YouTube, Bring Back the 301

There was a time a while ago, (before August 8th, 2015), where YouTube had a somewhat funny and not widely understood oddity. Video’s view counters would freeze at 300 or 301 views for approximately 24 hours after they were uploaded. (the reason it is either 300 or 301 was due to an error where a coder put a > instead of a >, so if two views occurred at the same time, the counter goes up to 301). Why? Well, this was before YouTube had enough computing power and complex enough algorithms to differentiate between real and fake views, so they needed the time to make sure the video was legitimate. [There is a video by Brady Haren that is forever stuck at 301 views as the video is about the reasons why and goes much more in depth.]

            The way I see it, I believe that once YouTube got rid of the 301 view limit, they went into a different era of videos, and not necessarily in a good way. The videos being stuck at (let’s just stick with) 300 views was a kind of god-send for certain types of YouTube videos that are a lot harder to come across nowadays. Yes, back then you could still see the likes and dislikes, but that isn’t the same as seeing the view count. 

           Thanks to the views being frozen, a viewer couldn’t get a primed perspective about the video. If you see a video at 15,000 views versus one at 1,000,000 views, you would perceive them differently. You’d be more likely to click on the one million views video. This makes it much harder for newer YouTubers and ones with “unorthodox” editing and production styles to break into the trending page. It instead gets filled with videos that already have a large following, things that people already know they will like and click on even if it only has 500 views. The big channels get bigger, while the small channels get smaller. 

            YouTube actually tried something recently where they removed dislikes from being seen, but people could still dislike videos. But what’s the point if you can’t see them? (I would argue it raised the average dislikes for videos since you don’t know how hated a video is so you dislike it because it becomes a “why not.”) And after a few weeks, YouTube came to the same conclusion and brought them back. 

           But I believe giving videos a 24 hour “judgement-free” zone would help with interaction and grow the platform instead of stagnating it. YouTube could even go a bit farther with this and remove views for some videos completely. (Obviously, the YouTuber who made the video can see the views and other metrics). But while they’re at it, why not block users from seeing subscribers, likes, dislikes, all the metrics?

           Instead do a algorithmic rating per user for each video giving a percentage chance they will like the video. That’s crazy you say? Well, that’s what Netflix does. Imagine if Netflix had a view counter. That’d be ridiculous right? Same idea for YouTube. It is becoming more and more of a TV/streaming service anyway, so why not try it?