Agreed.

Some also argue dislikes are used for censoring, but I’d conter-argue that dissidence is a form of opinion. If people are using the tool illegitimately, it doesn’t make the tool itself illegitimate. Rather, investigating suspicious behaviour, of which there are tools one can use on Youtube, should be the way.

And I’d further say the removal hurts not just the content creators, but their followers too. If the creator uses likes ratio as a quality assurance metric, or to know what they should or shouldn’t focus on, the lack of the metric will make the service he/she provides worsen, and by extension the experience of their followers.