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.
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.