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But it seems to only do this in the home tab. Search and subscription tabs still show the view count.
Now I don't think view count is much of an indication of quality for a video, but the number of likes even less so. It varies quite a bit even on video to video from the same creator depending on if a like is called out for, or audience type.
Certainly not the most egregious change they've made, but a bit of an odd one I can't quite figure out why.
15k likes to millions of views would be poor performance, but only if you had already clicked in on the video to see the view count. I know what they really want is a hypothetical single "how much you will like watching this video" number to display, but I feel "likes" (and to maybe a lesser degree view count) need a second number that you can compare with. A bit like getting ratioed on twitter, you need both the comment and like/retweet counts to make that judegment.