YouTube is experimenting with a new approach to negative feedback on its Shorts feature, potentially renaming the traditional “dislike” button as “Not Interested” and relocating it within a pop-up menu. The test, currently visible to a subset of users, merges the thumbs-down action with YouTube’s existing “Not Interested” button.
Changes in the Shorts interface
In the latest user interface experiments, YouTube has removed the dislike button from the main Shorts sidebar and placed it inside a contextual menu alongside the “Not Interested” option. Depending on the test group, users either see the label “Dislike” or “Not Interested” attached to the thumbs-down icon. YouTube says the goal is to clarify what a negative interaction means and how it should inform the platform’s recommendation systems.
YouTube is reworking negative feedback
In 2021, YouTube decided to hide public dislike counts across its platform, a change intended to lessen harassment and “dislike-bombing” campaigns by making dislike totals visible only to creators, not the general audience.
By blending the dislike and “Not Interested” actions in Shorts, YouTube could reduce confusion about what each signal actually means while giving algorithmic models clearer data on content preferences. How creators and users react to the renamed function will likely shape future feedback tools across the broader platform.