YouTube is an American app founded in 2005, which gave a solution to its users’ every problem in video form. It is owned by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim.
Recently, there were announced that Youtube is removing dislike button on their platform as people are misusing them in dislike attacks, which is becoming a form of mental harassment for the creators.
Youtube stated that they are not removing the YouTube button. They are only making it private so that it can’t be used as a way for harassment of any creator. People can still give their views about the video of any creator. They can still give thumbs up and thumbs down (dislike) to any video they want, but only the creator will be able to see the number of disapproval on their video. The number of dislikes will be visible on the creators’ YouTube studio account.
Youtube experimented with its design after removing dislike counts and making it the word “dislike” logo, which appeared under the thumbs-down button instead of the number of dislike buttons. The image below depicts YouTube’s current changed appearance.
The Primary Reason For Encrypting The Dislike Button
Youtube is not alone in doing this experiment with its platform. Earlier, Instagram also did that. Instagram also reduces its visibility of the functions that affect creators’ mental health. A year back, Instagram also did the test by hiding its like counts globally in respect of creators’ mental health.
These big platforms believe that content creators don’t need to focus on likes. I, too, believe that a creator doesn’t need to focus on the number of likes and comments. If one focuses on the number of likes and comments, this can affect the quality of the content. One must focus on its content quality. If a creator’s content is of good quality, people will surely come to watch and appreciate it by themselves.
YouTube makes the dislike button private in respect of its creators. As people and communities were using the dislike button to target particular creators, like if any disputes arrive between two creators, the fans of both creators start judging each other, fighting on social media, and using the dislike button to make dislike attacks on the creators.
By disliking attacks and commenting on bad things, communities have started to make decisions themselves, even in the private matters of creators. And in all this, what was being affected was the creator’s mental health. Dislike attacks were becoming mental attacks on the creator, mainly on small creators, as they were so demotivating and discouraging.
YouTube is still working on its features. They are still thinking of increasing their protection and security features for teenagers ages 13 to 17. They have also added restricting access to content that is not for kids. But because of it being a large platform, there are all types of people there.
In his letter, YouTube’s spokesman stated, “We are proactively making this change because YouTube has a responsibility to protect creators, particularly smaller creators, from harassment and dislike attacks.”
Conclusion
We should come together and appreciate YouTube for this step, as it is for someone’s welfare. The person who was trying to make us laugh and keep us entertained during the whole quarantine was the creator. They were there for us in our mood swings and cloudy moods with all types of videos that kept entertaining us, but nobody was there for them. Youtube took this excellent initiative, which I appreciate. What are your thoughts on this stage of YouTube?