YouTuber accuses Facebook of cheating to boost video views

Video blogger Hank Green has accused Facebook of “lying, cheating and stealing” so it can declare itself the most popular video site.

The social network has been inflating its view numbers and promoting clips uploaded directly to Facebook more aggressively than those posted to the site via YouTube, Green claimed in an article for Medium.

The strategy means that about three times more people will see natively posted content.

“As a creator, it seems like an abuse of their power,” Green said.

He said that a recent study found that 725 of the 1,000 most popular Facebook videos of the first quarter of 2015 were “stolen re-uploads”, accounting for around 17 billion views in that time period.

“This is not insignificant,” he said. “It’s the vast majority of Facebook’s high volume traffic.”

Green also took issue with how Facebook counts a video “view” – after the clip has been playing for just three seconds, whether or not the sound is on. YouTube counts a video view after it has been on for about 30 seconds.

Matt Pakes, a product manager at Facebook, defended the social network yesterday, writing in Medium: “If you have stayed on a video for at least three seconds, it signals to us that you are not simply scrolling through feed and you’ve shown intent to watch that video.”

Green has produced videos for YouTube, NASA and the Discovery Channel.