There have already been a few changes to YouTube that have the community in turmoil. That’s how it was back then when star ratings were abolished: Here the developers found that in most cases users only give either one or five stars anyway. That’s why today’s counter for likes and dislikes was created.
This allows viewers to quickly see whether a video promises what it delivers – particularly useful for instructions, tutorials or compilations. However, YouTube gradually removed the public counter for the “thumbs down” that users give worldwide. Only the uploader himself can see these numbers.
But since users can still vote, the data is still in the code. With the Return YouTube Dislike Count extension for Firefox and Chrome, you can easily make these values visible again in the usual place.