Even The Big Guys Do it! YouTube Confiscates 2 Billion Views From Universal And Sony For Fake Views
Google slashed the cumulative view counts on YouTube channels belonging to Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG, and RCA Records by more than 2 billion views Tuesday, a drastic winter cleanup that may be aimed at shutting down black hat view count-building techniques employed by a community of rogue view count manipulators on the video-sharing site. A spokesman for YouTube was cryptic about the slashing, saying “This was not a bug or a security breach. This was an enforcement of our viewcount policy.”
Universal’s channel is the one that took the biggest hit. According to figures compiled by the YouTube statistics analysts at SocialBlade, the record company’s YouTube channel lost more than 1 billion views from its preexisting tally of 7 billion views Tuesday.
Sony/BMG was the second largest sufferer, dropping more than 850 million views in one day, bringing its total number of views to a mere 2.3 million. RCA, which got off scot free by comparison, dipped 159 million views. Its tally now sits more modestly at 120 million views.
Other notable channels affected include the ones belonging to Michael Jackson, Chris Brown, Beyoncé, and Avril Lavigne, among others. More than 500 prominent YouTube channels have been stripped of preexisting YouTube views in the past 30 days, something that causes concern when you consider that YouTube views counts, unlike subscriber statistics, are cumulative and cannot organically drop at any point throughout their existence.
