Reports of YouTube moving the dislike button behind a menu have been showing up lately but, according to YouTube itself, this isn’t the change you think it is.
The dislike button has been a topic of contention in the YouTube community for years now, ever since YouTube removed the count that showed alongside it. So when some users noticed that the dislike button was suddenly no longer visible and hidden behind an overflow menu, there was plenty of confusion around the change.
In a statement to 9to5Google, though, YouTube directly confirms that this is not a test or a change that you’ll see on YouTube videos. Rather, this update to the dislike button’s location appears solely on the video page for a creator’s own video. In other words, you’ll only see this altered location on your own videos.
A YouTube spokesperson explains:
We are not testing hiding the dislike button on YouTube for users. We’re introducing a new UI for creators on their own uploaded videos, where dislike is behind the three-dot menu, and as always, they can find their full dislike counts in Studio, alongside other analytics.
And, sure enough, we were able to immediately replicate this behavior when we tested it out on one of our own videos.
More on YouTube:
- YouTube reportedly ‘looking’ into adding audiobooks to Premium
- YouTube begins rolling out GIF support for comments very slowly; it’s for a reason
- YouTube bringing automatic background play to Android Automotive cars
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