[24493] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] YouTube public view counts are a lie
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lauren Weinstein)
Sun Sep 13 13:21:48 2026
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:13:30 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
To: privacy-dist@vortex.com
Message-ID: <20260913171330.GA7381@vortex.com>
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YouTube public view counts are now a lie. Google recently changed how
regular YouTube video view counts are displayed publicly. Previously,
a set of (internal to YouTube) algorithms were used to increase the
view count only when what was considered to be genuine engagement was
noted -- a high probability that an actual person actually paid
attention to the video for a significant period of time.
But recently, this was changed so that the public count would
increment even if a single frame of video was all that was viewed,
much as was done with the horrible piracy-flooded YouTube shorts
starting last year. YouTube explicitly told creators that this was so
that their public counts would be more impressive to potential
sponsors and the like. Creators on their own dashboards would continue
to be able to see the old "engagement" view counts that are no longer
public, and decisions about monetization, etc., would still be made
based on those original engagement view counts.
The result is that public counts appear to have been artificially
elevated by up to 40% or more, and have now become worthless as a
means for actually judging the meaningful viewership of these videos.
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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