The Like and Dislike buttons on YouTube allow viewers to provide feedback to creators about the videos they upload. More often than not, “dislike mobs” get together to target a video by disliking it en masse without even watching. This is something that obviously irks creators and YouTube has been discussing its options to prevent it.
Tom Leung, director of project management at YouTube, posted on the Creator Insider channel about some “lightly discussed” options for preventing dislike mobs from disliking a video unfairly. It remains to be seen if any of the options mentioned will ever become a permanent fixture but YouTube may test them out.
YouTube currently shows the number of likes and dislikes on a video by default. Creators can make these ratings invisible but one of the options being considered by YouTube involves making these numbers invisible by default.
Another option is asking for more feedback from the user that dislikes a video, perhaps giving them a checklist of reasons. More radical options that have been discussed include removing the dislike count altogether or just getting rid of the dislike button completely.
Leung has invited users to share their own suggestions on how YouTube can tackle this going forward. It may test some of the options mentioned above but it’s too soon to say if any of them will stick around.