People walk by a YouTube sign at the new Google office in Toronto, November 13, 2012.
YouTube is fed up with users attempting to manipulate the view counts on videos posted to their site.
“When some bad actors try to game the system by artificially inflating view counts, they’re not just misleading fans about the popularity of a video, they’re undermining one of YouTube’s most important and unique qualities,” said YouTube’s software engineer Philipp Pfeiffenberger in a blog post.
In an effort to combat the manipulation of the site’s stats, YouTube’s engineers will increase scans for spam on a video’s view count and remove fraudulent hits when evidence surfaces. However, Pfeiffenberger conceded that this method won’t “affect more than a minuscule fraction of videos on YouTube”.
Late last year, YouTube launched a crack down on third party businesses that promise to generate views for their customers.
According to the Guardian, visitors to YouTube watch more than 6 billion hours of footage per month on average.
[Guardian]