r/technology • u/Dilpickle2113 • 10h ago

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

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtube-is-testing-hiding-the-dislike-button-entirely-and-users-arent-happy-3420822/
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u/GriveousDance21 9h ago

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.

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u/captainhector1 8h ago

Can someone smarter than me about this stuff explain why this matters though? The dislikes are hidden and my understanding is they're separate counts, so it's not like Dislikes impact the Likes directly.

So no one really sees Dislikes and Youtube and the content owner can do whatever it wants with that ifno. Why would they remove this as a feature then, what does it matter? Isn't the engagement generally a benefit for YT and more information for the creator good?

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u/Frewdy1 8h ago

Because now, if I’m looking up how to do something, I have to click through video after video to find the good one, rather than a quick glance without opening it that would have shown the ratio of up/down. 

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u/captainhector1 8h ago

But that's what I'm confused about - the Dislikes aren't shown - my understanding of the count is that it's purely of Likes - the Dislikes are a separate count that is not shown.

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u/seriouslees 7h ago

These people are living in the past. YouTube USED TO show Dislikes. These people haven't given up that fight yet.

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u/afterthought23 42m ago

No one should, it was a ridiculous change that should have been considered unacceptable. 

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u/Great-Trifle2810 5h ago

But they already eliminated that years ago. Also that isn't really effective engagement, they want you to keep coming back for addictive content, not to get one extra click from someone looking for a help video.

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u/MythrianAlpha 3h ago

There's been add-ons that put them back for just as long, lol.

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u/Great-Trifle2810 3h ago

The addon just make up a random number based on ratios of its users. It will still work the same.

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u/bmdweller 9h ago

exactly. even if advertisers dont care about likes/dislikes as the guy says, but adverisers and google must care about view counts or what content is pushed

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u/Great-Trifle2810 5h ago

You could simply treat a dislike as an engagement signifier of lower value than a like. Hell the button could do actually nothing on the back end.