YouTube really should be detecting and pushing them to the bottom of search results. Downvoting doesn't appear to have much of an effect.

I believe likes and dislikes on Youtube both count as "interaction" as far as rankings are concerned.

Won't matter much in this case as it's heavily linked to by all kinds of news outlets.

No it shouldn't. Sometimes videos like this one are a source of unique information.

I've seen a few of those before.

Some were CC text from CNN articles with random "war pictures". It was surreal - like a badly done brainwashing video. It had the eerie qualities of belonging as perverse art exhibit.

I have also seen these in "alt"/neonazi/kkk politics channels. There's not much worse than showing pictures of the KKK and black people while a robotic voice throws curse words and racial epithets. There isn't much else to say other than "WAT?"

I think you're lucky a fax was not involved.