The Death of Dislikes | Cynical Reviews 

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They did it to help small creators who get piled on, such as Disney, EA, Ubisoft or the White House.

RIP dislike button. You will be missed for allowing us to display an opinion

I'm worried they'll remove subscriptions in the future because their reasoning will be that "all creators must be treated equally"

My problem with the "it's a anti-harassment measure" claim is that that's not how trolls work I'm 100% convinced that trolls that are targeting smaller creators won't just go "aw shucks dislike button is gone, guess we have to quit", no they'll start commenting abuse which is way more detrimental to a creators psyche than a dislike

My favorite part of RU-vid's defense for taking away dislikes is when they said it's "too protect" small creators. When in fact, big corporations, like RU-vid itself, are the ones that get the most dislike bombed

It’s quite obvious that the real reason is because advertisers and politicians don’t like having their ads and stuff disliked honestly. RU-vid listens to advertisers not creators. Advertisers can choose to advertise somewhere else and strangle RU-vid, creators can’t really go anywhere else.

I SEE A PATTERN: politicians: "we care about our citizens" millionaires: "we care about the poor" ceos: "we care about our employees" ads: "we care about the consumers" youtube: "we care about our creators" ... yeah, nobody is buying it.

So, let me get this straight. The dislike button was disabled because people were using it to 'target' content creators purely because they don't like them or what they stand for. Because they... y'know... /dislike/ them and the content they produce. Who ever would have guessed?

When I work out at the gym I have my phone in my pocket and I would always question whether my leg was hitting unsubscribe or if I was being effected by the same bug, but… as long as RU-vid says it’s fake it must be the case. 🙃

Love how youtube conveniently ignores that 99% of the reason people hide likes is because they just did something controversial and don't want to be called out

I for one am very happy youtube has made this site safe from dislikes, everyday I would wake up and be shot in the face by a dislike ratio. It placed me in crippling dread but now that it's gone I only get shot in the face when I open up my analytics and see my career in the form of a top ten list of most to least successful videos while youtube doesn't tell me why anything happens! Thanks youtube I feel much more stable.

"If a service is free, then you're the product." RU-vid's customers are advertisers, not us the users, because we don't pay anything. RU-vid is 100% doing this for advertisers and it doesn't surprise me one bit.

It's decisions like this that make me want to start a future channel on alternate sites rather than here. May this video get viral and spread the message loud and clear!

Big companies protecting the reputation of other big companies. Isn't it heartwarming?

Now they made Dislike button as useless as Comments Dislike buttons

I remember the days when you could dislike comments and RU-vid would even hide comments if they had a high enough dislike ratio or if it was reported multiple times. Then they got rid of that perfect system in favor of Google Plus comments.

Here is a genuine solution to the dislike feature: Give creators the option to decide for themselves if they want to enable or disable the dislike button. Why does RU-vid have to decide what is best for everyone?

IMO the worst part of all of this is that no matter what, RU-vid just won’t listen or revert the change. Even with several big creators speaking out about it, YT’s too big to fail at this point, and so they couldn’t care less about the creators and the viewers that make their platform what it is.

"our goal here at RU-vid is to give everybody a voice" they say as they take away peoples voice

Your "Why dislikes are important" segment really summarizes why I think RU-vid is ran by impuslive teenagers. they literally don't have any foresight and seem to not know their own damn platform

It’s shocking how the rating system for RU-vid has gotten this bad in 15 years. Like imagine simplifying from a five star rating system into a like & dislike system, only to then get rid of the dislike part, which renders the likes completely useless.

On a serious note, I worry about how this will effect teenagers especially now that extremist content won’t have much of an indicator to show that it’s generally disapproved of. There’s countless dangers that can come from something like this & social media is once again showing that they don’t care about the safety of the children using their platforms.

Additionally, creators will likely be harrassed to release a screenshot or something of likes to dislike ratio on videos... On extreme ends, channels might be hacked to have like to dislike ratios "leaked." Although I know that's extreme so I don't believe that's going to be super common.

Can’t wait for RU-vid to start going: “We have never had dislikes. We have always had only likes. Corporations have always been your friends.”

RU-vid removes dislikes for the sake of RU-vidrs. Meanwhile Totally Not Mark had 150+ videos removed due to copyright claims and now has to manually have every one of those videos reviewed one at a time. THANKS RU-vid! /s

This is funny to me, because it also completely invalidates the like count. If you can’t tell how many people disliked it, then who cares how many liked it? It’s a completely ironic decision.

I hope everyone gets the extension that let you see dislikes again. i'm not sure enough people will use them to really make a difference, but at least it's something. It really is insane though that youtube does not seem to care about keeping people on their platform 🙄

As a creator, I've always found the dislikes helpful. They've let me know when a video I've created is trash or not. How am I to improve my content? I've also had some folks who would chronically dislike my videos, but I was always just happy with the engagement.

most frustrating is definitely how youtube knows that we're dependent on this platform for video content and so they can do whatever the heck they want. a perfect example of how monopolies are mostly bad for consumers

RU-vid just has to keep changing things that don't need to be changed. Its beyond ridiculous. They need to focus on copyright, monetization, channel hacks, bots and so much more. They should stop protecting film production companies. Loved the Fallout 4 text in the background.

I feel that not only should RU-vid bring back the dislike option, but they should even have a percentage rating under the thumbnail so that we as viewers can know if a video is even worth our time and not give it extra views, but I can now see how that is so much to recommend.

Dislikes: We're supposed to help people! RU-vid HQ: We're supposed to help OUR PEOPLE!! Starting with our stockholders, Bob! Who's helping them out??

It’s worth noting that this is likely being done to try and demoralize us from speaking up. Even when dislikes are low, the fact that you know you’re not alone even when you’re part of a minority encourages people to make their voices heard.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if RU-vid removes the ability for non-verified channels to post videos or if a bunch of disgruntled users raided RU-vid HQ.

I never actually dislike videos, even if I hate them, but yes, I used to look at the likes/dislikes ratio to indicate whether a video is worth watching

Just throwing it out there.... If RU-vid refuse to have the dislike number up, okay. What they should do instead is keep the like/dislike bar that was underneath. Make the bar thicker so it is clearer. And leave the number of likes. Then it is at least meeting in the middle.

One of the worst ideas, for sure. There have been many bad ones dealing with monetisation, removing DMs, & no ad revenue if content is marked as “family friendly”…yet the non-stop (adult) spam is increasing & blowing up comments. Well done. 👍🏻

"give everyone a voice" look, buddy, people have a voice. If their voice sucks, people should be able to say so. Ughhh RU-vid makes everything so much more complicated while blatantly ignoring the dumpster fire they've already created or otherwise not addressed.

Copyright takedowns, demonisation, strikes: Still exists. Removal of dislikes despite the number of concerns that could occur: We did it boys, we solved bullying.

There has to be a way to push back. Generally for me it's less engagement/viewing of RU-vid, but unfortunately that hurts a lot of creators.

When someone says "we did research that showed X" and doesn't provide that research for others to scrutinize, I immediately squint my eyes at them.

As soon as you hear a variation of 'we've heard your concerns and we're taking these concerns VERY seriously...' you can be sure that what follows is a lie. It just means: 'Calm down, we know you're angry. We expected that. We don't care. Let us just carry on with what we were doing.'

In the youtube announcement video I ran into one person in the comments who was saying it was a wonderful move because she was constantly dislike bombed and harassed. 30 seconds of googling said user showed she was a dedicated copyright troll that would strike videos that didn't actually violate anything out of petty spite and people called her on it. Someone who goes and kicks the hornet's nest multiple times then cries they got stung.

“You won’t even notice they’re gone in a few months” Nope, still a terrible decision

Ok, so a creator can already disable likes/dislikes if they are genuinely bothered by the negative feedback or if they are being targeted, right? Dislikes already count as engagement, so I know a lot of creators don’t really care one way or the other. RU-vid already solved the problems they’re claiming to solve here.

Getting rid of Annotations also sucked because it allowed creators to quickly correct themselves about something in their video without having to pull it down and reupload, too. Not to mention the fact that it made one of PurpleEyesWTF’s episodes of Code MENT lose some of its best jokes that were told via Annotations.

I like how there are a million reasons for why dislikes are great yet I can only think of one reason for they are “bad” and RU-vid only looks at that reason and decides to ignore everything else.

So to protect voices, they silenced the voice of the audience.

The way youtube treats its' creators is similar to an abusive relationship where one person can't leave the other despite how badly they are treated. Except, in this case, youtubers can't leave the site because they simply don't have anywhere else to go and not because of emotional attachment.

In my opinion it has nothing to do with harassment. They don't want you to click off videos and potentially click away from the website. They want the viewers to watch videos fully instead of clicking away when they see it's a useless or overall bad video.

Hiding dislikes is nowhere near as detrimental to my tubing experience as removing the ability to see which videos I've already watched from the related videos.

You didn’t mention it but youtubers can remove comments they don’t like and censor words they don’t want used so it’s not very effective.

"RU-vid's mission is to give everyone a voice" So we're gonna do that by removing the option of voicing your dislike of a video. Only blind acceptance and consumerism allowed here!

A bit suspicious to remove an extremely useful feature, supposedly for the "mental health of small creators", instead of addressing the concerns creators actually have about incorrect/malicious copyright strikes and demonetised educational content, which would probably do a lot more to help people's mental health.

RU-vid's nonsense about 'giving everyone a voice' rings completely hollow given the extreme amount of censorship that occurs on this platform. It's to the point where any YT person that wants to make money has to self-censor words and other nonsensical crap. Why does this platform still exist?

I really wish ads weren’t allowed to turn off comments as I am showed many scams and can’t go to the comments to warn people

This is literally just a big corporation protecting other big corporations. I wouldn't be surprised if they took away comment sections in the future tbh.

What’s interesting is how I’ve been desperately trying to find my dislike count in yt studio, but can’t. Either they lied or they just really don’t want my feewings to get hurt.

Steam's management deserves a lot of shit but the way they reacted to review bombing was probably the best compromise you could hope for. Instead of just hiding user ratings like RU-vid did, they provided a simple visual timeline of aggregate reviews so that you can spot if a large number of reviews were posted in a short span of time which is a possible sign of organised trolling.

I'm a big history buff and love to browse RU-vid's rich selection of history videos. Unfortunately, some of these videos give false or misleading information, and a high dislike ratio is often the first indication of that. Now only the comments can clue me in to the validity of a video's info, and damned if they decide to remove that too.

I'm old enough to remember when Facebook had a like and a dislike button. When Facebook got rid of the dislike button everyone pretty much have the same sentiment that it was the worst thing ever that they decided to do

The youtube executives continue to baffle me with their decision making. Over the last few years, every change they've made seems to take the site backwards and is hated by creators and users.They talked about potentially doing this month's ago and despite heavy criticism, they did it anyway. If there was any sort of competition, youtube would have failed a very long time ago. This site is no longer about broadcasting yourself. It's about pushing music and TV clips. This change only helps big corporations and simply angers users and the majority of creators. At this point they should just change their name to CorporateTube.

This is a really awful decision by RU-vid. What a crock.

RU-vid: You won't be able to see the dislike count now. Browser Extensions: Allow me to introduce myself.

For all those interested, there is a Google plug-in that brings back dislike (not sure how it works, but it does show dislikes on new videos). It's called: Return RU-vid Dislikes.

I'm glad you've taken the time to talk about this. I don't understand why they made such a moronic decision.

When I saw this update on Twitter, I immediately did a 3-4 tweet long response about how big of a piece of bullshit it is.

20:22 "Because money." Exactly.. That is the chief concern for any corporation. All their extra noise is just them attempting to dress a pig as a princess.

I was going to ironically dislike this video, but then I realized that irony and all other forms of subtlety are lost to the algorithm, so I liked it.

When Activision Blizzard released the introduction video for their newest World of Warcraft Real-money-shop mount, it got disliked so heavily that Acitivision Blizzard privated the video before it got totally out of hand. There you have who RU-vid is protecting with removing dislikes.

Google falsely advertises ad-free premium membership that's still got at least two ads per video and most of the content listed as 4K actually steaming at 720p.

I just install an add-on so I can still view the amount of dislikes everyone has

I really miss the community translations. It really helped broaden a lot of international creators and was responsible for the Vtuber boom. Mind-boggling that youtube would drop it when so many of those aforementioned Vtuber corps invest so much into RU-vid.

I am frustrated with how often youtube seems to ignore actual issues and decide to just implement changes nobody wanted instead. At the moment there are issues with content stealing, people profiting off of famous deaths, scams and excessive spam bots but they just ignore. "Should we work on the numerous issues that effect our users and creators almost every day?" "Nah, screw all of that, let's just remove dislikes even though nobody wanted it and it doesn't help anyone in any way."

Hold up. Oh no. I’m so sorry Mr beast. Your “how many dislikes can this video get” videos have met their deaths 😔 🤝

Next thing you know, RU-vid will disable our ability to chose what videos to watch unless we pay them $15 a month for the privilege to do so.

Thank you youtube for protecting small youtubers like HBO max, Disney, Nintendo and Netflix. Thank you so much RU-vid

RU-vid’s removal of dislikes reminds me of when teachers in elementary school would punish the entire class for one person’s wrongdoings. Without the bad, the good disappears.

16:37 Yeah we got used to it. Thanks to the Return RU-vid Dislike Extension.

The only time I dislike something is when somebody full on commits a crime or when someone thinks posting the same minecraft short every day for 3 month without a hiatus will gain them subs

I honestly feel sorry for the people in those official RU-vid videos who have to give these reports. Just being thrown under the bus for the hatred of millions of people.

CJ: *WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE NORMAL?!* RU-vid: _screams and removes dislikes_

I needed that group sigh in the beginning. Thank you.

They won’t actually tell us why - being big television companies are posting their videos here and we’re getting dislike bombed. So they but a stop to that I guess… make the big man happy as RU-vid always does

Been waiting for this honestly one of the stupidest things youtube has done- Also i just thought of how twitter doesn't have a dislike button and that has just gone so well for everyone edit: fuck me i had no idea they would actually use that as an unironic argument oh my lord

Why don’t they just make showing dislikes optional at the very least? Then all these so called “targeted channels” can do what they like. It’s still not a great idea, but mildly better than forcing dislikes away altogether. The RU-vid can still see their own dislikes anyway so what’s the point??

So, they removed one problem, and made 5 more

That Vincent Van Gogh joke you made during the Raycon ad is fantastic! 🤣

We the unwashed masses do not deserve the dislike button. That's the message I'm getting from RU-vid.

It probably helps controversial RU-vidrs like Nikacado Avocado, That Vegan Teacher, and many others terrible RU-vidrs to thrive on this platform

Makes it really hard and super inconvenient to find tutorials and new content to watch

Just discovered you through Jay and absolutely love your content! keep it up

Instead of focusing on dislikes, RU-vid needs to start preventing videos of infant monkeys being abused and tortured by their cruel owners from being uploaded. Videos of infant monkeys ripped from their mothers arms at birth for the sole purpose of being sold off to the exotic pet trade.

2025 RU-vid: “We’ve decided to remove the comment section to protect the mental health of our creators since the creators might get comments that will make them feel bad.” 2029 RU-vid: “We’ve decided to remove the like button to protect the mental health of our creators since some people might get more likes than others and that might makes them feel bad.” 2033 RU-vid: “We’ve decided to hide the number of views a video has in order to protect the mental health of our creators since some videos might get more views than others and that would make some people feel bad.” 2037 RU-vid: “We’ve decided to remove videos from our platform to protect the mental health of our creators.”

Why would they fix the unsubscribing glitch when they can't even be bothered to fix the shuffle feature? This year it's so badly broken that both my Halloween and Christmas playlists loop the same five songs and I have to manually select another song to restart a separate loop of five songs. Sometimes it gets so bad it just loops the same two songs. They never fix their broken shit. They're too busy doing stupid crap like hiding dislikes and removing the ability to add "kid friendly" videos to playlists.

I've also noticed that I can't dislike ads anymore. I always made a point to dislike annoying ads, but now I can't.

Yes small creators like HBO Max must be protected. That guy in the video had a face that screamed "Can you smell the shit coming out of my mouth? Cause I can!"

Honestly, Imma take particular issue with the comment that other platforms lack a dislike button. Instagram was made to get away from negativity, if I remember right. You can see that people enjoy your content, not that they don't enjoy it, which feels better and, with shortform content like that, is ultimately harmless. Twitter is about finding the content you want to consume and following it. You wouldn't need a dislike button because you're not getting recommended dozens of new tweets from other creators. Reddit has a dislike button, and it's incredibly valuable for keeping down the bad memes (doesn't help though) and smiting bad comments. RU-vid is about exploring creators to find content that may be new or fresh. That's why it recommends so many videos on the right, many of which are from channels I don't watch at all. That's the whole point of the infamous Algorithm, to decide what kind of content would most likely appeal to you. So dislikes are incredibly important for deciding whether or not a video that RU-vid fed to you with a silver spoon is worth your time or not.

Diverstity by removing the ability to dislike something.