this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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The removed the dislike count a couple years ago, so you can no longer see if a video is terrible.
"Return YouTube Dislike" extension for Firefox and Chrome.
Works surprisingly well even after all this time. I often forget its been removed.
It isn't a real count of users who have clicked the dislike button, YouTube no longer makes that data available.
So I would not put much stock in that number.
I'm well aware of how it works.
Then why put any stock in it whatsoever
Because it is quite accurate
And you're basing that conclusion on...?
Creators can view their like and dislike percentage, and around when the extension came about, many large youtubers were able to confirm the accuracy of the guesstimate that the extension gives you (on new content after the dislike indicator was removed). There are enough users and historical data to make the calculations reeeeally close.
It's not real though, you do know that right? There isn't some hidden dislike count that YT has that the extension can access.
I imagine it's taken from other users of the extension clicking the dislike button. A biased and wildly uneven sample. I would not put much stock in it at all.
Can confirm it is real, I have it installed right now via revanced, Grayjay, and Firefox extension.
Also, I have a terrible imagination, but that's OK, as it's open source and you can see how it's calculated on their github.
It takes the ration of likes to dislikes from users of the service, and applies that ratio to the total number of likes to estimate the total number of dislikes.
It also archived a lot of video's dislike counts before the dislike field was removed from the API.
As a user of the extension who knows how it works (no thanks to yourself), take it with whatever sized grain of salt you feel comfortable with.
It's "real" as in it exists, but you say so yourself that it's just an estimate.
It is real, it's just not data from YouTube. The information on how it works is made very clear, and people using it should be aware of the drawbacks.
you can still see that number on smarttube
The thumbnail and title alone is typically enough to know how garbage it is.