If you have nothing nice to say – shut up! It’s kind of my personal motto that somehow logically imposed itself on me even though I never intended to find myself a personal motto. Do you have your own motto? If so, please let me know because I’m really curious.
I never understood the need for some people to insult other people or comment on something that didn’t concern them personally. How many times have I heard someone tell someone that he or she is looking really lovely with the extra weight they gained or that someone looks sick because they have lost weight or didn’t apply their makeup that day.
When I was younger I liked to put on a lot of makeup, so I used to get questions about whether I was sick if I didn’t put on make-up that day. I guess it happened to everyone.
Does the perspective change if we only know the person online?
Personally, I don’t think that changes anything, but I know many will disagree. Which is entirely their right. Thumbs up for different opinions, and more importantly – respect for different opinions!
Being mean to people online is exactly the same as being mean to people offline. The only difference is that we are much braver online because we are hidden behind a monitor, in the safety of our troll lairs, and dare much more than when we stand in front of a person, looking them in the eye and having to say something rude or evil.
But where is the line between constructive criticism and insulting a person in the online world? Are we necessarily evil trolls if we write to a Youtube creator that we don’t like their video? Or that the tone is bad? Content boring? Clickbaity title? Are we rude if we press the Dislike button after watching a video (or part of a video) and decide that we don’t like it?
The answer to that question is pretty simple – it all depends on what our intention is. Even I clicked the dislike button a few times. Why? Because I didn’t like the video, I thought it was useless or it was just so bad that my finger flew towards that controversial thumb-shaped button turned upside down.
That is OK. It is perfectly ok to express our opinion if we do not do it out of malice and evil intent. But just as the online world is a place inhabited by trolls of all sizes, so is the movement known in the YouTube community called – Dislike Bombing.
What Is Dislike Bombing?
The point is that people, most often online trolls who like to hate a certain creator, come together to give the object of their current hatred as many dislikes as possible so that their number exceeds the number of likes and deters potential future viewers from clicking on the video. Because, it is clear to all of us how the thing works, we are all guided by the number of likes and dislikes as a measure of a certain quality or lack thereof.
Such trolls who preferred dislike bombardment gave a lot of headaches to online creators. Giving dislikes amused them and they did it out of pure obsession and even hatred, and YouTube finally decided to put an end to it. So in November last year (2021) they decided to remove, more precisely, to hide the number of dislikes on their platform.
What exactly does that mean? The dislike button is not gone. It’s still in place, and we can still dislike the video only it won’t be visible again. From now on, only the creator of a certain video will see the number of dislikes, not the rest of us.
According to YouTube, their goal is to create a safe environment in which creators can find and share their voice. In order to protect them from harassment, they decided to hide the dislike, and they also state the fact that this decision already brings positive results and that some creators said that they are less targeted by targeted harassment by trolls.
However, most creators disagree with YouTube’s decision to hide the dislikes, and one of YouTube’s founders, Jawed Karim, expressed his dissatisfaction in the description of his first video (which is also the first video ever posted on YouTube) “When every YouTuber agrees that dislike removal is a stupid idea, then it probably is. Please try again, YouTube. ”
So how do you know how many dislikes a video has?
For now, it is possible to find out and it is quite simple. All you need is an extension called “Return YouTube Dislike” and it works for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and iOS and you will be able to see the number of dislikes on YouTube videos again. At least for now.
The extension has already received a lot of positive reviews from users, and once you install it it will automatically show the number of dislikes on YouTube, just like before.
To download and install the extension, you can click this link Return YouTube Dislikeor simply type “Return YouTube Dislike” into the Chrome Web Store.
What do you think about hiding the number of dislikes on YouTube?
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