The Effects of Fake Views

Have you ever went onto any form of social media and saw a random video that has no reason to be at the top of your news feed? Have you ever wondered how that video has become so popular and why people would be watching this video? This can be because people can purchase fake views to push there videos to the top and into the “trending now” section where people are most likely to be looking for videos. This causes more people to watch the video and become “viral” as many people like to call it.

This isn’t just a video specific problem. People can buy page views for their website so they can show off the numbers and get some ad revenue as they pull in more views because of the inflated numbers they have. Live streamers also can face this problem. There may be view bots in the live streamers channel to make them reach the top of the website which causes real people to want to tune in. (Dan.2013)This is very unethical and creates an unfair environment for the other people trying to create content.

These fake views are unfair for the people who work really hard on the content they publish. It also makes it difficult to find good content for the viewers. An example could be something like this. John and Joe are both aspiring food critics. John works day and night to try and create the most interesting review of each restaurant he visits for his viewers filled with in depth knowledge about everything about the restaurant. Joe takes 5 minutes out of his day to write about a meal he just ate without any passion in the writing. Joe pays $10 to buy 50,000 page views each time he posts, causing him to be put on the front page of all social media. This causes people to click on Joes reviews to gain more attraction where he eventually gets triple his views and getting more revenue. John on the other hand is sitting at the bottom with only 100 people who all enjoy his content.

Fake views effect both the viewer and the content creators in the industry. It gives the viewers the possibility of lackluster content. It gives the content creator a huge advantage over everyone else because he bought his views. Everyone wants to be on top but it should be the people who create the best content to be on top as opposed to people who pay for it. 




Dan,L(2013,January) How to spot fake youtube views Retrieved from http://videocontestnews.com/2013/01/25/how-to-spot-fake-youtube-views/