I am really just starting out my channel, so I am not sure I really understand what is the (real) purpose of this change. A dislike hurts somewhat, but it is unavoidable this to happen when you have a large public. I have not seen dislike attacks (not to say they don't exist), but I'm pretty sure they can be avoided with other tactics.

I suspect that not showing the dislikes drives up engagement, but in my experience as a user I rarely look at the number of dislikes to judge a video.