Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube, simply ‘disliked’ this action. According to a recent YouTube announcement, the company is rolling out a new feature that will hide the public dislike counts on its videos in order to shield smaller producers from unpleasant remarks or online harassment.
The new functionality will be available soon, and only the video’s content creator will be able to see the dislikes. This is not to mean that the dislike button will be removed. Viewers can still dislike a specific video, but it will not be displayed.
The functionality follows an earlier trial on YouTube to see if something like this with the ‘dislike’ button can help safeguard smaller content providers from harassment.
Users frequently engage in purposely disliking a video in order to increase the amount of dislikes. According to a news release, YouTube “heard directly from smaller creators and those just starting out that they are unfairly targeted by this behavior.”
YouTube’s Matt Koval also uploaded a video outlining why the site made the decision, and he said that the platform expects this step would be a significant assistance to content creators. “It seems like groups of users are targeting a video’s dislike button in order to boost the count.” Making it more like a game with a visible scoreboard.
And it’s usually because they don’t like the creator or what he or she stands for. That’s a major issue given that part of YouTube’s objective is to give everyone a voice.
However, not all YouTube creators agree. Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube, revised the description of the first video uploaded to the video network, titled “Me at the Zoo,” on Tuesday “to express dissatisfaction with the platform’s decision to discontinue publicly showing dislikes.
The new description now reads, “When every YouTuber agrees that removing dislikes is a stupid idea, it probably is. Try again, YouTube ♂️”
Despite being only 18 seconds long and produced in relatively poor quality by today’s standards, Karim’s video was the catalyst for the platform’s success. In the video, titled ‘Me at the Zoo,’ Karim is seen speaking to the camera about the elephants standing right behind him. “The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks,” Karim added, before adding, “And that’s, that’s cool.”
