Google-owned YouTube’s plan to remove the “dislike” button from videos, the easiest and bluntest way for users to express their disapproval with the content of a video, should not be viewed in isolation. It’s part of a long-running trend of elites seeking to prohibit ordinary people from speaking back to them.
YouTube dislikes are disliked (haha, get it?) by elites for the same reason that audience scores on movie reviewing sites and comments sections on media websites are disliked by them. It gives ordinary people the opportunity to call their supposed betters out on their bullshit.
Those elites, by the way, include YouTube itself. The most-disliked video of all time is still YouTube’s official “2018 rewind” video, a compilation of highlights from the previous year that was widely panned by YouTube users for favoring mainstream celebrities over YouYube personalities like PewDiePie. YouTube’s 2019 “rewind” video also broke into
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