Can You See Who Liked or Disliked Your YouTube Video?

The short answer is no — YouTube never reveals which specific viewers liked or disliked a video, and that applies to everyone, including the channel owner. This isn’t a hidden setting or a premium feature; it’s a deliberate privacy design. Here’s what you actually can see, and what to do instead.

Why Likes and Dislikes Are Anonymous

Showing exactly who reacted to a video would expose ordinary viewing behavior in a way most people wouldn’t want. For dislikes especially, naming individuals would open viewers up to harassment for a single anonymous click. Most platforms follow the same logic: public counts, private identities.

This is also why no legitimate third-party tool can reveal this data. YouTube’s API simply doesn’t expose per-user like or dislike identities, so any tool claiming to show you “who disliked your video” is either guessing, scraping unrelated data, or outright scamming you — several such tools have historically been vehicles for account-credential phishing. Avoid them.

What You Can Actually See

As a Viewer

The thumbs-up count appears beneath any video, unless the creator has chosen to hide it. Public dislike counts have been hidden platform-wide since 2021, so you won’t see those on anyone’s video.

As a Creator

In YouTube Studio > Analytics (renamed Insights in a 2026 update), you can see:

• Your total like count and how it trends over time.
• Your total dislike count — creators can still see their own numbers even though the public can’t.
• Like counts per individual video, alongside views and watch time.

What you’ll never see, at any subscriber level, is a list of names.

Can Creators Hide Their Like Count?

Yes. In YouTube Studio, open a video’s details and look for the option controlling whether ratings display on the video page. Turning it off hides the public like count while you still see the real number in Analytics.

Some creators do this to reduce “pile-on” behavior, where a video already showing heavy negative reaction attracts more of the same out of momentum rather than genuine response to the content.

What to Do Instead of Trying to Identify Reactors

Since you can’t see who reacted, the useful move is figuring out why:

• Check audience retention in Analytics to see where viewers drop off. A sharp drop at a specific timestamp usually explains negative reaction better than any name list would.
• Read the comments. They’re direct, specific feedback — far more actionable than a dislike count.
• Look at your like ratio relative to views. A healthy ratio means the content landed with the people who actually watched it; a poor one on an otherwise high-view video often points to a title or thumbnail that oversold what the video delivered.
• Consider timing. A sudden spike in dislikes on an older video sometimes reflects an external factor (a controversy, a link from an unfriendly community) rather than the video itself.

A Note on Dislike Counts and Ranking

Dislikes are one signal among many, and not a channel death sentence. YouTube’s system weighs overall satisfaction — watch time, returns, shares, survey responses — far more heavily than a raw dislike tally. A video with strong retention and some dislikes generally outperforms one with no dislikes and poor retention.

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