Co-published on Read.cash.
On November 10, YouTube announced that it will be removing the public dislike count. In other words, viewers can only see the number of likes, but no the number of dislikes.
YouTube claimed that "groups of users have been targeting the dislike button to drive up the count, turning it into something of a game with a physical scoreboard... because they don’t like the creator or what they stand for". As a result, removing the public dislike count will will reduce the amount of "dislike attacks". YouTuber further claimed that hiding away the like-to-dislike ratio will reduce stress on the creators, especially small creators, and based on its research, the ratio has little effect on the viewcount.
However, YouTube's announcement received a lot of negative reception. In fact, a rather large majority of users expressed their discontent with the dislike button and in the comments.
The sheer irony...
There are several reasons why I find removing the public dislike count to be completely pointless. The most obvious reason is that creators could already disable the public like/dislike count for the longest time. If YouTube is really that concerned about the creators' mental health, why couldn't it just upload a tutorial video on how to disable the public count in the creator studio dashboard?
Another reason why I find YouTube's claims to be dubious is the timing. Since it started in 2005 with the 5 star system, the rating was always public by default. It has been the go-to way for users to (1) express their dislike of certain content and (2) use it as a barometer of whether a particular video is worth their time. But now, dislikes are a problem? Something does not quite add up and that leads into the third reason: YouTube's alleged research.
In its announcement video, YouTube claimed that its research found that groups of users will just dislike just to drive up the count or because they don't like the creator. In addition, it claimed that hiding the ratio will reduce stress on creators and the ratio does not affect viewership. However, the problem is we do not have access to YouTube's research. Real research encompasses scrutiny and verification, not believing what is told at face value. Where's the methodology? How did YouTube sample its data? What sort of study did YouTube perform? Case Control? Cohort?
When looking at the scientific literature on the impact of social media on mental health, conclusions vary widely. Karim et al. (2020) did a systematic review on 16 peer reviewed publications and found that while social media does have an impact, the extent of it is unknown. For instance, Keles et al. (2020), one of the reviewed papers, concluded time spent, activity, investment, and addiction correlated with depression, anxiety and psychological distress. On the other hand, Coyne et al. (2020), who performed an 8 year longitudinal study, found that "increased time spent on social media was not associated with increased mental health issues across development when examined at the individual level".
Because the results, on average, are still inconclusive, it would behoove YouTube to show us exactly how it did its study. Unfortunately, since it has not and is relying on its audience to just take it at face value, there's not way to verify. Overall, the lack of transparency makes YouTube's claims dubious if you ask me.
There are some who speculate that YouTube's stated reasons are just a front and its real motives are more sinister. Stephen Ford of Teen Wolf thinks YouTube is doing it to cover for the government and mainstream media.
Of course, there's no definite proof of whether this is YouTube's true intentions. On the other hand, it is not completely out of the realm of possibility. For instance, if you look at The White House's channel, basically every single video has an overwhelmingly high dislike-to-like ratio. On top of that, that is the only way for users to express their discontent as the comments section is disabled. Disabling the public dislike count will give the videos a more positive (and misleading) image.
If this is what YouTube is truly going for, I would not be surprised. After all, Google did publish a Medium article on so-called "hate clusters" and has a propensity to hold double standards on medical misinformation, so Google/YouTube is not this innocent angel.
