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Dislikes have been a feature on YouTube since 2010. Now, the feature is getting a major redesign: While Dislikes aren’t actually going away, the Dislike Count will no longer be shown publicly.

Here are the key facts:

• Users can still Dislike a video, but will not see how many other people have disliked it

• Creators (those who “own” the video) will still see total Dislikes as a metric in the Creator Studio on YouTube

Why it Matters

This change may be subtle, but it sounds like it could lead to an overall more positive experience on YouTube, which is a great thing. According to YouTube, a previous experiment showed that troll behavior declined following this change:

“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.”

— YouTube

Of course, not everyone is a fan of this change. According to The Verge, the co-founder of YouTube has said that the removal will lead to the “decline” of the YouTube platform:

“The ability to easily and quickly identify bad content is an essential feature of a user-generated content platform. Why? Because not all user-generated content is good.”

— Jawed Karim

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Here are a few more shareworthy items we’ve been reading this month…

Channel Updates & News:

• Reels and Videos are now just called “Instagram Videos” (FB blog)

• Facebook Eases Social Issues Ads Policy to Allow Product-Focused Ads to Run Without a Disclaimer (Social Media Today)

• Get lost in Layers, now on Snap Map (Snap blog)

• Introducing AR Experiences for Video Calls on Messenger (FB blog)

• Introducing Pinterest TV (Pinterest blog)

• Calling All Hackers: Introducing Bug Bounties on Clubhouse (Clubhouse blog)

• How To Record A Room On Clubhouse & See Total Listener Count (Clubhouse blog)

Stories & Analysis

• LinkedIn Report: What Candidates Want, What Companies Need, and What's Changing (LinkedIn blog)

• Twitter Blue: What to know about the subscription and features, including undo tweets (CNET)

• Social Media Firms ‘On the Hook’ Under New Aussie Defamation Law (Bloomberg)

• Why Facebook changed its name to Meta (Quartz)

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