YouTube is removing public dislike counts, the visible tallies of how many people click on “thumbs down” for a video.
The dislike counter is about to disappear from your most hated YouTube videos, but the dislike button isn’t going away. YouTube revealed the change in a blog post on Wednesday, which gave some additional context as to why the company will remove the dislike counter on all its videos.
The Google-owned company said that “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,” wherein viewers try to rack up dislikes on particular content.
“As part of this experiment, 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.
“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.”
YouTube added that viewers can still dislike videos and privately share feedback with creators on the site.
“We want to create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves. This is just one of many steps we are taking to continue to protect creators from harassment. Our work is not done, and we’ll continue to invest here,” the company said.
Facebook and Instagram already allow users to hide like and dislike counts in an effort to avoid people from feeling social pressure over their posts.
