There’s also an argument that not being able to see public dislikes could lead to users watching a video that’s not very good - an insincere apology, perhaps, or informative-looking content that ends up being an ad. That particular recap video sparked so much ire that YouTube recently announced that the annual Rewind videos were canceled. YouTube itself has the most disliked video on YouTubeĭislike counts going private could help hide an embarrassing piece of YouTube history: the most disliked video on the entire site is the company’s own Rewind from 2018. It’s not exactly a perfect comparison - the number of likes your YouTube video gets will still be public (if you leave public ratings on), and Instagram hasn’t turned off likes site-wide yet, but it shows a growing concern with what data creators have access to versus what data their audiences have access to. Other social networks have given users the option to hide rating metrics, too - Instagram and Facebook famously let you hide like counts if you want to avoid the potential social pressure that comes with having your main measure of success on the platform shown to everyone. The company says this still lets well-meaning viewers leave private feedback to content creators or use dislikes to tune the algorithm’s video recommendations. That behavior may still continue to some extent, though, as creators will be able to see the dislike numbers for their own video in YouTube Studio. YouTube says that when it tested hiding dislike numbers, people were less likely to use the button to attack the creator - commenting “I just came here to dislike” was seemingly less satisfying when you don’t actually get to see the number go up.
Commenting “I just came here to dislike” may be less satisfying when you don’t see a number go up