YouTube said yesterday that it will remove the dislike counts on YouTube videos around the world to prevent dislike attacks on creators’ videos and protect them from harassment. People all across the world see and use the dislike button on YouTube videos, however, the dislike counts will no longer be visible on YouTube videos, and dislike counts will remain private due to YouTube’s new policies.

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“We’re making the dislike counts private across YouTube, but the dislike button is not going away. This change will start gradually rolling out today.” “We experimented with the dislike button to see whether or not changes could help better protect our creators from harassment, and reduce dislike attacks — where people work to drive up the number of dislikes on a creator’s videos.” – YouTube

“We found that they were less likely to target a video’s dislike button to drive up the count. In short, our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike attacking behavior. We also heard directly from smaller creators and those just getting started that they are unfairly targeted by this behavior — and our experiment confirmed that this does occur at a higher proportion on smaller channels.” – YouTube