Why would people be against their videos on YouTube being rated?

Every so often on YouTube I've noticed a video where you can't rate it at all. Why would someone not like a video to be rated at all? I think YouTube should have an option to only allow positive ratings, a bit like how with certain forum software where if you allow posts to be rated (I know this forum doesn't) you can disable the option for a negative rating to be given to posts.

Don’t all YouTube videos have a like and dislike button? The only difference is the creator can choose whether to make the number of likes or dislikes public.

I've never really noticed this, but I do notice videos where the comments are turned off.

There are certain topics which will attract attention from groups of people who have nothing better to do than leave abusive or crude comments directed at people they disagree with, so creators who normally allow comments will turn them off in this case. For example:

• any video where a woman talks about gender discrimination or feminism
• any video about gun violence in America
• any video where someone undresses

I imagine there are certain videos where the creator knows no matter how good the quality of the content, they will attract a large amount of negative attention from people who are only there to expressive their dissaproval(a bit like people who write in to complain about TV programmes they didn't actually watch!), so it's better just to switch it off, than see a demoralising approval rating generated by people who aren't actually part of your audience at all.

Negative rating and negative comments can be used for bullying purposes so it is good that both can be switched off.

Geezertronic said:

Negative rating and negative comments can be used for bullying purposes so it is good that both can be switched off.

Click to expand...

On the flip side, it can be used to circumvent criticism or stop negative recations towards someting the creator did/announced. In this situation though, it harms them more than leaving them open because it proves to the people of the internet that they can't hold a discourse and/or like hiding from their issues.

JonathanP said:

I've never really noticed this, but I do notice videos where the comments are turned off.
There are certain topics which will attract attention from groups of people who have nothing better to do than leave abusive or crude comments .... so creators who normally allow comments will turn them off in this case. ....

Click to expand...

I see a different pattern. I notice that videos with comments not allowed tend to be ones produced by professional organisations, such as TV companies. Maybe it's a copyright thing, ie people are allowed to post these clips on condition that they cannot be criticised; or people do not have any permission to post these clips in the first place and in case they are challenged they don't any negative comments arising to be thrown into the balance against them.

My mates often turn their publicly visie ratings off on their train videos because , people dislike them.

There are many reasons why people press the dislike button on videos. Tilted footage when using a tripod. Windy whistling. Eratic zooming. Shaky footage. But above all else: jelously. I think kids dislike other train videos because they're jelous of the other trainspotters. Kids who don't have enough money to see and do all of the things older ones do.

It happens to me also, my amazing vids get dislikes here and there. I agree it's a bit annoying but I'm not really bothered now because nobody really watches my videos anymore, my ratings have dropped ahaha

Very rarely do I press dislike on a video because I know it negatively impacts some kids who make vids.

Although the ratings are hidden, you can actually rate them if you press the thumbs up/down, it just doesn't get shown publicly

The dislike button on YouTube has a positive effect on the popularity of a video. In fact, it’s better for a viewer to hit the dislike button than to do nothing at all, because all actions taken by a viewer on a video count as engagement, which help YouTube’s algorithm rank the video.

Remember, YouTube doesn’t always want to surface “good” content but rather content which provides a reaction.

Youtube is often used as a platform for sharing videos which are semi-private or linked to from elsewhere. It doesn't seem unreasonable for people doing that to not want to invite the rather toxic "community" of engaged youtube commenters to abuse and belittle them. It doesn't say anything about the quality of peoples arguments or work that they don't feel the need to justify or debate them on somebody else's platform.

As to votes, whether up-and-down or up-only, they rarely make content creators feel better - there's still a constant worry about whether the number is as high as it "should" be, and whether that just means that the reach wasn't great, or the audience was just not the voting type. It's all time and stress chasing a weird kind of validation which would be better spent producing the next great thing.