YouTube View Counts Frozen (Posted on YouTubes OWN blog)

Youtube has been self destructing or at least destroying channels that produce content for their website for the last year or so. They froze a ton of videos and sometimes for almost a week. If you had not even noticed that top rated is their least promoted part of youtube now. It used to be positioned very prominently on the site now it is way at the bottom of the pull down mouse over menu. Also they dont even have the ratings on the videos on the most viewed, most discussed etc... It is not about quality now it is all about who can somehow get the most views. Once the top rated gets dropped from the menu, it is all over for the new starter channels.

I know that my videos used to get 10,000 to 50,000 views with no problem at all. Now they are sitting at about 6,000 to 10,000. I don't know if it is how people get their subscriptions now or what, but when I had only 2,000 subscribers my videos could go viral and maybe even hit 200,000 to 500,000 views if people really supported them. Now with 5 to 6 times the subscribers and support, they are at a fraction of the views they had before.

I know that Youtube said it would be demoting video views and I have seen it happen on 2 videos and I saved the info on those to show everyone later in a video. This is getting out of control and unless some of the larger Youtube channels speak up nothing will ever change. All the larger youtube channels think that they would never be suspended, but they have another thing coming if they think that. Youtube has pissed off everyone from Viacom to Warner Music Group and even the Entire UK. Here is the link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7933565.stm

They dont seem to care who they piss off and it shows. So if someone who thinks that they are a youtube star and they wont get suspended, demoted or deleted, they have another thing coming.

Below is their revised statement regarding their handling of this situation:

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An Update On Our View Counts

Video view counts reflect the YouTube community's interests and the grassroots popularity of videos. We periodically make changes that allow us to display consistent view counts and accurately reflect a "real" view based on video consumption, video streaming and spam filtering. Unfortunately, a few people still try to artificially manipulate their video's view counts. Some people game third-party view counts as well. That can make things unfair for everyone.

Recently, we found spamming issues associated with the view counts on a small number of videos. The inflated view count number on these videos will be frozen until actual views catch up to the published, artificial, view count. Also, a few people have commented that their view counts are updating more slowly. Occasionally the speed with which views update changes -- sometimes it’s faster and sometimes it’s slower. But we are always working to make sure that the final view count numbers are an accurate reflection of the community's interest.

Michelle Schlachta
Community Manager
The YouTube Team