Youtube Cracks Down On Views Inflation, Deletes Billions Of View Counts Fudged By The Music Industry

Youtube said it has began regulating the views of videos by several recording artists after it claimed the data has been fudged by the music industry, several reports said.

Youtube has cancelled the views on videos posted by several recording companies on suspicions that the views were faked to make certain artists videos appear more popular than they actually are.

Universal was most affected by the crackdown, with artists such as Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Justin Bieber losing a collective more than one billion views on their videos, according to the Daily Mail.

Sony, which backs artists such as Alicia Keys, Rita Ora and Labrinth, lost a whopping 850 million views in a single day due to the crackdown.

The decision to slash some popular Youtube channels follows an audit conducted by the website that it said was geared toward "combating black hat view count-building techniques," according to the Mail.

Such techniques allow hackers to artificially build up the numbers of views or likes on Youtube videos, the news site noted, which in turn increases artists' view counts.

YouTube statistics analysts at SocialBlade have compiled a list of the account hard-hit by the view crackdown.

Other Youtube channels affected belong to such stars as Michael Jackson, Chris Brown and Beyonce, according to the Daily Dot.

Recording companies have responded by largely removing videos from their channels.

The crackdown also affected local Youtube users, who turned to forums complaining that their videos that had been deleted, according to the Daily Mail.

Based on Youtube's policy, the users had violated TOS item 4, Section H, which bans artificially inflating view counts, and calls for the deletion of such videos.

'This was not a bug or a security breach. This was an enforcement of our view count policy," the social media site said in its forum, and directed users to its policy on "view count gaming."

One major label, Universal, told the Daily Dot that it has decided to move its videosharing to Vevo, which it founded in 2009, in conjunction with Sony Music, Abu Dhabi Media Company, and E1 Entertainment.