The internet is full of numbers that seem important.  Views are one of them.  Every time you check your favorite social media apps, you see views.  YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and others show views in real time.  Even X and Threads track views for every post.  More views mean more success, right?  Wrong.  Views are mostly made-up numbers.  They don't really show how many people watched something.  It is a lie.  It is a trick.  This is how it works.

On social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts, a view is counted the moment a video starts playing.  Even if you scroll past quickly, it counts as a view.  This is silly.  It is like saying you watched a movie just because you walked past a TV playing it.  It is not true.  It is a trick to make the numbers look better.  This is not the only way to trick the system.  Facebook has a different way.  Facebook counts a view as the number of times a video, photo, or text post appears on someone's screen.  This includes repeat views.  Facebook also offers other numbers, like three-second views and one-minute views.  But these are not public.  Why?  Because the real numbers would be much lower.

The idea that everything in your feed counts as a view is everywhere.  On X, every post in your feed gets a view as you scroll.  Even posts in search results or on someone's profile page count as views.  X's rules for videos are simple: if the video played for at least two seconds and half of it was on the screen, it counts as a view.  All these videos play automatically.  So, if it loaded, you viewed it.  This is not true.  It is a trick.

Why do companies use these stupid metrics?  Because if they showed the real numbers, creators might think their platform is not popular.  Advertisers might think they are wasting money.  On the social web, momentum is everything.  Sometimes you have to lie about the size of your party to get the first people in the door.  The platforms have all the control.  They decide what counts as a view.  There is no step two, no intermediary, no actual matching of content and audience.  There are just views.

Even big companies like Netflix are part of this trick.  Netflix used to count a view only after you'd watched 70 percent of something.  Now, it only takes two minutes.  Netflix knows how much you actually watched.  It just wants the numbers to be higher.  Most streamers don't explain how they calculate views.  They keep their metrics quiet.  They can say things like "it was a huge hit! " without having to provide any actual information.  Even YouTube is secretive about its calculations.  It is generally accepted that you have to watch 30 seconds of a standard YouTube video for it to count as a view.  But this is not official.  It is a guess.

The companies know what they are doing.  If they thought public-facing view counts were legit, they'd offer those same numbers to creators and advertisers.  Creators get to see non-public data like watch time and actual interactions.  But even they are consistently being given less and less to work with.  Advertisers have the run of the place.  They get to see how many people watched different parts of a video.  The platforms collect all this data.  They know the answers!  But they'll never show them to you.

The Truth About Online Views: Why They Don't Mean Much

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