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How can they watch a video without its view count increasing? I am really interested.

by tpetry 7y ago

the-dude 7y ago
Does anybody know if youtube-dl increases a video's view count?
- m00dy 7y ago
  why not ? :)
  - the-dude 7y ago
    I guess the video count is updated by the player and youtube-dl does not use this player. Also, YT view counts may not be as straightforward as you imagine, as they are a hot metric for advertisers.
  - detaro 7y ago
    Because Youtube uses some measure of actually played video time to count a view. Depending on how it is implemented, downloads likly do not trigger that (since data loaded doesn't mean it was watched)
    - nefitty 7y ago
      Hm, seems like that would leave a mechanism open for blocking those kinds of sites. One reason I can think not to is if other apps, like YT for Roku, have to access the data directly and then process the relevant view count/ad stuff client side
martin_e 7y ago
I don't think there's a way to watch a video on YT without the count being incremented. Actually, the only way is if you watch your own videos with some frequency (not defined anywhere I could find).
duskwuff 7y ago
Given that they also mention needing embedding to be enabled, I suspect they're using an inline player on another site. IIRC, only plays on youtube.com are counted towards video view counts.
- gnicholas 7y ago
  > IIRC, only plays on youtube.com are counted towards video view counts. This appears to be untrue. [1, 2] It seems that embed views count, except possibly where autoplay is enabled (presumably because the video might be shown when no one is watching). 1: https://www.alliedpixel.com/2019/09/do-embedded-youtube-videos-add-to-the-view-count/ https://www.alliedpixel.com/2019/09/do-embedded-youtube-vide... 2: https://boostlikes.com/blog/2014/08/youtube-video-views-embeds-count https://boostlikes.com/blog/2014/08/youtube-video-views-embe...
- Google234 7y ago
  Why would you write something wrong like this in such an authoritative? Wouldn’t it be better to do 5 seconds of research instead of spreading fake news?
jaysh 7y ago
It's worth noting that YouTube is optimising for the opposite: they want to prevent artificial view count inflation. Therefore, this behaviour (the view count not increasing when the videos are automatically accessed) would make sense. If you're interested, an interesting measure for difficulty is how much companies charge to "buy youtube views" (e.g, $16 per 1000 views is ~8x the cost you'd pay for typical CAPTCHA solving).

How can they watch a video without its view count increasing? I am really interested.

by tpetry 7y ago

How can they watch a video without its view count increasing? I am really interested.

the-dude 7y ago

Does anybody know if youtube-dl increases a video's view count?

m00dy 7y ago
why not ? :)
- the-dude 7y ago
  I guess the video count is updated by the player and youtube-dl does not use this player. Also, YT view counts may not be as straightforward as you imagine, as they are a hot metric for advertisers.
- detaro 7y ago
  Because Youtube uses some measure of actually played video time to count a view. Depending on how it is implemented, downloads likly do not trigger that (since data loaded doesn't mean it was watched)
  - nefitty 7y ago
    Hm, seems like that would leave a mechanism open for blocking those kinds of sites. One reason I can think not to is if other apps, like YT for Roku, have to access the data directly and then process the relevant view count/ad stuff client side

martin_e 7y ago

I don't think there's a way to watch a video on YT without the count being incremented. Actually, the only way is if you watch your own videos with some frequency (not defined anywhere I could find).

duskwuff 7y ago

Given that they also mention needing embedding to be enabled, I suspect they're using an inline player on another site. IIRC, only plays on youtube.com are counted towards video view counts.

gnicholas 7y ago
> IIRC, only plays on youtube.com are counted towards video view counts. This appears to be untrue. [1, 2] It seems that embed views count, except possibly where autoplay is enabled (presumably because the video might be shown when no one is watching). 1: https://www.alliedpixel.com/2019/09/do-embedded-youtube-videos-add-to-the-view-count/ https://www.alliedpixel.com/2019/09/do-embedded-youtube-vide... 2: https://boostlikes.com/blog/2014/08/youtube-video-views-embeds-count https://boostlikes.com/blog/2014/08/youtube-video-views-embe...
Google234 7y ago
Why would you write something wrong like this in such an authoritative? Wouldn’t it be better to do 5 seconds of research instead of spreading fake news?

jaysh 7y ago

It's worth noting that YouTube is optimising for the opposite: they want to prevent artificial view count inflation. Therefore, this behaviour (the view count not increasing when the videos are automatically accessed) would make sense. If you're interested, an interesting measure for difficulty is how much companies charge to "buy youtube views" (e.g, $16 per 1000 views is ~8x the cost you'd pay for typical CAPTCHA solving).