YouTube is testing hiding the dislike button entirely and users aren’t happy

[u/Dilpickle2113]

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtube-is-testing-hiding-the-dislike-button-entirely-and-users-arent-happy-3420822/

[u/JurplePesus]

You will watch what the algorithm feeds you and you'll like it! Now shut up and click on this AI ad for a gambling app or some prescriptions from an online doctor who will never meet you.

[u/toddh39 → u/JurplePesus]

All the fake ai ads scams on you tube

[u/new_math → u/toddh39]

I see regular Costco ads, using the Costco logo, and it's for life insurance from a random LLC company that, based on the own ad details, is located in India or Eastern Europe >.>

[u/Specific_Frame8537 → u/new_math]

Damn, that's rough.

https://github.com/gorhill/ublock

[u/throw-away-exception → u/Specific_Frame8537]

Yup, between this and Revanced Youtube on rooted Android, I haven't seen ads on Youtube in years.

[u/annoyingashe → u/throw-away-exception]

Patching YouTube with morphe was easier and fixed the playback issues I was having with ReVanced recently. It also lets you use a more recently updated version of YouTube.

I still use the "reddit is fun" app patched with ReVanced, it's great.

[u/crustyrobots → u/Specific_Frame8537]

I keep forgetting others experience the Internet without it.

This dog shit is seriously malware, anti-adware is a must

[u/iamtherik → u/toddh39]

firefox + ublock origin

[u/Nonsenseinabag → u/iamtherik]

Right? The solution is quite easy. Ads can suck digested chow.

[u/rokahef → u/toddh39]

" this is how i built a team of grok ai agents that make my life so easy now! Meet pip-" fuuuuuuuuuck offfffffffff.

So sick of that ad appearing every 10 seconds

[u/Maelstrom52 → u/toddh39]

It's unbelievably annoying, but I will say part of the problem is that YouTube has democratized the advertising structure on YouTube, so pretty much anyone can purchase ad space on YouTube. It's super easy to do. Almost none of those ads are reserve ads, they're all auction ads, which basically means that they just get placement in places where they probably aren't going to have that much of an impact. I would wager that almost everyone clicks the skip after five seconds button. The conversion rates on those things are probably well below 0.1%, whereas decent conversion rates would be between 1-2%

[u/dychronalicousness → u/Maelstrom52]

Which it’s wild advertisers haven’t thrown a shit fit over artificially inflated numbers due to bots.

[u/Maelstrom52 → u/dychronalicousness]

There are two different advertising buckets though. Advertisers with money, who are spending several hundred thousand or millions of dollars per month, are absolutely getting premier placement. 15-second unskippable ads and 30-second unskippable ads are priced very differently than TrueView skippable ads. It only costs a fraction of the reserve ad cost to throw a bunch of AI ads and try to get some exposure.

And also, considering the average person on Reddit is under 35 and probably not making over $100,000 a year, the likelihood that you're seeing more of the auction ads is probably part and parcel to your demographics.

[u/baconboner69xD → u/Maelstrom52]

My favorite is when I’m driving or working outside and it starts playing an ad that is essentially endless unless I find my phone and skip it. Like wtf

[u/hackinwhackinsmackin → u/JurplePesus]

Don’t forget ads for AI apps that can take photos of women and turn them into videos of them doing sexual acts.

I’ve literally gotten ads like that. Or one of a girl playing slap bass in her car. I’ve gotten ads like that on YouTube shorts.

[u/Mineingmo15 → u/JurplePesus]

“If you swear a little too much we’re gonna have to take away your monetization. Anyways here’s actual porn as an ad.”

[u/Future-Bandicoot-823 → u/JurplePesus]

Chumba casinoooooo

America's social casinooooooo

[u/Shap6 → u/JurplePesus]

they can pry my subscription page from my cold dead hands

[u/Luthais327 → u/Shap6]

They will, give them time.

[u/thinkmatt]

I hate this on nextdoor. Pretty sure its partly why there is so much ragebait surfaced, with no way to hide it

[u/rokatoro → u/thinkmatt]

I feel like this is end game social media. The whole industry is build on rage bait engagement. They removed the downvote count so you couldn't know if a video was bad without watching it, now this feels like trying to limit your ability to shape your algorithm away from content you might not like

[u/YouMakeMeSikh → u/rokatoro]

twitter had this flaw since forever. that's why bots and ragebaitets are living the best life. nobody can downvote to curb the spread.

[u/Mute2120 → u/rokatoro]

I guess the only option still available will be the "don't show this channel" option.

[u/thekk_ → u/thinkmatt]

The fact that Reddit still has downvotes is most likely a good part of the reason why it's more sane than the other social media platforms that got rid of it.

[u/rokatoro → u/thekk_]

Even that's getting worse. My home page is full off newish 0 upvote threads full of rage and usually written by AI

[u/airfryerfuntime → u/rokatoro]

Turn off the suggested feed.

I still use RIF, but with the official app, I noticed all the algorithm driven slop reduced by a lot when I turned off suggested.

Edit: to the people asking about RIF, you can get it running with a patcher like Revanced or Morphe. I have it running through Revanced because I haven't changed it over to Morphe yet. For the longest time, it was pretty broken, with YouTube links and imgur albums not working, but that has been fixed through Revanced. https://github.com/MojiRS/revanced-rif-patches. The Morphe patcher is more limited and hasn't fixed YouTube links yet, I don't believe.

[u/Caleth → u/airfryerfuntime]

Old.reddit.com and Reddit Enhancement Suite.

Keep that puppy going as long as possible all the "improvements" they've made to reddit don't get passed along keeping it clean and efficient.

it is a 900% better experience that the current nu reddit layout.

[u/Koru03 → u/Caleth]

I, and many people like me, will absolutely drop reddit when they finally break old reddit. The new shit is unusable by comparison.

[u/Caleth → u/Koru03]

100% I'm mentally prepping myself to leave.

[u/Sugioh → u/Koru03]

Yep. This is my final red line. Old reddit is the only thing that keeps the site usable.

[u/PiccoloAwkward465 → u/Sugioh]

Is there any better place where nerds go? Maybe where the average age is above 14 and I don't have to read "bro. bro bro. BROOOO" in every thread?

[u/Sugioh → u/PiccoloAwkward465]

Sadly, not that I'm really aware of. There's the fediverse, but it's still pretty awkward to use (at least for me) and lacks a lot of the hyper-niche small communities served by subreddits that I love.

If reddit goes too far we may see a mass migration, but there aren't a lot of promising competitors waiting in the wings currently.

[u/eyebrows360 → u/Caleth]

We can't even see comment histories for some accounts, so it does look like they're trying to phase it out still, but I too will be holding on as long as possible.

The insane reduction in information density in the "new" UI, with all the fucking social-media-boilerplate whitespace and huge borders and padding everywhere, is just terrible.

[u/FUCKTHISWEBSITEBANME → u/eyebrows360]

It's intended for mobile, for the average social media user. Reddit is just normal social media now, for the average idiot.

[u/Magickarpet76 → u/FUCKTHISWEBSITEBANME]

Which is why the normal braindead social media bullshit comments are becoming more prevalent.

“THIS LMAO 😂😂😂” /s

[u/Aellope13 → u/Magickarpet76]

I still might prefer that to the ‘Narwhal bacons at midnight’ days.

[u/FUCKTHISWEBSITEBANME → u/Aellope13]

Idk man sometimes this site just makes me miss the cringe dork days. I genuinely hope they ban me so I can just read this shit without being tempted to reply. They changed it so that to use old.reddit you have to have an account, which is why I have an account again. I deleted my account years ago specifically so I wouldn't be tempted to get into stupid arguments with idiots, and now I'm back to getting into stupid arguments with the biggest idiots possible, and there's a good chance they're not even people.

[u/Agret → u/eyebrows360]

They actually made it a Reddit setting that you can hide your activity from everyone. The official app & modern website won't show you the history for those users either.

[u/AnalogiPod → u/eyebrows360]

You cant see the comment histories due to the privacy settings on their account. You used to not be able to but you now can set it so people can't view your history on their profile. Had a dude following me across subs for a while and had to turn it on for a like a week but I feel like comment history being available is how Reddit should be so I reversed it.

[u/lmpervious → u/airfryerfuntime]

Turn off the suggested feed.

We need a law where all social media needs to offer this. I think that’s very realistic to pass, and ideally also to have it off by default.

People being fed the same information from one perspective over and over is not healthy for our society. When people hear something 100 times and see everyone else agreeing with it, almost anyone in that situation will believe it, even if they are a skeptical person and believe they won’t fall for misinformation. That’s why we see people living in completely different realities.

[u/Exia777 → u/airfryerfuntime]

Does RIF still work? I thought it died with the 3rd party API costing money change

Is there a fork/maintainer you could point me towards, I miss having a nice, sterile mobile client...

Edit: thanks to all the responses + OP, it has been 3 years since I've used a mobile client ;D

[u/Adlerson → u/airfryerfuntime]

This may be a stupid question, but how do I turn off the suggested feed...?

[u/6thseer → u/Adlerson]

Settings > Preferences > Show recommendations in home feed toggle! Edit: Preferences not Profile

[u/Borderline-Bullshark → u/6thseer]

This just removes suggested posts, I think the real issue here is the home feed sort that can’t be changed in the app so it defaults and shows many new posts rather than the already curated and voted on posts of hot or top.

[u/Vid-Master → u/rokatoro]

yea and the subreddit name is like SuperGreenNews123

[u/AstroPhysician → u/thekk_]

I’ve seen correct answers im an expert in the field on downvoted very consistently lol. But yea

[u/Brootal420 → u/AstroPhysician]

Just like irl

[u/Gh0stMan0nThird → u/Brootal420]

There are times I will see someone post misinformation, I will do nothing but say "Hey, unfortunately that isn't true" and post a source

Then I get -23 downvotes and nobody comments back to me

[u/eseffbee → u/Gh0stMan0nThird]

I find there is a snowball quality to votes on some comments. The first few votes can really set the direction. You can often see two comments in a thread saying almost identical things yet one is minus and the other with dozens of upvotes. I think when people see something upvoted/downvoted it subconsicously influences how they approach reading the post.

[u/OldManFire11 → u/Gh0stMan0nThird]

One of the most dangerous human traits I've become increasingly aware of over the last decade is that people largely don't give a shit about what's true or not. They only care about what they want to be true.

It's obvious in groups like Trump supporters or conservatives because they've become actively hostile to truth, but even progressives and moderates will soak up misinformation that they want to be true. Like all of the posts about how Ukraine has crippled Russia's social media bots last week. It would be nice if that were true, but it's not. The data centers destroyed had literally nothing to do with Russia's bots. The few charts that circulated showing a line going down were either completely fabricated, or utterly misrepresenting what data was being shown.

[u/baconboner69xD → u/Gh0stMan0nThird]

It’s because you posted a source. Nobody wants to read that crap. You’re supposed to tell the other guy to post a source that refutes your “trust me bro”

[u/HipToss79 → u/AstroPhysician]

I've also had this happen. I'm a mechanical engineer and made some comments about the fury 365 rollercoaster incident that happened a few years back. The number of people that understood fatigue failures in structural steel grew exponentially overnight. I got down voted for stating basic engineering principles I use everyday.

[u/bacon-squared → u/HipToss79]

This happened to me when I pointed out the ocean is not a perfect mixer for heat when they were talking about building server farms underwater. Just talking about basic science and how it applies to heat exchange and I got down voted. Also got downvoted for talking about the ways to do heat dissipation in space.

[u/timmybondle → u/HipToss79]

People here just down vote you for disagreeing with them whether your points are valid or not. I think discussions here are mostly ego-based and conceding anything would be a hit to that ego

[u/Aeroncastle → u/AstroPhysician]

Half of r/bestof is so nonsensical that I think that bots got the community for themselves Edit: things currently being posted, not things on "all time best"

[u/_harveyghost → u/AstroPhysician]

I've been on this shithole website for two decades, that's always been an issue lol.

[u/Sweetwill62 → u/_harveyghost]

It was at least better in the beginning when both upvotes and downvote totals were displayed alongside all comments.

[u/HTPC4Life → u/AstroPhysician]

Still, world's better than no downvote button at all

[u/itsmesorox → u/thekk_]

Reddit is definitely not sane XD

[u/Acceptable_Fox_5560 → u/thekk_]

Reddit? Sane? Reddit is the reason we're in this whole mess to begin with.

[u/tehlemmings → u/thekk_]

I wouldn't expect that to last. Reddit is actively removing r/all right now, forcing everyone into algorithmic feeds.

They'll follow suit and remove downvotes sooner or later. It's the way every right wing site has gone. It's the best way to hide the bots.

[u/lplqsnkczxccia → u/tehlemmings]

Reddit is actively removing r/all right now

really? It's the way I used reddit (old.reddit.com/r/all), haven't seen any issues with it

[u/tehlemmings → u/lplqsnkczxccia]

Try it on mobile or using new Reddit.

The only way to access all is on desktop in old. They fully removed all the workarounds last week.

[u/LG03 → u/tehlemmings]

And they're very much in the process of permanently killing old.reddit. No hyperbole, the first step is blocking access to anyone that hasn't used it in 6 months, effectively cutting off any new users.

[u/tehlemmings → u/LG03]

Yup. They're already actively removing pieces and forcing you over to new for basic shit like checking your replies. They'll kill it for good soon.

[u/Bensemus → u/thekk_]

It’s not that sane. Subs are usually pretty hard echo chambers. Go against the sub and you will be massively downvoted or just outright banned.

[u/LackFormer554 → u/thekk_]

It’s also how every subreddit ends up an echo chamber with dissenting points of view sent to the shadow realm. Swings and roundabouts.

[u/Macqt → u/thinkmatt]

Rage bait is more profitable than showing you what you want. All these tech companies just decide what you want to see or hear. Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok are awful for it, Reddit is following suit making it harder to find the content you want while forcing you to look at shit you don’t.

Spotify won’t give you actual shuffle because they think you don’t want it.

Facebook won’t even let you hide the shit you don’t wanna see. At best they mute it “temporarily” so they can shove it in your face later.

Anger and rage drive clicks and engagement, and thus these platforms who depend on those metrics ram it down your throat.

[u/EnjoyerOfMX5 → u/thinkmatt]

I use YouTube a ton because of their "not interested" and more importantly "dont recommend this channel". I can fully block Nick Fuentes, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Taint, not to mention all the ai slop, just gone.

[u/SlapnutsGT → u/thinkmatt]

Nextdoor is so fucking annoying the boomers have turned it into Facebook 2.0. Every time some speeds down their street they gotta let all of us know in a 50 miles radius that it’s unacceptable.

[u/writingpracticeman → u/SlapnutsGT]

I live in a small town about 30 miles outside of a much bigger city and I just deleted it when Nextdoor decided I needed to start seeing all the big city shit instead of just my immediate community. I could tolerate it when it was just a few randos bitching about kids riding their dirtbikes on the street because I was more interested in what restaurant they were building and what my neighbors were trying to give away, but once Nextdoor started slowly and slowly expanding the range from where I could see posts, nah I'm good

[u/GriveousDance21]

They've been lying since day one about hiding dislike counts, claiming "oh, we don't want creators to be harassed lmao" where it was clearly implemented to protect advertisers and brand interests. And in that 2021 announcement video they boldly claimed "At least you can still dislike videos, other platforms won't even allow that".

5 years later, here we are.

[u/nox66 → u/GriveousDance21]

Negative opinions will not be tolerated in the slop mines.

[u/ArachnidNo2269 → u/nox66]

More hideous shit is coming so we're preparing now by removing the dislike button. Don't like videos now? Wait till we hit you with our new ai slop and other creative shit.

[u/m1ster_frundles → u/nox66]

techbros are training us not to complain for when their fascist wet dreams are finally realized

[u/King_of_the_Kobolds → u/m1ster_frundles]

I feel like I need to start becoming a lot more tech literate than I am so I can install all the prerequisite third party hacks and ad blockers that are going to make the 2030s marginally bearable.

[u/crustyrobots → u/nox66]

A lot of this AI crap is pretty much built to make talentless idiots feel better about themselves. Thats why CEOs like it so much

[u/Cheese-Manipulator → u/nox66]

It is like Ned Flanders and his Re-Neducation camp.

[u/dust4ngel → u/GriveousDance21]

we don't want creators to be harassed

"he's just a hardworking nazi trying to make ends meet."

[u/szydelkowe → u/GriveousDance21]

Reminded me of how TikTok has been limiting visibility of "unaesthetic" and disabled users, and then tried to cover their ass by claiming it was "to protect them from harassment"

[u/obeytheturtles → u/GriveousDance21]

Nah, it was done to boost right wing content creators on a platform which historically wants nothing to do with them. They did it very specifically in response to Trump and co saying that big tech censors conservative voices.

[u/bp92009 → u/obeytheturtles]

Whereas the actual numbers showed that rather than censoring them, it amplified their content significantly.

[u/Rutmeister → u/GriveousDance21]

I work in marketing. I worked many years with YouTube, for hundreds of advertisers. Ain’t a single advertiser who gives two shits about likes or dislikes. It’s not a revelation that people don’t like ads. Whatever the reason for them removing dislikes, that isn’t it.

[u/GriveousDance21 → u/Rutmeister]

YT definitely didn’t want to take any risks. They knew dislikes were a huge factor in views and that would significantly impact ad revenue. That’s why they made that choice. Public opinions be damned.

[u/teaguechrystie]

remember when netflix had a five star user review system?

[u/iPvtCaboose → u/teaguechrystie]

i also remember when youtube had a five star user review system

[u/LLemon_Pepper → u/iPvtCaboose]

I remember when youtube had video replies

[u/fizzlefist → u/LLemon_Pepper]

I remember when the community could upload subtitles for a video. Now we got auto-generated slop that can’t comprehend shit.

[u/Clear-Connection1012 → u/fizzlefist]

Auto-over-dub in English on a video from overseas… where the person is speaking English

[u/MysteryTempest → u/Clear-Connection1012]

Auto-dub in ASMR ;_;

[u/MysteryTempest → u/fizzlefist]

Remember when YouTube was basically MySpace with videos? You could add people as friends, comment on their profiles, customise your page however you wanted to. It was a genuine social media site, when the "social" part actually meant something

YouTube is a great example of the blandness of enshittification. Even when the site is still usable, it's so cold and sterile.

[u/mainman879 → u/fizzlefist]

This one hurt so much. I have difficulty separating voices from other noises so I need subtitles for a lot of videos. The community subtitles were so good. New subtitles are fucking trash.

[u/loki1887 → u/teaguechrystie]

They had full user reviews. They would refer you to a page where you would rate a ton of movies and then it would build a profile about based on your taste. The red stars on a movie was what they estimated you would rate it based on your tastes.

Then the user reviews had a percentage next to the user name based on how alike their tastes were to yours. So if you read a review about a movie that was good and saw the user had a 87% similarity to you, you had a good chance of enjoying that movie too.

And it was pretty accurate for me (after rating hundreds, if not thousands, of movies).

[u/3FtDick → u/loki1887]

Netflix really was a film-buff's dream when it first came out. I had a new dvd every other day. I watched so many obscure old french films using netflix. The community side of it was so rich, then they just removed it all. The backlog of films I had on my list got lost, it was just a bummer.

[u/ExchangeOptimal → u/loki1887]

Sound like a great system

[u/loki1887 → u/ExchangeOptimal]

It was great. Then replaced it with the stupid thumbs up/down.

[u/EbonySaints → u/teaguechrystie]

I actually miss having five stars as a rating system. I like a lot of things, but I don't "five star" like them. The problem is that with certain things like ridesharing, I really can't give anyone less than five stars even if I don't think they're perfect because it will fuck them over. Then there's the stuff that I kinda like but don't love. I want to show that I like it, but just giving it a like feels like it pollutes my feed and it's not really an honest assessment of how I feel. Liking something these days means that I'm now associated with it until proven otherwise.

I understand why they got rid of the five star system, since everyone who isn't riddled with indecisiveness obsessed either defaults to five or one, but it really is a sign of the death of nuance. Everything has to either be the GOAT or slop. Sometimes, I just want some three star, comfort food, semi-guilty pleasure, mid tier stuff.

[u/Inside-Specialist-55 → u/teaguechrystie]

The reason they got rid of this is because they know that low rated movies and TV shows will never get any views or watches. Now you just got to have your phone out the entire time browsing IMDB to see if a movie/show is good or not.

[u/fizzlefist → u/Inside-Specialist-55]

No, it’s because you could tell how controversial a video was. Slopaganda videos with 10,000 likes? You don’t see that there’s 100,000 dislikes.

[u/Winderkorffin → u/fizzlefist]

The thing is, it doesn't matter. They only care if you've watched it. They don't care if it was hate watching or whatever

[u/lucellent]

Youtube: "Oh you hate this new change? Okay we will keep it!"

[u/This-Requirement6918 → u/lucellent]

We're sorry you're unable to express your disapproval as we have removed the button to do so. Enjoy!

[u/cubano_exhilo → u/This-Requirement6918]

I have no mouth and I must scream: Youtube edition

[u/Sir-Insatiable2025]

Its to hide dissent and the Enshitification of everything.

For a while a lot of political posts were getting like 80%+ dislikes and they removed it very shortly after.

We are not allowed to dislike anything the corporations want to force on us.

[u/AcadiaWorried1865]

This, combined with the new trialed layout that puts videos below the video and comments on the side, just feels like they're trying to turn Youtube into TikTok.

I really hate it.

[u/keslol → u/AcadiaWorried1865]

at least with ublock origin you can still go back to the old format if you are forced to the new one

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.disable_theater_mode, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_watch_eligible_to_switch_to_grid, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_watch_enable_single_column_grid_view, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_fixed_panel_watch_next_grid_swap, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_watch_fixed_default_panels, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_engagement_panel_show_description, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_watch_move_summary_to_sd, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_watch_hero_list, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_watch_split_scroll, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_side_rail_dismissible_panels, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.kevlar_watch_hide_comments_while_panel_open, false)

youtube.com##.ytSideRailViewModelHost

[u/CaughtWaaping → u/AcadiaWorried1865]

Its such an atrocious change. I can't stand it

[u/codename474747 → u/AcadiaWorried1865]

Pushing vertical form video is absolutely infuriating for those of us who like to watch on large monitors or apps through their TVs

I swear they'll be recommending vertial-ratio'd monitors before too long (9:16?) and start phasing out wide screen videos eventually.

[u/zrad603]

I can't believe YouTube doesn't have a "block channel" feature. I'm sick of accidentally clicking on the same clickbait AI generated YouTube channels.

[u/InevitableAvalanche → u/zrad603]

All these social media sites are about controlling what you think, not giving you what you want.

[u/turtlemick → u/zrad603]

Make sure to also remove the video(s) from watch history if you don’t do that already

[u/PreciousJackal]

Why they remove it in the first place?

[u/Specific_War5484 → u/PreciousJackal]

Big business got mad that their videos got a ton of down votes 

[u/TheAllSeeingBlindEye → u/Specific_War5484]

It looks bad to shareholders when they look at the company video and see a 1:10 ratio or more dislikes. Better to let them think somethings good than hurt their feelings

[u/Appropriate1987 → u/Specific_War5484]

Gotta censor the truth about what people really think, right? So dumb.

[u/Klutzy-Football-205 → u/PreciousJackal]

YouTube put a "YouTube Rewind" video that was their most disliked video and it got a huge amount of dislikes. Within a few weeks the dislike counter was gone. Make of that what you will.

According to Wikipedia, it is the most disliked video with over 20 million dislikes. Source

[u/Ok_Confusion4764 → u/PreciousJackal]

Because stuff like Youtube Rewind got dislike-bombed for being out-of-touch. It was a vain attempt to save face for big corporations. 

[u/Chrisman614 → u/PreciousJackal]

I think the YouTube rewind played a big role. I remember the last one they did was bombarded with dislikes and it became a huge joke.

[u/Caged_Cage → u/PreciousJackal]

Their Youtube Rewind became the single most disliked video on the platform and the dislike button was removed shortly after.

[u/BigBlackHungGuy]

Youtube needs a competitor.

But I get it. It's a beast to replicate.

[u/Well_Socialized → u/BigBlackHungGuy]

It's easy to replicate the website features, just not the billions hours of content already on there and being added constantly

[u/mtranda → u/Well_Socialized]

The features are trivial, but on top of the billions of hours, the infrastructure associated with those is also collossal.

[u/roderla → u/mtranda]

And, you know, making it free to use when you invest millions into storage and availability. Probably more than millions even for a small competitor.

[u/ash_ninetyone → u/[deleted]]

Tbh it also tells creators when a particular video or take is unpopular.

This will just create an echo chamber of shit

[u/ShadowAze → u/[deleted]]

Click the three dots and then click "Not interested" or "Don't recommend channel"

Only this seems to genuinely work

Of course this won't help with rating videos and showing that to other users, but it's something

[u/TheBraveCoward → u/ShadowAze]

It only works temporarily. About once every 1 to 2 months I have to purge my feed. YouTube really really wants to show me Minecraft and fnaf vids despite me not showing interest in the topics.

[u/AttonJRand → u/[deleted]]

That doesn't work, social media algorithms, and reddit is especially bad about this, still view that as engagement. Its why there is so much hate and rage everywhere.

They abuse that vulnerability of you letting them know what you dislike.

[u/LegendOfBobbyTables → u/[deleted]]

I've been in content creation for a long time. Functionally, hitting dislike is exactly the same as hitting the like button. YouTube doesn't care if you like a video or hate a video, they only care that you interacted with said video. Advertisers pay more to be associated with an engaged viewer, and any action you take counts as engagement.

YouTube will happily feed you 100 videos in a row that you click dislike on and will be more likely to show those same videos to other users they believe have similar viewing habits as you. The only things that signal to YouTube that a video is low quality and shouldn't be offered to other users is to leave the video within the first 30 seconds or not clicking on it all.

[u/SomberArtist2000]

I swear they need to bring the dislike count back, not hide the button altogether. I'm tired of seeing disinformation, crappy takes, or arguments generally devoid of any factual information or logical cohesion having multiple likes but no counter for dislikes.

[u/rolfraikou]

Can someone explain what it is about YouTube wanting to take everything away?? I know that supposedly the "algorithm will keep people on there longer" but the changes they have made have continuously gotten me to use it less and less.

If I can't trust a tutorial on how to fix my car because it has no like and dislike, I just don't look up anything the needs to be reliable on YouTube. They remove sort by latest in search? I need recent info? I go to websites other than YouTube.

I used to go to look for me useful video, then get lost in the interesting video on the sidebar after finding what I needed.

So how exactly does making YouTube less useful get YouTube more business, as I keep seeing claimed?

[u/Nino_sanjaya]

They already remove it right? Am I in the past timeline?

[u/No_Picture_925 → u/Nino_sanjaya]

Only on Shorts. Videos can still receive dislikes.

[u/astelda → u/Nino_sanjaya]

You are likely thinking of the dislike count, which was removed years ago. Since then, the number of dislikes on a video is hidden for viewers (but creators can still see it)

This article is about the dislike button, so you wouldn't be able to dislike a video at all, even for creators to see

[u/milkybuet]

Hers is the unfortunate reality, this was always coming, and not a damn thing I see us users can do about it. Unless there is a legitimate competitor to YouTube, regular people are their captive audience, and only people YouTube answers to are large companies who doesn't like seeing down vote numbers on their videos.

So with some browser extensions "restoring" down vote count, removing the button entirely is the very natural next step.

[u/Zwars1231]

I haven't seen a dislike button on ios in probably months.

But on desktop too now? I already get way too much use out of the "don't recommend me this stuff, im not interested." button

[u/Physical-Builder-553 → u/Zwars1231]

That's the next thing to be removed.

[u/dimechimes]

I've disabled shorts because of this.

[u/Mission_Economy_6861]

Social media needs to take more user feedback and less input from outrage baiting advertisers

[u/ThePassionOfTheISK]

Does YouTube understand they're not immune to a future where users walk away from their platform?

They've dropped in quality and they continue to drop in quality.

At some point the content creators leave and the consumers leave. They really should be focused on fixing their degraded algorithm. It worked better in 2010.

50% of what I get suggested appears to be new accounts who use AI video and AI narrators. I use the site mainly for long form videos. Information and education. Like news and science. And all of the legit people are being replaced by unknowns. It's TRASH.

[u/adeadbeathorse → u/ThePassionOfTheISK]

Google just genuinely sucks as a company. It’s that simple. They are god awful at making products and putting themselves in the shoes of their users. They’re on the out IMO.

[u/bladerunnercyber → u/ThePassionOfTheISK]

What are they so afraid of? People not liking content? Oh noes!

For such a large company, you would think they would have developed a thicker commerical skin, seems not the case. I find it amusing that a company that big, is so afraid of something so small as a dislike button. Seems even the largest of titans is afraid of something, that being a choice.

Netflix used to rule the roost on streaming, now they are losing subscribers faster than they can keep them. Youtube wants people to create content, but is afraid of people expressing their opinions on posted content, thats pretty sad actually. They dont rule anything either, they are just a stop gap til something better comes along essentially, like all things, there is always someone bigger waiting to take their place.

[u/BSK_Darksol → u/ThePassionOfTheISK]

Are you saying you don't like searching for something and having the same 10 useless search results repeated in a loop?????

[u/Agreeable_Air1021 → u/BSK_Darksol]

I know you searched for this really specific video, but how about a Mr Beast one instead?

[u/SteakStrong7520 → u/ThePassionOfTheISK]

or you know getting the same 10 videos 1 1/2 pages in the recommended you get the same videos as the top two rows.... all the way to the end. There are literally hundreds of millions of videos on Youtube. Banning for legal things like Cannabis as well. I do not give a rats ass that your advertiser does not like spending money on that type of content... its fine. find another type you do like and use your money there. The cannabis streamers are NOT asking for your ad money, they just want to be left the fuck alone. You can drink until puking and its fine. Smoke a joint and the anti-cannabis people green out.

[u/ProffesorSpitfire → u/ThePassionOfTheISK]

Plenty of creators are already actively encouraging users to migrate to different platforms. Half of the channels I’m watching have been promoting Nebula for years, plenty of big channel have locked communities elsewhere where they publish videos for Patron supporters only, and so on.

But I agree, Youtube’s algorithm have become a lot worse in recent years. My experience is that the algorithm always wants me to watch more stuff from the creator I’m currently watching. It’s like going to a massive buffé and starting off with a chicken wing, and having a personal waiter nagging on you all throughout the chicken wing to have more chicken wings. If next you grab some mashed potatoes, the waiter starts urging you go eat more mashed potatoes.

It wasn’t always like that. A few years ago, the waiter would’ve said: I see you like both chicken wings and mashed potatoes - based on the preferences and behaviour of other patrons, I suspect you would also really like this pie.

[u/woodworker_junkie → u/ThePassionOfTheISK]

The YT algorithm baffles me so much, especially when still on the main page - like no, I don't want to watch a totally random 5 years old video and especially a video we both know you know I've watched already. I've been saying this for years, I'm glad I'm not just insane. It literally did work way better when I was a kid

[u/faresar0x → u/ThePassionOfTheISK]

Dont get me started on youtube music. I dont know how a human sounds like anymore.

[u/Upset_Ant2834 → u/ThePassionOfTheISK]

Unfortunately it is practically impossible for a real competitor to exist, and they know it. The infrastructure needed to handle petabytes of data every day and streaming it to millions of users is incomprehensible. YouTube itself couldn't handle it and was hemorrhaging money trying to keep up, which is why selling to Google was really the only choice they had. Even then with Google's limitless resources it struggled for years to become profitable. Really only an existing tech giant even has the means, but they're not dumb enough to dump billions of dollars into a slim chance they can steal enough users from Google to make it work

[u/krwawie → u/ThePassionOfTheISK]

There is no alternative

[u/YoshiTheFluffer → u/krwawie]

Thats the sad reallity of it.

[u/willacceptboobiepics → u/YoshiTheFluffer]

It would be very hard for someone to compete as well. YouTube basically grew this content format into what it is today. And therefore had the luxury of building up the infrastructure over time as it became more popular.

Where we are at today is Google having unimaginably massive data centers in order to be able to hold the overwhelming amount of data storage required for this kind of operation in the current day.

The money required to do something like this on any level that would be even slightly close to what YouTube is doing would be so crazy expensive that the only people that can afford to do it will just end up enshitifying the platform out of greed, just like Google and we are back to the same issue.

[u/KryptikAngel]

I need two browser plugins just to make viewing tolerant.

[u/Hot_Cheesecake_905]

Does the Dislike button do anything on YouTube? It doesn't seem to register any numbers on screen?

[u/No_Picture_925 → u/Hot_Cheesecake_905]

Yes, I can see I get dislikes on YouTube Studio.

[u/Modern_Doshin]

Can we go back to the 5 star voting system and custom channel wallpapers?

[u/SendAnimalFacts]

Isn’t the dislike button practically useless anyway? I was under the impression it became a “scream into void” button when they removed public dislike counter in 2021

[u/Metool42 → u/SendAnimalFacts]

Only for creators now to see how many hate your guts

[u/boogaloo9214 → u/Metool42]

Even for creators, they recently hid it from the main content page in YT Studio, you now have to go through multiple steps to see how many dislikes your video got.

[u/_nobodycallsmetubby_]

In the age of AI we absolutely need the dislike button, I hate how many times I have googled a tutorial only to find a 5 minute AI video that isnt even close to being correct

[u/mr_birkenblatt]

users aren’t happy

How to know? All metrics only show positive feedback

[u/Flabbergasted98]

I don't really care about the dislike button one way or another.

just give me a "never show this AI generated propaganda bullshit to me again" button.

[u/Forge__Thought]

Literally removing the voice of people that helps us filter trash content. Gives more power to bad actors, corporations, and the algorithm. And telling us it's "for the best."

The enshittification shall continue until morale improves.

[u/mabus42]

They don't want you to downvote AI slop into oblivion.

[u/garyvdh]

Here's my rant. People get so upset about there being no dislike button, but they can't stop themselves from posting on videos that they don't like. Comments like "AI slop" or "this is crap" mean nothing to Youtube's algorithms which just interprets it as user engagement. The bad videos are then pushed to the top because of all the angry comments. People need to actually learn to completely ignore the bad videos so that they just die out by themselves.

[u/dervik → u/garyvdh]

How can you ignore it if you want to give feedback after watching it and disliking the content? There should be a mechanism for voting down fake news, slop and low effort content

[u/VernonP007 → u/dervik]

I want to watch soccer highlights now I don’t know which videos are legit and which are bullshit due to the lack of a dislike button

[u/Well_Socialized → u/garyvdh]

The dislike button helps with that though. If I click that I feel less need to also write something about how I don't like it.

[u/Dorintin → u/garyvdh]

Back in the old days we could just avoid disliked videos...

[u/DaRealJoeBiden69 → u/garyvdh]

Why are YouTube’s algorithms so fucking dogshit is a better question.

[u/astelda → u/DaRealJoeBiden69]

It's working exactly as intended.
It doesn't matter at all to companies whether you like the content that you see

what matters to them is whether you keep using the platform and seeing their ads. That's the primary metric the algorithm targets, always.

[u/kamekaze1024 → u/garyvdh]

That’s what the dislike button was for. You knew a video was bad and could communicate that by increasing the dislike to like ratio.

Now you have to comment because how else do other users know it’s bad beside having to watch the whole video

[u/qwerni]

I rarely use youtube anymore. The last nail was when they ruined the search. You can't sort by recent anymore.

Want to find a recent review or tutorial on something? Too bad, you will have to go through dozens of videos yourself and check the upload date.

[u/cdwillis → u/qwerni]

Removing the ability to sort by the date was just minorly annoying when I first noticed it, but now it's actively pissing me off. I don't want to see just the last five or whatever videos posted about what I searched for.

[u/Redit_is_dead19703]

I wish government would legislate this bs, hiding the dislike function is one of the main way social medias are distording reality and destroying fabric of society, on every single platform.

People would realize what bs is being pushed by evil people if they could see platforms trying to push the heavily disliked content, it would be obvious they are influenced by somebody to go again the algos.

After all they keep saying the algos is supposed to push content people like, hiding dislike is how they hide the fact they do the opposite.

[u/feculentcuntfist]

We are only allowed to clap. Clap monkeys, clap for the shareholders.

[u/KidRed]

Can they add a “no ai” filter for searching?

[u/MossiGuy]

can’t wait for the downfall of this app.

[u/Additional-Board-727]

I disagree with doing this but functionally what does it matter at this point. Taking away the ability to see dislikes is similar to the button not existing at all. They should bring back dislike counts on videos AND comments. Being able to view and voice negative feedback is what at one time separated YouTube from the other social media platforms. Sad case.

[u/Shap6 → u/Additional-Board-727]

it does nothing for the viewer but creators have always been able to still see their dislikes so this removes another metric for them to track how much their audience likes their content. on that side its a pretty big change.

[u/sociofobs → u/Additional-Board-727]

Likes and Dislikes were an effective way for users themselves to 'vote' on video quality in general, not just for you to see how many have liked/disliked it. That in turn was a way for the recommendations algorithm to sort through all the trash, as the more disliked videos weren't recommended that often. Removing that functionality altogether means you'll simply get far more trash than you already do.

[u/DogsRNice → u/sociofobs]

They probably saw ai slop getting too many dislikes and wanted to stop that from happening

[u/MustardEnema007]

"Ma'am, the new rollout has received 100% thumbs up from users"

[u/Evening-Mention-8738]

Didn't we already go through this once before or was that Netflix?

[u/BigGayGinger4]

lmfao this is not the first time

they took it away a long time ago, people bitched, and they added it back.

around goes the quarterly-profit-cycle-carousel.

[u/htplex]

I’m just using report button instead.

[u/RaidriarT]

I miss the star rating system :( 

[u/royanb]

YouTube on a mission on how to keep making the UI/UX worse and worse

[u/lostshell]

Youtube won’t even let you block creators. They are not about positive user experiences. You have to use browser extensions to make it useable.

[u/FeedtheFrog]

Its all about control and giving people less freedom. Shame on them.

[u/guyxbwc]

We should just start making youtube alternatives. And if you cant code ask chatgpt too. 

[u/Trebeaux → u/guyxbwc]

It’s not the front end you gotta worry about, or even the back end. The programming is the easy part, it’s the infrastructure needed that’s hard. EXABYTES of data to store. The PETABYTES ADDED DAILY. That’s what stops a new platform from taking off.

(For reference, a single exabyte is 1,000,000 Terabytes.)

[u/Top-Strawberry4466 → u/Trebeaux]

Just vibe code a more advanced compression algorithm that is also lossless for quality. Make sure to add “make no mistakes” to your prompt for ultimate efficacy! Turn those PBs into GBs!

[u/Abgott89 → u/Top-Strawberry4466]

Instead of storing the videos, just use AI to turn the video into keywords, then use another AI to recreate the video from those keywords. No mass storage needed, just the glorious AI misinterpretation and hallucination oroboros. You can do it for the comment section too.

[u/After_Weather_5685 → u/guyxbwc]

Wow such a great idea. Why don’t you do that and be a billionaire?

[u/kristospherein]

Enshitification continues until morale improves...

[u/NecessaryPopular1]

Damn, we want to dislike what we don’t like.

[u/ExchangeOptimal]

Why even have any buttons? Just open the app and start consuming

[u/HexicDragon]

Nobody wants this.