Social Media giant YouTube announces that it is planning to start testing hiding dislike counts from its videos. This will be a significant modification to the platform.
According to the reports, YouTube is planning to try hiding the dislike button count from public view. This will be a smart experiment to find out the statistical data in lieu of much bigger experiments lined up soon.
The company plans to try different versions in which the dislike counts would not be visible to the public. The public can still witness and dislike a video but the total count would not be available.
The company has announced that as per the plan, the company wanted to test this option on Twitter first but that will not give them the exact data which will enable them in determining newer aspects of algorithms.
The creator of the video will still be able to view the number of dislikes his video received, as feedback from the general public.
This testing is planned based on the recommendations of the creators. The creators had sent feedback to YouTube, that the number of dislikes at times impact their targeted audiences, and in serious notations; certain campaigns were badly influenced also.
This is an effort from the YouTube platform to balance the effort of the creator as well as provide quality entertainment to the audience.
The company claims that once you have approved the newer testing site, you will not be able to revert to the older version. You will be able to share the feedback with the creator only.
There is a lot of apprehension before the testing; as it can also cause adverse effects to the website’s credibility. Sometimes the videos are spam, misleading, or simply click baits; this type of information will go haywire because of the missing dislike count from the eyes of the general public.
YouTube is not the first social media giant to experiment with newer horizons. Instagram has been testing the removal of possible false engagements on many posts to make the user experience on its website more authentic.
Similarly, Facebook also removed the like button from its pages, so that the exact number of followers can be determined.
YouTube announced that this testing will be ongoing for the next few weeks over Android and iOS devices to collect statistical data and feedback.
