YouTube Removed the Dislike Count and Won't Bring It Back
13 posts since Jul 2026, all from r/youtube.
“YT is not doing this for creators, the vast majority support the dislike button The ones who actually have a problem with it are advertisers not wanting any negative public repercussions”
“Remember when you could look at a video and instantly know if it was trash just by the ratio? A video with thousands of dislikes used to carry weight. Creators actually paid attention. Shady content, clickbait, or straight-up bad videos got called out publicly. Now the dislike…”
“There is nothing useful about downvoting, removing it does nothing to lessen your user experience. Maybe instead ask yourself why do you feel the need to have to downvote someone to make your user experience valid?!”
A recurring theme revolves around YouTube's removal of the dislike button, with users expressing dissatisfaction and accusing the platform of prioritizing positive engagement over genuine feedback. There are also complaints about video quality (thumbnails) and general platform policies.
SOURCES (20)
“YT is not doing this for creators, the vast majority support the dislike button The ones who actually have a problem with it are advertisers not wanting any negative public repercussions”
“It was a hard loss, not to be able to see how many dislikes a video has got. But removing the button entirely? It has been some time now since they took the sweet satisfaction that was clicking dislike away from me. I was always thinking that somehow, someone would not see the bad video, or the creator could see that they just did not good. Let me tell you how it changed me as a YouTube fan. I watch YouTube pretty often. I might be a bit addicted, but honestly, you can shit so much better when s”
“If we simply create a clone of youtube with the dislike button, and migrate every user from youtube to this youtube clone, it'll be 100% accurate”
“The Return YouTube Dislike extension has now been installed by 5 million users, showing that there's still strong interest in seeing dislike counts. There is a Change.org petition with nearly 200 signatures calling for YouTube to bring public dislike counts back for transparency. Almost 5 years after the change, people are still actively discussing it, especially now that YouTube is totally removing the dislike button in Shorts. Extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/return-yout”
KemTube, Odysee, and PeerTube are better alternatives than YouTube.
“Remember when you could look at a video and instantly know if it was trash just by the ratio? A video with thousands of dislikes used to carry weight. Creators actually paid attention. Shady content, clickbait, or straight-up bad videos got called out publicly. Now the dislike count is basically hidden and the only feedback is likes + comments (which are easy to manipulate or ignore). I miss that instant public accountability. It felt like the community had a real voice. Anyone else feel like Yo”
“No they didn't. But they should. The change is one of the least significant they've made recently but a zillion of you babies have to cry about it here. submitted by /u/userhwon [link] [comments]”
“It's more effective to search for topics you're interested in so YouTube can more effectively deliver content you enjoy instead of wasting your time telling YouTube you don't like a plethora of videos being randomly suggested to you. Play smarter, not harder. Just think about maybe 6 topics you enjoy, search them, like some videos from each result. Your feed will become more enjoyable once YouTube formulates a better feed for you.”
“There is nothing useful about downvoting, removing it does nothing to lessen your user experience. Maybe instead ask yourself why do you feel the need to have to downvote someone to make your user experience valid?!”
“Ask yourself why you feel the need to hit a downvote, instead of just clicking away?!”
“I can still dislike on PC, so I still do it and many others do it too. Shorts I don't really care, I never liked the short form thing in general. And the only reason you feel that is because you are used to doing it almost everywhere (rating, liking, hearts, etc). So when they take it away, it feels unjust. As long as they all make mad money and more the way they do now, they are not going to change a thing and it will only get worse. The world isn't going to stop watching YT, probably l”
“Encourages people to pump out garbage. Kinda the same concept as a participation trophy. Here at youtube, we dont give you the option to not like something.”
“YouTube recently officially removed the dislike button in the Shorts tab for all users, so if you can't see the dislike button on other places, it is probably an experiment”
“There are many examples, I think the most notable one was pewdiepie asking for only dislikes on a video, got millions, turned out to be very successful. And it makes sense, all youtube wants is people watching. If someone watches and continues watching even after pressing disklike, then why should they care?”
“If just 10% of people reported every video they would otherwise dislike youtube would bring that button back faster than Neal Mohan can suck off Mr. Beast”