Co-founder of the video streaming platform YouTube, Jawed Karim has spoken out against the removal of the dislike count from the videos. The move has been divisive since it was announced, with the announcement video itself featuring a lopsided like to dislike ratio.
To clarify, the dislike button has not been removed but viewers will no longer be able to see the number of dislikes on a video. They can still use the button but the total number of dislikes can only be viewed by the creator of the video.
Both creators and viewers have spoken out heavily against the move and Karim has questioned Google's true intentions behind the change.
Karim shared his views by updating the description of "Me at the zoo" which was the first video ever uploaded to the platform.
"The ability to easily and quickly identify bad content is an essential feature of a user-generated content platform," says Karim.
"Why? Because not all user-generated content is good. It can't be. In fact, most of it is not good. And that's OK. The idea was never that all content is good. The idea WAS, however, that among the flood of content, there are great creations waiting to be exposed. And for that to happen, the stuff that's not great has to fall by the side as quickly as possible."
Karim also added that the, "process works" calling it, "the wisdom of the crowds."
"Does YouTube want to become a place where everything is mediocre?," says Karim.
"Because nothing can be great if nothing is bad."
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