YouTube is the popular online video sharing and social media platform.
With the internet and its widened coverage and reliability, and thanks to mobile devices that have become common and the increasingly affordable devices to create videos, as well as the trends of having presence on the internet, YouTube has expanded tremendously.
YouTube has a significant social impact to many around the world, and managed to place itself at the center of the popular culture, internet trends, and also creating multimillionaire celebrities. While it has been criticized for facilitating the spread of misinformation, copyright issues, violating its users' privacy, enabling censorship, and endangering child safety and wellbeing, YouTube remains among the biggest titans the internet has ever seen.
But before any of that, Before it was acquired by Google, YouTube was the brainchild of Steve Chen and two others. They were all early employees of PayPal, who earned enough money to start their own business after the company was acquired by eBay.
And YouTube's first-ever video, was uploaded April 23, 2005.
Titled Me at the zoo, it shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo.
And following YouTube's attempt to make its platform safer by removing the dislike counter, Karim updated the video's description to protest the change.
Jawed Karim also commented on the “Update to YouTube’s Dislike Count” video, where YouTube first announced the change.
Karim wrote that Matt Koval, YouTube's Creator Liaison, "doesn't look excited because he knows it's the wrong decision."
When YouTube was first launched in 2005, Karim was not officially an employee but rather an informal advisor.
At that time, Karim was 26, and was still “focused on school.”
Fast forward, YouTube is the largest streaming platform on Earth, and is Google's property, which in turn, is Alphabet's, the largest American multinational technology conglomerate holding company.
By hiding dislikes, YouTube aims to promote “respectful interactions between viewers and creators.”
“We are proactively making this change because YouTube has a responsibility to protect creators, especially smaller creators, from harassment and dislike attacks,” a spokesperson said.
While YouTube has a "noble" goal, this kind of approach is not known as the perfect solution.
