YouTube is hiding dislikes on all videos, here's why:

YouTube announced that they are removing the "dislike" button across its platform.

File photo: YouTube logo

The button remains, count not visible to the public

According to YouTube, the change will better protect its creators from harassment and reduce the threat of what it calls "dislike attacks". The American giant says that the dislike button will be there to stay, however, the counts won't be visible to the public.

Meanwhile, creators will be able to track their dislikes in YouTube Studio. This decision follows an experiment YouTube ran earlier this year. 

YouTube explained that public dislike counts can affect creators' well-being and may motivate targeted campaigns to add dislikes to videos. However, dislikes can also serve as a signal to others when videos are clickbait, spam, or misleading, which can be useful.

We are proactively making this change because YouTube has a responsibility to protect creators, especially smaller creators, from harassment and dislike attacks, YouTube spokesperson said.

YouTube said it had also heard from smaller creators and others who were just getting started on the platform that they felt they were being unfairly targeted by dislike attacks.

The changes to the dislike count will roll out globally across YouTube's platform starting today, including all devices and the web.