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YouTube will now count a view as soon as a video starts playing (techcrunch.com)
submitted 2 hours ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 17 points 1 hour ago

Well that's a great incentive for clickbait content - cause now it won't matter if you can keep people watching after you've reeled them in.

You'd think this would be against YouTube's own best interest, considering they want to keep you watching, and people don't often like watching that kind of clickbait-farm slop...

Or maybe I and the people I know are in the minority, and a lot of people just watch it whether they like it or not, which would be disappointing to hear.

[-] MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 1 points 2 minutes ago

I mostly watch videos from channels I'm already subscribed to, but recently a few shows I watch have dropped new seasons and I was looking for recaps on YouTube. It was nothing but AI slop channel after AI slop channel. I would click off as fast as possible to not give them the view, but I guess they will all count going forward. It really sucks because we can't opt out of these channels and many of them don't even admit to being AI anyway.

I have no idea how this change is good for them. I totally agree that it seems like it'll encourage low quality content. After a few of those videos I can't imagine most people sticking around for another, but what do I know. I'm sure they have more accurate stats than I do.

[-] reksas@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 hour ago

this is definitely against their interests, unless they just plan on having people watch ads everytime they open a video, watch that video for like 1 second and go to next and watch more ads. There is no depth of depravity i wont put past corporation executives, so that feels very plausible how they think and how detached they are from humans.

It could even be prelude to some other even more horrible, like they start gatekeeping actually decent stuff with premium aggressively.

We should really start archiving the good content of youtube more, just in case.. I would too, but i dont have that much extra harddrive space and i dont have energy enough to start learning to build a personal storage system that is secure and fault resistant.

[-] EvergreenGuru@lemmy.world 31 points 1 hour ago

Now we have view inflation on top of losing the dislike button and the UI consistently getting worse.

[-] First_Thunder@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 hour ago

Rewarding clickbait, let’s goo

[-] TIEPilot@lemmy.world 14 points 1 hour ago

Oh like the chinese bot farms aren't going to take advantage of this to push slop content to the top. Wonder what they are charging for 1 sec views...

[-] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 4 points 55 minutes ago

Calling it now..

"YouTube will now count views only when an ad has been played in full".

Will come sooner than you think.

[-] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 2 points 48 minutes ago

It makes it easier for advertisers because all views on the internet are equally inflated I guess but it also destroys 2 decades of internet history in that views played a huge role in Youtube culture and they will soon become meaningless with this update. Getting a million or a billion views on anything won‘t matter at all anymore.

But yeah Facebook, Xitter and TikTok have been doing it for years so it makes sense when you compete with them.

[-] magnue@lemmy.world 1 points 39 minutes ago

I wonder if the algorithm counts views the same though.

[-] Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 1 points 42 minutes ago

Yeah makes sense for them... Good I don't consume that crap.

[-] jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

time to learn Japanese or Chinese and use nikoniko or bilibili

[-] GottaHaveFaith@fedia.io 1 points 55 minutes ago

I used to rip the video I liked from YouTube and upload them to Odysee, I should start again...

[-] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

K

this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
34 points (94.7% liked)

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