A professional economist (I think?) wrote a NodeJS program (I think?) to demonstrate dislike manipulation on current White House YouTube videos: White House YouTube Dislike Manipulation. I’m not so much pointing this out as an attack on Biden (though I’ll say he is a boring stuffed suit), but as a factoid for psycho-epistemology interests. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, as creatures mostly controlled by a-rational forces, and seeking social cohesion over truth, we’re more influenced by what other people like or dislike than what the actual “thing” is.
That jaggy red line is telltale.
I won’t say it’s flawed, but the results aren’t conclusive, since there’s no analysis of videos from other channels to compare. A comment from Joao describes it nicely:
It is possible that YT is employing a general algorithm to prevent the misleading effects of “dislike mobs”, as discussed here: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18207189/youtube-dislike-attack-mob-review-bomb-creator-insider
Don’t get me wrong, that’s still condemnable if it’s done without transparency! What I’m trying to say is that before rushing into conclusions that these actions are politically motivated, we should do a “control experiment” with non-political YT videos, which could be targets of “dislike mobs” as well, like product reviews, and test if the same effect is observed.Also, even though a lot of people could be in bed at 1 am EST, on the West coast the time would be 10pm. Not to mention that there’s a considerable cut to ~50% of the dislikes happening at 6pm EST on the second plot. Can you argue that most people are asleep then? If they wanted to hide, why not something 5am EST/2am PST? And that would be effective in the US only.