Like or dislike buttons let users be awed by videos or give them thumbs up or down. For creators, they can use their likes and dislikes to gauge what viewers like and what they do not. If a YouTuber gets thousands of likes on a video but only a handful of negative reviews, it’s possible to make like-looking videos later in the future. You can likely be sure both the likes and dislikes will be genuine.
But, if the YouTuber is slammed by a significant portion of the YouTube audience, there might be many negative reviews even though the YouTuber’s videos are excellent regarding the quality of presentation and content. In this scenario, the criticisms are likely to come from many hateful people who wish to destroy YouTube’s YouTube career.
The “dislike mobs” are all over YouTube and can be a massive threat to YouTubers over the long term. The good news is that YouTube has begun to incorporate features that allow creators to avoid these mobs. This article will take a deep analysis of the best way to eliminate hate mobs from YouTube. First, we’ll take a closer review of how dislikes influence the YouTuber.
Do dislikes make an impact?
The YouTube algorithm recognizes likes and dislikes for any film to determine YouTube engagement. You’ve probably heard that the algorithm puts a lot of importance on engagement. If you have many dislikes rather than likes in one or more of your YouTube videos, they’ll constitute engagement. For instance, if the viewer is watching a significant part of your video and decides to leave a negative comment, that’s positive engagement following YouTube’s algorithm. Therefore, dislikes will not affect your videos in any way, on your video content or your revenue from YouTube.
There are instances when dislikes can cause indirect negative consequences. For instance, when a user can stay for a short time on an online video, clicks on the dislike button, and then goes to another one, YouTube will rate the engagement negatively. YouTube’s algorithm will consider it the viewer isn’t finding any value in the video. Consequently, at some point, in the near future, your content won’t be suggested to viewers by YouTube. Additionally, other viewers with similar interests will not be informed about your content. Therefore, in the long run, disliking your videos could affect your exposure.
For established YouTubers with millions of subscribers, even just a few thousand likes do not matter. But for new YouTubers in the early stages, their lack of exposure can cause a decrease in income opportunities. Excessive hate to like ratio may also influence how advertisers view your videos. If advertisers see that your videos frequently get not liked in large amounts, it’s unlikely that they like to be associated with your brand.
What is “dislike mobs”?
Certain dislikes are genuine and involve viewers communicating their feelings about a video with a single click or tap of the “dislike” button. Most of the time, it’s the ones with the highest controversy which generate the highest number of YouTube dislikes. Other scenarios where there’s a significant chance that a video will be viewed as unpopular are:
- Videos with poor editing or presentation
- Videos of low quality
- Videos with clickbait title titles
- Videos that contain hate speech
Sometimes, however, organized online mobs might target specific creators and cause hundreds and thousands of displeasures. The mobs online could consist of internet trolls or an individual segment within the YouTube community with an agenda for a specific YouTuber. Let’s talk more on this subject by using an illustration.
Dhruv Rathee, an Indian YouTuber, is famous for his commentary-style videos on YouTube. His videos focus on political and social issues affecting his home country. In the past, Rathee has put out over 400 videos and 6.1 million subscribers that is one of the most successful Indian YouTubers. The popularity on his YouTube channel led Rathee to create another channel where he would upload video vlogs from his travels and his partner.
Many of Rathee’s politically charged videos contain criticisms of India’s ruling party, known as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This has resulted in the YouTuber being harassed by mobs of organized hatred who support the BJP. In addition to leaving hateful comments, they also attack Rathee with hateful YouTube comments, which violate YouTube community rules.
For Rathee, these challenges aren’t a big deal, given that Rathee already has an impressive fan base. For YouTubers just getting started to establish themselves, likes, shares, and new subscribers are vital. If a YouTuber gets victimized by hate mobs, it could be a disaster for a YouTubers’ YouTube career.
How to deal with them?
In the final analysis, it’s impossible to get rid of any of your YouTube videos of negative feedback. Sure, you can make a report of negative comments and also urge your subscribers to submit complaints, which will eventually lead to the moderators removing them. But there’s no way to remove disliking comments. However, an option creator can activate on the preferences section on their own YouTube Studio pages. This option hides dislikes; however, it also conceals YouTube likes. If you switch this option off, all positive comments will be secret.
In recent times, many content creators have approached YouTube searching for some kind of protection against targeted dislike campaigns. The creators have urged YouTube to take action against mobs of dislike since targeted dislike campaigns can harm their channels. YouTube had no choice but to listen, and, in 2019, the director of project management at YouTube, Tom Leung, announced that the company was working on addressing the problems with targeted campaigns.
One of the concepts Leung suggested went like this: If viewers click the button to dislike and they do not like the video, the reason behind the video should be included by way of the form of a checkbox. If this idea comes to fruition, it will let creators comprehend why their viewers leave negative reviews. This will inspire them to serve their audience more effectively.
However, there are many issues and difficulties in making this concept a real-world reality. A system like this would be extremely complicated to create and would be challenging to collect the responses and communicate them to creators efficiently.
Another option Leung suggested was the complete elimination of dislike features. But, according to Leung, it is the most radical move. It would create a lot of controversy among YouTube users since it would essentially eliminate the democratic basis of the platform.
Content creators took note of what Leung said, the thought of a new concept. The idea was that the button to dislike would only be visible after viewers had watched one-fourth of an online video. If this is implemented, this will help creators greatly since it doesn’t hinder the viewing experience. It will also go a long way to ensure that displeasures are due to genuine dislike and not just an effect of the subject and clickbait title.
How is YouTube dealing with these mobs?
The year 2021 is now in the rear-view mirror, and YouTube is now well in the process of making modifications to remove specific hate campaigns. This year, the company began experimenting with new design concepts to implement the changes. It wasn’t far off from Leung’s 2019 vision of removing dislikes. However, it also included democratic values.
The tests have been conducted. The designs allowed viewers to dislike videos. But, the number of dislikes would be secret. Therefore, even if a user does not like something, the other’s dislikes will not be seen. Viewers will only be able to view the amount of YouTube likes. YouTube Studio is the only way creators would know how many dislikes via YouTube Studio.
To clarify the testing, the company released a help article that placed a lot of emphasis on the wellbeing of YouTube content creators. The article also advised that viewers might be motivated to increase the number to a higher level if they are aware of the number of dislikes.
The tests were not all-encompassing, i.e., YouTube didn’t try this idea across all creators who are on YouTube. They selected a small number to test the idea and let them, along with the users, share their opinions.
Conclusion
How effective YouTube’s tests were being not something the company has revealed to the public. But, it’s reasonable to believe that YouTube will try to make it much more difficult for mobs of hate to run in a riot on YouTube over the next few years and months. The idea is to create an environment for content creators who want to prosper based on real responses instead of agenda-driven ads designed to smear the creators.
If YouTube sticks to this model, this will also benefit those truly unhappy with specific videos since it doesn’t remove the possibility of disliking a video. In addition, creators will be able to observe YouTube Studio’s dislikes, which will encourage them to work on their content-creating abilities.
If you’re a YouTuber who is growing and want to grow your YouTube channel, you’ll require likes, comments, watch time, views, and subscribers to expand. You can buy YouTube subscribers and everything else you’ll need to make it on the world’s largest video streaming platform. You can also increase the number of YouTube sales.