YouTube removes visible dislikes to protect creators mental health

[Yel]

Their main reason for hiding it seems to be to prevent dislike bombing that can negatively affect creators mental health.

While is definitely is abused at times I think this is a really bad move as I mainly use it for tutorials and for finding information. It's invaluable seeing the like to dislike ratio to know if it's worth bothering with a video. So much crap is shown up in search results it's now going to be even harder to find good stuff.

Shouldn't creators instead be given the option to turn off visible dislikes? They can still see them hidden away in analytics.

Also I kinda think if you're putting yourself out there and chasing fame you can't really be protected from the negative aspects that come with it. This could feed the many influencers who demand to be treated both like a celeb and private individual simultaneously. Which just isn't realistic, celebrity culture always has and always will have downsides.

 

[Notorious PIG]

Any video I’ve found to have a huge dislike ratio has been deserving of the dislikes. It’s not about “bullying” the creator, it’s about the contents of the video being crap/inaccurate/clickbaity/etc.

Like you, I also don’t want my precious viewing time wasted, so seeing the like/dislike ratio helps me to decide!

 

[Yel]

It's literally the most important metric when deciding if you should invest time into watching it.

I kinda get the bullying angle, but think that could be done selectively with an algorithm rather than this blanket change that makes the whole product less useful. It's almost comparable to disabling the ratings on Amazon or IMDb. Removing a
feature isn't the solution to dealing with abuse.