YouTube considers removing dislike button to combat bad actors

The goal is to stop people from spamming videos with dislikes

YouTube is because means to combat the weaponization of its dislike push on videos.

The video-hosting and social platform has seen its share of 'dislike mobes' attacking videos by spamming the dislike button in hopes of hurting the creator's channel. The most recent instance of this would be YouTube Rewind, which sparked ire from the community for ignoring some of the platform's biggest moments of the year.

YouTube'southward director of projection management, Tom Leung, addressed the dislike mob issue in a contempo 'Creator Insider' video. This includes experiments that could get in difficult or impossible for dislike attacks to form.

Currently, the team is leaning towards adding an selection for creators to toggle the visibility of likes and dislikes. However, hiding the ratings has impacts videos with positive responses, and Leung says the team knows how important public stats are to creators.

Leung as well discusses an option to inquire viewers why they're clicking the dislike push button. This could take on the grade of a checkbox with reasons you dislike the video.

"That could give the creator more than information, and it would also give viewers pause instead of just doing it impulsively," Leung said. "On the other paw, that's complicated to build, complicated to collect, and so to relay the results to the creator in analytics or Creator Studio."

The team has also considered the extreme of removing the dislike push entirely, but Leung says this wouldn't be democratic.

Notwithstanding, Leung maintains that these changes are still in a word phase. If the team decides these aren't the right arroyo, they'll await until a better idea comes forth.

Some creators responded to the video suggesting YouTube implements a minimum viewing requirement to stop dislikes. For case, viewers would have to watch 25 or 50 percent of a video before the rating buttons unlock. It's a proficient idea that could gainsay dislike spam, and it's less extreme than other suggestions.

Source: YouTube Via: The Verge