Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Google Music The Almighty Buck Youtube Your Rights Online

YouTube Drops 2 Billion Fake Music Industry Views 167

Posted by samzenpus from the cure-for-bieber-fever dept.
An anonymous reader writes "YouTube has dropped 2 billion fake music industry views and their offending videos. From the article: 'Google made good on its promise to weed out views inflated by artificial means last week, according to Daily Dot. Record company sites impacted included titans like Universal Music Group, which reportedly lost 1 billion of its 7 billion views, and Sony, who lost 850 million views. The cuts affected marquee names like Rhianna, Beyonce and Justin Bieber. YouTube said in a statement that the figures had been deliberately, artificially inflated. 'This was not a bug or a security breach. This was an enforcement of our view count policy,' the company, which is owned by Google, wrote.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

YouTube Drops 2 Billion Fake Music Industry Views More

YouTube Drops 2 Billion Fake Music Industry Views

Comments Filter:

  • Great (Score:5, Funny)

    by sheehaje ( 240093 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:06AM (#42432175)

    My band went from 72 views to 5. Damn you Google!

  • *phew* (Score:5, Funny)

    by alphatel ( 1450715 ) * on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:06AM (#42432179)
    "Gangnam Style was not affected", thank goodness, I didn't want to watch it another billion times!

    • Re:*phew* (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OhPlz ( 168413 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:07AM (#42432187)

      It'd be funny if it was since it was the showcase of Youtube's year in review 2012 video.

    • Re:*phew* (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:27AM (#42432291)
      "NASA Johnson Style" ("Gangnam Style" Parody) was not affect either. Thank goodness! I could even watch it a billion more times! http://youtu.be/zulxSCb4ZVk [youtu.be]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Considering how the video went viral, and how little marketing was used for it in the beginning (which is how music industry is likely inflating, to get music "started up"), it's pretty unlikely that videos like gangnam style would be guilty of artificial inflation to any meaningful extent.

      This is more of a thing of a large industry which needs its videos to look good at the very start to succeed. Gangnam style took months from being published to going viral.

  • What if Google is wrong? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Piata ( 927858 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:12AM (#42432207)

    My brother is a local film maker in a small town and he got his demo reel pulled from Youtube for "artificially inflating views". Naturally my brother is a little confused by this as he's not savvy enough about the internet to even know how to do such things. Obviously he didn't go to his video and hit refresh a couple thousand times and it's possible some of his friends did but that's not his doing.

    The worst part is he's left no recourse. Google pulled the video and warned that if another of his videos sees the same artifically inflated views, his account would be banned so now he's looking at Vimeo as an alternative.

    • Joe Jobbing of the future? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:16AM (#42432231)

      That suggests a way to suppress videos that some object to. Just pump them up by a few thousand with obviously faked views and let Google pull the video and ban the account.

      • Re:Joe Jobbing of the future? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Piata ( 927858 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:29AM (#42432307)
        Yep. In his case, he felt the competition might be trying to make him disapear. He occassionaly films weddings (which like most wedding services, is completely cut throat) or does videos for the city (which involves bidding on contracts) so if someone out there feels slighted or envious, they can get your video pulled with enough effort.

        • Re:Joe Jobbing of the future? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @01:46PM (#42434005)
          If it's his job, then he should seriously consider getting his own web site to host his videos for exactly this reason. YouTube can drop your videos for whatever reason they want. This is exactly the reason why you shouldn't rely on a third party who you aren't paying to help you do business. Similar thing happened for Facebook. They used to send your message out to everybody for free. Now they want to charge you to reach 100% of your subscribers. If you had just built up your own following on your own website, you wouldn't have any of these kinds of problems. Sure it costs more money up front, but nobody can come and take away the service from you without any warning.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            Pretty much this. With free sites, you get the service you paid for. Remember, they don't care about you or your success - they care about giving you free dose at the start to hook you and then milk you as hard as they can.

    • Re:What if Google is wrong? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:26AM (#42432289)

      I had a similar experience months ago with a false positive on their copyright-enforcement system. There is no effective appeal, as the system is so heavily automated. I tried contacting them, but never was able to get a reply, even after a few attempts. I just stopped posting videos on youtube. They are on my own personal website now, but without the youtube social promotion system they aren't going to get many views.

      Just my dabblings in video restoration and blowing fruit up with a capacitor bank.

    • Re:What if Google is wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alphatel ( 1450715 ) * on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:55AM (#42432469)
      So your brother gets a ban for an unaccountable 500 hits, but Sony gets nothing for a billion? Welcome to corporate whoring.

      • Re:What if Google is wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LordLimecat ( 1103839 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @11:12AM (#42432613)

        Welcome to the online world, where the actual reason someone gets banned has absolutely nothing to do with why they claim they got banned.

        If you havent seen it a zillion times even just on slashdot (stories saying "I GOT BANNED FOR X, NOT FAIR" that are completely bogus), then you havent been paying attention.

      • Article wrong. (Score:5, Informative)

        by ZombieBraintrust ( 1685608 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @01:38PM (#42433933)
        The article at the top is wrong. Sony didn't lose 850 million views. Sony youtube channel lost views because sony moved all its vidoes off its youtube channel. They were moved to the Vimio youtube channel. Google did some housekeeping and removed channel views if the video is no longer there. Video views were not effected. Only about 1.5 million views were removed because of spammy sites that start a video when you first access the page.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by poetmatt ( 793785 )

      They don't pull videos for inflating views, but nice try on your full of shit post in the first place. If this weren't a troll, you'd link to a video. Then again, it is a troll. The "google is evil, I'm going to the alternatives, see y'all" trollpost.

      The view inflation is not about hitting refresh on a video either - it's more like that the companies in question were paying people to actually artificially inflate views. You could have trolled better.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      As someone who has fought abuse in the past for an extremely large service, I can tell you that in any even-somewhat-sophisticated company, the abuse flags and signals flagging things are extremely complex and detailed. Especially when you're talking about the best data analyzers in the world (Google), don't doubt what they know about the abuse happening.

      I can also tell you that people constantly, all the time, blatantly horribly lie. People who shamelessly broke the rules would publicly bitch about being s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        I still remember a thread on League of Legends forums where Riot, the company behind the game started calling people out on real reasons for their bans. With detailed explanations.

        The stuff that they quoted was so full of absolutely retarded levels of flaming and trolling you almost had to bring a fire extinguisher just to read the thread. The really nice sounding people on the forums who made really good cases about how they were unfairly banned came out as ridiculous trolls telling people that they will f

    • a "Local Film Maker" are you sure he didn't violate other terms of service.

    • Yeah, Google pulled the same shit on me with my AdSense account...they've still got some $200 they owe me. I have since pulled most of my business from Google...now all I need is a reasonably good search engine replacement and I can dispense with their BS...

      • DuckDuckGo is reasonably good. I don't think I've used Google search in a god while, save perhaps for image searches.

  • -Conflicted (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Stenchwarrior ( 1335051 )
    I can't decide if the people who took advantage of the ranking system are to blame, or if the system itself is. I certainly can't blame anyone for trying to inflate numbers by utilizing a loophole left by Google or YouTube; I would probably do the same thing if it meant making more money. Even though I'm glad that Google and YouTube closed the "vulnerability", it does lend fuel to the idea that we're really just seeing the Internet that Google wants us to see.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:24AM (#42432277)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

        by AaronLS ( 1804210 )

        Agreed, that's like stealing someone's purse and then justifying it with "Well they should have held on to it tighter..."

        • One is a crime, the other is a legitimate, if unethical action. If there's money to be made, ethics may take a backseat.

          To put it into a better context for you, it's like finding a lost wallet on the ground: you should turn it in to the police, but frankly, aside from the owner, who cares if you don't? You won't get punished for taking it, but you might not get rewarded for returning it, whereas if you take it, the reward is guaranteed. After all, "Finders keepers, losers weepers!".

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • At the end of the day, you have to answer to the person in the mirror, andlike and respect that person.

              That's ... actually a rather nice way of summing up just what makes most people law-abiding, apart from the threat of punishment.
              As for faith in mankind? Personally, I've lost that a long time ago, so it wouldn't be any surprise to me if I returned such a wallet and were turned away with barely a thanks. All the more reason for me to keep it, even if I'm enforcing the stereotype. My needs and interests come first for me, after all. And I assume the same for every rational person.

              As far as I know, however, n

          • You have a funny definition of "legitimate".

            You have justified the crime by saying if there is no reward for doing right, and no punishment for doing wrong, then it is justifiable to steal from another person? Keeping a lost wallet, when there is contact information in it, is indeed stealing. You are making a deliberate choice to keep something that could otherwise be placed in the hands of the owner. To basically disregard the negative effect on others for your own gain. You have no idea what kind of d

            • it's like finding a [lone woman] on the ground: you should [take her] to the [hospital], but frankly, aside from the [family and friends of the woman], who cares if you don't? You won't get punished for [raping her], but you might not get rewarded for it, whereas if you [rape her], the reward is guaranteed.

              Like most analogies, this analogy is not exact. Say I find the woman while riding a bicycle to or from work. I wouldn't even think of assaulting her, but helping her would have a substantial cost to me. For example, how do you recommend that I transport her to the hospital? Likewise, how would someone who depends on public transit afford the bus fare and lost wages to carry a found purse with no ID to the police station?

              • Like most analogies, this analogy is not exact. Say I find the woman while riding a bicycle to or from work. I wouldn't even think of assaulting her, but helping her would have a substantial cost to me.

                (emphasis mine) That is what makes it noble. Cost-benefit analysis shouldn't figure too heavily into helping someone.

                For example, how do you recommend that I transport her to the hospital? Likewise, how would someone who depends on public transit afford the bus fare and lost wages to carry a found purse with no ID to the police station?

                Perhaps by phone, arranging transport that way. And if you can't get to a police station, would a police officer accept it insead? (don't know if they'd take it or tell you to get lost instead).

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by cusco ( 717999 )
                  If you call the police they'll send an officer around to wherever you are to pick it up, at least in Seattle. I've reported quite a few things that I've encountered while walking the dogs, mostly bicycles dumped in the park, but they came and picked up a wallet, an unfired .32 round, a phone and something else I forgot. Ninety nine percent of the time their job is pretty boring and they need something to do.

            • Let me start from the end of your comment, your example. Frankly, aside from her family and friends, nobody cares if you don't help her. Oh sure, people say you're an asshole, and you should help her, take her to the hospital, etc. But tell them to do it themselves, and they make up an excuse and hurry on: Bystander Effect. On the other hand, raping her is a crime unto itself, punishable by law. That's where your analogy goes astray, in that you attempt to substitute a clearly illegal act for a legal, if un

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Sabriel ( 134364 )

                Hmm. I disagree. In your quote, I notice that the court differentiated between mislaid property (you acquire no rights), lost property (you are not entitled to possess it against the true owner) and abandoned property (you are entitled to keep it). So if you find a wallet that is lost rather than abandoned (however the court defined those terms), then it seems to me that you would not be entitled to keep it, only to possess it - and if you had (or believed you had) knowledge of the true owner then you would

              • For you to cast aside the importance of her life and well being so casually, shows you are a sociopath.

                • Is she someone I know? No, she's a complete stranger. Is she someone important to me? No, I don't even know her name. Therefore she bears no weight, no importance, nothing.

                  On the other hand, could you address the point I made in response to yours, if you're replying?

                  • You are just further exemplifying your sociopathy with your self centered devaluing of human life.

                    • Hmm, avoiding making, supporting, or refuting points: I've seen this behavior before. I think those exhibiting it are called ... "trolls". Or politicians. Take your pick.

              • Not to mention there is a big difference between the Bystander Effect, where no one has the courage to step across the social line of "minding your own business", vs. you, who simply rationalize yourself to a point where you justify wrong doing. One may care, but fail to act, whereas you make a deliberate choice due to your screwed up view of humanity.

          • Short version of your statement is something like this.
            Stealing money from someone is not bad if you can find a way to justify it.

            • Short version of your statement is something like this.
              Stealing money from someone is not illegal if you can find a way to justify it.

              Ethics is optional, and often overrated. Legality is what matters. Welcome to reality.

          • To put it into a better context for you, it's like finding a lost wallet on the ground: you should turn it in to the police, but frankly, aside from the owner, who cares if you don't? You won't get punished for taking it, but you might not get rewarded for returning it, whereas if you take it, the reward is guaranteed. After all, "Finders keepers, losers weepers!".

            Let's just say that in California it is theft. And in the state of New York it is theft. And I bet in many other states of the USA it is theft, or in some other way criminal.

            • Actually, it isn't. I explained before, according to Michael v First Chicago Corp. Illinois, 1985, "A finder of property acquires no rights in mislaid property, is entitled to possession of lost property against everyone except the true owner, and is entitled to keep abandoned property.". Therefore, unless the true owner comes to claim it from you after having tracked you down, and you refuse to return the wallet, it becomes theft. If you return it, or the owner doesn't turn up, it's nothing, since you're e

    • Well, yes. If you use Google, then you see what they want you to see. If you use Bing/Microsoft, you see what they want you to see. This is true for their search engine, and a hundred times more true for sites they wholly own (IE: YouTube).

    • I certainly can't blame anyone for trying to inflate numbers by utilizing a loophole left by Google or YouTube; I would probably do the same thing if it meant making more money.

      Ever heard of "ethics"? People with your attitude do not make the world a better place. If you found a wallet with money someone lost, I guess you'd keep it since it would mean more money for you.

  • Same old tactics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by marcello_dl ( 667940 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:15AM (#42432221) Homepage Journal

    Back in the day it was payola to radio djs and buying back your own records in the stores.

    Now it's scripted youtube visits.

    Same tactics from the producers, but also same behavior from consumers who have to know if something is popular before adopting it.
    I suggest not looking at counters when choosing stuff for yourself.

    • Re:Same old tactics (Score:5, Funny)

      by dkleinsc ( 563838 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:19AM (#42432247) Homepage

      Same tactics from the producers, but also same behavior from consumers who have to know if something is popular before adopting it.
      I suggest not looking at counters when choosing stuff for yourself.

      But millions of people look at what's popular when choosing what to buy, and they can't all be wrong, right?

      • Same tactics from the producers, but also same behavior from consumers who have to know if something is popular before adopting it.
        I suggest not looking at counters when choosing stuff for yourself.

        But millions of people look at what's popular when choosing what to buy, and they can't all be wrong, right?

        But billions of people look at what's popular when choosing what to buy, and they can't all be wrong, right?

        • Re:Same old tactics (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ultrasawblade ( 2105922 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @11:29AM (#42432731)

          The people that look at what's popular to buy seem to comprise of thirty/fourtysomething females who are out of touch with pop culture and want to rejoin it after not having young kids consume every moment of their time, and a certain class of young usually small- to mid-town teenage girls. The older women want to indulge in something that seems younger and fresher, and the younger girls want to indulge in something that seems more "adult" - and this fits that bill perfectly I guess.

          No one else buys into this shit, not that I know of. As a male growing up in the 90's I've NEVER understood the term "popular music" because no one I know listens to it or follows it. Were I live now the "Top 40" radio station is among the lowest rated. Yet it stays alive.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            The more popular guys who actually got laid did understand it however.

            Personally I was always in the middle ground, as I happened to be both a "jock" (I was great at sports, still am) and a "nerd" (I liked computers), so I can understand both points of view.

            But popular culture is about of giving young people regardless of sex one of greatest tools of sorting who is a part of "popular" crowd and who isn't. That is why view numbers now and DJs playing the music before matters so much when you're commercially

    • The trick back then was in knowing which stores to buy from. Not all stores contributed to the counts used to determine the chart order. Effective rigging via purchasing needed a bit of insider information to know where to buy.

      • I'm not sure if it's still in use or not, but the way the album sales chart was calculated 10 years or so was through a service called Soundscan. The way it worked (in a nutshell) is that certain stores would submit their sales numbers to Soundscan, and then Soundscan would run those numbers through an algorithm to "calculate" the sales from other, non-Soundscan stores. I have no idea how accurate these numbers were.

        There was a case I know of where one label (a larger independent label) got wind of which

    • I suggest not looking at counters when choosing stuff for yourself.

      Unless a product or service has a substantial network effect [wikipedia.org], such that it becomes more useful as the user base grows. For example, people might not want to buy a smartphone that only has 10,000 units sold because not a lot of developers of useful applications would find it profitable to target a market of 10,000.

  • Not so many Bieber fans after all... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cid Highwind ( 9258 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:42AM (#42432377) Homepage

    "The cuts affected marquee names like Rhianna, Beyonce and Justin Bieber."

    This restores a tiny bit of my faith in humanity. Now if we could just get confirmation that 90% of the people watching "Here Comes Honey Boo-boo" are bots too...

  • Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @10:51AM (#42432439)

    The brand managers who commission stuff like this are typically inexperienced, low-paid and overworked. They don't know what the fuck they are doing but they know they've got to get it done quickly and for next to no money. You'd be shocked at how low the budgets they have to work with are for digital stuff - sure, drop a couple of hundred grand on a music video to promote their latest single, but good luck getting more than ten grand for a website that they'll be using for years. They also have the habit of following the crowd and simply using the suppliers and techniques their colleagues use. So it doesn't surprise me that a few of them decided to use cheap off-shored clicks to inflate their results, or that once a few of them did it, it spread like wildfire within their ranks.

  • http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/28/youtube-video-views-disappear-migrate

    Views and videos just got shifted over to VEVO.

  • How about weeding out infringing material? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mumblestheclown ( 569987 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @11:38AM (#42432811)

    I know, -1 Flamebait, but ...

    has anybody here every seriously looked at the process to report and have removed infringing material from youtube? if you try, the first thing google/youtube does is basically threaten you with jail and worse if you dont happen to be the copyright holder. they make it as slow and painful as possible though probably within what is allowed by law. why? google has a vested interest in keeping the pirated material on there.

    it would take me all of one day at most to find over 1000 movies just with the search "full movie", each of which has a view count of 10,000+. Google could too, but they have no interest in this. They play this game where they pretend they are some innocent service, and of course meanhwhile providing de facto anonymity to serial uploaders (anybody even ONCE prosecuted for uploading pirated stuff? at worst it's "account suspended, make a new one homer jo jo junior shabadoo"). meanwhile, google collects HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS in ad revenue on infringing material. Oh, and when something is pointed out to be infringing, does google contact the rightsholder and offer them a the money or at least a split? you must be joking.

    If youtube were anything but a giant company armed with masses of lawyers *and didnt enjoy the popular support of those below who find it useful and who are about to make all sorts of yesbuts and rationalizations, it would have been shut down for conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement a long time ago.

    yes, i find it useful too. but i'm under no illusions that the system is any way a fair to the rightsholders off of whom youtube is making massive profits especially during that delay between upload and takedown.

    again - actually try the takedown process before you flame away. it's diabolical.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JazzHarper ( 745403 )

      Why were you trying to use the takedown process if you are not the copyright holder?

      • You don't have to agree with me, but I (as a YouTube content producer) get frustrated when I see blatant rips of items that have ad content on them. I would very much like to report these people in a way to get them removed. It frustrates me that I produce content and work hard to put out what I do, but these people take the Rudolph song and make 3mil+ views quite against copyright. So, call it petty jealousy or whatever you want, but yes, I would very much report infringing videos given the opportunity.

    • actually try the takedown process before you flame away. it's diabolical.

      So diabolical that NASAs own live stream of the Curiosity landing got taken down. And you want it to be easier?

      • The Diamond Jubilee speach of HRM The Queen on Her Most Royal own Youtube channel was blocked by Bertelsmann in Germany due HRM the Queen not getting her royalties cut due to the royalties not being yet sorted out in Germany.

        It is refreshing that GEMA looks after starving artists like HRM The Queen in Germany.

        I find it more and more difficult to approach this matter with any seriousness whatsoever.

    • I'm familiar with the hoops you have to jump through to take down videos but I've found them to be painless in my experience. I had 2 high traffic videos re-uploaded by other users (with ads) that I filed claims for. By providing a link to my original video the process was sped up quite a bit.

      However I do agree that Google has no incentive to enforce their own copyright rules unless someone notices. I can't imagine how much ad revenue they have made on movies and music that was uploaded by other th

      • Afaict google doesn't follow their own copyright rules unless the copyright holder forces them to.

        There is LOADS of stuff on youtube that is almost certainly infringing. If the copyright holder wanted to upload is they almost certainly wouldn't upload a crappy vhs recording or cam copy (unless that was the only version in existence) and they almost certainly would use a user account that reflects their brand. Nevertheless there is no report category for normal users to report probable copyright infringement

    • it would take me all of one day at most to find over 1000 movies just with the search "full movie", each of which has a view count of 10,000+.

      You own the copyright of 1000+ movies? You must be the most powerful man in Hollywood.

      Google could too, but they have no interest in this.

      Seriously? Google will pull that in a heartbeat if the copyright owner complained. Their system is freakin' militant. It's actually MORE aggressive than the legal DMCA process calls for, with less room for reprieve.

      The problem you'r

  • Weren't these views dropped because of VEVO? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "On Thursday, when YouTube sent out its regular reports on view counts, one data company, SocialBlade, noticed that the channel views for Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group saw its channel count sliced by about 2 billion views.

    That led some folks to conclude that the views were "fake" and that nefarious "black hat" techniques were being cooked up by the labels to falsely inflate their views. The truth, however, isn't nearly as sexy.

    Interviews Billboard.biz conducted with YouTube, label execu

  • Article is wrong (Score:5, Informative)

    by ZombieBraintrust ( 1685608 ) on Monday December 31, 2012 @11:55AM (#42432957)
    According to Billboard most of the 2 Billion views were removed because the videos were moved off the channel. Only a few million views were removed because of spamming. Basically the views were moved from the UMG channel to the Vevo channel. http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/945498-shin-megami-tensei-persona-4/faqs/53550 [gamefaqs.com]

  • "As news of the cuts spread, some critics suggested other recording artist social media could be similarly manipulated."

    Well, that explains this rather bold request on Elance:

    https://www.elance.com/j/build-software-that-makes-itunes-sales-go-up/36006811/ [elance.com]

    "I need a talented freelancer developer to develop a software tool for Mac, or online web based which we input an iTunes Link for a Song or an App. Then it automatically increases their sale to the top charts.

    I've seen 2 companies do it. i will give more det

  • I can best describe my feelings with a meme [twimg.com].

  • google would have blocked their account all together wouldn't they? I hope they follow their own terms this time too.

Slashdot Top Deals

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

Close