Asmongold Shares His Opinion About YouTube Removing Dislikes

Twitch streamer Asmongold gave YouTube a giant thumb down for removing dislikes off the platform, accusing the site of silencing resistance to corporate and government “propaganda.”

YouTube announced on November 10th that it would no longer show dislikes for videos, instead focusing on the number of likes they receive. The site said that the modification was made to protect against “dislike attacks,” in which viewers would mass-dislike videos to harass content creators.

But then many people, like Twitch star Asmongold, have criticized this decision because YouTube already allows users to disable likes, dislikes, and comments on their videos.

Asmongold isn’t afraid to speak out on controversial topics, and the dislike count on YouTube was no exception. He attacked the Google-owned platform for a change he believes promotes censorship and makes the service less safe in a series of articles.

Here’s what he stated; “YouTube removing dislikes not only censors dissent from corporate propaganda and brand agendas. It also protects predators and abusers from accountability to their audience, making new victims easier to find.”

He also mentioned that by deleting only dislikes, narratives may be spun in which content that would typically be met with hostility now appears to be well-received. He noted; “Removing Likes AND Dislikes from a video is removing feedback entirely. Removing ONLY Dislikes allows you to craft a positive and potentially misleading narrative regardless of the audience’s reaction.”

Asmongold further expanded on the topic on his Twitch broadcast, stating that YouTube was becoming more receptive to “corporate propaganda.”

Asmongold isn’t the only prominent figure in the streaming industry to criticize the decision. Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel told the site that making this change would be a huge mistake, but YouTube sensation PewDiePie believes the system is great as is. The latter even mentioned his personal experience searching for tutorial videos and knew to avoid those with a lot of dislikes, which Asmongold also mentioned.

He remarked; “I don’t know how many times I’ve watched a tech help video with 2 likes, 38 dislikes and saved myself 15 minutes.”

While it’s unlikely that YouTube will back down, the video announcing the elimination of public dislikes has four times the number of downvotes as it has upvotes.