YouTube to stop showing ‘Dislike’ count on all videos; here’s why

YouTube has finally taken a much-needed step to protect the creator community from online harassment and targeted attacks on its platform. The Google-owned video sharing platform has officially announced it will stop showing dislike count on all the videos across its site. Here is everything you need to know about the big announcement.

• Creators can still see the ‘dislike’ count

According to the latest announcement, the dislike button won’t be removed. It will in fact still be present next to the like button. People will still be able to dislike any video, but it will not be shown to the viewers or any users for that matter. It is however important to note that creators will still be able to view dislike count in the studio.

• Protecting creators from online harassment, attacks

The statement issued by YouTube read, “To ensure that YouTube promotes respectful interactions between viewers and creators. We experimented with the dislike button to see whether or not changes could help better protect our creators from harassment and reduce dislike attacks.”

• Key highlights from the experiment

The experiment showed a significant reduction in attacking behaviour towards small creators. “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,” the statement further noted. The smaller creators, in addition, have also said that they feel unfairly targeted by this behaviour, the experiment done by YouTube noted. Targeted attacking and harassment behaviour occurred largely on small channels.

• Dislike button not going anywhere

The company has confirmed that the dislike button is not going anywhere however the dislike count will get private across YouTube. Creators can still find their exact dislike counts in YouTube Studio, apart from other metrics to understand how their content is doing on their channel. As per the announcement, this change will start gradually rolling out today.

• ‘New to you’ tab to help users discover new content

The company in the statement also said that it is excited to share more details about the ‘New to you’ feature. This new feature on YouTube helps users to discover new creators and fresh content–beyond the usual stuff we watch. ‘New to you’ feature is now available for all the users on YouTube homepage across mobile, desktop and TV devices.

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz