When Youtube says 👎 to the 👎 button

As you probably know, there are several ways to tell a YouTube creator what you think of a video:

• 💬 By writing a comment
• By leaving a thumbs up 👍 or 👎

It is precisely this last symbol (👎) that Youtube has decided to attack by hiding its counter for users.

The reason?

The reason invoked by Youtube is the well-being of creators by protecting them from harassment and waves of haters. In short, reduce the toxicity of the platform.

Why is it a bad solution to a real problem?

The subject of trolls and online harassment is real and clearly not to be taken lightly. Moreover, a few negative opinions or comments have more impact than hundreds of positive opinions, as Caroline Mignaux reminds us in a recent episode of his podcast Marketing Square.

Only Youtube does not remove the dislike, it will always be possible to leave a 👎 on a video that you don't like. The only difference is that soon this counter will only be visible to the creator.

So you do not delete the information (and the potential nuisance) for the creator. You hide it from others.

Only more than the number of 👎, which brought very useful information to the public (you / me) was precisely the like/dislike ratio.

• Having 100 👎 when you have 50 👍 tells you that the video is crap.
• On the other hand having 100 👎 when it there are 50,000 👍 that tells you exactly the opposite.

The number of dislikes is nothing! It's the like/dislike report that gives you the real info.

From now on as a reader of a video you will have no way of knowing (without reading the comments) if the video is generally appreciated or not.

The only positive point I see is that it will make it more difficult to raid negative ratings (as you don't know if a video has a lot of 👎, it will be a a priori less tempted to add more).

Until then, good luck identifying relevant content in the crowd of results that Youtube will offer you in your next search.