YouTube has made it official that it will not show ‘Dislike’ counts on any video across its platform. The online video streaming platform says that this development will help small creators who end up being targeted by dislike attacks, abuse, or harassment. Adopting this change, YouTube wants to encourage “respectful interactions between viewers and creators.”
However, this doesn’t mean that YouTube is removing the dislike button altogether. Users can still use dislike any video they want to, but the number of dislikes on any video won’t be shown in public. It will be shown only to the creator (within their channel dashboard) as private feedback so that they can improve on it and be protected from public humiliation.
ALSO READ: Google App to gain a floating search shortcut on Android
This decision was taken after YouTube conducted a series of experiments that showed good results, i.e., it reduced the attacking behavior towards small creators.
“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,” YouTube said.
YouTube took this decision after it received feedback from small creators who claimed that their newly started channel was unfairly targeted by users. YouTube itself observed that this kind of attacking behavior occurred more on smaller channels.
So, now dislike counts will be hidden from the public eye but will be visible to creators in YouTube Studio, along with other existing statistics to let them understand how their videos/channel is doing. The change will start rolling out today and will gradually be completed on all YouTube accounts.
“To ensure that YouTube promotes respectful interactions between viewers and creators…we experimented with the dislike button to see whether or not changes could help better protect our creators from harassment, and reduce dislike attacks,” The company said in its statement.
ALSO READ: Marvel Movies will now be available in IMAX format on Disney+ Hotstar App
These changes at YouTube come as a much-needed change in a time when major social media networks and video platforms are accused of not doing enough to fight online harassment.
Source: 1
