YouTube to Hide Dislike Counts On Videos to Stop ‘Dislike Attacks’

YouTube began experimentation with covering up the dislike statistics on videos earlier this year to help decrease dislike strikes on creators throughout the media platform, then after an assessment in July, YouTube did record a decrease in that behavior, so the corporation has officially confirmed it will begin hiding the dislike numbers on any videos throughout its platform. This doesn’t mean users can’t vote against a video because the dislike button isn’t going away, and viewers can still use it to fine-tune their suggestions. It’s only that the number of dislikes a video receives will now be restricted to content producers with access to YouTube Studio.

Google owns YouTube, an American digital video uploading as well as social networking website. Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, as well as Jawed Karim, founded it in February 2005. It is the second-highest viewed site, with over one billion monthly active users watching over one billion hours of content per day. As of May 2019, video footage was being uploaded at a rate of more than 500 hours every minute. YouTube suggests that by concealing the dislike numbers, it hopes to “create a more inclusive as well as friendly atmosphere where content creators have the opportunity to excel and feel comfortable to express themself,” and that this is just one of several pathways the platform is pursuing to safeguard content creators, particularly smaller ones, from abusive behavior.

While it is a reasonable explanation, one might contend that hate numbers on a video are valuable since they assist viewers in determining whether the film is worth viewing. However, YouTube claims that its research found no discernible change in viewing whether or not viewers could see the dislike count. The video with the maximum dislikes on YouTube currently is YouTube’s Rewind 2018, which has 3 million likes with a staggering 19 million dislikes. But somehow it won’t be long before those statistics become secret since YouTube has been systematically burying dislike figures throughout their network.