Recently YouTube permanently annihilated the “dislike” count on videos across its platform. The decision is likely to be controversial given the extent that it impacts the public’s visibility into a video’s good or bad points . But I think YouTube believes the change will better protect its creators from harassment and reduce the threat of what it calls “dislike attacks” .
The company says that while dislike counts won’t be visible to the public, it’s not removing the dislike button itself. Users can still click the thumbs down button on videos to signal their dislike to creators privately. However I believe Google may intend to silence the collective voice of what we think about a video as the like/dislike ratio is often the best way to judge a videos quality at a glance. It means saving time and effort as I don't have to guess which videos are worth my time, provides essential data to understand which video is trolling/propaganda/advertisement, and therefore it helps my own personal taste.
Fortunately my main browser is Firefox and this extension flawlessly returns the dislike feature: It's an intelligent gambit which I've much needed.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/return-youtube-dislikes/?utm_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=search
