YouTube is testing hiding the dislike button entirely and users aren’t happy
How would they know? They removed the dislike button!
this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2026
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Technology
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Doesn't really matter, they already made it pointless.
You're not allowed to express anything negative, it's bad for the advertisers.
didnt they already make it useless??
the channel can see its downvotes and clicking it registers as engagement
I honestly don't think the voting does anything. It's all about what they feed you and how you move around the screen. And god help you if you click on one thing new but not sure if you'll like, because now it's ALL that niche. No likes or dislikes involved at all. Do I see more of the subscribed and liked things I have now? Nope. You'll see what YT wants you to see.
I shouldn't talk too bad though, as going to YT with a clean browser and no sign in gets all sorts of garbage, so at least I'm not seeing all of that. I don't know how though.
Wouldn't that be an argument for factoring it into recommendations, and not a reason to remove dislikes?
... OH WAIT, I made the mistake of thinking Google cares about providing a good user experience over pushing ads and an agenda, whoopsie!
the whole website is smelly dog ass excretions
Literally devolving into cable
Dating myself, but I remember when cable was the way to get quality entertainment without the network commercials.
And that was escaping broadcast TV, who still had like 45 minutes to a show with just 15 minutes for commercials spaced out mostly in the middle part.
And some of the commercials were actually pretty good.
I still watch YouTube by subscribing to channels with RSS. I see what the people I follow upload. Nothing more, nothing less.
voting counts as activity driving engagement IIRC. I upload videos once in a blue moon and I personally care about that ratio, but I don't know about other creators (like ones who actually are partnered and earn).
Cool extensions for people: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/return-youtube-dislikes/
I stopped using it recently when they had an update every other day and Firefox was requesting more permissions for me to accept.
I wasn’t sure why or what, so went to the comments to see. The way the dev was responding to people really put me off, though to their credit, they did go back and edit them to be more polite. It just threw me off though, so maybe everything is still fine but I probably won’t be using it again. :-/
Fair enough. If theres a better one, im all for it. Its not all that hard to implement honestly.
I've been slowly phasing out my YouTube consumption in favor of Nebula, Dropout, and sailing the seven seas
Yep. Nebula has most of the creators and content with none of the bullshit. Same for dropout.
No sad, only happy!
"stop being so negative" It's like they hired cheerleaders and now it's just bubble heads in corporate... oh, wait.
They already did for me on Shorts, even with Return YouTube Dislike. I now have to utilize the "Not interested" and "Don't recommend channel" functions extensively.
If I have to use YouTube, blocking shorts is a great feature.
The like button disappeared for me a week or so ago, no idea what's going on there.
A/B testing. Big tech like Google likes to roll out (often experimental) changes to a select number of random people and measure how their behavior changes compared to others that get the existing experience. In other words, you're a lab rat.
I've had this happen to me countless times, perhaps because I used to write lengthy and in-depth feedback (until I thought they should pay me for this and stopped).
They also do it to lessen the outrage that might be more likely to happen than if they rolled out the change on everyone all at once.
Stop the Hexbearisation of YouTube!
First they came for the dislike button...
Fuck the dislike button. Embrace Upbear Thought and bully creators in the comments if you don’t like something
Doesn't clicking the dislike button move the video up in the algo anyway? It's "engagement." If you don't like a video the best thing to do is "not interested" it on your recommendation page.
I thought they took it away a while ago. I have an extension to add it back.
They stopped showing the dislikes to force you to watch crappy videos.
Since the extension does not add it back but introduces an alternative they might as well return the button too.
AI slop, propaganda videos, and grifter channels which drives more traffic tot eh site.
YouTube: Where a bigoted Christian can go on a transphobic tirade, but I'm the one who gets in trouble for telling them to fuck off.
I've heard this one before.