YouTube is testing how to hide a video’s dislike count

YouTube is testing a few new designs where video viewers can no longer see how many dislikes a video has. Creators can still see how often users clicked on a video’s dislike.

The video platform writes on Twitter test hiding the dislikes based on creator feedback. YouTube writes that this feedback revolved around the well-being of the makers. In addition, creators could be the target of organized ‘dislike campaigns’. Video makers can still see exactly how many likes and dislikes a video has received in YouTube Studio. The platform calls hiding the dislikes a “little experiment.”

YouTube uses the dislikes not only so creators know how their videos are hitting the public, but also to show new videos to users. The button will therefore not disappear and users who participate in the experiment can still click the dislike button.

The video platform has been struggling with the dislikes for years, such as with the video below from January 2019. In that video, the platform indicates that makers can already disable the display of the amount of likes and dislikes. YouTube already said it wanted to disable displaying the likes and dislikes for everyone by default. However, this could also have negative side effects, the platform said at the time. Another idea was that users could indicate why they wanted to dislike a video.