Aside from complaining, make sure to do something about it. Otherwise there’s no point.

1. Absolutely use uBlock Origin and Sponsorblock on all devices you watch youtube on.
2. There’s a Return Youtube Dislike extension you can use. Bonus: you can use data from it to shame various’ companies videos, which is what youtube primarily wanted to avoid by removing dislikes.
3. For creators mostly - there are other video-sharing websites you can post your content on (or even easily mirror your youtube uploads). Make sure to upload somewhere else too, so that more people can leave youtube forever.

Do whatever you can to harm youtube (or Google more broadly), as well as support alternatives. Memes and complaining by themselves are pointless, and solve zero issues.

So, what are good alternatives to YouTube and how do I get there?

I remember Reddit used to have the ability to show both upvote and downvotes. I miss that feature.

This has always confused me.

I’ve never liked, disliked, rated, commented, or shared a Youtube video. Because I’m using Freetube, I technically don’t even subscribe anymore. Why are y’all so eager to maintain the algorithm? Does “disliking” a video feel like agency?

If you really wanna punish Youtube creators, watch their video for less than 30 seconds. That won’t count as a view, but I bet the algorithm clocks it as a dislike.

Any service only cares about engagement so the dislike was never really useful because the core of engagement is rage bait. The only way to truly downvote content is to not engage with it whatsoever. Ex. The only way to dislike Instagram is to not use the platform