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YouTube Drops 2 Billion Fake Music Industry Views

Posted by samzenpus on from the cure-for-bieber-fever dept.

An anonymous reader writes "YouTube has dropped 2 billion fake music industry views and their offending videos. From the article: 'Google made good on its promise to weed out views inflated by artificial means last week, according to Daily Dot. Record company sites impacted included titans like Universal Music Group, which reportedly lost 1 billion of its 7 billion views, and Sony, who lost 850 million views. The cuts affected marquee names like Rhianna, Beyonce and Justin Bieber. YouTube said in a statement that the figures had been deliberately, artificially inflated. 'This was not a bug or a security breach. This was an enforcement of our view count policy,' the company, which is owned by Google, wrote.'"

9 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. What if Google is wrong? by Piata · · Score: 5, Informative

    My brother is a local film maker in a small town and he got his demo reel pulled from Youtube for "artificially inflating views". Naturally my brother is a little confused by this as he's not savvy enough about the internet to even know how to do such things. Obviously he didn't go to his video and hit refresh a couple thousand times and it's possible some of his friends did but that's not his doing.

    The worst part is he's left no recourse. Google pulled the video and warned that if another of his videos sees the same artifically inflated views, his account would be banned so now he's looking at Vimeo as an alternative.

    1. Re:What if Google is wrong? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Informative

      I had a similar experience months ago with a false positive on their copyright-enforcement system. There is no effective appeal, as the system is so heavily automated. I tried contacting them, but never was able to get a reply, even after a few attempts. I just stopped posting videos on youtube. They are on my own personal website now, but without the youtube social promotion system they aren't going to get many views.

      Just my dabblings in video restoration and blowing fruit up with a capacitor bank.

    2. Re:What if Google is wrong? by poetmatt · · Score: 3, Informative

      They don't pull videos for inflating views, but nice try on your full of shit post in the first place. If this weren't a troll, you'd link to a video. Then again, it is a troll. The "google is evil, I'm going to the alternatives, see y'all" trollpost.

      The view inflation is not about hitting refresh on a video either - it's more like that the companies in question were paying people to actually artificially inflate views. You could have trolled better.

    3. Re:What if Google is wrong? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Informative

      Video restoration and filters: http://birds-are-nice.me/video/restorations.shtml

      Stuff go boom: http://birds-are-nice.me/explodium/

  2. Re:Great by leuk_he · · Score: 4, Informative

    FAKE!.

    below 300 views youtube does not care too much about the views.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI

  3. Weren't these views dropped because of VEVO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "On Thursday, when YouTube sent out its regular reports on view counts, one data company, SocialBlade, noticed that the channel views for Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group saw its channel count sliced by about 2 billion views.

    That led some folks to conclude that the views were "fake" and that nefarious "black hat" techniques were being cooked up by the labels to falsely inflate their views. The truth, however, isn't nearly as sexy.

    Interviews Billboard.biz conducted with YouTube, label executives and analysts from Next Big Sound told a very different tale. Here's what really happened.

    Read more at http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/digital-and-mobile/what-really-happened-to-sony-and-universal-1008059892.story#3BCYRJW518fJqDPC.99 "

  4. Article is wrong by ZombieBraintrust · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to Billboard most of the 2 Billion views were removed because the videos were moved off the channel. Only a few million views were removed because of spamming. Basically the views were moved from the UMG channel to the Vevo channel. http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/945498-shin-megami-tensei-persona-4/faqs/53550

  5. Re:How about weeding out infringing material? by JazzHarper · · Score: 1, Informative

    What you are saying is that you have no legal standing, but you have moral outrage, so you have appointed yourself as a copyright vigilante. The law (OCILLA) doesn't permit that, so you are going to be, at the very least, frustrated in your efforts.

  6. Article wrong. by ZombieBraintrust · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article at the top is wrong. Sony didn't lose 850 million views. Sony youtube channel lost views because sony moved all its vidoes off its youtube channel. They were moved to the Vimio youtube channel. Google did some housekeeping and removed channel views if the video is no longer there. Video views were not effected. Only about 1.5 million views were removed because of spammy sites that start a video when you first access the page.