6 ms·

YouTube removed 3.9M dislikes for White House

65 points by smsm42 5y ago

dexwiz 5y ago
Not surprised. Youtube has been known to sell likes/dislikes for years. "Trending" videos for Pop Music will be minutes old yet have thousands of likes and views. The views and like/disklike ratio are about as useful as comments or Twitter followers.
- felipemnoa 5y ago
  >>Youtube has been known to sell likes/dislikes for years How do they actually do that? First I hear about it.
- takeda 5y ago
  I don't know it's actually youtube that does it. It's actually known that you can just buy an influence by purchasing access to bot accounts[1]. This happens on YT, Twitter, FB and other places, and it isn't just likes/dislikes but also comments. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4 ha he has more videos about that
- airpoint 5y ago
  Known by whom lol the flatearthers?
balozi 5y ago
First mistake is assuming that any YT numbers are real. Second mistake is assuming that YT numbers are accurate. Third mistake is assuming that YT numbers represent what you think they represent.
- leephillips 5y ago
  YT numbers are definitely neither real nor accurate: https://lee-phillips.org/youtube/ https://lee-phillips.org/youtube/
m1117 5y ago
Now all the people have to re-dislike.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rglover 5y ago
Goebbels is clapping from the beyond.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
Can you imagine how much of "scandal" this would have been if this happened during the last administration?
- duxup 5y ago
  Maybe on twitter. Otherwise I don't think anyone would care.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    CNNs drop in ratings would beg to differ.
    - duxup 5y ago
      I have no idea what that has to do with an imagined scandal... over youtube down votes... like none.
      - iammisc 5y ago
        You said no one would care other than twitter. However cnn made it's money the past four years sensationalizing everything about the previous administration, so that is evidence that people other than twitter care.. CNN's former viewers.
        duxup 5y ago
        Whatever CNN is, I think it is more than and has existed longer than "made it's money the past four years sensationalizing everything about the previous administration". Let alone how that ties to its ratings. You're out in the weeds with these characterizations and connections.
        iammisc 5y ago
        CNNs ratings have dropped precipitously after Trump left office, after rising quite a bit during his time in office. Several accusations against their hosts, such as Maddow, have been met with responses of 'this was exaggeration' in courts of law (an argument judges have accepted). With that in mind, and keeping in mind CNN is a pretty mainstream news source, it's pretty obvious that a large segment of CNNs viewers did care about such scandals during the previous administration, which means quite a bit of non-tweeters did.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
duxup 5y ago
I would assume YT stats often go through some sorts of spam detection ... thus this? I see YT stats change up and down a lot. On videos with lots of likes and dislikes, and videos with almost none. I just assume it's spam / false positive detection / database synchronization... or whatever system at work. Maintaining any kind of stats like this that matter / on a huge site has to be a 'try to keep it in the ballpark' at best scenario / endless adjustments. It doesn't take much deep thinking to realize how these numbers are going to change for all sorts of legitimate reasons, in any direction. Maybe a number of times, tomorrow even? Heck maybe if there was spam had nothing to do with the videos / source of the videos even? If I'm going test some up / down vote bottling ... probably going to pick a big target to see how far I can push the numbers.
- phzoe 5y ago
  9005 spam likes 3.9 million spam dislikes Makes sense.
drannex 5y ago
The tone in this is... Less than stellar. This is standard operating procedure, mainly dealing with deleted accounts, and reducing spam or bot actions on the site. 3.9M removed over the course of 500+ videos for a global account for one of the largest countries isn't all that surprising. They also remove likes and comments for spam reasons as well, which this "article" (if you can call it that) just so happened to ignore, I can't imagine why. YouTube prunes accounts quite often, even streamers and boy bands will have their numbers rapidly changed to deal with spam or bots. This has been normal operating procedure for over a decade.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > The tone in this is... Less than stellar. Agreed. I got down to the "So odd for the most popular resident ever!" and realized I got duped into reading some ideologue's rant against the other team and now I have to question the data provided and wonder what context got casually discarded.
  - jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
    This whole "Youtube deletes dislikes on White House videos" has been part of the alt right narrative for some weeks now, right next to "if masks work then why do we need to stay at home".
- phzoe 5y ago
  The data shows they deleted: 9005 Likes 3.9 Million dislikes 750,000 views You're welcome to think that nearly twice as many diskikes were removed as remain is normal. I disagree. Thank you.
  - duxup 5y ago
    > is normal. I disagree. Why though? What's normal and can't abnormal things happen?
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    Personally I have no idea how likes vs dislikes are likely to be distributed in any given set of artificial operations. Why are you so sure about it?
nrb 5y ago
Dislikes removed, or bots banned (taking the votes with them)?
- duxup 5y ago
  Youtubers value likes so the volume of like or dislike spam I suspect is pretty high. I see likes and dislikes change over time even on videos with very few likes and views. I just assume it is some sort of cleanup system.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mrmcd 5y ago
This guy also has a bunch of posts on the same site denying climate change and rehashing conspiracy theories about fraudulent votes for Biden. I wouldn't take anything he says very seriously.
iammisc 5y ago
I mean... when you threaten to nuke your own citizens, you gotta have someone running cover.
dobladov 5y ago
I wonder what would Youtube's CEO winner of Youtube's free speech award would think about it.
kunagi7 5y ago
It's similar to what Google does with other products like their Play Store. Things like the removal of 1 star reviews [0] when an app rating goes down. They call this "review-bombing" protection. And perhaps the easier option for this kind of official videos is disabling comments and like/dislike buttons for them. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22255245/google-deleting-bad-robinhood-reviews-play-store https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22255245/google-deleting-...
mdasen 5y ago
I'm a little shocked that this is getting so much traction here. The site (81m-dot-org) seems to be a right-wing "the election was stolen from Trump" site. Their "about" page says: It is true that Biden won the most votes cast for a U.S. presidential candidate, amassing about 81 million votes. Such a popular president should have some truly epic YouTube numbers. Let's keep track. I'm sure we won't see anything weird happening, such as dislikes being thrown out in the wee hours of the morning. When you're dealing with "voting" on the internet (like Reddit, YouTube, or HN do), there's going to be vote manipulation. Some of it you might be able to catch early on. Some of it you'll end up fixing with batch jobs that identify "huh, there seems to be a few hundred users using this IP address and all watching this video and hating it at exactly the same time." This blog linked here has such posts as "Something Rotten in Georgia" where she questions the accuracy of Georgia election results (https://phzoe.com/2021/01/06/something-rotten-in-georgia/ https://phzoe.com/2021/01/06/something-rotten-in-georgia/) and "81 Million Ballots" where she says that "there is ample reasons to suspect that foul play bumped [the number of votes for Biden] by several million" (https://phzoe.com/2021/03/12/81-million-ballots/ https://phzoe.com/2021/03/12/81-million-ballots/). Are we really upvoting right-wing propaganda now?
- airpoint 5y ago
  Exactly same thoughts. Not only right-wing propaganda but straight up conspiracy nonsense. How is this getting traction on HN!
- phzoe 5y ago
  Good thing you audited all the states and know the truth. Some of us aren't privy to such magical knowledge, and so we'd like a look see.
  - tzs 5y ago
    The relevant states were already audited. There is no "magical knowledge" required.
lph 5y ago
This is presented in a way that infers political partisanship, but without any evidence for or against that argument. - No statistics for previous administration's like/dislike removal rate. Was it lower? Higher? We don't know. - No statistics for YouTube like/dislike removal rates on other kinds of political or non-political videos. Maybe this is extraordinary behavior for YouTube, or maybe not. We don't know. In other words, this is flame bait that people can read into whatever they want to confirm their biases. With a heavy dose of partisan editorializing ("Disgusting!"). At best, it shows a need for more principled study from someone else.
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
  It's alt right propaganda. On the frontpage of HN.
- phzoe 5y ago
  The left wasn't keeping track of how many of their dislikes were removed from the previous administration. Why not? Because it was a pitiful and legit amount. That's why! Think!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - chomp 5y ago
    Do you have any supporting evidence of this? Unrelated to the topic, from your comments and post, you seem like you are a rather smart person, but you are also accepting a lot of negativity in your life. I really do suggest you disconnect for a bit from TV, news, and the Internet and look for creative outputs for your energy that aren't Red vs Blue.
    - takeda 5y ago
      Well, I know I didn't keep track 2017-2020 and I don't know any site that did. Do you have site that actually did? If I would own 81m.org site which only purpose is to monitor whitehouse youtube channel (very specific) and believed that the end justifies the means, why wouldn't I hire a botnets to help with that effort? If my botnet works I can show that general population is dissatisfied. If youtube removes my spam I can use that to show that YouTube is partisan. Either way I win. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4
erk__ 5y ago
The big question that is missing to be answered is what it looks like generally on youtube, especially with highprofile youtube channels with a lot of people who dislike them, it is rather rare where more than half of all viewers dislike a video. A incident like this also happened in the past and there youtube said that they remove malicious or spammy votes, though did not seem to comment on the concrete case. https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/jan/25/did-youtube-remove-dislikes-video-posted-biden-whi/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/jan/25/did-youtube-r...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cbradford 5y ago
Big tech defends the defenders of Big Tech. Yawn
cortexio 5y ago
Hmm, you cant really be sure if this is from bots or not. However, youtube has shown in the last 5 years that they actively want to promote the left and shown that they do not like anyone that has different opinions. I recall the trending page in the US being spammed with pro leftist videos that were unpopular while major popular videos from more conservative channels werent even showing up. Or all the demonitization of almost any conservative channels 4-5 years ago. It has gotten better though, oof. Want to give a skeptic opinion about covid or masks? They'll delete your video or demonitize it. How about them spamming their own channel with leftist propaganda videos with the likes/dislikes disabled because it was getting 90% dislikes? Ah well, nothing you can do anyway.
happytoexplain 5y ago
Is there a less biased source doing similar research?
klipklop 5y ago
I see a lot of people refuting this data, yet provide no counter evidence. Let's remove politics from this, is YouTube being deceptive? I am honestly asking. I have noticed in the past controversial videos have their views/dislikes reset. Anecdotal, but I would like to see if there is truth to vote and view manipulation. Hell look at sometimes how manipulated the trending pages are. I remember for months low view count Jimmy Kimmel clips were boosted to trending. Logged in or not. Seems like mainstream Hollywood stuff is far more likely to trend. YouTube is silent about explaining why this happens. It can't all possibly be spam and bots.

65 points by smsm42 5y ago

Not surprised. Youtube has been known to sell likes/dislikes for years. "Trending" videos for Pop Music will be minutes old yet have thousands of likes and views. The views and like/disklike ratio are about as useful as comments or Twitter followers.

felipemnoa 5y ago
>>Youtube has been known to sell likes/dislikes for years How do they actually do that? First I hear about it.
takeda 5y ago
I don't know it's actually youtube that does it. It's actually known that you can just buy an influence by purchasing access to bot accounts[1]. This happens on YT, Twitter, FB and other places, and it isn't just likes/dislikes but also comments. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4 ha he has more videos about that
airpoint 5y ago
Known by whom lol the flatearthers?

balozi 5y ago

First mistake is assuming that any YT numbers are real. Second mistake is assuming that YT numbers are accurate. Third mistake is assuming that YT numbers represent what you think they represent.

leephillips 5y ago
YT numbers are definitely neither real nor accurate: https://lee-phillips.org/youtube/ https://lee-phillips.org/youtube/

m1117 5y ago

Now all the people have to re-dislike.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rglover 5y ago

Goebbels is clapping from the beyond.

BitwiseFool 5y ago

Can you imagine how much of "scandal" this would have been if this happened during the last administration?

duxup 5y ago
Maybe on twitter. Otherwise I don't think anyone would care.
- iammisc 5y ago
  CNNs drop in ratings would beg to differ.
  - duxup 5y ago
    I have no idea what that has to do with an imagined scandal... over youtube down votes... like none.
    - iammisc 5y ago
      You said no one would care other than twitter. However cnn made it's money the past four years sensationalizing everything about the previous administration, so that is evidence that people other than twitter care.. CNN's former viewers.
      - duxup 5y ago
        Whatever CNN is, I think it is more than and has existed longer than "made it's money the past four years sensationalizing everything about the previous administration". Let alone how that ties to its ratings. You're out in the weeds with these characterizations and connections.
        iammisc 5y ago
        CNNs ratings have dropped precipitously after Trump left office, after rising quite a bit during his time in office. Several accusations against their hosts, such as Maddow, have been met with responses of 'this was exaggeration' in courts of law (an argument judges have accepted). With that in mind, and keeping in mind CNN is a pretty mainstream news source, it's pretty obvious that a large segment of CNNs viewers did care about such scandals during the previous administration, which means quite a bit of non-tweeters did.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

duxup 5y ago

I would assume YT stats often go through some sorts of spam detection ... thus this? I see YT stats change up and down a lot. On videos with lots of likes and dislikes, and videos with almost none. I just assume it's spam / false positive detection / database synchronization... or whatever system at work. Maintaining any kind of stats like this that matter / on a huge site has to be a 'try to keep it in the ballpark' at best scenario / endless adjustments. It doesn't take much deep thinking to realize how these numbers are going to change for all sorts of legitimate reasons, in any direction. Maybe a number of times, tomorrow even? Heck maybe if there was spam had nothing to do with the videos / source of the videos even? If I'm going test some up / down vote bottling ... probably going to pick a big target to see how far I can push the numbers.

phzoe 5y ago
9005 spam likes 3.9 million spam dislikes Makes sense.

drannex 5y ago

The tone in this is... Less than stellar. This is standard operating procedure, mainly dealing with deleted accounts, and reducing spam or bot actions on the site. 3.9M removed over the course of 500+ videos for a global account for one of the largest countries isn't all that surprising. They also remove likes and comments for spam reasons as well, which this "article" (if you can call it that) just so happened to ignore, I can't imagine why. YouTube prunes accounts quite often, even streamers and boy bands will have their numbers rapidly changed to deal with spam or bots. This has been normal operating procedure for over a decade.

rootusrootus 5y ago
> The tone in this is... Less than stellar. Agreed. I got down to the "So odd for the most popular resident ever!" and realized I got duped into reading some ideologue's rant against the other team and now I have to question the data provided and wonder what context got casually discarded.
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
  This whole "Youtube deletes dislikes on White House videos" has been part of the alt right narrative for some weeks now, right next to "if masks work then why do we need to stay at home".
phzoe 5y ago
The data shows they deleted: 9005 Likes 3.9 Million dislikes 750,000 views You're welcome to think that nearly twice as many diskikes were removed as remain is normal. I disagree. Thank you.
- duxup 5y ago
  > is normal. I disagree. Why though? What's normal and can't abnormal things happen?
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  Personally I have no idea how likes vs dislikes are likely to be distributed in any given set of artificial operations. Why are you so sure about it?

nrb 5y ago

Dislikes removed, or bots banned (taking the votes with them)?

duxup 5y ago
Youtubers value likes so the volume of like or dislike spam I suspect is pretty high. I see likes and dislikes change over time even on videos with very few likes and views. I just assume it is some sort of cleanup system.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mrmcd 5y ago

This guy also has a bunch of posts on the same site denying climate change and rehashing conspiracy theories about fraudulent votes for Biden. I wouldn't take anything he says very seriously.

iammisc 5y ago

I mean... when you threaten to nuke your own citizens, you gotta have someone running cover.

dobladov 5y ago

I wonder what would Youtube's CEO winner of Youtube's free speech award would think about it.

kunagi7 5y ago

It's similar to what Google does with other products like their Play Store. Things like the removal of 1 star reviews [0] when an app rating goes down. They call this "review-bombing" protection. And perhaps the easier option for this kind of official videos is disabling comments and like/dislike buttons for them. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22255245/google-deleting-bad-robinhood-reviews-play-store https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22255245/google-deleting-...

mdasen 5y ago

I'm a little shocked that this is getting so much traction here. The site (81m-dot-org) seems to be a right-wing "the election was stolen from Trump" site. Their "about" page says: It is true that Biden won the most votes cast for a U.S. presidential candidate, amassing about 81 million votes. Such a popular president should have some truly epic YouTube numbers. Let's keep track. I'm sure we won't see anything weird happening, such as dislikes being thrown out in the wee hours of the morning. When you're dealing with "voting" on the internet (like Reddit, YouTube, or HN do), there's going to be vote manipulation. Some of it you might be able to catch early on. Some of it you'll end up fixing with batch jobs that identify "huh, there seems to be a few hundred users using this IP address and all watching this video and hating it at exactly the same time." This blog linked here has such posts as "Something Rotten in Georgia" where she questions the accuracy of Georgia election results (https://phzoe.com/2021/01/06/something-rotten-in-georgia/ https://phzoe.com/2021/01/06/something-rotten-in-georgia/) and "81 Million Ballots" where she says that "there is ample reasons to suspect that foul play bumped [the number of votes for Biden] by several million" (https://phzoe.com/2021/03/12/81-million-ballots/ https://phzoe.com/2021/03/12/81-million-ballots/). Are we really upvoting right-wing propaganda now?

airpoint 5y ago
Exactly same thoughts. Not only right-wing propaganda but straight up conspiracy nonsense. How is this getting traction on HN!
phzoe 5y ago
Good thing you audited all the states and know the truth. Some of us aren't privy to such magical knowledge, and so we'd like a look see.
- tzs 5y ago
  The relevant states were already audited. There is no "magical knowledge" required.

lph 5y ago

This is presented in a way that infers political partisanship, but without any evidence for or against that argument. - No statistics for previous administration's like/dislike removal rate. Was it lower? Higher? We don't know. - No statistics for YouTube like/dislike removal rates on other kinds of political or non-political videos. Maybe this is extraordinary behavior for YouTube, or maybe not. We don't know. In other words, this is flame bait that people can read into whatever they want to confirm their biases. With a heavy dose of partisan editorializing ("Disgusting!"). At best, it shows a need for more principled study from someone else.

jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
It's alt right propaganda. On the frontpage of HN.
phzoe 5y ago
The left wasn't keeping track of how many of their dislikes were removed from the previous administration. Why not? Because it was a pitiful and legit amount. That's why! Think!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chomp 5y ago
  Do you have any supporting evidence of this? Unrelated to the topic, from your comments and post, you seem like you are a rather smart person, but you are also accepting a lot of negativity in your life. I really do suggest you disconnect for a bit from TV, news, and the Internet and look for creative outputs for your energy that aren't Red vs Blue.
  - takeda 5y ago
    Well, I know I didn't keep track 2017-2020 and I don't know any site that did. Do you have site that actually did? If I would own 81m.org site which only purpose is to monitor whitehouse youtube channel (very specific) and believed that the end justifies the means, why wouldn't I hire a botnets to help with that effort? If my botnet works I can show that general population is dissatisfied. If youtube removes my spam I can use that to show that YouTube is partisan. Either way I win. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4

erk__ 5y ago

The big question that is missing to be answered is what it looks like generally on youtube, especially with highprofile youtube channels with a lot of people who dislike them, it is rather rare where more than half of all viewers dislike a video. A incident like this also happened in the past and there youtube said that they remove malicious or spammy votes, though did not seem to comment on the concrete case. https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/jan/25/did-youtube-remove-dislikes-video-posted-biden-whi/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/jan/25/did-youtube-r...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cbradford 5y ago

Big tech defends the defenders of Big Tech. Yawn

cortexio 5y ago

Hmm, you cant really be sure if this is from bots or not. However, youtube has shown in the last 5 years that they actively want to promote the left and shown that they do not like anyone that has different opinions. I recall the trending page in the US being spammed with pro leftist videos that were unpopular while major popular videos from more conservative channels werent even showing up. Or all the demonitization of almost any conservative channels 4-5 years ago. It has gotten better though, oof. Want to give a skeptic opinion about covid or masks? They'll delete your video or demonitize it. How about them spamming their own channel with leftist propaganda videos with the likes/dislikes disabled because it was getting 90% dislikes? Ah well, nothing you can do anyway.

happytoexplain 5y ago

Is there a less biased source doing similar research?

klipklop 5y ago

I see a lot of people refuting this data, yet provide no counter evidence. Let's remove politics from this, is YouTube being deceptive? I am honestly asking. I have noticed in the past controversial videos have their views/dislikes reset. Anecdotal, but I would like to see if there is truth to vote and view manipulation. Hell look at sometimes how manipulated the trending pages are. I remember for months low view count Jimmy Kimmel clips were boosted to trending. Logged in or not. Seems like mainstream Hollywood stuff is far more likely to trend. YouTube is silent about explaining why this happens. It can't all possibly be spam and bots.