Are dislikes important in regards to the algorithm?

Black Tea Recluse

Black Tea Recluse

Member
I don't care about receiving dislikes personally but do they factor into the algorithm Youtube uses at this point in time? Last I checked what was most relevant was watch time, and I've heard people with larger channels state this to be so, but I wanted to know if dislikes mattered in such a way that it could as one person put it, "kill my channel". Do they?
 
Dislikes can hurt you from a human behaviour perspective. There's lots of clickbait out there so sometimes I'll take a quick peek at the dislike and like ratio. If there's is an overwhelming amount of dislikes, I'll leave the video quickly. This is where it can hurt you, as it will hurt your audience retention, which is just as important if not more than watch time.
 
PositivelyBrainwashed said:
Dislikes can hurt you from a human behaviour perspective. There's lots of clickbait out there so sometimes I'll take a quick peek at the dislike and like ratio. If there's is an overwhelming amount of dislikes, I'll leave the video quickly. This is where it can hurt you, as it will hurt your audience retention, which is just as important if not more than watch time.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this. Either some awful, clickbaity contents or incoming ear rape (I'll pause the video before it loads, then exit)
 
As far as I know, excluding the human element, YouTube does not differentiate between likes and dislikes and will promote videos based on the interaction. Remember, a widely disliked video could be controversial for what ever reason, and people always love controversy, even if it's just people looking for the next thing to be offended by!
 
I agree with Frithgar, the like/dislike feature is independent of YouTube's ranking system. More an "additional" interaction tool to boost youtube.com subscription retention rates more than anything else (interactive customers have higher retention rates). I say technically though because the "dislikes will kill a channel" idea, if it did anything, would likely work in reverse, with the dislikes fueling an increase in video views and thus popularity. Bieber's "baby" video with more dislikes than likes is an excellent example of this.
 
I believe both count towards interaction. I run with around a 9-1 like to dislike ratio.
 
The algorithm counts likes and dislikes as engagement and doesn't favour one or the other.
 
The algorithm, from everything I've read, doesn't distinguish between likes and dislikes. I'm unsure on the human element. I almost never look at likes and dislikes on a video, and the folks I see noticing it tend to make a comment on it, as if there's some sort of objective element to it OR that there's a team of "haters" who have been dispatched to dislike a video. So I'd say the jury is out on how much it affects people when they visit a video.
 
I just read a day or two ago (of course, I dont remember where) that a high dislike to like ratio in the first 48 hours will have an effect on if/how much YT will (or will not) share/boost your video.
 
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