Video platform YouTube has announced that the “dislike counts” on videos will no longer be visible to the public.
This move comes after the company had experimented with the dislike button to see whether or not changes could help better protect creators from harassment, and reduce dislike attacks.
The company said prior to their “experiment” smaller scale or new creators reported being unfairly targeted in attacks, where people work to drive up the number of dislikes on videos and their experiment confirmed that this does occur at a higher proportion on smaller channels.
The Google-owned video-sharing platform said users can still use the “dislike” button and tune their recommendations and privately share feedback with creators, but they will no longer see the negative review count.
“We're making the dislike counts private across YouTube, but the dislike button is not going away. This change will start gradually rolling out today,” Tthe company said in a blogpost.
The company added that creators will still find their exact dislike counts in YouTube Studio, along with other existing metrics, if they would like to understand how their content is performing.
“We want to create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves,” said the company.
YouTube reiterated that this is just one of many steps they are taking to continue to protect creators from harassment. “Our work is not done, and we’ll continue to invest here.”
Earlier this year Facebook and Instagram introduced the same feature but the only difference was that Facebook allowed users to have the option to hide public like counts on all posts.
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