I’ve seen screenshots of YouTube modifying dislikes of White House videos. I decided I would do a thorough analysis myself. I wrote a script to check video stats every 80 seconds for 24 hours – for all videos on White House’s YouTube channel.
The collected data is archived here and here. The format is space-separated “CSV”, as follows:
VideoURL UnixTimestamp Date,Time Views Likes DislikesHere is a sample of the most egregious manipulation:
Some videos were delisted in minutes!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bpSkdYUtNU 1611771197 01/27/2021,13:13:17 1227 437 2963
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bpSkdYUtNU 1611771285 01/27/2021,13:14:45 1463 441 2999
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bpSkdYUtNU 1611771372 01/27/2021,13:16:12 1763 449 3030
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bpSkdYUtNU 1611771459 01/27/2021,13:17:39 2476 455 3060
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bpSkdYUtNU 1611771546 01/27/2021,13:19:06 2640 459 3098
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bpSkdYUtNU 1611771720 01/27/2021,13:22:00 3588 470 3183
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxo3OHKjfxs 1611699362 01/26/2021,17:16:02 918 405 4942
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxo3OHKjfxs 1611699448 01/26/2021,17:17:28 1202 412 4976
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxo3OHKjfxs 1611699534 01/26/2021,17:18:54 1375 415 5026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juqHZYKzyx0 1611766646 01/27/2021,11:57:26 255 375 1771
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juqHZYKzyx0 1611766733 01/27/2021,11:58:53 455 380 1823
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juqHZYKzyx0 1611766819 01/27/2021,12:00:19 455 383 1852
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juqHZYKzyx0 1611766906 01/27/2021,12:01:46 819 387 1886
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juqHZYKzyx0 1611766992 01/27/2021,12:03:12 1148 393 1932
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juqHZYKzyx0 1611767079 01/27/2021,12:04:39 1462 397 1971
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juqHZYKzyx0 1611767166 01/27/2021,12:06:06 1830 398 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucvgAZG_IT4 1611770591 01/27/2021,13:03:11 1587 83 2040
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucvgAZG_IT4 1611770764 01/27/2021,13:06:04 3014 95 2114Likes+Dislikes was greater than views in some cases. Although that seems impossible, Youtube updates views slower, so they do not reflect real views at the time. For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw1_00uI02U 1611720090 01/26/2021,23:01:30 44404 924 8099
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw1_00uI02U 1611720176 01/26/2021,23:02:56 44404 924 8118
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw1_00uI02U 1611720260 01/26/2021,23:04:20 44404 925 8132
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw1_00uI02U 1611720345 01/26/2021,23:05:45 44404 925 8151
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw1_00uI02U 1611720429 01/26/2021,23:07:09 44404 925 8168
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw1_00uI02U 1611720514 01/26/2021,23:08:34 44556 925 8184
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw1_00uI02U 1611720599 01/26/2021,23:09:59 44556 925 8199
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw1_00uI02U 1611720683 01/26/2021,23:11:23 44556 928 8219
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw1_00uI02U 1611720768 01/26/2021,23:12:48 44556 928 8237So it’s possible for likes and dislikes to accumulate while views stays the same. Eventually, views jumps up to better reflect reality.
The record of every time dislikes were removed is archived at https://pastebin.com/raw/F4ELDc4R
Grand Total -130321130 Thousand dislikes were removed in a 24hr period!
And this is for the most popular US President of all time!
Enjoy 🙂 -Zoe
Update
This research was featured in a youtube video.
Code wh.sh:
# Zoe Phin, 2021/01/26
require() { sudo apt-get install -y curl gnuplot; }
stats() {
list=$(curl -s 'https://www.youtube.com/c/WhiteHouse/videos' | grep -o 'watch?v=[^"]*')
for i in $list; do
link="https://www.youtube.com/$i"
date=$(date +"%s %x,%R:%S" | tr -d '\n')
curl -s $link | tr -d ',' | tr '}' '\n' > new
grep -m 1 -o '[0-9,]* views' new > .views
grep -m 1 -o '[0-9,]* likes' new > .likes
grep -m 1 -o '[0-9,]* dislikes' new > .dislikes
paste .views .likes .dislikes | awk -vL=$link -vD="$date" '
NF==6{printf "%s %s %9s %9s %9s\n", L, D, $1, $3, $5}'
done
}
collect() {
while true; do
stats; sleep 75
done | tee -a data.csv
}
dislikes() {
list=$(cut -c1-44 data.csv | sort -u)
for vid in $list; do
echo $vid
grep ^$vid data.csv | awk '{
DiffD=$6-D
if (DiffD < 0) {
printf "%s %+7d\n", $3, DiffD
DLost+=DiffD
}
D=$6
} END {
printf "%-19s %7d\n", "Total", DLost
}'
echo
done | awk '{ print } $1=="Total" { GT+=$2 }
END { printf "%-17s %9d\n", "Grand Total", GT
}'
}
plot() {
list=$(cut -c1-44 data.csv | sort -u)
let n=0
for vid in $list; do
let n++
awk -vV=$vid '$1==V {print $2" "$4" "$5" "$6}' data.csv > plot.csv
echo "set term png size 740,740
set key top left
set grid xtics ytics
set title '$vid'
set timefmt '%s'
set xdata time
set xtics format '%Hh'
plot 'plot.csv' u 1:2 t 'Views' w lines lc rgb 'black' lw 2,\
'' u 1:3 t 'Likes' w lines lc rgb 'green' lw 2,\
'' u 1:4 t 'Dislikes' w lines lc rgb 'red' lw 2
" | gnuplot > example${n}.png
done
}
Run:
$ source wh.sh; requireCollect data:
$ collect
( press Ctrl-C when you're done )Record of dislike drops:
$ dislikesGenerate charts:
$ plotVersion 2.0: Cleaner and grabs stats at random 60 to 120 second interval.
# Zoe Phin, v2.0 - 2021/02/20
require() { sudo apt-get install -y gnuplot; }
collect() {
url="https://www.youtube.com"
while true; do
for vid in $(wget -qO- "$url/c/WhiteHouse/videos" | grep -o 'watch?v=[^"]*'); do
wget -qO- $url/$vid | egrep -o '[0-9,]* (views|likes|dislikes)' |\
sed -n 1~2p | tr -d '[:alpha:],\n' |\
awk -vL=$url/$vid -vD="$(date +"%s %x,%R:%S" | tr -d '\n')" '
NF==3 { printf "%s %s %9s %9s %9s\n", L, D, $1, $2, $3 }'
done
sleep $(seq 60 120 | shuf | head -1)
done | tee -a data.csv
}
dislikes() {
for vid in $(cut -c1-44 data.csv | sort -u); do
awk -vv=$vid 'BEGIN { print v } $1==v {
Diff=$6-Last
if (Diff < 0) printf "%s %+7d\n", $3, Lost+=Diff
Last=$6
} END {
printf "%-19s %7d\n\n", "Total", Lost
}' data.csv
done | awk '{ print } $1=="Total" { GT+=$2 }
END { printf "%-17s %9d\n", "Grand Total", GT
}'
}
plot() { n=0
for vid in $(cut -c1-44 data.csv | sort -u); do let n++
awk -vv=$vid '$1==v {print $2" "$4" "$5" "$6}' data.csv > plot.csv
echo "set term png size 740,740
set key top left
set grid xtics ytics
set title noenhanced '$vid'
set xdata time
set timefmt '%s'
set xtics format '%Hh'
plot 'plot.csv' u 1:2 t 'Views' w lines lc rgb 'black' lw 2,\
'' u 1:3 t 'Likes' w lines lc rgb 'green' lw 2,\
'' u 1:4 t 'Dislikes' w lines lc rgb 'red' lw 2
" | gnuplot > example${n}.png
done
}
Zoe, as you know, you and I have often disagreed very strongly on scientific questions. Hey, that’s why we have horse races.
But in this case, I can only totally agree, amidst laughter at what you’ve shown, and admiration for the excellent quality of your analysis.
My very best to you as always, disagreements or not,
w.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thanks Zoe. I think we’ll see a lot more of this nefarious behaviour right across all social media networks.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great work on the data. You can’t help but laugh except that a lot of angry people are being denied a legitimate means of expression. What happened to free speech?
LikeLiked by 2 people
It would be sad if they were also denied a legitimate means of expression also in the ability to vote for a president.
People who feel they are right to manipulate data will feel they are right to manipulate data everywhere.
LikeLiked by 1 person
People who feel right about manipulating data will also feel right about manipulating the counting of ballots.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I vote libertarian–for a set of principles. This spoiler vote clout consistently causes both halves of the looter kleptocracy to gradually back away from the initiation of force.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Zoe – Would have liked to see you bore in on that late night Dominican voting thing in the same way. You’re doing something good; keep it up.
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Nice work, Zoe!
LikeLiked by 1 person
elegantly simple, suitable to task, clean and clear coding => awesome again. They are belittling one stack by repeatedly interrupting the flow, excellent job, great to learn these tricks Zoe, thanks so much. Meanwhile, yt only requires login to vote, so watching the vid is irrelevant, we can vote ona whim, and yt keeps tabs on minutes watched, so perhaps two hundred people watching the first two minutes will count 200 ‘views’.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hey Zoe,
This analysis is great. The thing that really struck me was how well you shell program. I’m wondering if you have any resource recommendations for getting better at shell programming specifically. I’m coming from an experienced software engineering background if that’s helpful.
Nikhil
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you, Nikhil.
I just read the man page of every command and also google “advanced bash-scripting guide pdf”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Check out Liberal/Left Wing “Comedian” and News Channels like Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert. They pump UP their numbers too. By about 5 to 10 fold.
America is NOT divided 50/50.
It’s more like 90/10. But the Left Control the Media.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Excellent work Zoe! I will share far and wide.
LikeLiked by 2 people
This is great work! I’ve been telling people for weeks that I suspected the same. Here’s the proof! I’ve been spreading this page like wildfire! Again, awesome work!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh wow! Thank you Zoe for showing us how stupid those “genius” in Silicon Valley are. Only an imbecile modifies such data in bulk. At least even they know that getting them more likes than dislikes would expose their evil deeds.
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So very refreshing …. To see someone do great detective work … And great numbers crunching…. Thank you for the math …. Great work God speed to you …. Zoe ❤️
LikeLiked by 1 person
The new president’s honeymoon usually lasts 100 days. Joe Biden managed to accelerate it to a week. Their interpretation of “business as usual” is “lying as usual”. The prognosis is not good.
Zoe, a great idea, thanks.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Excellent. Thanks. Just found your blog. Boy, are you a welcome relief from new world order science mantra. Just going over it. Sure if the NWO are right, fair enough, but they are not in many cases, and where have Biden’s voters gone to? Hmmmm. You sure that code is all right? I don’t have a clue btw 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hey Zoe,
Great work! While I imagine it’s not normal for the likes to be going down like this, I’d be curious to see what a typical YouTube video looks like. Do you have any links to examples of that that are similar to your work here to see a good side-by-side? Just curious if it’s normal for likes/dislikes to ever under any circumstance start going down only to rise again. Thanks!
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You point out the “drop” at 1am Eastern – but did you also notice the smaller but equivalent %age drop 8 hours earlier?
It looks to me like shift-change block censorship – switching to auto-censorship after the night shift come on…
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Hi
First of all I should applaud you for your effort to denounce data manipulation on Youtube. This is very interesting!
However, it seems to me that the implicit conclusion from this analysis, that the manipulation is politically motivated, is FLAWED!!! I’m not saying it isn’t true, only that you haven’t shown enough data to conclude that.
It is possible that YT is employing a general algorithm to prevent the misleading effects of “dislike mobs”, as discussed here: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18207189/youtube-dislike-attack-mob-review-bomb-creator-insider
Don’t get me wrong, that’s still condemnable if it’s done without transparency! What I’m trying to say is that before rushing into conclusions that these actions are politically motivated, we should do a “control experiment” with non-political YT videos, which could be targets of “dislike mobs” as well, like product reviews, and test if the same effect is observed.
Also, even though a lot of people could be in bed at 1 am EST, on the West coast the time would be 10pm. Not to mention that there’s a considerable cut to ~50% of the dislikes happening at 6pm EST on the second plot. Can you argue that most people are asleep then? If they wanted to hide, why not something 5am EST/2am PST? And that would be effective in the US only.
Finally, I want to emphasize that I do think that the analysis you have done is extremely important, especially if it ends up demonstrating clear political bias in a huge platform as YT. But we should all make an effort not to look at data from a biased perspective too.
Regards
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Fair points, Joao.
But remember,
“YouTube wants ‘dislike mobs’ to stop weaponizing the dislike button”
Is also a political position. Not unlike banning channels, 95+% of which has certain political views.
Alphabet, Inc seems to direct which way cancel culture works.
It’s pretty obvious that they made enormous in-kind donations to political parties that handed them critical gov posts.
It’s all rational from their point of view, but is it good for society?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hi Joao!
At last a critical view! What’s the point of analysing data you got from a source you don’t trust. And then even try to infer anything from that analysis. In spite of that they should test their hypothesis and not just take one particular channel and then claim that these “manipulations” are political. Also, what about the manipulations of the likes? Although he proportion of removed likes is much smaller than the the proportion of removed dislikes, why would they do that if their goal is to present the channel in a better light.
I is awesome that Zoe shows us all these data and even giving us the tools to do our own research. But these data itself are by far not enough to conclude anything. Does youtube also remove likes/dislikes on other videos/channels? Is the drop at 1 am EST seen on other channels? Under which circumstances does that happen? If you correct the dislike data by adding the removed dislikes, why does the data not reflect US day cycles?
Regards
LikeLike
Hi Joao!
At last a critical view! What’s the point of analysing data you got from a source you don’t trust. And then even try to infer anything from that analysis. In spite of that they should test their hypothesis and not just take one particular channel and then claim that these “manipulations” are political. Also, what about the manipulations of the likes? Although he proportion of removed likes is much smaller than the the proportion of removed dislikes, why would they do that if their goal is to present the channel in a better light.
I is awesome that Zoe shows us all these data and even giving us the tools to do our own research. But these data itself are by far not enough to conclude anything. Does youtube also remove likes/dislikes on other videos/channels? Is the drop at 1 am EST seen on other channels? Under which circumstances does that happen? If you correct the dislike data by adding the removed dislikes, why does the data not reflect US day cycles?
Regards
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“Did you notice the huge drop at 06 hour (1 AM US Eastern)? Most working people go to sleep by that time. Coincidence? I think not.”
It’s Politics, Zoe; in Politics, there ARE no Coincidences..
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That red line shift is remarkably similar to the red vote count shift in several Philadelphia precincts at 1:00 am. I suspect some kind of red gravitational shift worldwide.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Not that it’d be odd for YouTube to adjust the like/dislike ratio to favor biden, just that they appear to do a poor job of it?
Checking the cpl dozen WhiteHouse vids since the 20th and they all show a 3/1, 4/1, 7/1 dislike/like ratio. Unlike President Trump’s numbers (Trump White House Archive)
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There was once a dream called Liberty. Elusive and easily killed; but if nurtured and believed in could free all of humanity and unite the world.
This is not it. This is not it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
If Youtube is indeed doing data manipulation for political purposes then we should ask ourselves whether that is fundamentally wrong in a free market system. Isn’t that what Liberty is all about? I mean, YT costumers are free to leave the platform if they don’t agree with something. Unless people are defending more government involvement in regulating what private companies can or cannot do, which I’d actually be in favor of. But of course, that would raise many red flags for people at the right, wouldn’t it?
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Joao,
Stock exchanges are free to drop any company they don’t like, right? If companies manipulate their data, they are fraudulent, no?
If corporations work with political parties to stifle their competition, they are regulating, aren’t they? If they lie about being open and fair, then they are committing fraud, no?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m assuming that YouTube would make a comment that our algorithms rapidly detect and remove dislikes by bots…etc…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here is ‘stats’ that works with zsh on a Mac…
stats() {
list=$(curl -s ‘https://www.youtube.com/c/WhiteHouse/videos’ | grep -o ‘watch?v=[^”]*’ | tr ‘\n’ ‘ ‘)
for i in $(echo $list); do
link=”https://www.youtube.com/$i”
date=$(date +”%s %x,%R:%S” | tr -d ‘\n’)
curl -s $link | tr -d ‘,’ | tr ‘}’ ‘\n’ > new
grep -m 1 -o ‘[0-9,]* views’ new > .views
grep -m 1 -o ‘[0-9,]* likes’ new > .likes
grep -m 1 -o ‘[0-9,]* dislikes’ new > .dislikes
paste .views .likes .dislikes | awk -v L=$link -v D=”$date” ‘
NF==6{printf “%s %s %9s %9s %9s\n”, L, D, $1, $3, $5}’
done
}
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Mr Boogie Nights.
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So if you follow the curves of the clipped negatives you can actually restore the graph of the negative votes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very True, but there will be some loss due to my 80 second resolution.
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using Searx to compare DDG/Google we see how google cooks search results to hide political stuff. Example search for ruby freeman and oops google removes stuff related to her election fraud while DDG shows it
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Hi Zoe, I posted your blog here ( https://greatawakening.win/p/11SKLMByO9/data-for-white-house-youtube-dis/ ) and lots of complements and interest if you want to check it out. Thanks for the great work! People really appreciate it over here at .win.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Nice 🙂 Thank you very much
LikeLiked by 1 person
Everyone needs to flood the White House YouTube videos with dislikes, and do it all at once. That should overcome the manipulations.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A young computer scientist ridicules the WH cheating:
https://aitia.fr/erd/une-jeune-informaticienne-ridiculise-la-triche-de-la-maison-blanche/
LikeLiked by 2 people
Nice. but I’m not young 😦 35!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you very much for your incredible work. I have found you from someone mentioning you on Youtube. He replied to my comment on the White House page regarding the counts, I think…but when I clicked on the notice to read it, the comment section was turned off. Luckily I was able to read what he said under the notification so I could do some research, then found a Youtube channel talked about you and found this link from there.
I have put the numbers of likes and dislikes with date and time and observed them dropping so I commented again a day later with the like/dislike numbers on the comment section of the White House cannel. Now the whole comment section has been removed. Today, I took screen shots of all of the comments (more than 100) which were all against Biden. I mean…not a single comment there supported him. I knew the comment section would be turned off as I have witnessed it happened before and sure enough, while I was taking the screenshots, the comment section was turned off. I had managed to take all the screenshots as I did not refresh my screen, though. I am sick and tired of them controlling our real voices.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank You, K.
I’m sick of it too.
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Nice job, symbollikely (sic) showing the reverse proportionality between voters and general approval…en français….le rapport inversement proportionnel entre le nombre d’électeurs et le taux d’approbation de la population….
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Just FYI, I had to go to duckduckgo.com to find your page. It did not show up at all in a Google search.
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Works for me. Maybe I’m shadow banned?
What search term did you use? Thx
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Soldier, if you don’t use quotes around “white house youtube dislike manipulation”, I get 982,000 hits, with Zoe in fourth place, and a couple of places mentioning her post not far below that.
w.
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Inspired by your work, I created a site that tracks the likes and dislikes on all White House videos. Instead of scraping data from YouTube’s HTML pages, it uses YouTube’s API, but it’s basically the same as your idea. I also estimate “real dislikes” from the data.
https://81m.org/videos/H3ym47f014c/
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh wow! Super!
Thank you very much.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you. Your site is a breath of fresh air.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Excellent work, Zoe. I agree with Willis on that.
LikeLiked by 2 people
This is fantastic work, Zoe! I came here from the 81m.org site. I’ve been disliking Joe’s videos since the inauguration (which was a very heavily ratioed video). I’m wondering why YouTube only deletes dislikes but does not add likes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you. I wondered that myself. I thought it’s because they need to associate each like with an account or IP. They would have to dirty up their database. But then again … they could just digitially print more likes then exist in DB. Maybe they are afraid of whistleblowers? I don’t know.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Zoe,
Is the situation continuing through this month?
Thanks for your work on this!
LikeLiked by 2 people
My only purpose was to get someone else to do it 🙂 See 81m.org.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, it’s been continuing since the first Biden White House video Jan 20th (inauguration). YouTube archived and hid all of Trump’s White House videos (which were not “dislike ratioed” like Biden’s are). Joe was supposedly the most popular president? I don’t think so.
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