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#youtube#caching#viewcount

Why do YouTube views freeze at 301?

Numberphile

4.7M subscribers • 28 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 1 person: 1 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Ted Hamilton, Product Manager at YouTube
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 14 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

301 views14 years ago1 recommendation

Web developmentDistributed systemsScaling and large-scale architectureWeb performance

Ted Hamilton explains the mechanism behind YouTube's historic 301 view count freeze, used to verify views and prevent bot spam.

This glitch was finally "fixed" in August 2015, but may it live on in our hearts. More links & stuff in full description below ↓↓↓ Featuring Ted Hamilton. This video's view count in January 2021 - 15.1 million Numberphile pays a visit to YouTube and learns the secret behind one of the website's famous idiosyncrasies - why view counts on new videos often freeze at 301. Subscribe to Numberphile for new videos about numbers every week. NUMBERPHILE Website: numberphile.com/ Numberphile on Facebook: facebook.com/numberphile Numberphile tweets: twitter.com/numberphile Subscribe: bit.ly/Numberphile_Sub Videos by Brady Haran Patreon: patreon.com/numberphile Brady's videos subreddit: reddit.com/r/BradyHaran/ Brady's latest videos across all channels: bradyharanblog.com/ Sign up for (occasional) emails: eepurl.com/YdjL9 Numberphile T-Shirts: teespring.com/stores/numberphile Other merchandise: store.dftba.com/collections/numberphile

Why it's here

1 person recommends this

What people say. Recommended as the classic explanation of YouTube's view-counting architecture and why it used to freeze at 301.

citricsquidon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Gangnam Style hitting 1 billion YouTube views”

They cache view counts heavily on highly viewed videos for validating views, here's a good video on why it happens (with information from Youtube -- the 301 refers to the first point at which video views stop incrementing in real time): link to this video
View on Hacker News

vegardxon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable”

There's a good reason for it, and usually is a sign that the video is immensely popular. You can find out why on Youtube it self: link to this video
View on Hacker News

flingoon Hacker News • Mentions

On “This Video Has X Views”

Or, someone at youtube saw the video and thought it was cool. Like how this video will always have 301 views: link to this video
View on Hacker News

u2077on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ask HN: Why do so many YouTube videos have exactly 54 upvotes?”

It may be related to the famous 301 view count where YouTube would stop updating the total pending further verification that the views are legitimate. See: link to this video This behavior was later removed in 2015, but I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar is happening here.
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cedillaon Hacker News • Mentions

On “YouTube Oddities”

You probably think of Numberphile explanation of why YouTube videos (used to) stay at 301 views for a while - leading to lots of confusion when the site showed 301 views with 5728 comments and 37592 likes. link to this video
View on Hacker News

meinersburon Hacker News • Mentions

On “YouTube addresses lower view counts which seem to be caused by ad blockers”

From the GitHub issue it becomes clear that blocking happens by the EasyPrivacy blocklist. The blocked URL youtube.com/api/stats/atr is/can also be used for tracking users, this is why some are arguing that it legitimately on that blocklist. The tracking not malicious. YouTube has a legitimate interest to verify views, e.g. to recommend popular videos to others. If a view counter was increased by just invoking an API, view counts could be manipulated easily. Also see the video 1 from ... 13 years ago ... so it might be slighly outdated. Just slightly. 1 link to this video
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