Likes from logged in views do count, the like to view ratio is higher due to that.
A German YouTuber tested it with an unlisted video, I can’t find it as of now but I do find a lot of deleted videos in my liked ones…
Basic theory as of the time of the video is that they want to go against bot views. Short views did not decline, only long form video, and of those the people with mostly desktop views are hit the most.
Edit: found it!
So do advertisers still have to pay for impressions or clicks if the viewer isn’t logged in?
Something tells me Google’s just going to pocket the difference now.
From different youtubers self reporting they say the amount of money they make hasn’t changed, so it appears they still play the ads but not count their views on YT
So they go and blame ad blockers for the decrease at the same time they cause said “decline”? Classic.
Wasn’t it already proven to be an ad-blocker update? I though thet blocked the url that counts the views. So no views are counted
I did some youtubing last week and saw three people claiming that three different theories were already proven.
I find it crazy that the client would call an API endpoint to register a view. Then we could just call that end point in a script to arbitrarily inflate the view count, can we not? How do they prevent this exploit? Wouldn’t it be better if the server registered the view after a certain amount of the video was delivered?
Get ready for “login, like and subscribe guys” and dont forget to smash that login button
All I can say is my feed has been shit since it happened.
I knew something was odd. I watch youtube without an account and in the past few days, when trying to watch some of my favorite channels youtube prompted me to “lognin to prove” I’m not a bot. This was only for a handful of channels, others seem to work fine.
I saw Josh Strife Hayes talking about this and I think he was collecting some data to potentially do a video on it? Will be interesting to see the results and if they match up with this.
Yes! The one I mentioned quoted Josh and went further with his research
deleted by creator
Views always go down in summer. This is a regular trend. Less people watching YouTube, more people going out and doing stuff.
I’ve heard about this from a number of youtubers. It seems to be a much bigger dip than they’ve ever seen
It’s not related. A bunch of different content creators across a bajillion different genres have publicly shared that it’s one specific type of view (desktop views) affected in their analytics (no other view type shows any statistical difference), and it’s acting the same way for everyone.
It’s just not that total views are down… it’s evidence that YouTube has changed the way they are counting the views of PC viewers. Why, or exactly how, no one is sure of yet (pretty sure YouTube has been silent on it and the reasons that it is happening are all speculation).
Yeah and first it was most of the views were definitely going down because of restricted mode despite that it was a feature used by a like a fraction of a percent of users and was over a decade old. None of the specific information getting parroted around has actually made any sense. Less people watching on desktop can also track with less people actually owning desktops or using them to watch YouTube, couple that with the fact they just got a drop of viewership and now they cant accept the common demonanator being that their videos are just getting less views
Less people watching on desktop can also track with less people actually owning desktops or using them to watch YouTube
Not what’s happening. The change can be pinpointed to an exact specific date for everyone. It’s just statistically impossible to explain that away as “fewer people are watching”
I’m very skeptical of that argument.
- Millions of people didn’t throw out their desktops overnight.
- Lots of tech channels finding their core audience that’s actively supporting and often growing on platforms like patreon aren’t showing up in their metrics while fluff videos are getting picked up outside their community on mobile and "performing well“.
So something definitely seems to be going on.
To me, ads contributing to "views“ metrics seems the most logical since YT wants to incentivise ad watching but I have to agree it feels like every day someone has proven a new theory so it’s hard to say what exactly is going on.
