Web Reactions

Web Reactions vs YouTube Dislikes Democratized

This comparison is mostly about privacy disclosure. YouTube Dislikes Democratized is a niche YouTube counter; what makes it stand out in the store catalog is what it tells Chrome it collects — and Web Reactions's approach is the opposite end of that spectrum.

TL;DR

On the public Chrome Web Store card, YouTube Dislikes Democratized declares collection of personally identifiable information and web history. The extension is closed source, has 26 listed users and a 1.0★ rating, and its last release on the public store card is dated January 2022.

Web Reactions collects no browsing history at all. The only thing tied to your identity is an irreversible salted hash of your lowercased email; the email itself is sent only during sign-in and is never written to a database. The full policy is on the privacy page.

At a glance

Web Reactions YouTube Dislikes Democratized
What is collected (per the store / policy) Email transiently (discarded after OTP), reactions and their public targets, day-rotated salted IP hash for rate-limit Personally identifiable information; web history (per the Chrome Web Store card)
Source code Public on GitHub, GPL-3 Closed source
Identity model Email-OTP → irreversible salted hash Not publicly documented
Sites covered Facebook, GitHub, Amazon — and growing YouTube only
Public reach Brand-new 26 users, 1.0★ rating
Last public release Continuous 2022-01-08 per the Chrome Web Store card
"Delete my account" flow Yes — one button in the popup; erases user row and decrements counters Not publicly documented

Where Web Reactions is the better choice

1. No browser-history collection. Period.

"Web history" in the Chrome Web Store taxonomy means the extension may collect a list of pages you visit. For an extension whose stated purpose is showing dislike counts, that is much more data than the job requires.

Web Reactions sees the page only long enough to find the public anchor it's about to render a reaction picker next to. The only URL it sends to our server is the one you actually leave a reaction on, and the only thing we persist there is a count.

2. PII handling that survives a privacy audit

Web Reactions's PII-handling story is intentionally tiny: your email is sent over TLS, used to deliver a 6-digit code, and discarded. The thing we store is sha256(server_salt || lowercase(email)) — a one-way hash. Even an attacker with full database access can't recover your email from it.

Closed-source extensions can claim anything they want about how they handle PII; you have to take their word for it.

3. You can delete your account, and we'll prove it

The Web Reactions extension popup has a "Delete account" button. When pressed, the server erases your user row and decrements the reaction counters that you previously incremented. No queue, no review, no email exchange.

We didn't find a comparable flow disclosed for YouTube Dislikes Democratized on its store card.

4. Counts that don't pretend

Beyond the privacy story, Democratized is a YouTube-only counter with a tiny user base. Web Reactions covers three different platforms today, with verified-account voting. That's a more honest and a more useful number when you see it on a page.

Which one should you pick?

Pick Web Reactions if you want a reaction extension whose privacy disclosure is "no browsing history, ever; email hashed and discarded; here's the source code".

We can't think of a reason to recommend the alternative on privacy grounds, and we don't try to.

Curious how the layer looks on the video page itself? See Web Reactions for YouTube.

Install Web Reactions See other comparisons

Sources