noisy signal is better than no signal, which in turn is better than manipulated signal. at least with this change they won't be deleting[0] dislikes anymore.
[0]: https://phzoe.com/2021/01/27/white-house-youtube-dislike-man...
[0]: https://phzoe.com/2021/01/27/white-house-youtube-dislike-man...
It's certainly possible that Youtube is acting in a political manner and is preferentially deleting real dislikes, but this post hardly proves that.
I didn't make that claim.
My main point is that the article suggests that this manipulation is selective, and while Youtube might indeed be selectively manipulating White House videos, the methodology used doesn't show that.
Here's a simple question which should be easy to answer, if you've actually approached this in an impartial way: does Youtube also remove likes or dislikes from other videos in a similar way? If the answer is "yes", then the conclusion becomes much less politically interesting.
PS, I think you're overestimating the amount of people who care about White House channel videos. E.g. the press briefing from 3/29/21 has less than 34,000 views. I guess some of the Trump rally attendees forgot to show up to their downvote party.
81m.org tracked other channels. Different behavior.
All that article shows is that the votes are manipulated by users too, there's no signal in down vote brigading like that