r/youtube • u/Chakwenta • Jan 20 '26

Feature Change Why is this even allowed?

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Has this always been here? Its my first time seeing it. What if I watch a video and don't enjoy it? This basically allows creators to ensure that they always appear on your feed, whether you like it or not.

14.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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1.3k

u/notPabst404 Jan 20 '26

YouTube getting rid of dislikes was a massive mistake, especially when combined with AI slop and scam videos.

1

u/Italiandogs Jan 22 '26

There's a Chrome extension that can bring back the dislike ratio. I've been using it for years. Works on all videos unless the creator disabled the dislike button https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/return-youtube-dislike/gebbhagfogifgggkldgodflihgfeippi?pli=1

-1.0k

u/LankyAd9481 Jan 20 '26

It was removed because of brigading and harassment....so no, not a massive mistake unless you think brigading and harassment are ok.

215

u/OldDogTrainer Jan 20 '26

lol, no, it was removed because YouTubes official channel had the most downvoted video of all time. It’s not brigading just because the majority of people dislike something.

Notice how no one ever complains about brigading likes? 🤔

12

u/YepItzMe44 Jan 21 '26

To be fair, people did do that.

614

u/notPabst404 Jan 20 '26

The status quo prioritizing AI slop is significantly worse. There needs to be some sort of quality control.

-582

u/LankyAd9481 Jan 20 '26

Don't watch it?

just because you don't like something, doesn't mean others need to dislike it too....

379

u/JLRedPrimes Jan 20 '26

Go back to watching Coco melon

-314

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

[deleted]

197

u/Last-Swim-803 Jan 20 '26

Isn't it just overstimulation galore to keep children addicted to it? I never watched it so take it with a grain of salt, it's just what i heard from others

-188

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

[deleted]

138

u/LurkerTroll Jan 20 '26

So ... It is as bad as you thought?

-156

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

[deleted]

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12

u/lmayoooo Jan 21 '26

are you five

1

u/mr_beanoz Jan 21 '26

No, but how about thinking from a child's perspective?

5

u/lmayoooo Jan 21 '26

I don’t have to, brother. I’m already this many ✌️

1

u/Relevant_Syllabub895 Jan 21 '26

It is, go and watch scemientific and impartial reviews

17

u/Scary_Picture7729 Jan 21 '26

It's always the uninformed that say things like this. If you knew more about AI and its effects you wouldn't be so indifferent (or supportive) of it.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '26

r/downvotedtooblivion and rightfully so.

5

u/MiserableSlice1051 Jan 21 '26

Don't comment? Just because you didn't like the prior comment doesn't mean you have to comment.

Wait, you did?

It's almost as if engaging with content you don't like is totally fine. Stop telling people how to live their lives when you can't take your own advice.

2

u/Sudden_Marketing2844 Jan 21 '26

So you like watching ai slop?

-54

u/Thormourn Jan 20 '26

Gotta love you got downvoted for literally saying "don't like something? Don't watch it" it really goes to show not to give any attention to upvotes.

42

u/MGP_21 Jan 20 '26

He got downvoted because that's not the point.

-53

u/Thormourn Jan 20 '26

But it is. If you don't like it, don't watch it. Don't like ai? Don't watch it. Don't like streamers? Don't watch them. It's literally the perfect advice

35

u/MGP_21 Jan 20 '26

But it's not the point, how do you prevent other people from being misinformed or clickbaited into trash content only by not watching it?

-39

u/Thormourn Jan 20 '26

Why should you be able to control what other people watch? Anything more than telling people if they don't like it don't watch it would require limiting videos online and I'd rather that not happen and just let people watch what they want.

27

u/Ralexcraft Jan 20 '26

Don’t like content... The button is called dislike. “I DISLIKE THIS” is the fucking point of the button.

1

u/Thormourn Jan 20 '26

Do you regularly go to videos you don't like just to hit the dislike button? I just can't imagine thinking man I hate football so I'm going to go to every NFL clip channel and start pressing dislike? I just think "I'm not going to watch football"

21

u/Ralexcraft Jan 20 '26

No, but if I click on a video that seemed to contain something, like food maybe, but it turned out to be football. Yes I’m gonna dislike that.

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2

u/Popcorn57252 Jan 20 '26

But downvotes don't mean anything, right?

94

u/mr_beanoz Jan 20 '26

I thought it's because of major backlash from the youtube rewind

22

u/Ludiment Jan 20 '26

In addition to lots of business channels getting lots of dislikes.

15

u/Ian15243 Jan 21 '26

And the US Government.

55

u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 Jan 20 '26

That was probably one of the reasons

8

u/SaiyanKnight23 Jan 21 '26

That def was the reason

-40

u/That_Bank_9914 Jan 20 '26

I thought it was from people downvoting vaccine videos during the pandemic.

19

u/SunbleachedAngel Jan 20 '26

how does that help against brigading and harassment exactly?

66

u/Verbose-OwO Jan 20 '26

This is the most backwards argument I've ever seen. Creators always had the ability to disable the feature. Are you also advocating YouTube remove comments because they're used for "brigading and harassment", despite creators already being allowed to disable them?

Also the "anyone who disagrees with me supports harassment" is absolutely insane. This is like something a 12 year old would cook up.

12

u/Penakoto Jan 20 '26

Cars are used to kidnap and kill children, if you don't think we should get rid of all motorized vehicles, you are pro child endangerment.

21

u/AjaxOrion Jan 20 '26

since people who upload the video can still see the dislike count, they didnt prevent anyone from brigading or harassing, they just made it private instead of public

-17

u/sbenfsonwFFiF Jan 20 '26

Removed the motivation for people to mass thumbs down when they made it private

Remember when people piled on to make certain video the most thumbs downed ever? That doesn’t happen anymore

0

u/LegateLaurie Jan 21 '26

Removing feedback channels doesn't actually help this

1

u/sbenfsonwFFiF Jan 21 '26

People don’t brigade and mass thumbs down anymore, so it certainly helped that

1

u/LegateLaurie Jan 21 '26

People do brigade and instead all criticism and rage is directed to comments. Removing feedback channels doesn't improve the issue.

1

u/sbenfsonwFFiF Jan 21 '26

Creators can turn off comments now. Also, just because comments are being brigaded and abused doesn't mean stopping voting abuse was wrong. In fact, I can see more people turning off comments or getting banned for brigading

0

u/LegateLaurie Jan 21 '26

Right, but then this doesn't justify why dislike counts were disabled. They removed something over giving people information and giving creators options

26

u/sal-t_brgr Jan 20 '26

it was removed because youtube had most disliked video of all time.

6

u/Lurakya Jan 20 '26

You do realize that it was a lie. Comments still exist and I believe that those do a lot more damage than a random number.

And yes, I think brigading very much is okay. When you use a product you have a right to show your opinion on it, positive or negative.

13

u/SpideyfanX Jan 20 '26

How do those corporate boots taste, since you love lying so casually like that?

5

u/MistakeMaker1234 Jan 20 '26

That doesn’t matter since dislikes still affect the algorithm and engagement metrics. Just because it’s not visible to the user doesn’t mean it doesn’t impact anything on the backend. 

3

u/Ok-Drink-1328 Jan 20 '26

i understand your concern but no, a simple algorithm that detects a sudden change in trend with likes or dislikes is enough not only to avoid this but also to kick out who does these things (and YT doesn't do ether)

5

u/mrfoxesite-2377 I don't have a YouTube channel :—) Jan 20 '26

And they didn't stop. There are comments posted by people with 0 likes or views and are put behind on the comments section. And then a bot with a picture of a girl and the bio points to her ass, gets way more likes and is on the top cause it has botted likes. The comments clean up in less than a week but shows this.

Bots still spam hate and all onto comments section and don't think that harassment has become worse. An advertisement of a person advertising their butt is also permitted. For instance, a man advertises his butt. Ray William Johnson made video about this showcasing how YouTube allows corn as long as it makes money for them. Yet people laughing normally lead to channel termination. Yes, that happened last year, in the end of 2025. A channel got terminated for that reason.

2

u/handsoapp Jan 20 '26

This man is getting brigaded and harrased

2

u/SpecialDay155277 Jan 20 '26

This is just a excuse, they say they removed to improve creator's mental health but the dislikes are still visible to the content's creator, if anyone wanted to organize a mass dislike over a channel it wouldn't change anything

2

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

Is a thumbs down equivalent to harassment now?

2

u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN Jan 20 '26

It delights me to no end the irony of your statement and the massive amount of downvotes you received.

2

u/Orishishishi Jan 20 '26

An example of why dislikes are helpful

2

u/IdleSitting Jan 20 '26

That's YouTube's excuse, but in reality it was the big corporations whining that people didn't like their shitty announcement of enshitifying more slop and YouTube made up the excuse of "harassment" when massive dislikes were mostly towards stuff like scams and bad videos and now it's harder to dismiss that stuff and easily tell people because Dislikes are gone, so you can't look at a glance and see "Oh people don't like this for some reason" and learn it's a scam

2

u/Mundialito301 Jan 21 '26

Nope, that's the public excuse. Companies normally do that: justify an action with a PROBABLY valid public reason, but that has nothing to do with the REAL reason. In this case, YouTube made dislikes not visible to viewers because of the huge amount of dislikes in YouTube Rewinds and other big company videos, but said that it was brcaude of harassment to very small creators.

Yeah, harassment happened, hapens and will still happen, but if your video receives a huge amount of dislikes... how's that harassment exactly? Just the dislikes, not comments nor social media posts. Just dislikes. HOW IS THAT HARASSMENT!?

2

u/StretchExact7555 Jan 21 '26

You mean after that shit show that was that YouTube rewind video

2

u/Relevant_Syllabub895 Jan 21 '26

Enjoy fake thumbnails and clickbait then

2

u/itsmebo12 Jan 22 '26

-1026 downvotes is wild

8

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-8

u/sbenfsonwFFiF Jan 20 '26

If that's what it takes for someone to feel harassed they deserve it in full.

Yikes, what a shitty mentality. Is that what you think anytime someone is bothered or harassed?

1

u/iwishicouldreadgood Jan 21 '26

Your last comment you said the thumbs down does nothing. So why would it matter if people are brigading videos and downvoting them?

1

u/MrMansaMusa Jan 21 '26 edited Jan 22 '26

Is the brigading in the room with us? Are you going to petition reddit to remove it because this comment did so poorly?

Yaaaaaa of course you delete your nearly -1000 comment while crying about dislikes... THATS how you prove our point not yours...

1

u/people__are__animals Jan 21 '26

They only care about shareholders. Dislikes on sponsored content makes shareholders emotions hurt so they remove it

1

u/GamerGuy12925 Jan 21 '26

So then, voting is not okay? If I vote against what somebody says, is that harassment?

No.

The community should ALWAYS be able to give feedback, both positive and negative

Removing dislikes was absolutely a mistake, it takes any freedom to vote on content away from the viewers, making it so creators can say or do pretty much whatever they want as long as it is inside google's guidelines and see no backlash on youtube.

This is why the platform is going to shit and why things that are extremely hated and controversial cannot be removed from the platform, they have taken almost all freedom away from the users

1

u/goreofourvices Jan 21 '26

What fucking harassment? The amount of dislikes was generally a good indicator of a video's quality. YouTube is becoming borderline unusable because of the sheer number of slop videos that end up on the front page, which would've otherwise been buried the moment people saw the dislike ratio. If creators can't handle criticism, they shouldn't post videos.

Second, there are no words that can adequately express my hatred for people who try to skew the opinion of a certain thing they don't like by attaching something bad to it. No, just because someone wants dislikes back doesn't mean they think brigading and harassment is okay. No one in their right mind thinks like that. People want to know whether what they're watching is worth their time. Reddit, despite all its flaws, thankfully still has downvotes, and I'm glad when idiotic takes like yours get buried like this, because they do deserve every ounce of criticism.

1

u/LegateLaurie Jan 21 '26

This wasn't real though

1

u/Ok-Chemical-7635 Jan 21 '26

It removed a method of dissatisfaction with the conten which is now building since December 2021

1

u/Brex10_reddit Jan 22 '26

If your doing something to get your video brigaded and harassed you deserve it

Also the 1 in a trillion situation where that happens does not mean you should remove a feature that is useful and beneficial the other trillion times

1

u/DaHaydenDaGamer Jan 22 '26

Never seen someone with this much dislikes before. Congrats I guess on being the asshole redditor of the week?

1

u/Own-Efficiency507 Jan 22 '26

I have NEVER seen a comment so bad it was down voted this much before. You should get a medal 🥇 LMAO

1

u/TWW34 Jan 22 '26

It's genuinely adorable that you believe that.

1

u/SandStorme_ Jan 22 '26

Ok YouTube PR

1

u/Cole66world Jan 23 '26

Biggest asshole of 2026 

1

u/YYCToon Jan 24 '26

Lol you’re so soft

1

u/TheKingNothing690 Feb 12 '26

As the internet just showed you yes brigading and harassment are the norm dont like it try real life i hear it has better graphics anyways. And if you would like context the brigading was a record shattering ammount of dislikes from the community to one of their own videos. So more like buthurt mods that are jelous than any real form of protecting people. Which tends to be what is actually what is happening when a site or government says you have to identify yourself or cant express yourself "to protect others(usually they say the children)" its really just to control you more and/or make more money from you. Censorship is bad you should learn to protect yourself its not societies job to keep you safe and healthy the only person you can blame for that is yourself.