YouTube Is Testing Hiding Dislike Counts For Some Viewers

YouTube is launching an experiment that will have the dislike count hidden from some users. The company has previously mulled a potential change in its like and dislike system to combat targeted dislike campaigns, citing the wellbeing of creators as its primary concern.

On Tuesday, YouTube announced that it will be experimenting with new designs for like and dislike buttons that appear below YouTube videos. Those chosen to participate in the experiment will no longer see the dislike count, but the dislike button itself will remain.

👍👎 In response to creator feedback around well-being and targeted dislike campaigns, we're testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count. If you're part of this small experiment, you might spot one of these designs in the coming weeks (example below!). pic.twitter.com/aemrIcnrbx

— YouTube (@YouTube) March 30, 2021

The experiment will only affect a small group of users, who will not be able to opt-out of it at least initially. While the users won't be able to see the dislike count, creators will still be able to see the exact number of likes and dislikes in YouTube studio.

In January 2019, YouTube's Director of Project Management Tom Leung talked about so-called "dislike mobs" on the platform. He then voiced out four potential options that YouTube was considering for tackling the problem, with the most radical solution being to remove the dislike button altogether.

Dislike mobs – this is where a group of people will go to a video, not even watch a video and just purposely hit the "thumbs down." […] Another option is just to remove dislikes entirely from YouTube. That's a very extreme option. That one doesn't seem like super-democratic in my opinion, because not all dislikes are dislike mobs, there are just people expressing their opinion about a video.

YouTube itself has suffered from its videos getting massively disliked — it's 2018 YouTube Rewind video currently remains the most disliked video on the platform, sitting on a whopping 19 million dislikes and 2.9 million likes.