YouTube has announced that it will changing the way its dislikes are displayed on videos. Going forward, the company will make the dislike count private in attempt to limit the misuse and abuse of the option.
As said by YouTube’s Creator Liaison Matt Koval:
“Groups of viewers are targeting a video’s dislike button to drive up the count, turning it into something like a game with a visible scoreboard, and it’s usually just because they don’t like the creator or what they stand for. That’s a big problem when half of YouTube’s mission is to give everyone a voice.”
The change spawns as a result of numerous attacks on users, where the dislike button has been used to negatively affect the performance of videos.
However, the move isn’t out of no where. Earlier this year, YouTube experimented with the hiding of public dislike numbers. Nevertheless, it is a still a big deal that dislike counts will be disappearing for everyone. Many users used the ratio of likes to dislikes as a viable means of pre-judging a video before deciding to watch it. This will no longer be an option and users will have to find an alternative way of vetting videos.
