YouTube will stop updating dislike counts for Shorts in YouTube Studio by the end of June as it shifts creators toward replacement performance signals and introduces a more granular viewer feedback system designed to sharpen the platform’s recommendation engine.

The data cutoff marks the backend consequence of YouTube’s decision to retire the dislike button from Shorts. While creators will retain access to historical dislike data, the count will no longer reflect new viewer responses going forward. Dislikes will continue to be tracked as usual for long-form videos and live content.

In place of the dislike count, YouTube is directing creators to monitor Likes and the ratio of views to swipe-aways as the primary indicators of Shorts performance. The view-vs.-swipe metric captures how often viewers watch a Short versus scrolling past it, a behavioral signal YouTube says better reflects engagement with short-form content.

On the viewer side, YouTube is adding a sub-layer to the “Not Interested” option that survives the dislike removal. When a viewer selects “Not Interested” from the three-dot menu, they can now provide specific reasons why a Short was not right for them. YouTube said the additional input helps the platform fine-tune individual feeds and improve future recommendations.

The change positions “Not Interested” as a more active feedback mechanism rather than a passive dismissal signal, with the specificity of each response feeding directly into how YouTube calibrates content recommendations for each viewer.

“Not Interested” and “Don’t recommend this channel” remain accessible through the three-dot menu. The Report option, used to flag potential Community Guidelines violations, is also unchanged.

Source: JJ (TeamYouTube)

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