The internet is everywhere. It’s a constant flow of information that contains many different types of platforms, one being YouTube, which has been around for over 15 years.
¨My first experience with YouTube was a Nicki Minaj music video and I was intrigued,” junior Emma Bigner said, “so I kept watching music videos on YouTube and then that’s when I started watching DIY channels and skit videos because I was little. So I grew up watching those kinds of videos.¨.
Ever since its conception, YouTube has been updated and changed over time along with the world and internet culture. On Nov. 10, 2021, YouTube officially announced an update to the dislike button. They were making the total dislike counter private on videos rather than being open to public view. The option to click the dislike button is there; how many dislikes a video has, however, will only be visible to the owner of the video itself.
Some viewers see this as a way of streamlining the process of feedback and giving a more favorable experience when it comes to being a creator on youtube. Getting a lot of dislikes is something that most creators don´t look forward to since it can have the possibility of giving viewers an unfavorable opinion of a person’s content, which is why some might reason that YouTube did this in order to lessen negativity on their platform.
¨I believe YouTube decided to get rid of the dislike button just because of the negativity that can come [from] the dislike button, so you can’t look at different videos and be like ‘oh this person has more dislikes than this person then we should hate on this person because they have more dislikes.’ ” said senior Tamiya Michell.
YouTube had put the dislike counter under a microscope and had determined that the dislike counter endangered creators when public since it could lead to a constant downpour of dislikes from people ganging up on a creator.
¨Research teams at YouTube have found there´s this whole other use for disliking a video… Apparently, groups of viewers are targeting a video´s Dislike button to drive up the count, turning it into something like a game with a visible scoreboard and it’s usually just because they don’t like a creator or what they stand for,¨ said Matt Koval, a Creator Liaison, on ¨Youtube Creators.¨
YouTube’s goals stated in the announcement that they were removing the dislike total and that doing so might help smaller channels grow and flourish in a competitive atmosphere without dislikes causing them disadvantages. This change could help bring a lot more creators into the limelight.
¨Now, this again is about protecting all creators and making sure they have a chance to succeed and feel safe in doing so.¨
The implementation has already happened, you can see this on YouTube right now. Some think there were different motivations for YouTube, such as the effect of dislikes denting their bottom line. YouTube relies on watch time and with more dislikes means fewer people will want to watch a video to its end.
¨…a lot of [Youtube´s] videos that they published were receiving a lot of backlash… [If] someone keeps uploading content, and they get lots of dislikes over and over. They might not want to keep uploading so they might stop using YouTube.. then again, there’s also the backside to that where large channels that receive dislikes are scams, and they get lots of dislikes. If they can remove that counter then you can’t see if they’re scamming or not and then they get more views.” said junior and YouTuber Miguel Russo.
YouTube stated that opinions could spread and creators could grow on the platform. That’s why they needed to make dislikes private in order to make sure opinions could be heard.
¨…half of YouTube´s mission is to give everyone a voice,¨ said Koval.
With the dislikes numbers becoming private those voices who actually didn’t like a video or wanted to express their opinion are being censored in a way. Those voices are being heard, but only by a few people.
The platform has changed once again, but who knows? This change might be reversed or it might just be a permanent feature and become the norm. What people see YouTube as now and as it keeps changing is up to them of course.
¨It’s cool. It’s A more positive environment when you can’t constantly see how many people think negatively of what you´re watching or posting¨ said Bigner.
