As part of its continuing effort to reduce harassment on the internet’s largest video platform, YouTube will hide dislike counts on videos, the number of thumbs-down votes given to material.
On Wednesday, YouTube announced that it has made the statistic private after testing the adjustment this year and seeing a drop in “dislike mobs,” in which people purposefully downvote videos to boost dislikes.
YouTube will hide dislike counts
The decision comes as YouTube is under fire for harmful content on the site, with creators complaining that they are being penalized. Some who have been victims of hate speech and misinformation have informed the firm that dislike counts can have a detrimental influence on their mental health. With the new policy update, YouTube does not intend to eliminate the dislike button. Instead of displaying the downvote count on videos, Google will now notify creators privately about it.
Many small channels, according to YouTube, are disproportionately harmed by dislike mobs in its study. Creator assaults can harm them since the quality of video recommendations may be influenced by a high amount of dislikes. Previously, only turning off both like and dislike counts prevented creators from displaying the numbers for videos with a lot of likes.
YouTube refused to give specific figures on how many dislike mobs the company observed while testing or which films had been the most vulnerable.
YouTube’s “2018 Rewind” video, which recapped the site’s most popular videos and events of the year, was the most affected. According to Brandwatch, the YouTube company’s “2018 Rewind” video, which recounted the greatest videos and events on the site, is the worst-disliked video in YouTube history. It was disliked 19 million times and only liked 3 million times.
