YouTube cancels billions of 'faked' music video views

[dutchman]

A crackdown by YouTube on 'faked' video views on their site has led to billions of views being wiped off from music videos.

Some of the world's biggest recording companies have had their content stripped of views as a result, with Sony and Universal Media Group losing nearly 2bn views in a single day.

The Daily Mail reports that the move left UMG, which has Rihanna and Justin Bieber on its roster, with just five videos on the site, and Sony, which represents Alicia Keys and Rita Ora, with just three, marking a huge commercial blow to both companies.

YouTube announced: "This was not a bug or security breach. This was an enforcement of our view-count policy."

The decision to wipe the views came after YouTube conducted an audit of its viewers in an attempt to combat 'black hat' view-count building techniques - when hackers artificially increase the number of views or likes on a YouTube video.

There are a number of black hat websites and forums that trade information on how to boost views and likes.

The popularity of YouTube as a platform for displaying music videos, as well as the importance of a clip's popularity when calculating advertising revenue, means that the number of views and likes held by each video is becoming increasingly important.

Music industry sources claim that the cuts were a result of the videos migrating to another channel, and that YouTube was simply "cleaning up".

Google, which purchased YouTube in 2006, has so far declined to comment.

[dutchman]

Far be it from me to doubt any report in the Daily Mail but I have yet to find a single music video by the artists mentioned which is no longer available on YouTube?

[rebbonk]

[dutchman]