Google has removed dislikes from YouTube so as not to alienate authors of videos that are being disliked by fans. Nevertheless, you can get back the “dislike” if you use a special extension for Google Chrome.
Likes, dislikes, and reposts are literally the holy trinity that we encounter on every online service, whether it’s a social network or something else. We use them to express an attitude towards the content that is posted on the site, or towards the author who created it. But while the likes and reposts make most content creators happy in general, the “dislike” marks depress many quite a bit. Therefore, in order not to disappoint people who fill platforms with content, developers of various platforms began to phase out the disliking. This includes YouTube.
YouTube’s unlikeliness started disappearing about a fortnight ago, though not for everyone. Google decided not to disable them everywhere at once to let people gradually get used to this innovation. As a result, some people’s tees disappeared with everything else, while others didn’t.
How to bring back dislikes on YouTube
Perhaps, authors of the videos liked the initiative, but users didn’t find it at all useful and demanded to return the “dislike” marks. Google, of course, didn’t take anything back. But that doesn’t mean there’s no place for dislikes on YouTube anymore. You can do it yourself.
You can do it using a special Return YouTube Dislike extension for Google Chrome:
- Follow ->>this link to the Chrome Web Store;
- Click on “Install extension” in the opened window;
- Open YouTube on your computer and launch the video;
- Pay attention to the counter below the video – the dislikes are back.
Installing the Return YouTube Dislike extension doesn’t just return the dislikes. It slightly modifies YouTube’s website layout so that you can see the exact number of “like” and “dislike” marks. While by default they’re in the thousands or tens of thousands (when there are enough of them, of course), the extension allows you to see their exact number.
How is this possible, you may ask? Because the disliking is disabled. Yes, they are disabled. But not at all. So the extension uses the API of the site where the “dislike” element still exists, and simply reproduces it where it should be. As a result, users get what they need, and YouTube itself doesn’t suffer at all. There is, however, one unpleasant nuance.
Why did YouTube hide the dislikes?
It turns out that after December 13 Google is going not just to hide the dislikes, but to disable this type of data altogether. Thus YouTube Dislike will no longer be able to work on the same principle as before. However, the developers assure that in this case, the extension will continue to work, starting to collect “dislike” marks on the principle of crowdfunding from each user.
Obviously, this would be an uneven substitute. After all, the extension’s audience is objectively smaller than the cumulative number of viewers of even the least popular videos on YouTube. But, on the other hand, users have no other alternatives anyway. Therefore, if you want to keep your YouTube dislikes, the Return YouTube Dislike extension is the only way out.
I wouldn’t count on Google at some point coming to their senses and deciding not to remove the dislikes. While history is replete with examples of this sort of thing, nothing in the context of this one points to a similar outcome. Still, Google has a firm stance on this: teasers are detrimental and provoke a flow of viewers away from YouTube.
Therefore, by abandoning them, the company expects to increase interest in its own platform. So what if now users won’t be able to say bad things about content makers or what they do? After all, it will only get better. The site itself stands a good chance of becoming kinder, and the haters will, at least in part, migrate to a place where they can express their negative emotions through the use of dislikes.
