YouTube's removal of dislikes is controversial among users
In November of 2021, YouTube removed dislikes off their site because according to their CEO, “they were sometimes a reflection of viewers' opinion of the channel and not the video itself”.
Spencer, a student at E&S who makes content on the platform shared his own opinion on the legacy of the whole situation,
"In retrospect, I don't think it mattered much" Spencer said. "While it did happen, in the first month or two, first week or two, everyone's like, oh my gosh, dislikes are gone."
Thankfully that comment makes it clear Spencer hasn’t let it affect him too much and he even states,
"For me personally as far as it goes, it doesn't really matter to me. because as a creator, or as someone that works under a creator, I can still see all the dislikes. It's just a matter of the viewers. They can't see the dislikes."
But YouTube removing dislikes is a much deeper problem than just the surface level, as Spencer says,
"YouTube is much in favor of companies rather than they are the creators."
Creators on YouTube are often mistreated when compared to big companies that can post whatever without worrying about demonetization rather being promoted by the website and Spencer doesn’t see much hope,
"I think as far as fighting against it, there's not much you can do. You can punch a wall as hard as you can but if you're just using your bare fists you're never gonna get through that wall."
There aren’t many easy solutions for the average YouTube user or even content creator like Spencer to fight back against all the company does,
"The best thing for content creators is just to post better content. And that's about, that's about all they can do. As for YouTube, they would simply just have to push more, more content, you know, push the same content that the content creators are pushing out, push that out more rather than company content."
But this won’t stop content creators from making the best videos they can even in an unfair system, Spencer won’t give up saying,
"I'm constantly working on making the best content I can make, whether or not the video releases or not. Because if I don't like the way one thing turns out in the video, that video isn't going online, the video has to be 10/10 perfect, otherwise it's not going up there."
In the end, Spencer continues making videos pushing quality over quantity; "If it's just simply better content to watch, then YouTube will push that better content."