YouTube trailers have been a good parameter for whether a game is popular or not, with company missteps resulting in merciless reviews. Famous examples include Paul Feig's Ghostbusters from 2016 which was extremely hated, as well as the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare trailer and recently Nintendo got to taste the wrath when they unveiled the Switch Online + Expansion Pack.
But soon it will be harder to protest in the same way. That's because YouTube is announcing that the Dislike button's results will be removed. You can still dislike things, but no one other than the uploader will see the results. YouTube justifies the decision:
"As part of this experiment, viewers could still see and use the dislike button. But because the count was not visible to them, we found that they were less likely to target a video's dislike button to drive up the count. In short, our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike attacking behavior. We also heard directly from smaller creators and those just getting started that they are unfairly targeted by this behavior--and our experiment confirmed that this does occur at a higher proportion on smaller channels."
However, they recognize that there may be problems with this as many people have also used the feature to see what is worth watching, and that this will now be more difficult as you have no idea in advance of the quality of a video:
"We heard during the experiment that some of you have used the public dislike count to help decide whether or not to watch a video. We know that you might not agree with this decision, but we believe that this is the right thing to do for the platform. We want to create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves. This is just one of many steps we are taking to continue to protect creators from harassment. Our work is not done, and we'll continue to invest here."
What do you think about the Dislike counter disappearing from YouTube?