Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, that's definitely your opinion, but this doesn't match any definition of censorship I'm aware of -- it sounds like you want compelled disclosure . It's a single statistic that YT collects per video. YT also has location data for the dissenters. Is it censorship that they aren't showing a country-by-country breakdown of where the dislikes are coming from? Is it censorship that they aren't showing a town-by-tow…
I guess, the underlying principal in my mind is around the intent of why they are removing such a feature, when it has very valid uses even as a consumer of content. I understand some of the issues with the upvote/downvote concept in terms of targetted ratio campaigns, however, I think it is censorship if they are removing this information for the intent of social engineering, which I think that they are. I know I'm…
I feel you here, but you're not making a principled argument. You're appealing to a fundamental right to free speech, but that just doesn't fit the situation.
If we're going by intent, YT's statement is that people seem to be biased by the rankings. Taking it at face value, they want people to think for themselves, and not pre-judge the content based on what previous viewers thought. That sounds like a good thing to me. That said, I don't consume youtube except when my kid watches minecraft stuff there, so I couldn't care less what happens to/on the platform. What I care about is the legal mechanisms in play -- and your suggestion is quite alarming from that perspective.