3 ms·

What's the claim here? That someone at YouTube is artificially altering dislike counts on White House videos? It's hard to tell from the headline link or from t

What's the claim here? That someone at YouTube is artificially altering dislike counts on White House videos? It's hard to tell from the headline link or from the blog post that supposedly inspired it (in the About section).

mikeyouse 5y ago
If you read more of the authors' posts, she's some sort of mildly numerate election truther that thinks there's a wide ranging conspiracy to favor Joe Biden including changing election results in Georgia and altering the dislikes (but not the likes?) on Youtube videos.. also seems to believe that random observations about temperature and snowfall disprove global warming and she has the pseudocode to prove it.
EricE 5y ago
I don't know why it would be surprising. Youtube does it all the time. I've see it happen on videos about movies, pop culture, and more - not just politics.
- justinzollars 5y ago
  everyone is in a media bubble. So its not that surprising.
CompuHacker 5y ago
For context, I was watching The White House YouTube channel during the Obama, Trump, Biden administration. Every video posted is subjected, instantly, to what I assume are automated comments and, in my opinion, unusual like/dislike ratios. The comments originate from a wide variety of accounts of varying ages, usually with no published video or text, following channels of international brands and small entities so obscure that I wouldn't doubt they were chosen at random. The content is generally support for the current President. "[US Flag Emoji]" features prominently. In my experience, total comment activity dropped off after the last election. It looks like comments are disabled on recent videos. So, if I had to guess, this site grapples with the removal of the accounts that would normally make those comments, and all of their associated likes and dislikes. It would be interesting to follow up on every comment, checking whether the account was changed or deleted after those comments.

mikeyouse 5y ago

If you read more of the authors' posts, she's some sort of mildly numerate election truther that thinks there's a wide ranging conspiracy to favor Joe Biden including changing election results in Georgia and altering the dislikes (but not the likes?) on Youtube videos.. also seems to believe that random observations about temperature and snowfall disprove global warming and she has the pseudocode to prove it.

EricE 5y ago

I don't know why it would be surprising. Youtube does it all the time. I've see it happen on videos about movies, pop culture, and more - not just politics.

justinzollars 5y ago
everyone is in a media bubble. So its not that surprising.

CompuHacker 5y ago

For context, I was watching The White House YouTube channel during the Obama, Trump, Biden administration. Every video posted is subjected, instantly, to what I assume are automated comments and, in my opinion, unusual like/dislike ratios. The comments originate from a wide variety of accounts of varying ages, usually with no published video or text, following channels of international brands and small entities so obscure that I wouldn't doubt they were chosen at random. The content is generally support for the current President. "[US Flag Emoji]" features prominently. In my experience, total comment activity dropped off after the last election. It looks like comments are disabled on recent videos. So, if I had to guess, this site grapples with the removal of the accounts that would normally make those comments, and all of their associated likes and dislikes. It would be interesting to follow up on every comment, checking whether the account was changed or deleted after those comments.