So many smart people there and such an idiotic solution - this whole short sighted, mind narrowing, engagement "boosting" recommendation system must be trained on attention horizon of a fruit fly.
It’s also about engagement and avoiding offending folks via dislikes. IMO dislikes are essential.
It's probably companies advertising their products getting salty their new movie or something got 90% downvotes and YT is all too eager to please its ad overlords.
It started when a Joe Biden speech video got disliked into oblivion. We're talking 2 million+ dislikes.
Why not do things transparently and do weighting by default weight = upvotes - downvote + us cents paid by author, all 3 visible.