YouTube has introduced that it’ll be hiding public dislike counts on movies throughout its web site, beginning right this moment. The firm says the change is to maintain smaller creators from being focused by dislike assaults or harassment, and to advertise “respectful interactions between viewers and creators.” The dislike button will nonetheless be there, however it’ll be for personal suggestions, slightly than public shaming.

This transfer isn’t out of the blue. In March, YouTube introduced that it was experimenting with hiding the general public dislike numbers, and particular person creators have lengthy had the ability to hide ratings on their videos. But the truth that the hate counts will likely be disappearing for everybody (regularly, in response to YouTube) is an enormous deal — viewers are used to having the ability to see the like-to-dislike ratio as quickly as they click on on a video and will use that quantity to determine whether or not to proceed watching. Now, that can not be an possibility, however it might shut off a vector for harassment.

YouTube says that when it examined hiding dislike numbers, individuals had been much less possible to make use of the button to assault the creator — commenting “I just came here to dislike” was seemingly much less satisfying while you don’t really get to see the quantity go up. That habits should still proceed to some extent, although, as creators will be capable to see the hate numbers for their very own video in YouTube Studio. The firm says this nonetheless lets well-meaning viewers depart personal suggestions to content material creators or use dislikes to tune the algorithm’s video suggestions.

Other social networks have given customers the choice to cover score metrics, too — Instagram and Facebook famously allow you to conceal like counts if you wish to keep away from the potential social stress that comes with having your important measure of success on the platform proven to everybody. It’s not precisely an ideal comparability — the variety of likes your YouTube video will get will nonetheless be public (should you depart public scores on), and Instagram hasn’t turned off likes site-wide but, however it exhibits a rising concern with what information creators have entry to versus what information their audiences have entry to.

Dislike counts going personal might assist conceal an embarrassing piece of YouTube historical past: essentially the most disliked video on your entire web site is the corporate’s personal Rewind from 2018. That specific recap video sparked a lot ire that YouTube just lately introduced that the annual Rewind movies had been canceled. There’s additionally an argument that not having the ability to see public dislikes might result in customers watching a video that’s not superb — an insincere apology, maybe, or informative-looking content material that finally ends up being an advert.

Still, YouTube’s argument that it needs to guard smaller creators from dislike mobs or harassment is one which’s arduous to argue in opposition to. It’s simple to think about workarounds for a few of the different concepts it floated to fight that habits, which included requiring further data on why you had been disliking the video or graying out the hate button till you’d watched a certain quantity of the video. Instead, individuals leaving dislikes will likely be doing so for the creator’s eyes solely — and screaming into the void simply isn’t the identical as publicly booing.