YouTube Dislike Count Removal

Discussions center on YouTube hiding public dislike counts while retaining the button and its algorithmic impact, with users lamenting the loss of visible like/dislike ratios for assessing video quality and mentioning extensions to restore them.

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#3191
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Keywords

nypost.com AI reactions.h YT reactions.html blogspot.com YouTube github.com API dislikes dislike youtube count video button likes yt videos disliked

Sample Comments

onion2k May 10, 2022 View on HN

YouTube still has dislikes. They just don't show the count publicly any more.

iptpus Apr 22, 2021 View on HN

It appears that is somewhat underway. Youtube is at least experimenting with not having dislikes.https://nypost.com/2021/03/31/youtube-is-testing-removal-of-...

wildrhythms May 10, 2022 View on HN

The 'Dislike' still exists; people complain that the dislike count was removed. Presumably Youtube still uses dislikes to tune suggestions, but who can be sure? Personally I found the dislike count quite useful.

akulbe Dec 5, 2021 View on HN

YouTube without showing dislike count feels like participation awards in school.

wilg May 29, 2023 View on HN

YouTube still has the dislike button. It just doesn't show the count or ratio.

kerpotgh Feb 16, 2023 View on HN

YouTube still uses dislikes to keep those out of your stream.

BitwiseFool Mar 31, 2021 View on HN

This seems deceptive more than anything else. If a content creator doesn't want their videos to be rated they can disable like/dislike ratings entirely. But to remove public dislikes across the entire site takes away a valuable indicator of video quality. Like/Dislike ratio can also express approval and disapproval for the subject itself, which is also valuable.

jjcon Nov 10, 2021 View on HN

But youtube isn't removing the button or the signal from their algorithms - they are just removing the optics of having a disliked video (which a lot of users including myself found useful)

midoridensha Jun 23, 2023 View on HN

YouTube already has dislikes. You just need to use a better front-end so you can see them.

xyst Nov 28, 2021 View on HN

Dislike button still exists. However the number of dislikes has been removed.This visual change is now live in the YT app