Can’t see the haters: Should YouTube have removed the dislike count?

The dislike button provided users with a simple and direct way to express their dissatisfaction with a particular piece of content. It served as a form of feedback for content creators and platforms to gauge the overall sentiment and quality of their work. But in November 2021, YouTube removed the dislike count from its platform. This was not only a terrible idea, but one that showed how little YouTube understands its users.  

The dislike button used to help maintain transparency and authenticity on YouTube. When users saw a high number of dislikes on a particular video or post, it served as an indicator that the content may be controversial, misleading, or low-quality. It was clear that YouTube did not take into account that removing the dislike count can lead to a lack of transparency, making it easier for low-quality or misleading content to gain visibility without users being aware of its negative reception. YouTube cites the reason for removal of the dislike count to be harassment caused by the button’s misuse. “In short,” they wrote, “our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike attacking behavior. We also heard directly from smaller creators and those just getting started that they are unfairly targeted by this behavior.” This is true, people were getting harassed via this feature. But removing the dislike option has done nothing to make the rest of the platform less dangerous. 

Platforms like YouTube expand at such a rate that they can’t properly moderate the whole site. This has led to community moderation as the main defense against possibly dangerous content. Community moderation was usually executed by users through comments and dislikes, but this has changed since comments were given the ability to be disabled, and the dislike count removed. Now the clear warning sign for potentially problematic content is gone.

While dislikes can be disheartening for content creators, YouTube was less focused on the actual impact on creators and more on its bottom line. In an article by Peter Suciu for Forbes, Suciu interviewed Amit Altman, the head of publisher relations at Thought Leaders, who works with many independent YouTubers. Altman states: “The ‘victims’ of dislike attacks are almost exclusively large corporations on YouTube, and there are plenty of examples to back that claim, whether as a form of protest against a polluting corporation, movie fans showing their disdain to a disappointing trailer, or even YouTube themselves with the #1 and #6 all-time disliked videos – trust me those videos are pretty bad.” Most of YouTube’s revenue comes from advertisers and YouTube can’t risk making a bad impression. Between Elsagate, dangerous stunts and challenges, and pranks that are just assaulting strangers, YouTube has no shortage of problematic content. YouTube is simply taking precautions to ensure their advertisers won’t leave due to inconvenient publicity.

Altman was right on the mark in suggesting that YouTube did not remove dislikes to protect smaller creators from dislike attacks. When this decision was announced, there was a sentiment that if there was no public dislike count, there would be a positive effect on YouTubers’ mental health. This possibility fell short when the changes were actually rolled out. “Creators will still be able to find their exact dislike counts in YouTube Studio,” the company said, “along with other existing metrics, if they would like to understand how their content is performing.” This made the entire change pointless to those who were actual victims of targeted dislike harassment campaigns– they were still being harassed but only they could see it. This detail made it clear that this action wasn’t for the sake of anyone’s mental health but instead YouTube’s bottom line.

Harassment has always been a problem on YouTube but it wasn’t dislikes that were at fault. The copyright system on YouTube has been used by large creators to bully smaller creators of the platform for simply disagreeing with them. Though YouTube claims it doesn’t tolerate abuse of the system, they have done nothing to truly back up their claim. In an article for Insider, Lindsay Dodgson goes over a few notable such situations. The YouTuber LtCobra received a false DMCA takedown and was sent a fake cease-and-desist letter for simply being critical of another user. Luckily for LtCobra there was enough public outcry for the perpetrator to rescind his claims. LtCobra expressed that “YouTube provides only one alternative, give all of your private information to whoever copyright striked you, or suck it up,” he said. “And when it’s a channel with much more subscribers than the person who was striked, YouTube don’t listen and creators get away with it.”  This compulsion to expose one’s private information under the threat of legal action can be used to ruin someone’s life, yet for YouTube, the display of the number of people who dislike a video is a more imperative issue. Both YouTubers in the example before expressed that action was only taken because enough people had heard about their issues. If it wasn’t for their connections and public outcry, YouTube wouldn’t have stepped in to help them. YouTube doesn’t care about its users, creators, nor their mental health or how you feel about them. YouTube will continue to make the worst decisions to protect its bottom line because they have forgotten what got them their wealth in the first place.