The initial reason for creating this "dislike" button was initially so that viewers could inform others about the quality of the content, the quality of the video recording, the accuracy of the information provided, among other things.
The social network conducted research in which it found that there were times when dislikes had a higher number of views than the views of the same video. This raises questions about whether it's really necessary. Of course, the platform has already conducted real-world tests hiding the button and didn't create any dramatic changes.
“A few months ago, we at YouTube ran some experiments and hid the public dislike count to see if it might help reduce organized attacks on the platform to increase the number of dislikes on some videos. After analyzing the results in July of this year, we did see a reduction in these attacks. That’s why we’re now hiding the dislike count on YouTube (although we’re not removing the dislike button). Users can still use the dislike button, and we’ll use that feedback to adjust their personal recommendations. However, users won’t be able to see the dislike count; only creators in YouTube Studio will be able to see it,” YouTube Creators officially announced.
While the new policy goes into effect today, it may take a few weeks to be updated across the entire website to begin eradicating cyberbullying from the platform.