YouTube starts the dislike removal tests. The American platform announced with a tweet that, after receiving negative feedback regarding the number of dislike, some users will be part of an experiment that could lead to a site design change, with the removal of the public number of dislikes under the videos, which will only be accessible to the video creator via Youtube Studio.
This change seems to be necessary in order to protect video creators from the phenomenon of review bombing, i.e. from the risk that a number of users agree and select a video they have not seen in order to bombard it with I do not like and sink its virtual reputation, thus discouraging other users intending to see that video.
This process can take place against an influencer, but also against some specific products, such as video reviews of video games, phones, computers or other products. This is another reason why Google it had to run for cover and rethink its "dislike" policy, to accommodate the need of companies to protect their products on the web.
The reactions of the users seem to be divided in half: on the one hand there are those who consider it a real censorship while the creators of the videos breathe a sigh of relief and say they are happy to no longer be slaves to the quest to please their audience to avoid the dreaded waves of dislikes.
This is not the first time that a social network has had to deal with the critical evaluation of its contents: too Instagram and Facebook they changed their approach. Instagram has opted for the opposite option by hiding the "Likes", believing that excessive research detracts from the quality of the content produced by users, while Facebook has inserted various reactions in addition to the "likes" to give greater possibilities of expression to their users.
