YouTube removed dislike button on videos? No, here’s what’s happening

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on May 26, 2021) follows:

When it comes to likes and dislikes on YouTube, the video-sharing giant gets a recollection of controversies related to online wars among users.

YouTube’s own rewind video became a victim of people’s frustration and the video was slapped with millions of dislikes.

A powerful tool, isn’t it? Its recent disappearance from the YouTube videos is acting as a catalyst to further ignite the controversy.

A lot of users, at random instances, have found out that the dislike button keeps disappearing and coming back while surfing YouTube.

the dislike button on youtube doesn’t work anymore????? um

Hell yeah the dislike button on YouTube from my POV only shows “dislike” and no number

The dislike button, all of a sudden, has gone wonky for a lot of users using the app version of it.

It appears randomly on videos where the dislike button won’t show the actual count. This has led many to think that YouTube is planning to get done away with the button after all.

But when dug deeper into this issue, we found out that it isn’t really what it appears. YouTube is more like doing some tests at this moment.

The update repository page of YouTube suggests that they are experimenting with the visuals of like and dislike buttons which may affect how the dislike button appears to a user.

Experiment with like/dislike button designs on mobile: With a small group of users, we’re testing designs for the like and dislike buttons on video watch pages. Some of these designs won’t include a visible like or dislike count.

If you’re in the experiment, you can still like or dislike a video to help tune the recommendations you see on YouTube. Creators will still be able to see the exact number of likes and dislikes on their videos in YouTube Studio.

The FAQ section further clears the air. Here’s what it says.

Q. If I’m in this experiment, can I opt out?
A. Currently, there’s no way to opt out of this experiment.

Q. Are you removing the dislike button?
A. No, we’re just experimenting with a few designs that don’t show the dislike counts.

Well, this is enough to put a pause button on the rumours doing rounds on the internet about YouTube ripping the dislike button.

At this moment, it is unclear as to how long this experiment is scheduled to last but we hope it doesn’t take much longer.

All the functions work properly, it’s only the visual count that has been compromised so feel free to hit the dislike button whenever you feel like it.

That said, we will add more developments as and when they are available so stay tuned.

06:00 pm (IST): After a long experiment, it seems that YouTube has finally removed the dislike button in the latest update and users are not quite happy with this change, as can be seen from the reports.

11:48 am (IST): YouTube has put in place the change where dislikes on videos are now hidden from the public. This has drawn a lot of criticism from viewers. Some even threaten to cancel their…