The dislike button is a well-known button that typically appears along with a "like" button in many social media. On steam, every screenshot, artwork, workshop mod, video, guide and review that has been published has a dislike button. Until this year, it was also shown in the "friend activity" feed whenever any of your friends bought a game or posted a "status" message. However, it was a mere placeholder and had absolutely no effect, so it has been removed (we can still see it when a friend adds one of the previously mentioned items to favorites).

In my opinion, this button is completely useless for screenshots, artworks, videos and reviews as well, since they don't have the 5-stars-rating-system that the other items have. (EDIT: I mean, the button does absolutely nothing for these items, you cannot even see a dislike count). Thus, it should be removed too.

Regarding the workshop mods and reviews (especially the workshop mods), there is a huge problem with the rating system. Personally, I see the dislike button as negative for this purpose, but I understand why some people see it as necessary. Nevertheless, that is not the problem I want to criticize.

Currently, every workshop mod is included in a list called "Most popular mods of the week" at the time of publication. 7 days later, it's removed from the list. The problem is that, while the most liked mods are shown on top of the list and hence they're easier to see, dislikes also play a role in computing the position of mods in that list. A very unfaire role. Why are dislikes so unfair in this context, you may be wondering? Because, based on my own experience, the effect of 1 dislike is equal to about 10 likes, so a mod with 4 likes and 0 dislikes will end up being more popular than another mod with 36 likes and 4 dislikes, which is ridiculous (the proportion should be 1:1). Some people, mainly haters and modders who see other modders as their competitors, are well aware of this system and abuse of it by making other mods drop dramatically with a single dislike (you can guess what happens when they have multiple accounts).

Many people probably don't care at all because most of them aren't modders, but keep in mind that this affects everyone directly, because the quality of the mods we see on top of those lists is not as good as it should be. In addition, making a good mod is very time consuming, quite a lot more than making a video for YouTube (on average), so modders want to reach as many people as possible.

Hope you understand these issues and have a nice day.