By Eric Chang, Lina Wu, Young Tsai, and Andy Yu
On November 10, YouTube announced that they will make the dislike count invisible for viewers and only show the number privately for the creators from this month, but still retain the same dislike button.
According to YouTube’s blog post, the policy is made to “create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves.” As a result, viewers can only check the like count instead of the dislike count.
Earlier this year, YouTube has made an experiment to examine whether this innovation would better improve the environment for new or smaller creators. Even though showing the number of dislikes can help viewers to determine whether the content is qualified or not that good, their research team found that some viewers treat the dislike number as a way to attack the creators.
YouTube also adds that they “heard directly from smaller creators and those just getting started” that they are mistreated by people who dislike their contents simply because of the dislike count. As the results showed, hiding dislike count can greatly reduce the number of dislikes that were driven up because it has previously received lots of dislike from other viewers. Besides, YouTube’s research team also concludes that whether the viewers can see the dislike counts or not, there is not much difference in viewership.
Since YouTube retains the dislike button, viewers can still choose to dislike content if they do not like the videos. And they can also share feedback with creators privately to help them improve their contents. As for creators, they can get access to the exact number of dislikes through YouTube Studio and how their content is performing.
However, there are some critics saying that it would disappoint the viewers because they need other users' comments to decide whether the content is worth watching. Other users rumor that the policy is made for YouTube themselves to hide their YouTube Rewind 2018 since it is the most-disliked video on YouTube. YouTube points out that the percentage of likes and dislikes will remain visible for the viewers (currently in beta). So people can still evaluate the quality of the content without knowing the exact numbers of likes or dislikes.
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