On December 20th, hundreds of youtube users woke to find that google had left a big lump of coal in their digital stockings.  Over 2 Billion “fake” youtube views had suddenly been removed from view counts and scores of videos were pulled for violating the site’s Terms of Use.  According to The Daily Dot, some of the channels that were hit the hardest belong to some big name musicians, youtube stars, studios and record labels.  Sony/BMG was the biggest victim of the purge.  Their channel’s cumulative view count dropped by 850 million and now stands at just 2.3 million.  How was Sony able to fake 850 million views?  It was easy; they just bought them.  Right now anyone can go to a site like Fiverr and order hundreds of likes or thousands of views for just 5 bucks.  Here’s an example of what a bogus view “gig” looks like.

10,000 views for $5 sounds like a great deal…until your video gets pulled

I’ve never been exactly sure how all these Fiverr sellers are able to generate fake views but I guess it’s done with bots.  Views are determined by which IP addresses access a video.  So these bots need to somehow switch IPs between each play.  If you have such a program it’s an easy way to make a lot of cash.  Just look at that gig I posted.  29 people are currently waiting for their order to filled.  So that seller will make 145 bucks and all he has to do is run his bot 29 times.

For years google stood on the sidelines and watched users inflate their view counts using a variety of nefarious means but now it sounds like they’ve decided to try and fix this problem.  And this is GREAT news for video contest filmmakers.  Fake views and likes have totally wrecked every video contest that is run on youtube.  If views and likes affect a video’s score, cheaters will be able to win that contest easily.  Why should anyone bother to get legitimate views and likes if they can just pay $5 and win in a landslide?  In late 2011 I was in a contest sponsored by the microjob website DoUpTo.com; $15,000 was at stake and the finalists were determined by Youtube views.  Things got ugly really fast and a few videos were able to achieve massive view counts in just a few days.  These videos weren’t getting any likes or comments so it was obvious the views were phony.  I contacted the guy running the contest and explained flat out how people were cheating.  But it seemed like the guy knew exactly what was going on.  He basically said we understand and unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do to stop this.  We encourage you to do whatever it takes if you want to make the finals.  Why would DoUpTo actually encourage contestants to cheat?  Maybe because their site is a lot like Fiverr and plenty of their users are in the view-selling business.

Again, it sounds like a great deal until your channel gets suspended

So buying views is really cheap and really easy.  But now finally it looks these transactions are no longer 100% risk free.  Apparently it’s easy for youtube to detect these bots and now if you buy some views you might get caught and your video will be pulled.  And if you rack up multiple violations your entire channel can be shut down.  So if your video gets pulled in the middle of a video contest you are totally screwed.  What are you going to do, tell the sponsor that you need to re-upload your entry because you got busted by youtube?  So when it comes to buying fake youtube views and likes, remember kids, just say NO.  It’s not worth the risk.  And hey just between you and me, if you need to get a lot of youtube views really fast, just do what I always do…I pay youtube to promote my video!  It costs more than 5 bucks but you can get thousands of real views from real humans and there is zero chance you’re going to be disqualified for cheating or have your video zapped into oblivion.

If you’d like more details about youtube’s Promoted Videos Program you can check out this article I wrote last year: How to Get Unlimited, Real Youtube Views