YouTube is updating Shorts — and most headlines have focused on minor details: a heart instead of a thumbs up, a clear screen mode, acceleration up to 2x. The real change is hidden in a single sentence of the official announcement: the dislike button disappears from Shorts forever, and its data will stop updating for creators by the end of June 2025.
What changed technically
The Clear Screen mode allows you to remove all icons and captions with a single touch — useful for musical or visual content where the interface interferes with perception. Acceleration up to 2x is implemented by holding the edge of the screen: release it — return to normal speed, or lock it with a gesture. There's also a watch timer and quick mute.
The "like" button received a new icon — a heart instead of a thumbs up. As The Verge notes, TikTok and Instagram Reels have long used a heart as the primary reaction: YouTube is consciously adopting the "visual grammar" of competitors.
Dislike: convenience or criticism filter
This is not the first attempt: the platform tested removing the dislike button in 2024 and late 2025. Now — full and permanent implementation for Shorts only, while for long videos and streams the dislike button remains.
Users disliked for various reasons: low quality, personal preferences, or simply not wanting to see a specific creator. More specific signals fine-tune recommendations more accurately.
YouTube, official explanation of changes
Instead, a dissatisfied viewer will have in the three-dot menu: "Not interested," "Don't recommend this channel," "Report." When selecting "Not interested," you can specify the reason. YouTube claims that the "Not Interested" function is statistically more effective than dislike in reducing unwanted content.
- Historical dislike data will remain in YouTube Studio — but will stop updating by the end of June
- For long videos and live streams, the dislike button continues to work unchanged
- Creators will track Shorts effectiveness through likes and the percentage of viewers who watch to the end instead of swiping
The scale of these changes
At Cannes in June 2025, YouTube CEO Neil Mohan cited a figure: 200 billion Shorts views per day. Separately — about 2 billion hours of Shorts are watched on televisions monthly. This is precisely why removing the dislike button is not a redesign, but a decision about what signal the algorithm receives from two hundred billion sessions per day.
If "Not interested" is truly a more accurate signal than a dislike — Shorts recommendations should improve measurably. If not, creators will be left without a single public indicator that content isn't working — and will only find out through view statistics that the viewer cannot see.
