The dislike button does not go anywhere, but the number will be hidden

YouTube, one of the most essential platforms in terms of video viewing, will begin to implement changes to improve the user experience. An intention it has let slip with its most recent decision: to eliminate the ‘dislikes’ counter for viewers. The button to express our dissatisfaction with a piece of content will remain active, but only the creator will know how many people have clicked it. This idea will undoubtedly affect the platform such as the criticised Nintendo Switch Online video.

YouTube has communicated this on its website, where they inform that this new feature will be implemented gradually starting today. It’s not specified whether the mechanic will be rolled out across countries, so we don’t know when it will be integrated into each country. And while this may come as a surprise to a lot of users, YouTube believes it helps prevent aggressive behaviour on its platform: “As part of our experiment, viewers could see and use the ‘dislike’ button. But because the counter was not visible to them, we found that they were less likely to focus on a video to increase the counter.

However, YouTube knows that such a counter was helpful for many users, as it acted as a way of knowing whether a tutorial or specific content was of value. Despite this, the platform will go ahead with the idea: “We know you may not agree with this decision, but we think it’s the right thing to do for the platform“. A proposal aims to improve the online environment and serves as the first step for other initiatives not announced by the company.

Therefore, we will no longer be able to know the general opinions on many types of content, which has helped us discover viewers dissatisfaction with the first trailer for the Sonic movie. However, this practice was also observed in the field of video games, as trailers such as Babylon’s Fall or the criticised Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare video had also received an avalanche of dislikes.

Source: 3djuegos