why i disable ratings on my youtube videos

A question/complaint I get rather frequently has to do with the fact that I hide the like/dislike bar on all of my YouTube videos. For some people this has proven to be a source of confusion, if not frustration. I’ve talked about this before, but I’ve decided to write a blog about it just so I, as well as my viewers can have something to direct people to when they ask why I do it.

It’s definitely a bit suspicious I suppose. I know when I go to a channel and the Likes and Dislikes are hidden, I assume there was some reason for that, usually that their video has been heavily Disliked and the uploader is trying to hide evidence of that. This may be a good theory for newer viewers, but if you stick around you notice that I hide the ratings on all my videos, not just ones that didn’t get a good reception. By the way, the ratings aren’t technically “disabled” they’re just hidden. You can still Like and Dislike, it just wont be displayed publicly.

I was initially inspired to hide the ratings bar when I was a frequent target of video brigading by the fans of other bigger YouTubers who had made videos about me. Of course these fans do not actually watch the video (the analytics confirm this), they just come to dislike it and leave a nasty comment because their favorite YouTubers essentially encouraged them to. So that usually results in a video having a massive amount of dislikes. So the dislike button becomes a way for people who have been trained not to like you to come and essentially vandalize your channel. For several months, this happened very frequently and resulted in many of my videos being dislike-bombed. Now I don’t mind negative feedback if it is actually useful. I have made videos that got a lot of dislikes naturally because my audience thought the video was bad or off-base. But this is not useful feedback, this is just vandalism. And I have to say, when every other video you make has a bunch of dislikes, it’s not exactly encouraging. It kind of makes you not want to make videos. So I decided to take away the weapon these trolls were using.

Nowadays, I don’t get dogpiled that often. Both because I have sort of “opted out” of the “YouTube culture war” and have done a decent job of staying off of the radars of the usual suspects. However, I decided to still keep ratings hidden, because I find it kind of pointless and usually misused in general.

Most of the time, your video will get 99% likes. Because your subscribers like you and support you so they’re going to auto click Like. And unless you’re being brigaded, there’s no real reason for anyone to click Dislike. So most of the time, the like/dislike bar is either A. 99% Likes because your audience clicks Like anyway, or B. 90% Dislikes because you’re being dogpiled by some other person’s audience.

Sometimes you make a controversial video and that could get you some dislikes as well. In this case, people use the “Dislike” button as a “Disagree” button, and I really hate that people do that. In my opinion, Dislikes should be used for videos that are bad, poorly made, misleading/clickbait, or generating strong disgust — things like that. Not used just because someone said something you disagree with. That sort of diminishes the whole function of clicking Dislike.

So yeah, I basically think the like/dislike bar is useless and kind of provides very little value to me as a creator and also to my viewers. Also, I’m interested in taking a way a weapon people use to vandalize your channel when they don’t agree with you (or when they’ve been told they shouldn’t agree with you.)

Also, if i’m being honest I find it very amusing how frustrating this is to people. People literally feel entitled to being able to click Dislike on stuff. So that’s another reason, I guess.