YouTube Strips Universal And Sony Of 2 Billion Fake Views

WOW!!!!

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.

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.

In addition, each label’s YouTube archives are now surprisingly thin. UMG, which
had long held a heavy hand in YouTube operations, now only boasts five videos on
its YouTube channel, none of which are actual songs—and none of which last more
than 1:23.

Sony’s page, by comparison, is currently empty. The company did not respond to
the Daily Dot’s request for comment.

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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.

Google’s takedown of these major music channels came on the same day that
hundreds of YouTubers took to Google forums and their own YouTube channels to
inform their peers that they’d been subject to a series of video takedowns for
violations of YouTube’s Terms of Service (TOS). Some speculated that the
widespread video takedowns were caused by a technical error, but YouTube
confirmed that the users violated TOS item 4, Section H, which bans automated
methods of inflating view counts.

“This was not a bug or a security breach. This was an enforcement of our
viewcount policy,” wrote a Google representative on the forums.

The apparent crackdown on fake views became a major talking point Wednesday on
Black Hat World, a forum where users trade tips about unethical search engine
optimization tactics.

The thread’s first post alluded to a friend of the poster who “sells likes” and
was recently told by four different customers that their videos “got deleted due
to TOS violation.”

“Now I also got a message from a customer who ordered views from me that his
video was removed,” the individual wrote, sparking a six page conversation that
continues on to this moment—and mentions Universal Music Group throughout.

“I spoke with some people on Skype and 2-3 more have the same problems with
videos being removed for fake views,” the original poster added in a later post.
“Likes are from YLH (YouLikeHits) and AddMeFast and views from ViralSocial in my
case.”

Later in the thread, the conversation turned towards an individual known in some
online circles as Tapangoldy, a 16-year-old seller of YouTube views who is
prominent on the cheap favors website Fiverr and claimed last month to have
already raised $60,000 through the site. Recently, he closed up shop for a few
days “to fix all issue thanks.”

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  1. @jd Damn hacking at it’s best. I like the 16yr old witts. However I find this comical for big companies such as Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG, and RCA Records, they didn’t need to create fictitious views on their content they provided on youtube. They provided content that viewers wanted to watch, MUSIC VIDEOS! It was poor marketing on there part to draw the accountable viewers to their youtube channel. Using social media and optimizing your search(SEO) can be slighly difficult at times to obatin the views on your youtube channel. It’s not what do, its how you do it. Its not what you know, its who you know. Sometimes companies have to take a different approach on social media and optimizing their search(SEO) to gain those views. The viewers are there!!! They just don’t know different approaches to getting them. READING THIS MAKES ME EXCITED beacuse I’m fortunate enough to have created a solution business model that use social media and SEO at its finest use. Creating optimum results with whats already existing.

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