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.'"

Comments

Great

[sheehaje]

My band went from 72 views to 5. Damn you Google!

*phew*

[alphatel]

"Gangnam Style was not affected", thank goodness, I didn't want to watch it another billion times!

Re:*phew*

[AndyKron]

"NASA Johnson Style" ("Gangnam Style" Parody) was not affect either. Thank goodness! I could even watch it a billion more times! http://youtu.be/zulxSCb4ZVk

What if Google is wrong?

[Piata]

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.

Re:What if Google is wrong?

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Re:What if Google is wrong?

[Shark]

Uh oh... I post example of work done on my milling machine. The horrible whine sound of the spindle definitely could be interpreted as RIAA copyrighted material, especially given the talent of pop singers lately.

Same old tactics

[marcello_dl]

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.

Re:Same old tactics

[dkleinsc]

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.

But millions of people look at what's popular when choosing what to buy, and they can't all be wrong, right?

Joe Jobbing of the future?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Joe Jobbing of the future?

[Piata]

Yep. In his case, he felt the competition might be trying to make him disapear. He occassionaly films weddings (which like most wedding services, is completely cut throat) or does videos for the city (which involves bidding on contracts) so if someone out there feels slighted or envious, they can get your video pulled with enough effort.

Re:-Conflicted

[SternisheFan]

Well if you can't blame them for being dishonest, what does that say about *your* character, or lack of it?

Re:Not so many Bieber fans after all...

[plover]

Now if we could just get confirmation that 90% of the people watching "Here Comes Honey Boo-boo" are bots too...

They ARE mindless robots. Just that they're the flesh and blood kind, so they still get pageviews.

Re:YES!

[rtfa-troll]

I'm not sure you are getting this. Google suing should be the least of these people's worries. From AFA linked from TFA:

Google says that these companies violated its terms of services, which prohibits automated methods of inflating view counts

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.

Re:YES!

[sirlark]

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.