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

The decision to kill the dislike button is very much strictly anti consumer and marks the beginning of the enshitification of youtube, especially the enshitification of the comment section. It use to be that if someone had the most dogshit opinion, they would be disliked into oblivion and nobody would see it. Now even the worst opinions imaginable will be pushed to the top if it can find 100 like minded mouth breathers, effectively normalizing it in the eyes of the average viewer. Same goes for whole videos too. I desperately wish we would come up with a real federated alternative to it, because right now its actively contributing to the decline of humanity.