In Defence of YouTube Killing Off Dislike Counts

I just don’t get it. I don’t get why you would want to give the thumbs-down to videos on YouTube. What’s wrong with you? Attention seeking? Inferiority complex?

OK, I get this much. I get that there are some opinions on YouTube we all disagree with, and if we don’t want to leave a comment, we’ll just click on the downvote instead.

And I get the concerns that YouTube is pandering to the concerns of the Disneys of the world, who don’t like people criticising their movie trailers… but I don’t have much sympathy for that line, either. More in a minute.

I’m not even strongly backing YouTube’s public message that it wants to be a kinder place for all creators.

Let’s see what YouTube said about taking away the count next to the downvote button:

At YouTube, we strive to be a place where creators of all sizes and backgrounds can find and share their voice. To ensure that YouTube promotes respectful interactions between viewers and creators, we introduced several features and policies to improve their experience. And earlier this year, we experimented with the dislike button to see whether or not changes could help better protect our creators from harassment, and reduce dislike attacks — where people work to drive up the number of dislikes on a creator’s videos.

We’re making the dislike counts private across YouTube, but the dislike button is not going away. This change will start gradually rolling out today. (November 10, 2021)

As part of this experiment, viewers could still see and use the dislike button. But because the count was not visible to them, we found that they were less likely to target a video’s dislike button to drive up the count. In short, our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike attacking behavior.

We also heard directly from smaller creators and those just getting started that they are unfairly targeted by this behavior — and our experiment confirmed that this does occur at a higher proportion on smaller channels.

Based on what we learned, we’re making the dislike counts private across YouTube.

Get Over Yourself

Now I’ve read and listened to a lot of critical feedback about this move, but the crying all seems to be along the lines of “they just don’t want us to tell Marvel that their latest film sucks”.

Well I’ve got a question for you, WHO CARES WHAT YOU THINK?

Seriously, just take a step back from your pedestal of self-importance and consider this.

Let me take you back to 2010. Fresh faced child star Justin Bieber released the song Baby. I hated it, but so what? My daughters loved it. They loved him. I was online at 9am on the dot to buy concert tickets for them — before the tour sold out at 9am and 23 seconds. I was successful, thankfully.

Here’s the video to Baby on YouTube:

Now what’s striking about this vid is not so much the 19 million thumbs-up votes it has been given, it’s the 12 MILLION DISLIKES, placing it in the Top 20 Most Disliked YouTube Videos of all time.

Incidentally, most of the videos on that list are children’s songs. Get a life people. Just get a life.

You know what I do if I watch a video of a song and I don’t like it? I move on to the next one.

It’s the most stupid, pointless action to tell the world that you don’t like it. Are you aware that you don’t get to choose what music you like and dislike? It’s all down to how your brain is wired.

When you hear a song on the radio, do you say “I like / don’t like this” — or do you say “I CHOOSE not to like / dislike this”?

Obviously it’s the former. We don’t choose what music we like. We are conditioned by neural pathways, what we’ve been brought up with, whether we like things to be edgy and creative or safe and soothing, what our current mood is.

We have control over NONE of these things, so why the hell does it matter if you don’t like a song? You can’t claim any higher ground by supposedly being above all that sort of stuff.

Millions will hate what you listen to — and that’s fine and natural, too. Why do people feel the need to make a big thing about it?

The Night I Stopped Being A Critic

Here’s another story involving my daughters…

I booked them tickets for another concert, the X Factor Live Tour. They loved the TV talent spotting / destroying behemoth, so it was the perfect Christmas present. Except for the fact that I had to take them…

So there I was, watching my daughters run to the stage, screaming after One Direction, wondering what all the fuss was about, and I was suddenly struck by something.

No, it wasn’t a divorced mum’s bra that was thrown towards the band — that just missed my head. I was struck by the fact that my opinion counted for absolutely nothing. Because it just wasn’t important.

At the time, I was a journalist, and I reviewed music, films, theatre and other forms of entertainment for newspapers.

That night, I vowed never to review anything ever again.

I was sitting there, smugly comparing this musical trash to the far superior works of Radiohead, when I realised that I was surrounded by 23,000 happy, screaming fans of what was being churned out on stage.

This music was making them happy. It was doing the job that music is supposed to do. Who cared if I didn’t like it? What difference did my opinion make on this matter, and why should it have counted for anything?

So if I see a YouTube video of One Direction, I’ll simply scroll on by.

The Force Isn’t With You

By the way, this isn’t all about big name celebrities — the most serious part of my rant is yet to come.

But let’s briefly look at movies.

I find it incredibly sad how people get so worked up about the finer points of comic book characters. They’re not real, y’know.

I’m not one to marvel at the Marvel universe and other superhero franchises but seriously, if the powers wanted to out Batman as gay, like DC Comics outed Superman as bisexual… SO WHAT?

There are far more important things to get hot under the collar about. Real life things like poverty, the climate crisis, wars, famine… I’d give the thumbs-down to all those.

I’m old enough to have been around for the original Star Wars. I was part of the cult following as a kid, and it was fantastic. Treasured memories right there.

I loved The Empire Strikes Back even more, but after the darkness of that movie, Return of the Jedi with its cuddly teddy bears didn’t cut it for me. My Star Wars-obsessed partner still gives me grief about this.

So anyway, I’m not a fan of prequels — they lack the suspense when you know what’s going to happen to the characters — so I wasn’t a fan of Star Wars episodes 1–3.

But I could totally appreciate the awesome craft, skill and talent that went into making these movies. Everything from sets to locations to special effects to music… fair play to everyone involved.

What an irrelevant idiot I would have been to have downvoted the trailers on YouTube. I didn’t, because I’m not full of my own importance.

Could YOU Do Any Better?

I’m not much of a gamer but I’m not going to be disliking any videos relating to this area, either. My young boys love watching Minecraft hacks on there.

I think some of the videos are ridiculous but am I capable of creating anything better? No!

Here’s an idea… if you can’t do better yourself, don’t criticise. You just look needy.

And that leads to my final point. The dislikes don’t just apply to celebrity-strewn videos, far from it.

You find yourself any hobby YouTuber, sharing their knowledge to make your life easier — how to do everything from writing a blog to fixing a toilet, bathing your dog to painting your bedroom…

There are always people disliking these videos! I just can’t get into their heads, it must be something like… “Well I wouldn’t wash my dog’s tail first, I’m going to tell this person I don’t like their video..”

SO.

WHAT?

Nobody cares.

Well done YouTube.