Dislike the disappearing dislike

 

Hi readers, 

You may have come across a small but significant modification to YouTube's interface that was recently rolled out. From now on the dislike-counter that used to be placed next to the like-counter will be hidden. You can dislike videos as before, but the tally of these dislikes will no longer be displayed. The uploader of the video can view the counter in their statistics if they choose, but viewers no longer have access to this counter anywhere on the site.

exhibit A

From what I can surmise, a fairly common sentiment among users of the platform regarding this change can be expressed as follows:

Why did you change this? Nobody asked for this! 

YouTube's attempt to briefly explain the rationale of the change can be seen in the 3-minute video below:

Unsurprisingly, many users of the site remain unsatisfied with this explanation and much speculation as to the true motivating factors behind the change abound. Many comments on this topic seem to reject the official reasoning (that is, to protect content creators from bullying and malicious practices like coordinated dislike-bombing) and suggest that the change is the result of YouTube being pressured by big corporate interests who would prefer not to have dislikes displayed on their content. A clear problem with the latter reasoning is that video uploaders had control over displaying likes, dislikes and comments already before the change.

Some hot takes

My own opinion on the matter is subject to the same limitations as just about anyone else piping in on the topic. Outside of Google and YouTube employees, few people have authoritative information about their internal decision-making. The statistics and analytical studies that YouTube refers to in order to justify its actions are not open for review or scrutiny. All I can do, all we can do, is speculate.

My opinion is this: By taking away the dislike-counter, YouTube is taking away an indicator that I as a user of the site can inform myself of a general reaction to the content in question. Regardless of how dubious or inaccurate this indicator is, it improves my general understanding of how the content is received. The same pitfalls apply to the like-counter, but they're not taking that away.

Twitter doesn't have a dislike button. That's why nobody gets bullied on twitter. OK, that was entirely facetious, but what I'm getting at is that on any given platform, users will find ways to act out and defy existing measures to prevent unwanted types of behaviour. 

YouTube already has a reputation among content creators as a difficult platform to communicate with and I feel that this recent change will further solidify a view that average users' concerns and needs are largely ignored or glossed over. If dislike-bombing and bullying was a problem on the scale that YouTube makes it out to be, I would've expected the general reaction to be far more approving and favourable. Granted, I may be subject to a selection bias when it comes to the comments I have seen, but in my estimation a majority of opinion is against the hiding of dislikes.