Let's look at it a different way. How often has youtube recommended to you a video that you felt the need to click dislike on? How often have you visited yout

Let's look at it a different way. How often has youtube recommended to you a video that you felt the need to click dislike on? How often have you visited youtube from some link provided externally and felt the need to register your dislike (and how often was that link followed with the understanding you would probably be seeing something you found disagreeable)? What is a dislike in these instances actually communicating to youtube and to creators? Youtube already probably wouldn't have suggested that to you, and the creator probably isn't making content for you. As a useful signal, dislike brigading is very low (and whatever usefulness it serves in communicating to the creator is already served by comments and external media). In that context, I think removing the indicator of how many people have disliked the video (but not the ability to dislike) may serve a useful purpose.