The hope with youtube videos is that the likes/dislikes represent a random sampling from the ratings of everyone who would watch the video. A brigade is purposefully adding to the sample ratings from only one side. So from an objective standpoint it makes the like/dislike ratio lower quality.
But from a less objective standpoint, it's just rude. Even if the rankings are purely cosmetic, why go out of your way to leave a dislike on one person's video if you wouldn't interact with it otherwise?
There is always bias in the userbase, people usually watch content on their side of the political agenda for example. How do you know the so-called "brigade" isn't actually bringing things closer to public opinion?
Also are we talking about global opinion? A lot of people outside of the western world aren't as big fans of LGBT for example, so if we want to make things more objective those videos should have even more downvotes and hateful messages. And if we're being consistent with what google currently does, these videos should be banned sometimes for hurting others (ex. religious) feelings. People are ok with downvotes and banning, but only if it panders to their current subjective moral fashions.
> There is always bias in the userbase, people usually watch content on their side of the political agenda for example.
I agree, but as a user I am used to assuming a baseline of support for a video coming from the channel's subscribers. So even if the pie-in-the-sky random sampling is biased, I can usually account for that. What I would like to be able to assume is that likes and dislikes come from the "usual" traffic a video receives.
> Also are we talking about global opinion?
No. I think it can be assumed (like you said) that videos typically receive views from certain people. My point is more that brigades disrupt the helpfulness of ratings for viewers like myself. I think we should not offend the sensibilities of the homophobes in this world (lmao) by asking them to watch LGBT-friendly videos. Conversely, I think said homophobes should refrain from brigading such a video just because they dislike LGBT people.
I also will reiterate my claim that it is rude for the hypothetical homophobe to exercise targeted downvotes on LGBT videos.
As for myself, I'm not all too pleased with downvotes being straight up removed from Google (edit: YT). But acting like brigades are constructive and normal use of the platform is silly to me.
But from a less objective standpoint, it's just rude. Even if the rankings are purely cosmetic, why go out of your way to leave a dislike on one person's video if you wouldn't interact with it otherwise?