logical next step. sounds like they just wanted to wait until the controversy blew over.

I'm not keeping up with YouTube, but didn't they already remove it a few years ago?

We should quit watching YouTube. YouTubers are more proof of overconsumption. People should not be willingly shilling for corps for ad revenue. Just turn it off.

I mean, not like people would go anywhere.

This is probably bad for the YouTubers actually making content, despite it all. They can see whether people disliked their video.

"Return YouTube dislikes" exists right now to approximate dislikes, and it will continue to exist, and review bombers are more likely to use it and therefore disproportionately influence approximate statistics. But at least for now, YouTubers can dispute those guesses. They won't be able to do that if they lose the metric.

It's kind of conceding to the mob.

The real dislike button is removing videos from your watch history - as the watch history defines what the algorithm recommends. Curate your watch history and you can have a better experience.

The dislike button is for users telling the content creator they've made a bad video. But I believe studies have shown it can leave a bad impression of the platform on the user - that's why sites get rid of negative indicators.

Didnt they remove it years ago?

I wouldnt know since i use invidious and automatically download videos of creators i follow using a yt-dlp script.