YouTube Does Away With Its Wretched Practice Of Displaying “301+” Views
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="600" width="800" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
Image Credits: sorosh / Flickr under a CC BY 2.0 license.
You use YouTube, everyone uses YouTube, so you know the “301+” number that this headline refers to. Before a video goes bananas with views, it gets paused at “301+” for some period of time just to make sure that the counts aren’t being fluffed up by bots.
Sure, it’s a nice notion, but man is it annoying. Today, YouTube dropped a tweet letting everyone know that they’re doing away with that practice.
Yay!
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="324" width="324" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
This has been a pain in the ass for a while, with people constantly asking both Google and YouTube why their view counts are “frozen.” There’s even a…video about it.
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="326" width="596" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
Here’s a little bit more information on why YouTube embraced this practice in the first place, and how it can now drop it.
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="333" width="680" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
Only after a few hours would the number jump up past 301+, while YouTube verified those views. The training wheels are off for the most part, but the player will only show view numbers that YouTube is confident are real early on, just to be safe.
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="105" width="187" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="132" width="187" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="134" width="187" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
