Hey guys, just wanted to chime in here as I'm the creator of Social Blade, the source of the data here.
YouTube removing views is nothing new. We see it all the time. YouTube audits previous views & also from time to time redefines what a view is and updates past view counts to reflect that. We've had an item posted about it on our FAQ for years: http://socialblade.com/youtube/help#3
The thing though is this time in Dec YouTube did something different. This time, as billboard states they also removed views from deleted videos. They hadn't really done this in the past. As a result, universal whose channel had pretty much all of its videos removed (they were all private at one point, but they put some back) suffered a huge loss. Personally what I thought most funny though was YouTube's 3rd cofounder (http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/jawed) who uploaded the first video (me at the zoo) to YouTube actually was one of the biggest losers with almost all of his views thrown out.
This whole thing started when I posted to our facebook page about this https://www.facebook.com/social.blade/posts/135335623291035 and its kind of funny how the media spun it how they did. No one actually contacted me to ask about the data and we did correctly state on the site possible reasons for view loss.
Anyway glad to be a reference. Just like any data people are going to interpret it as they will.
YouTube removing views is nothing new. We see it all the time. YouTube audits previous views & also from time to time redefines what a view is and updates past view counts to reflect that. We've had an item posted about it on our FAQ for years: http://socialblade.com/youtube/help#3
The thing though is this time in Dec YouTube did something different. This time, as billboard states they also removed views from deleted videos. They hadn't really done this in the past. As a result, universal whose channel had pretty much all of its videos removed (they were all private at one point, but they put some back) suffered a huge loss. Personally what I thought most funny though was YouTube's 3rd cofounder (http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/jawed) who uploaded the first video (me at the zoo) to YouTube actually was one of the biggest losers with almost all of his views thrown out.
This whole thing started when I posted to our facebook page about this https://www.facebook.com/social.blade/posts/135335623291035 and its kind of funny how the media spun it how they did. No one actually contacted me to ask about the data and we did correctly state on the site possible reasons for view loss.
Anyway glad to be a reference. Just like any data people are going to interpret it as they will.