No More Dislikes On YouTube? How The Platform Got Worse

YouTube recently announced that "dislikes" will no longer be visible to all users, only to the creators of the videos. This decision is quite unpopular since dislikes on YouTube fulfilled many functions that were considered essential by several users of the platform. For example, the number of dislikes in a tutorial was generally indicative of the quality of the tutorial; if a tutorial had a lot of dislikes, it was considered difficult to follow or useless.

The decision to remove this feature is one more in the long list of unpopular decisions that have been made on YouTube in recent years. Let's look at other decisions that made YouTube worse and were not well received by the community.

When they removed the option to add subtitles created by the community

Before September 2020, YouTube had a feature called Community Contributions. It allowed users to create subtitles for their favorite creators' videos and submit them for approval to these same creators.

This allowed small channels, which cannot pay for an official translation, to have a greater reach. Thanks to this function, many channels found new audiences in other languages and even in people who are deaf or hard of hearing. All this without paying a penny.

Now, thanks to YouTube removing this feature, many channels must use the automatic captioning system, (which is not the best) if they want to continue reaching their audiences.

This also made life difficult for several freelance translators, who used the feature as proof of their experience to expand their resumes.

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YouTube Red

It's hard to remember, but in 2015, when YouTube introduced its premium version to the world, social media strongly disapproved of this decision. Known as YouTube Red, for just $ 10 a month, it offered users original content, the ability to download videos for offline viewing, and the ability to play videos while using other apps or when the screen was off.

The internet found several problems with this proposal. First of all, YouTube Red's price was very high for just those features. It cost the same as a Netflix subscription, which offered much higher quality content.

Additionally, the ability to play videos while using other apps or when the screen is off was free before YouTube launched Red.

Most of all, the creation of YouTube Red solidified in the minds of many a change in the philosophy of the platform. That day the company, in the minds of many, stopped being a site for amateur video creators and took on a much more corporate air.

Double ads at the beginning of the videos

It is difficult to know when this practice started. However, we do know that around the end of 2017 to the beginning of 2018 YouTube began to include two commercials at the beginning of the videos instead of one.

There is nothing wrong with advertising, in fact, this is what makes the platform money, but when it is already too much it can become intrusive.

In addition to being annoying, some of these ads cannot be skipped, which tests users' patience. The problem is even worse when the ads are doubled or have an exaggerated length (some users have reported the appearance of full movies in these ads).