Come on, I'm trying not to dismiss your perspective just because it sounds a bit conspiratorial, but this is not convincing. Are you saying the YouTube execs (or whoever is leaning on them) are just acting emotionally with no strategy?
Dislikes are embarrassing to, for lack of better terminology, their pet causes. Simply disabling them on certain videos or channels calls even more attention to them - so why not just remove them entirely.
The only thing surprising to me is that it took them this long.
So hence why the whole feature is pRoBlEmAtIc and must be removed :p