The “dislike” button is kept, but the actual number of dislikes is set to private.
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Earlier this month, video-sharing service YouTube, the second most used platform online as of now, announced that it would keep the “dislike” button but make the actual number of likes private.
The company announced in a blog post that “We’ve improved the experience by introducing several features and policies to help YouTube foster respectful interactions between viewers and creators.” “And earlier this year, we experimented with the dislike button to see if the changes could help better protect creators from bullying and reduce dislike attacks that people are trying to increase the number of dislikes for their videos. .”
YouTube added that it heard directly from small creators and those just starting out. According to the company, in the future, creators will still be able to see the exact number of dislikes and other metrics, which will allow them to decide how their content performs and how to improve it.
However, the number of dislikes for the video is not shared publicly.
YouTube explained the update via a video.
New report released this week Data Platform Thought Leader We’ve highlighted how this can affect the “How To” and “Crafts” videos, the categories with the highest dislikes. Research shows that the average total engagement per video (likes + dislikes) has grown steadily over the past decade, but dislikes have grown much faster than likes. Additionally, videos with brand sponsorships had 14% fewer dislikes on average, while games had the lowest dislikes compared to overall engagement, with just 2.8% dislikes.
While removing public dislikes can help creators, there are also claims that it helps YouTube by giving them more attention to videos that may disappoint some viewers. No “dislikes” means no quick public review of user-generated content.
Amit Altman, Head of Publisher Relations at Thought Leaders, said, “The more I think about YouTube’s claim that it removed dislikes to protect small creators, the more I think we can’t get away from the truth.” .
“First of all, YouTube isn’t good enough to combat click bait or spam content, so content with a like-to-dislike ratio was the only indication that content was what the creators promised. Quality independent creators are now defeated,” Altman added. I did. “Second, the claim that it is intended to protect small creators from hate attacks is also completely false.”
Altman, who works with dozens of professional full-time independent YouTubers, said none of them have ever been victims of a hate attack.
“The ‘victims’ of hate attacks are large corporations almost exclusively on YouTube, and there are many examples of movie fans expressing disdain for their disappointing trailers, as a form of protest against polluting companies, and even supporting those claims. YouTube It has its own #1 and #6 dislike videos, which I believe are pretty bad.” Altman suggested.
Unfair dislikes could have been a problem, but Altman said other issues with the video-sharing platform were trivial. “Mental health and cyberbullying in the digital space are serious issues that deserve due attention, and YouTube has a paramount responsibility to protect creators and users, and we don’t know how these measures will help address these issues.”
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