A Browser Extension Lets You See Dislikes on YouTube (For Now)

If you’ve determined that you just completely can’t dwell with out seeing the variety of dislikes that movies get on YouTube, there’s now a technique to get them again, no less than for now.

A gaggle of builders has created an open-source browser extension, aptly titled “Return YouTube Dislike,” that brings again the hate counts on YouTube. The extension obtains the information from YouTube’s personal API, which nonetheless reveals dislikes when it’s used for public information, and restores the previous structure we have been used to seeing on movies earlier than YouTube determined to axe dislikes final month to handle harassment issues and “dislike attacks.” Return YouTube Dislike was noticed by 9to5Mac.

Interestingly, the extension reveals you the precise variety of dislikes a video has acquired and never simply approximations, which is what YouTube beforehand supplied. (Creators can still view the variety of dislikes their content material receives; the quantity is simply not accessible to the general public. Individual customers may also nonetheless dislike content material to assist curate their suggestions).

The extension is out there on Chrome, the place it has already been downloaded by greater than 200,000 customers and garnered greater than 3,800 total constructive opinions. It can be installed on Firefox, Edge, Opera, and Brave as effectively. If you’re an iOS person, the builders even have a model for you, nevertheless it’s jailbroken, so that they advise these to “use at your own risk.”

As talked about above, the extension will briefly deliver again YouTube dislikes. On their Github page in regards to the undertaking, the builders observe that YouTube will take away the “dislike” discipline from its API on Dec. 13. This implies that dislike counts received’t be capable of be accessed by means of the API after that date, which, based on the builders, “[removes] any ability to judge the quality of content before watching.”

Currently, the extension will get its data from a mixture of YouTube’s API information and scrapped information. The builders declare they “save all available data” to their database to make sure will probably be accessible when YouTube shuts down the hate counts in its API. In addition, they do have a plan for when YouTube removes the “dislike” discipline, though it’s not clear whether or not it’ll work out but.

“With the removal of dislike stats from the YouTube API, our backend will switch to using a combination of scraped dislike stats, estimates extrapolated from extension user data and estimates based on viewlike ratios,” the builders wrote on Github.

Return YouTube Dislike isn’t excellent. The dislike counts are up to date each 2-3 days, which is “not ideal,” the builders mentioned, and one thing they’re engaged on.

The extension is free, though the builders are taking donations on Patreon and the Russian funds platform YooMoney.

Although I get why individuals are clamoring for the return of dislikes, as somebody who prefers platforms that aren’t swamps of negativity, I don’t miss them. To every their very own, I say. Enjoy your dislikes whilst you can.