[illuminati1911]

There is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that the dislike count was "abused by troll hordes". Your arguments are very weak and remind me of the rhetoric used by totalitarian regimes in justifying their censorship.

"Public shaming" is the result of creating content that most likely deserves to be publicly shamed. This has also not disappeared, but is now in the comment section. This is just as "elegant solution" as SWAT team shooting all the hostages in order to be able to injure one hostage taker.

Most likely the reason to remove the dislikes is either because

a) YouTube for some reason wants more user engagement in the comment section

b) To protect American corporations (advertisers) from the uncomfortable reality that 95-99% of the people don't like their woke-content.