Viewbot on youtube?: 10,000 views removed!

shuzzbutt · 5 Jan 2013 at 12:13

Hi guys just looked at my channel to find 10,000 views have been removed!

Now I have an idea why: in November, I posted an unboxing/review of my Kraken pro headset and all seemed normal when all of a sudden over 2 days I gained around 11,000 views! I looked at the analytic and it seemed that most were from external sites with Facebook being the biggest culprit.

Now I know that people do pay for views etc but I never have for the obvious reasons and the fact that YouTube is a fun thing for me to relax doing after a days work!

So my question is why would someone add views to my video and why as I fail to see the benefit??

Any ideas :confused:

iviv · 5 Jan 2013 at 13:19

Recently youtube had a massive crackdown over fake views (source). I guess that your 'competitors' in the unboxing/review market may have used this fact to buy views for your video, in the hopes that something like this would happen and youtube would delete the video/suspend your account.

Inferno99 · 5 Jan 2013 at 13:30

Competitors wouldn't have used this fact as the audit was only announced in December. Most likely Razer or some EU marketing partner.

shuzzbutt · 5 Jan 2013 at 14:06

How is a third party able to buy views for my videos? Surely they need access to your account?? Or is it just a case of pointing these nefarious view sellers in the direction of the video?!

All seems so shady and ridiculous!

Jokester · 5 Jan 2013 at 14:12

Yeah I couldn't understand this either when it was in the news recently. I can understand fake viewing your own vids to get them up rankings and what not, but it seems it was happening to just random people.

asim18 · 5 Jan 2013 at 14:28

Yeah someone over at Razer must have done it to help promote the video.

Aeleys · 5 Jan 2013 at 15:08

Youtube is corrupt,plain and simple.

Vevo are the worst with viewbots.

Tough luck i guess, just gotta deal with it.

TurnipHead · 5 Jan 2013 at 15:26

Athene made a related video.

Can't link video cause of swearies but add /watch?v=9ADa3v_Znj4 after youtube.com

darubio · 5 Jan 2013 at 16:07

This happened to all vevo videos they had like about 1billion worth of views taken off lol

shuzzbutt · 5 Jan 2013 at 19:35

The worst thing about it is apparently I am responsible for any illegitimate activity that happens to my account or channel. This seems so unfair as imagine if you have worked hard to build a channel only for some jerk to ruin for you!

Hopefully I will not get in trouble for some unknowns actions- I know they have removed the views from my channel but the kraken video is still showing it has nearly 15,000 views- I suppose the safest thing to do would be to remove it and upload it again as I don't want this to mess up my monetisation etc