Therefore without the dislike numbers, videos won’t be flagged as much and viewers’ reaction might be more unbiased.

When seeing an incredibly high number of dislikes on a random video, one might be affected by public opinions and become more convinced that it deserves another dislike - the force of social proof, one of Cialdini’s principles of persuasion, can be powerful. Meanwhile, creators can still see dislike statistics from the back end of their channels, in which way it will hopefully provide more genuine feedback that is not driven by irrational, pointless hatred.īesides, removing the dislike totals might help to reduce bias. Since the Dislike button does not go away, viewers can still use it to communicate their preferences, to YouTube’s algorithm for better recommendations and to creators for better content that meets their expectations. Our UX consultant Mae sees this change in a relatively positive way. When the count is invisible, it is as if the spur that stimulated people to hit Dislike was taken away. The result showed that hiding dislike count reduced dislike attacks.

They conducted an experiment around Dislike earlier in which users could still click Dislike and the only difference lied in dislike count. YouTube is keen to improve the relationship between creators and viewers and to protect creators from cyberbullying. So, why did YouTube decide to remove dislike count particularly? According to the official statement, it is for the sake of a more respectful environment.

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