main item and regular house phones started disappearing, our house included... one great thing was taken away: the satisfaction of slamming down the phone onto the base to hang up on someone, BOY I miss that! 🤣

Anyway, seriously, I think the viewing experience will be just a bit more pleasant now. Well, once we get promoted ads and junk removed as well.


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## Polkasound (Nov 16, 2021)

Imagine you enter a Best Broccoli Soup contest where different groups of people are randomly chosen from the crowd to rate each contestant's soup. Unfortunately, the group of people chosen to rate your soup happens to be all grade-school children. Your soup immediately comes in last place. Why? Because it's broccoli soup and not pizza.

Now imagine that the group chosen to rate your soup happens to all be family members. Even though no one in your family likes your broccoli soup, your soup wins first prize.

This is the paradox that exists whenever the general public is allowed to vote — you can never know why, or for what, a person is voting. All you can see are the numbers.

In my personal opinion, most likes are genuine because they are gestures of positivity, which are useless to a troll. Although some likes could come from friends and family members blindly voting, one can only have so many friends and family. The rest of the likes will come from people who have seen the video and genuinely like it.

Dislikes can be genuine, too, and when they are, they are helpful. But I'm willing to bet a lot of dislikes are undeserved because they're coming from children rating broccoli soup. And if the dislike numbers are intentionally being manipulated en masse by trolls who are targeting certain videos, then the button's purpose is seriously negated.

If YouTube wants to remove the dislike count in order to take a weapon away from trolls, that's fine by me. Whether or not they leave the like count up makes no difference to me, since that number is highly unlikely to be manipulated by trolls.

But I understand the controversy. A few years ago, Amazon removed the ability for people to vote product reviews as unhelpful. This did solve the problem of trolls dinging stellar reviews out of spite, but it left no way to strike legitimately unfair reviews that bring down a product's rating, such as when someone reviews the shipping service instead of the product, or literally reviews the wrong product. You can report such reviews as abuse, but I have not yet seen one such review get removed.

--

On a side note, I don't have a Google account, but if given the opportunity, I'd be tempted to ding every YouTube video I saw that contained...

1. "...but first, please take a moment to subscribe, hit the like button, and leave a comment..."
2. A timeout for a product endorsement
3. Exaggerated, excited YouTube speak
4. A thumbnail image of a person with their mouth agape
5. Nauseatingly flagrant overuse of jump cuts

Yeah... I'm old school.


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## KEM (Nov 22, 2021)

If they remove the dislike count then I won’t be able to laugh at the dislike count on the Island Boys!!


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## ResidentSmeagol (Nov 27, 2021)

Looks like someone came up with a browser add on that returns the dislike stats to youtube. Nice.






Return YouTube Dislike


An extension that returns dislike statistics to YouTube using a combination of scraped dislike stats and estimates extrapolated from extension user data.




www.returnyoutubedislike.com


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## d.healey (Nov 30, 2021)

ResidentSmeagol said:


> Looks like someone came up with a browser add on that returns the dislike stats to youtube. Nice.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## VeganPete (Mar 27, 2022)

Only reason it was removed is because people noticed that youtube were deleting video dislikes on thousands of political videos and news-streams, to influence public opinion about Biden, Covid, War and Vaccines etc. It was not to protect "Jessica Smith's feelings" whenever someone down-voted her 2-minute video of "Watch tiddle's the cat farting the Star Spangled Banner song". When people started posting proof that YT were guilty of "astroturfing" (by bulk-deleting thousands of dislikes and boosting thousands of (fake) likes) - and after being caught deleting 2.5million dislikes from the official White House Administration's channel, they very quickly removed the dislike counter completely (literally within a few hours of being busted) and then announced their cover-story: that it was the result of a year-long experiment, designed to prevent trolls and cyber-bullies from "weaponising" the dislike button. They then designed a fake campaign to raise awareness of how "paid- trolls" were supposedly "egregiously abusing" the dislike button - but really to disguise the fact that it was Youtube themselves whom were caught propagandising, by nefariously tampering with the dislike counter.


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## LatinXCombo (Apr 5, 2022)

NekujaK said:


> For those who feel the removal of visible dislikes will lead to a proliferation of spam, hate, or misleading videos... remember you can still (and always have been able to) report offending videos. Just pull down the 3-dots menu by the video's Share/Save links, and you can pick from a wide variety of reasons the video should be removed.
> 
> Unfortunately, "Doesn't know sh*t about orchestration" isn't one of the reasons
> 
> ...


"Promotes terrorism" comes close though.


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