Couldn't we just use ratio of overall views to likes? Videos that are highly disliked won't have a good views/likes ratio compared to a video that is highly liked.
Also, RIP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussCHoQttyQ
Also, RIP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussCHoQttyQ
I'm not exactly a Google-tier product designer, so I have to imagine such a proposal has already been seriously considered... Perhaps they're waiting for the dust to settle before trying other approaches?
In any case, the idea is not necessarily novel in the social media space. I recently learned that Twitter has a similar strategy for discerning content quality: the ratio[1]. It's not something that's explicitly exposed to users as a statistic, but it's basically just one step away.
[1]: https://eclincher.com/your-tweet-got-ratioed-what-next/
fUCK IT i AM NOT HITTING THAT BUTTON NOW. dOUBLING DOWN!