I have never ever looked at the dislike counts to judge a video. I am baffled by most of the top comments here, that express frustration or outright anger about this. I don't think like counts are relevant to me either. When I consume YouTube (and I have a premium membership which I am happy with) I either know the creator well or I have to trust the search and recommendation algorithms to give me good content for my current interest. I don't find it hard to skim a video and judge for myself if it is worth my time. I'm betting I'm part of the silent majority on this.
You can interpret these like and dislike interactions in two ways: in absolute terms or in personal terms. "Is this video good?" or "Is this video good for me right now?" We can debate what most users are trying to express* or if they are brigading, but it is mostly irrelevant. As soon as the platform stops showing everybody the same videos or at least random videos and it starts recommending specific videos to specific users then like/dislike interactions are a function of how well the algorithm is working, not some absolute measure of sentiment. Dislikes just indicate that the video was recommended to the wrong people. Netflix doesn't show the number of likes and dislikes and I haven't heard of anyone demanding that this change.
* The label "like" certainly suggests a personal judgment. On the other hand, the like/dislike placement and other feedback options suggest an absolute judgement. When I have (very rarely) used the dislike button it was more about a bad recommendation. Often the video wasn't bad in any absolute sense. In my experience I have to go looking for videos I truly dislike in some absolute sense. YouTube does occasionally ask me to rate a recommendation and there is a "Not Interested" option which are alternatives that are even more explicitly about recommendations. Unfortunately these are only offered before you even try to watch a video or if you are very intentional about returning to your recommendations feed and finding "Not Interested" in the three dots menu.
You must watch very simple, popular content, in which case, yes, you're part of the majority. Congrats.
I rarely watch videos, but when I do, it's complex technical material relating to a niche subject. A high dislike-to-like ratio is a clear indication that the content is inaccurate. Not offensive or boring or too long, just inaccurate. And because the content is complex, I can't just skim it and identify inaccuracies.
This is exactly my experience and I also have a YouTube premium account. I use YouTube religiously and have my own system of improving the algorithm so that the vast majority of content recommended is something I might watch.
If I don't like a video, I hit dislike and will maybe even remove it from my watch history.
I suspect that most who are against this change are not heavy YouTube users.
Previously if you were linked their videos it might have 1000 upvotes and 100,000 downvotes, and it would be obviously terrible. Now you just see 1000 upvotes and it would look like it has substantial support.
Google can and does remove videos they simply dislike by using nebulous policies against 'hate' or 'meanness' or similar. Removing dislike then, by and large, helps push those unpopular views that Google themselves approve of.
Does removing likes let them accomplish that? They can still remove videos that trigger them, but without a like count they can't push their ideology with the appearance of support.
I believe this is the actual reason why they will show upvotes but not downvotes, and as prediction I expect them to remove total views since that allows for estimating the viewer sentiment based on likes per view (or make it useless for estimation, for example replacing a count with big buckets like "thousands" or "millions").
You can interpret these like and dislike interactions in two ways: in absolute terms or in personal terms. "Is this video good?" or "Is this video good for me right now?" We can debate what most users are trying to express* or if they are brigading, but it is mostly irrelevant. As soon as the platform stops showing everybody the same videos or at least random videos and it starts recommending specific videos to specific users then like/dislike interactions are a function of how well the algorithm is working, not some absolute measure of sentiment. Dislikes just indicate that the video was recommended to the wrong people. Netflix doesn't show the number of likes and dislikes and I haven't heard of anyone demanding that this change.
* The label "like" certainly suggests a personal judgment. On the other hand, the like/dislike placement and other feedback options suggest an absolute judgement. When I have (very rarely) used the dislike button it was more about a bad recommendation. Often the video wasn't bad in any absolute sense. In my experience I have to go looking for videos I truly dislike in some absolute sense. YouTube does occasionally ask me to rate a recommendation and there is a "Not Interested" option which are alternatives that are even more explicitly about recommendations. Unfortunately these are only offered before you even try to watch a video or if you are very intentional about returning to your recommendations feed and finding "Not Interested" in the three dots menu.