[kiryin]

I wonder what likes and dislikes are even for. They don't generate income for channel owners afaik, nor do they affect the recommendation algorithm for users, also afaik. Only views "matter." Especially if the other half gets hidden now, they should just get rid of the whole thing. It doesn't seem to provide anyone with anything, except useless bandwagoning

[Mountain_Skies]

Try finding reviews for older fitness equipment. 90% of them are generated by scripts pulling images and text from Amazon and image search. The other 10% are either old commercials from when the product was released or long term owners of the product doing real reviews. None of these videos get very many views so that's not a useful metric. The automated videos probably only get viewed for a minute or so before they exited but that's enough time to register a view. The automated videos tend to accumulate dislikes from people angry they got tricked into watching. Now that signal is gone and actual product reviews will no longer be able to rise above the automated ones by having a favorable Like/Dislike ratio. Because these reviews are for old products, even the legitimate reviews have only a small number of views and doesn't serve as a useful way to separate the clickbait from the actual content.

[not2b]

Read the article. They specifically say that they will still use "like" and "dislike" to help figure out recommendations for videos to recommend to you, and that the publisher of the video will still see the dislike count, so the creator gets the feedback.

[csee]

> I wonder what likes and dislikes are even for

It's useful for users to figure out if it's worth spending time watching the video.

That usefulness degrades for politically charged content but holds for things like how-to guides, lectures, etc.