YouTube has removed false video views with Sony and Universal Music losing more than 2 billion views as a result.
Beyonce image by Ros O'Gorman
More than one billion views were taken from Universal artists and 850 million from Sony acts with Leona Lewis losing 24 million views overnight.
YouTube has decided to police views after it became more common with the fake views to artificially inflate the perceived popularity of certain artists. The company claims that record labels were using bots it inflate YouTube views making their artists appear to be more successful than they really were.
YouTube has removed statistics it considered “deliberately, artificially inflated”.
Artists affected by the reduction in views include Justin Bieber, will.i.am, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Chris Brown and Beyonce.
Source:
http://www.noise11.com/news/youtube-wipes-fake-2-billion-video-views-from-stats-20121231