I don't believe this at all. In any system where likes and dislikes have value to recommendations or whatever you have to identify and neutralize those who try to game the system. For example:
1. Sock puppets
2. Brigading
3. Bullying (which is really the dislike version of brigading)
That should be relatively easy to do at scale. Not perfectly but good enough. Once identified just count those votes as nothing. Present them as if the user has still pressed like or dislike but just don't count it.
Instead what Youtube has done has disincentivized people from disliking, which removes a very useful quality signal. Some will still dislike but less will if there's no feedback.
Dislikes provided a very useful signal to viewers about scams, poor videos, wrong information and so on. This provided a disincentive to post such information. So Youtube has removal that signal from users and effectively opened the floodgates to low-quality and scam videos.
That's just crazy.
And to pin that on "bullying" is (IMHO) ridiculous.
1. Sock puppets
2. Brigading
3. Bullying (which is really the dislike version of brigading)
That should be relatively easy to do at scale. Not perfectly but good enough. Once identified just count those votes as nothing. Present them as if the user has still pressed like or dislike but just don't count it.
Instead what Youtube has done has disincentivized people from disliking, which removes a very useful quality signal. Some will still dislike but less will if there's no feedback.
Dislikes provided a very useful signal to viewers about scams, poor videos, wrong information and so on. This provided a disincentive to post such information. So Youtube has removal that signal from users and effectively opened the floodgates to low-quality and scam videos.
That's just crazy.
And to pin that on "bullying" is (IMHO) ridiculous.