But it seems to only do this in the home tab. Search and subscription tabs still show the view count.
Now I don't think view count is much of an indication of quality for a video, but the number of likes even less so. It varies quite a bit even on video to video from the same creator depending on if a like is called out for, or audience type.
Certainly not the most egregious change they've made, but a bit of an odd one I can't quite figure out why.
they ran AB tests on longer ads too, then just implemented them
Oh yeah, I'm not saying there's no chance of them permanently implementing it. They certainly wouldn't be A-B-testing it, if they weren't think about it.