Some of the world’s biggest recording companies have been exposed for having hackers create fake video views on Youtube. The very popular website cracked down on alleged ‘fake viewers’ when they removed fake views from labels that are the home to artists like: Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Justin Bieber. Reports are coming in that say over one billion Youtube views have been removed in the video site’s biggest ever crackdown on artificially inflated figures.
The severe cuts came as YouTube conducted a crackdown on fake views, but music industry sources have blamed it on housekeeping related to the migration of their videos across different channels. As as result, Universal was left with just five videos on the site. ‘This was not a bug or a security breach. This was an enforcement of our viewcount policy,’ YouTube announced.