Meta’s Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, as well as TikTok and YouTube, use view counts as a key engagement metric, but they are arbitrary and only serve to juice posts’ popularity, according to The Verge.
View counts are a “lie” because they only reflect how a platform records a view, not the number of times a user has viewed a post, the article claims.
For example, a view can be logged after just three seconds of a video playing automatically, or if an image or text is visible for a frame, it is considered viewed, even if a user doesn’t actually look at it.
The article calls for internet metrics to be overhauled to provide more accurate data to prove worthwhile to creators and advertisers, concluding: “Maybe we’d all be better off without the numbers, but they’re not going anywhere.