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YouTube Drops 2 Billion Fake Music Industry Views
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.'"
My band went from 72 views to 5. Damn you Google!
"Gangnam Style was not affected", thank goodness, I didn't want to watch it another billion times!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
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.
Back in the day it was payola to radio djs and buying back your own records in the stores.
Now it's scripted youtube visits.
Same tactics from the producers, but also same behavior from consumers who have to know if something is popular before adopting it.
I suggest not looking at counters when choosing stuff for yourself.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
That suggests a way to suppress videos that some object to. Just pump them up by a few thousand with obviously faked views and let Google pull the video and ban the account.
Well if you can't blame them for being dishonest, what does that say about *your* character, or lack of it?
"The cuts affected marquee names like Rhianna, Beyonce and Justin Bieber."
This restores a tiny bit of my faith in humanity. Now if we could just get confirmation that 90% of the people watching "Here Comes Honey Boo-boo" are bots too...
0 1 - just my two bits
The brand managers who commission stuff like this are typically inexperienced, low-paid and overworked. They don't know what the fuck they are doing but they know they've got to get it done quickly and for next to no money. You'd be shocked at how low the budgets they have to work with are for digital stuff - sure, drop a couple of hundred grand on a music video to promote their latest single, but good luck getting more than ten grand for a website that they'll be using for years. They also have the habit of following the crowd and simply using the suppliers and techniques their colleagues use. So it doesn't surprise me that a few of them decided to use cheap off-shored clicks to inflate their results, or that once a few of them did it, it spread like wildfire within their ranks.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I'm not sure you are getting this. Google suing should be the least of these people's worries. From AFA linked from TFA:
If they have been faking 1/8th of their viewership, then that was artificially increasing their apparent influence and so share price. The SEC should be coming around damn soon now if a shareholder would just make a complaint.
Now that would be sweet.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
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
Assuming there's advertising revenue involved in the views as well, artificially inflating your count would constitute fraud wouldn't it. No need for a shareholder complaint.
Why not both? Two great tastes, taste great together!
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.
No, get them for defrauding advertisers, who assume the views are legit and pay money for them.