And for that to happen, the stuff that's not great has to fall by the side as quickly as possible. The idea WAS, however, that among the flood of content, there are great creations waiting to be exposed. The idea was never that all content is good. Why? Because not all user-generated content is good. The ability to easily and quickly identify bad content is an essential feature of a user-generated content platform. Studies that apparently contradict the common sense of every YouTuber. Instead, there will be references to various studies. Why would YouTube make this universally disliked change? There is a reason, but it's not a good one, and not one that will be publicly disclosed. We know this because there exists not a single YouTube Creator who thinks removing dislikes is a good idea - for YouTube or for Creators. I have never seen a less enthusiastic, more reluctant announcement of something that is supposed to be great.Ĭalling the removal of dislikes a good thing for creators cannot be done without conflict by someone holding the title of "YouTube's Creator Liaison". The video reminded me of an interview Admiral Jeremiah Denton gave in 1966. 'Watching Matt Koval's announcement about the removal of dislikes, I thought something was off. 'Unfortunately, research teams at YouTube has found there's this whole other use for disliking a video that I had never experienced,' Koval says. Videos that are seen to have higher dislike counts could negatively and unfairly impact YouTube creators, many of whom rely on their videos for income. Matt Koval, 'creator liaison' at YouTube, also goes through the decision in a video.Īs Koval explains, the dislike button is staying where it is, so users can still hit the thumbs down if they don't like a video, but how many dislikes a video has is only visible to the video's creator. YouTube's decision to hide dislike counts from the public was announced on November 10 in a blog post. Why? Because not all user-generated content is good.' 'The ability to easily and quickly identify bad content is an essential feature of a user-generated content platform. 'There is a reason, but it's not a good one, and not one that will be publicly disclosed. 'Why would YouTube make this universally disliked change?' says Karim in the updated description. Karim, now 42, founded YouTube with Chad Hurley and Steve Chen in February 2005, but it was sold to Google less than two years later.