It looks like the creator is counting any decrease in dislikes over time as manipulation, without a firm understanding of how large scale systems work.
Say for example I used a batch of 100 HN accounts to mass downvote your comment. After a while an hourly job runs that looks at all those votes in aggregate and determines they were coordinated (for simplicity sake they all came from the same IP) and removes them. You'd see a large shift in the net score of your comment all of the sudden. This isn't HN manipulating anything, it is them doing their job to prevent abuse on the platform.
It's interesting data, but the obvious response from YouTube would be "we run sophisticated click fraud detection algorithms and periodically remove interactions determined to be from fraudulent accounts; given the current political climate White House videos attract more of these types of fraud than other videos on our platform and thus the effect is more pronounced on their videos". The numbers in question are small enough (~1k missing interactions) that it doesn't seem totally unreasonable.
I don't even buy YouTube's claim that "brigading" or "dislike attacks" is a real thing or a problem. If they have a minimum number of minutes that a video needs to be watched before a vote is counted, then that vote is legitimate, full stop. YouTube are simply unhappy about which videos users dislike, whether it's the White House's videos, important brands, or YT's own videos.
Agreed. Sometimes you know within a couple of seconds that a video isn't what the title and thumbnail claims it is, and that's a great reason to hit "dislike".
For instance, an hour-long video claiming to be what you're looking for, but actually consisting of a still image and a URL to a scam/spam site.
> I don't even buy YouTube's claim that "brigading" or "dislike attacks" is a real thing or a problem. If they have a minimum number of minutes that a video needs to be watched before a vote is counted, then that vote is legitimate, full stop.
I've seen dislike attacks happen. And if it takes a non-trivial procedure to make them count, people will document that procedure. For instance, hypothetically:
"Alright everybody, here's the link. Remember, mute the tab right away but don't mute the video itself; wait 2 minutes (the timer that starts when you click the link will go green to let you know), then click the dislike button."
I've seen much more complex instructions offered as part of gaming a poll, as well as sites built to help semi-automate or simplify the process.
The key distinction that would be useful for YouTube to measure: did you encounter the video and then dislike it, or did you visit a video you were referred to for the sole purpose of disliking it? I don't think hiding dislike counts serves that purpose, though.
