YouTube reportedly deleting dislikes on Biden Administration YouTube videos

The website 81m.org, named for the 81 million people that voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, was inspired by a researcher named Zoe Phin doing a similar analysis earlier this year. The website was created to track the intermittent mass dislike deletions allegedly happening on the Biden Administration YouTube channel.

81m.org calculates what it calls "real dislikes," in contrast to the dislike count shown by YouTube. Real dislikes are calculated by ignoring large decreases in dislikes, showing the real ratio of likes to dislikes. It also shows real likes, although it hasn’t found those to be tampered with as of yet.

Video statistics on the site show after a few hours of a video being posted, dislikes will intermittently start getting deleted.

One video titled "A Weekly Conversation: Americans ask the White House about the American Jobs Plan" posted by The White House on April 3 shows two drastically different dislike stats. As of April 4, YouTube shows 435 likes to 6,153 dislikes. The real statistics, according to 81m.org are 435 likes to 15,605 dislikes, with the manipulation amount between those two being 153.62 percent.

Some videos, after the dislikes have been deleted, are left with only a small fraction of what would potentially be there. One video is listed at having 377 dislikes, but really has 12,652. Another shows 222, but should really have 10,552, according to the site.

It also uses other popular channels as a comparison to show similar actions are not happing on other channels. Popular YouTube channel PewDiePie, even for being often viewed as controversial, doesn’t have any manipulation placed on the numbers. It had recently added US Senator Ted Cruz’s channel to the roster, but had yet to find evidence of tampering as well.

One explanation for the mass deletion of dislikes, according to The National Pulse, could be "targeted dislike campaigns." They speculate that Trump Administration YouTube followers were transferred to the current Biden account. Those Trump account followers then proceed to dislike the Biden video, but YouTube flags those large number dislikes as a targeted dislike campaign and deletes them.

The manipulation of the numbers, whether done by the YouTube or the White House itself, is yet another example of growing censorship and manipulation in Big Tech, similar to many social media outlet suspensions, deletions, and censorships over the last few months.