YouTube Shorts tests new dislike button placement and rebrands it as “Not Interested”

YouTube Shorts

YouTube Shorts is quietly testing a new approach to how dislikes work, and the change goes beyond a simple visual tweak. Some users are now seeing the dislike option moved away from its usual position, while others are being shown entirely new wording designed to better reflect how YouTube wants people to train its recommendation system.

Over the past few days, several users have noticed that the familiar thumbs-down button is no longer visible during normal Shorts playback. This is not a bug. Google has confirmed that it is experimenting with both the placement and the phrasing of the dislike option on YouTube Shorts as part of a limited test.

In the current experiment, the thumbs-down button is being moved into the overflow menu. This menu is accessed by tapping the three-dot icon in the top-right corner of a Short. While the dislike option is now hidden behind this extra step for some users, the thumbs-up button remains prominently visible on the main playback screen. The result is a clear imbalance in visibility, where liking content is frictionless but disliking it requires deliberate effort.

Alongside the placement change, YouTube is also testing new language around the dislike action itself. Some users continue to see a traditional “Dislike” label, often paired with a separate “Not interested” option. Others, however, are seeing the two concepts merged. In these cases, the thumbs-down icon appears alongside “Not interested” phrasing, signalling that the action is less about expressing negativity and more about personal preference.

What Google has to say

According to Google, this wording reflects how users already interact with the platform. Internally, the company says people often treat “Dislike” and “Not interested” as interchangeable signals. Both actions are primarily used to shape recommendations rather than to penalise creators. By testing different layouts and labels, YouTube is trying to understand which version better helps users fine-tune what appears in their feed.

That logic may make sense on paper, but the change is unlikely to land smoothly with everyone. Dislikes have long been a sensitive topic on YouTube, especially since public dislike counts were removed from standard videos. Any attempt to further downplay or obscure the option risks frustrating users who rely on it as a quick feedback tool. For Shorts in particular, where content is consumed rapidly and decisions are made in seconds, hiding dislike functionality could feel like unnecessary friction.

Google appears aware of the potential backlash. Users who are part of this experiment will be shown an optional survey after selecting either “Dislike” or “Not interested” from the overflow menu. The company is also encouraging feedback directly through the YouTube app, suggesting that this test is still very much exploratory rather than a locked-in redesign.